After Babel with Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch

We were made for relationship — to be seen, loved, known, and committed to others. And yet we increasingly find ourselves, in the words of sociologist Jonathan Haidt, “disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

On our podcast Haidt and bestselling author Andy Crouch pair up to explore how the technology era has seduced us with a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back, and restore true community:

“A person is a heart, soul, mind, strength, complex designed for love. And one of the really damaging things about our technology is very little of our technology develops all four of those qualities.” - Andy Crouch

We hope you enjoy this conversation about the seismic effects technology has had on our personal relationships, civic institutions, and even democratic foundations — and how we might approach rethinking our technologies and reclaiming human connection.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt

The Coddling of the American Mind, by Jonathan Haidt

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt

Culture Making, by Andy Crouch

Playing God, by Andy Crouch

Strong and Weak, by Andy Crouch

The TechWise Family, by Andy Crouch

My TechWise Life, by Amy and Andy Crouch

The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, by Andy Crouch

Ernest Hemingway

Francis Bacon

Howard Hotson

Greg Lukianoff

Wolfram Schultz

The Sacred Canopy, by Peter L. Berger

Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas

Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

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