For the last Humanize episode of the season, I thought it would be edifying to explore how Discovery Institute's institutional programs dovetail with the work of the Center on Human Exceptionalism. Who better to ask than our intrepid president, Steven J. Buri?By Discovery Institute Center on Human Exceptionalism

In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on AI — artificial intelligence. Are we on the verge of an era if incalculable human progress because of the power of AI? Or are we threatened with being made obsolete and perhaps extinguished in an age of intelligent machines? Or, perhaps, a combination of both? The program features two experts who have …

Most people support responsible environmental policies but may be unaware of how radical the leading edge of the movement has become as an increasing number of activists support granting personhood rights to nature. Is nature rights a subversive threat to human exceptionalism and our thriving or is it the next necessary step in society’s moral grow…

We live in a time in which eliminating suffering is considered by many to be society’s ultimate purpose. Too often, this leads to policies that eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer. Still, for those not experiencing intense pain or anguish, arguing for improved care instead of increased access to assisted suicide or euthanasia can seem l…

To say the least, bioethics is controversial. Many in the mainstream movement reject the sanctity and equal dignity of human life around issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and biotechnology. But there is a robust pushback against such approaches—a human dignity bioethics, if you will—that promotes medical ethics and public health policies t…

It is no secret that most of society’s critical institutions are suffering from a crisis of trust. One of these is science, which heretofore enjoyed the confidence of the vast majority of the American people. To learn, what happened, whether the loss of confidence is deserved, and what can be done about it, Wesley asked the Director of the Discover…

Racism has been America’s lingering cancer. There is no question that great strides have been made in eradicating this evil from our culture since the bad old days of slavery and Jim Crow. But alas, the urgent task is not completed, and as a result, a great divide still lingers among too many Americans based on superficial and irrelevant difference…

We are in the midst of a transgender moral panic. Where only recently, very few people sought what used to be called a sex change, today the numbers of people seeking to “transition” to the other gender—particularly among children and teenagers—is becoming a flood. Much of the American medical establishment and the Biden administration claim that i…

The southern border of the United States is in chaos. Millions of people from all over the world are flooding here each year, mostly illegally, but still allowed to remain in — and be transported free — throughout the country. Matters are quickly coming to a head. The crisis has strained our infrastructures, exacerbated our bitter political divisio…

When the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a constitutional right in Roe v. Wade in 1973, it not only throttled an important ongoing democratic debate in the country about legalizing abortion, but it tore this country’s culture apart. In the next fifty years, dedicated pro-life activists committed themselves to democratic engagement and advocac…

The homelessness and addiction catastrophes on our city streets seem intractable. Unhygienic squatter tent cities. Human waste on our sidewalks. Used needles littering our parks. Crime. Collapsing commercial districts. It’s enough to make one turn away in despair and allow areas of our once most beautiful cities to become no-go zones. But some refu…

It is no secret that American politics are in crisis. Polls show that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives are increasingly estranged from each other, conservative red states and progressive blue states are enacting public policies that are dramatically dichotomous, and millions of people no longer trust the integrity of our electo…

It’s no secret that American education is in a profound crisis. From dismal academic performance, to bitter contention over gender ideology taught in elementary school, the damage caused by COVID school lockdowns, a collapse in discipline, and fear of violence, “school days” have become much more complicated than reading, writing, and arithmetic.…

A vibrant and engaged media is essential to protecting American liberty—which is why the First Amendment provides such a strong protection for freedom of the press. If the media are to carry out their societal responsibilities, journalists must have the trust of news consumers. But these days, trust is in low supply. An October 2022 Gallup Poll fou…

Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy once opined that freedom of religion has “a double aspect—freedom of thought and action.” In other words, to be truly religiously free, one must not only be at liberty to believe, but act consistently with those beliefs. This concept of religious freedom—the right to live and act according to one’s faith—has histo…

The COVID pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Adding to our woes, the proper approach to scientific inquiry and policy makers’ relationship with the expert class became badly skewed. Once an orthodoxy was declared by the World Health Organization or the Center for Disease Control, govern…

The United States has become the world’s most adamant promoter of what is now called “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents who identify as being other than their born sex. This approach ranges from “social affirmation”—the use of preferred pronouns, for example—to “medical affirmation,” such as puberty blocking, to radical “surgical …

In his first term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown famously said back in 1975, “There is no free lunch. This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it. Small is beautiful.” Was Brown right? These days, it seems that establishment thinking and most of the content on mainstream media believes it is so. Threats Read More ›…

The environmental movement is growing ever-more extreme. Radical ideas such as granting rights to nature—including geological features like rivers, lakes, and glaciers—are gaining popularity as a means of “saving the planet.” But is there another way? Can we fulfill our human duty to be good stewards of the environment without undermining human exc…

Western Civilization is in crisis. It is becoming unmoored from its Judeo-Christian roots and the belief in the unique dignity of every human life, leading to destructive progressive social policies that some believe threaten us with a form of therapeutic authoritarianism. One such commentator is my guest today on Humanize. Rod Dreher is an America…

No modern society has embraced lethal injection euthanasia with the enthusiasm of Canada, where not only the terminally ill can be killed by doctors but also people with chronic conditions and disabilities. Soon, people with mental illnesses will qualify for a doctor-hastened death. In 2021, more than 10,000 Canadians were euthanized by doctors or …

Abraham Lincoln famously called the United States of America, “the last best Hope on earth.” Throughout our history, most Americans believed that. So did countless people from other countries who left their homes behind to come here in pursuit of the American dream — including my grandmother who immigrated from Italy in 1910 as a 16 year-old to hel…

A continual criticism of the pro-life movement is that adherents only care about children before they are born. But is that true? The proliferation of Pregnancy Help Centers throughout the country and the many outreach efforts of the pro-life movement to help women and babies after birth testifies to the lie of the accusation. Wesley’s guest today …

In this episode of the Humanize podcast we will explore the human body. Is your body “engineered” or did it evolve through impersonal and random processes over countless millions of years of natural selection? And what difference does the answer to that question make? Wesley’s guests are the authors of Your Designed Body, a new book that explores t…

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Which seems odd. Usually, a universal external threat unites societies and rallies populations to focus on the common foe. Instead, American society fractured into different tribes, which often coincided with our preexisting political fact…