In his new book, The Decadent Society, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat diagnoses America’s core problems as decadence: “a situation in which repetition is more the norm than innovation; in which sclerosis afflicts public institution and private enterprises alike; in which intellectual life seems to go in circles; in which new developments in science, new exploratory projects, underdeliver compared with what people recently expected.”

Douthat argues that there is a kind of ideological exhaustion, a spiritual malaise, at the center of the American project. We are a victim of our own successes, undone by our own achievements, and unable to break free from our oldest debates. But is he right?

Ross and I cover a lot of ground in this conversation. We discuss why conservative Catholics talk so much more about sex than poverty, the dangers of the expansionary impulse, whether psychedelic culture is an antidote to decadence, the importance of utopian ambition, the moral foundations of effective altruism, the problem with contemporary science fiction, whether political liberalism is dependent on Christian metaphysics, why America can’t build, whether war is necessary for existential meaning, how the New York Times op-ed page has changed over the past decade, and much more.

Book recommendations:

From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun

The Illusion of the End by Jean Baudrillard

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Children of Men by PD James

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Credits:

Producer/Editor - Jeff Geld

Researcher - Roge Karma

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Satansplain #097 - The Absence of Evidence ("Satanism" before 1966)