Michael Robbins explores the shape that apocalyptic thought has taken in American Christianity (despite its slim textual basis) and in contemporary secular contexts like climate catastrophe. Robbins also draws on systems analysis to bring out the structural factors that could be pushing us to the edge of apocalypse. He discloses his own attitude, which is neither optimistic nor defeatist, but rather informed by religious and leftist commitments, which in his view share a “structure of feeling.”

Read Robbins’s essay: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/12/apocalypse-nowish/

This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Maddie Crum, with production assistance from Ian Mantgani.

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