David Gornoski sits down with economist and venture capitalist Patri Friedman, founder of Pronomos and the Seasteading Institute, for an exploration of liberty and the future of governance in our time. Will we see a return to local city-states and private enterprise zones around the world? Patri says that the Seasteading project, which is very […]
Very few films have defined a genre. One of these films is the 1927 German silent movie Metropolis. Directed by legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang, Metropolis is a dystopian sci-fiction movie that touches on important socio-political and even theological aspects of modern society. Made during the Weimar era—a time when Germany was in political and economic […]
In these times of social unrest we need to understand what drives humanity towards conflict. David Cayley, longtime CBC Ideas broadcaster, joins David Gornoski to discuss the breakdown of social unity through a distinctly Christian lens shaped by experiences with Rene Girard and Ivan Illich. On the pandemic, Cayley says that “the virus is the […]
Technologist and public intellectual Jordan Hall joins David Gornoski, host of A Neighbor’s Choice, for a journey through sense-making in 2020. The conversation starts off with Peter Thiel’s comments on humanity reaching a technological stagnation after the moon-landing mission. Could this be due to lack of innovation in the world of atoms? asks David Gornoski. […]
In ancient times, there were often masked rituals, and in these rituals, boundaries and identities were blurred because the participants wore masks. But what would these rituals lead to and why was anonymity so important? David Gornoski gives us an earth-shattering explanation of this ancient ritual and how it is refined and imposed today under […]
According to Rene Girard, plague is an omnipresent theme in literature. It features prominently in the stories of the great bards of history: Homer, Sophocles, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Camus to name but a few. It spans the whole spectrum of literary genres: epic, tragedy, short story, sonnet, novels, history, science fiction, and science. In […]
In monarchy… it is a matter of the victim being still alive, one that has not yet been sacrificed. In the case of divinity, by contrast, the interpretation accentuates a victim that has already been sacrificed and it is a matter of the sacred having been already expelled from the community. In the former example, […]
David Gornoski contemplates how Jesus would deal with a pandemic and concludes that the key lies in Jesus’ merciful treatment of Peter who had earlier betrayed him. Whereas ancient mythologies empower the mob against a single person, Christ redeems and humanizes the victim of the crowd. It is due to this anthropological revelation that the […]
What if Galileo had been asked to spend millions to prove his claim? Host David Gornoski explains how the government’s patenting practices have proved to be an enormous and sinful hurdle in fighting the COVID-19 virus. “But free markets hurt families,” say the naysayers. David Gornoski disagrees. “I see a society that has mutated from […]
In this episode of A Neighbor’s Choice, Florida Rep. Mike Hill calls in and argues that instead of panicking and shutting down the economy saner heads should have prevailed. “Government is not the answer, it has created the problem in the first place.” The conversation then moves to Mike Hill’s email interaction with a woman […]