The podcast introduces the Ministry of Good Faith and encourages listeners to make a year-end contribution. They explain the podcast's funding and how individuals can donate. They then discuss how institutions help manage human anxiety by taking on potential future losses, allowing individuals to navigate life without excessive worry.
In the diagnosis of the epidemic of anxiety sweeping through society, the examination has tended to focus on individual risk factors or macro-social trends (like social media and smartphone adoption among teens). But this misses something going on at the intermediary level between individuals and mass society: the state of the institutions that shape so much of our daily life. Curtis is joined by renowned scholar Yuval Levin in exploring the concept of “the anxious institution.” They make the case that institutions both externally cause and internally experience anxiety in fascinating and important ways.