What do Woody Allen, Dostoevsky, Cain, and Able have in common? What are the underlying psychological themes and influences in modern horror? Andrew Klavan, an award-winning writer, screenwriter, and media commentator, joins Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas to discuss his new book, The Kingdom of Cain. Klavan explores how artists’ imaginative engagement with the darkness can point the way to living beautifully in the midst of a tragic world. Using the frame of three historic murders, he examines how the transformation that occurs in art grants us a vision for how transformation can take root in our lives.

Has toxic empathy led modern Christians to live in a Stockholm Syndrome-like way towards an opposing world? John West, Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, where he also serves as Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, shares how the overwhelming influence of toxic empathy and desire to appease popular culture can be fatal to our faith. Using the famous Stockholm bank robbery of the 1970, West joins Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas, to discuss how Christians have subconsciously grown up in cultural captivity, and how we can rebel against it.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a prominent author and former member of the Dutch Parliament recognized for her work on women’s issues and civil liberties, joins Socrates in the City to share her extraordinary personal journey. Born in Somalia and raised in a strict Islamic environment, she recounts her flight from forced marriage and eventual political asylum in the Netherlands. A fierce critic of radical Islam, Hirsi Ali became a leading voice for secularism and embraced atheism—only recently undergoing a transformative journey that led her to embrace the Christian faith. In this compelling conversation, she reflects on faith, freedom, and the search for meaning in the modern world.

Can the world of academia be trusted? In an attempt to expose the insanity that he personally experienced in higher ed, James Lindsay and a small team came up with the idea of writing bogus papers which they submitted to peer-reviewed publications. Much to their surprise, many of these “academic articles” were accepted. The team went so far as to submit a paper that included chapter 12 of Mein Kampf – rewritten with trendy phrases like intersectionality – which was accepted by a feminist social work journal. While Lindsay and his team hoped this experiment would expose academic publishing, with the purpose of bringing truth and rigor back to the institutions, there were other unexpected consequences.

How do our minds make meaning? Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists to name a few. A leading scholar in the field of neurology he has published original research on neuroimaging in schizophrenia, the phenomenology of schizophrenia, and is the author of, The Master and his Emissary:The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World and The Matter With Things. He joins Socrates in the City host, Eric Metaxas to discuss how our minds make meaning out of purpose, divinity, and the relationship between matter and meaning. 

Headmaster of Michaela school, Katherine Birbalsingh sits down with host Eric Metaxas to discuss the challenges of speaking about the deficiencies in the UK school system and how it led her to begin her school and initiate a reform of Classical Education against the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’.                           

Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists to name a few. A leading scholar in the field of neurology he has published original research on neuroimaging in schizophrenia, the phenomenology of schizophrenia, and is the author of, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He joins Socrates in the City host, Eric Metaxas to discuss the myths and misconceptions between the left and right hemispheres of our brain. McGilchrist highlights the importance of understanding the balance within our brains, and how this has shaped and changed Western Civilization.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What does the world of philosophy have to do with the world of religion?  Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity, Dr. James Orr joins host Eric Metaxas to have a conversation on the Twilight of the West, the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and the enduring influence of Hellenistic and Hebraic thought in our enlightened world.      

Is free speech a Western value? In our modern society are we more afraid of truth, or what that truth may ask of us? Writer, social commentator, co-host of TRIGGERnometry and comedian, Konstantin Kisin sits down with host Eric Metaxas to discuss the role of free speech in Western civilization, the difference between individualistic worldviews compared to collaborative Eastern environments, and the role of faith in understanding the values of free speech. They discuss the enemies of free speech, truth, and progress – and how society today maintains the balance of free speech and free expression.

“Tolkien believed that the fairytale genre was for everyone,” says Eric Metaxas’s guest, Dr. Holly Ordway, Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies, and J.R.R. Tolkien expert. This delightful conversation unearths many amazing details and covers topics like how Tolkien came to faith, the important friendship with C.S. Lewis, his ambitions to be a poet, the “Christianness” of the Lord of the Rings saga, Leaf by Niggle, and much more.

The esteemed editor of The New Criterion — a monthly review of the arts and intellectual life – and president of Encounter Books, Roger Kimball, and Socrates host Eric Metaxas, sit down for a delightful conversation on the intellectual life, touching on subjects from the inversion of virtue to political correctness to the effects of the sexual revolution on culture to Artificial Intelligence.

The day after his Socrates in the City event on C.S. Lewis and Scientism, The Discovery Institute’s Dr. John West sits down with Host Eric Metaxas to discuss his documentary Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism.

Human Zoos tells the shocking story of how thousands of indigenous peoples were put on public display in America in the early decades of the twentieth century. To watch the full documentary, head to https://humanzoos.org/.

English Professor at Houston Baptist University, Louis Markos, returns for a second conversation with Socrates in the City’s Eric Metaxas. For this entertaining Studio conversation, the duo illustrate how ancient myths point to Christ, discussing C.S. Lewis, Pandora’s Box, Genesis, and much else along the way.

Louis Markos, English Professor at Houston Baptist University, joins host Eric Metaxas for a fascinating conversation on how the work of Plato —  Socrates’s student and Aristotle’s teacher — has shaped the Christian faith. In this lively discussion, the two look at Plato’s best-known texts and talk about how it affected figures like Augustine, Dante, and C. S. Lewis.

Socrates in the Studio is a pared-down version of our larger forum, Socrates in the City, where host Eric Metaxas poses the “big questions” in conversations with world-class thinkers, scientists, archeologists, philosophers, artists, and professors. Season one explores the questions:  What does truth have to do with beauty? What is liberty? Is there a “law” hidden beneath the written law? And more!

Public intellectual and author Heather Mac Donald and host Eric Metaxas discuss ideologies that are infecting Western institutions. The two argue that lowering standards in the name of inclusion leads to mediocrity, and worse, and offer some solutions.

Dr. Anthony Bradley and host Eric Metaxas discuss the unique position of fraternities to provide men with support, friendship, and mentors, and create opportunities for heroism and hope in an age of anxiety and socioeconomic change.

Medical doctor, public health policy expert, and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute Dr. Scott Atlas joins host Eric Metaxas to share details from his time on the White House’s COVID-19 Task Force.

What does truth have to do with beauty, and what does beauty have to do with goodness? Princeton Theological Seminary’s Margarita Mooney Clayton and host Eric Metaxas sit down to discuss the meaning of beauty as defined by figures such as St. Augustine, Plato, and C.S. Lewis, and its great significance for a materialistic generation.

Is there a “law” hidden beneath the written law? Hadley Arkes, professor of law for nearly fifty years, and host Eric Metaxas sit down to discuss how the framers of the Constitution regarded the “self-evident” truths of the Natural Law as foundational.

Writer and cultural commentator Andrew Klavan returns for an in-depth conversation with host Eric Metaxas on his nonfiction book, The Truth and Beauty. The two discuss the Romantic’s response to the collapse of European thought and belief and what that means for us today.

The Stream’s John Zmirak and host Eric Metaxas sit down to discuss Zmirak’s new book: No Second Amendment, No First. No Second Amendment, No First is nothing less an urgent call for moral clarity, and a full-throated reminder of what is at stake in the war for our nation’s soul.