Humanize

By Discovery Institute Center on Human Exceptionalism

What's Humanize about?

Humanize with Wesley J. Smith from Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, where human rights meet human responsibilities. We speak on the controversial issues of human life and human thriving that impact our daily lives.

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Humanize episodes:

04.22.2024
Thomas Linzey on the Nature Rights Movement
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...
04.08.2024
Mark Davis Pickup on Living with Intense Suffering and Experiencing a Miraculous Healing
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,...
03.11.2024
Dr. Charles Camosy on Current Trends in Bioethics
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...
02.26.2024
Stephen C. Meyer on the Crisis of Trust in Science
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...
02.12.2024
The Rev. Dr. Arthur Cribbs, Jr. on His Book HollyWatts: From the Promised Land to Purgatory and the Crisis in Race Relations
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...
01.29.2024
Jennifer Lahl Her Newest Film, ‘The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood’
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...
01.08.2024
Mark Krikorian on the Southern Border Crisis
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....
11.20.2023
Clarke Forsythe on the History and Future of the Pro-Life Movement
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...
11.06.2023
Jonathan Choe on the Crisis of our City Streets
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...
10.23.2023
Henry Olsen on the Crisis in American Politics
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,...
10.09.2023
Dr. Keri D. Ingraham on the Crisis in American Education
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,...
09.25.2023
Alice Stewart on the Crisis of Trust in the American Media
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...
09.11.2023
Sam Brownback on the Importance of Religious Freedom to World Peace and Prosperity
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....
06.05.2023
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on the Need for a COVID Response Truth Commission
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...
05.22.2023
Stephen B. Levine M.D. on the Science of Gender-Affirming Care
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,...
05.08.2023
Dr. Gale L. Pooley on the Ideology of Scarcity and the Potential to Achieve “Super Abundance”
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?...
04.10.2023
Todd Myers on Democratizing Environmentalism by ‘Thinking Small’
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...
03.13.2023
Rod Dreher on the Crisis of Western Civilization
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...
02.20.2023
Alex Schadenberg on the Canadian Euthanasia Epidemic
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...
02.06.2023
Tim Goeglein on the Case for Teaching the Great American Story
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...
01.23.2023
Dr. Peggy Hartshorn on Heartbeat International, Pregnancy Resource Centers, and Abortion Pill Reversal
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...
01.09.2023
Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman on the Design of the Human Body
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...
12.26.2022
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on COVID-19 as One of the Most Divisive Events in American History
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...
12.12.2022
Chen Guangcheng on the Current Tyranny in the People’s Republic of China
In the current episode of Humanize, Wesley interviews Chen Guangcheng, an authentic human rights hero and adamant opponent of Chinese Communist Party tyranny that rules the People’s Republic of China. Known internationally as “the barefoot lawyer,” Chen is a renowned...
11.28.2022
Dr. Jay Wesley Richards on What Every Parent Should Know About Gender Ideology and Gender-Affirming Care
In a previous episode of Humanize, Wesley interviewed Jennifer Lahl, director of The Detransition Diaries, which documents the stories of three young women who received what is called “gender-affirming care”—including a mastectomy in one case—and later realized that they were...
11.07.2022
Jennifer Lahl on ‘The Detransition Diaries: Saving our Sisters’
We are in the midst of a transgender moral panic. Where only a decade ago, very few people sought what used to be called a sex change, today the numbers of people seeking to “transition” is becoming a flood. It...
10.24.2022
Ward Connerly on Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Individual Rights
Racism is profoundly evil and a clear violation of human exceptionalism by treating inherent equals unequally. Indeed, if we are to become a truly just society, racism must be countered by people of good will whenever it is expressed. At...
10.10.2022
Robert J. Marks II on Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism, and Whether Computers Will Ever Be More Than ‘Human’
In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on the emerging computer technology known as artificial intelligence. Are we on the verge of the era of machines? Is AI destined to supplant most human endeavors and activities? Can a computer be...
09.26.2022
Ambassador Sam Brownback on the Threat to Religious Freedom in America
With Western society becoming morally polyglot and secular, religious freedom is becoming a major political clash point, and in the United States, a central front in what is sometimes called the culture war. Proponents of robust religious freedom protections see...
09.12.2022
Dean Koontz on His Vocation as an Author, Art and Meaning in Life, and Human Exceptionalism
In episode one of the second season of Humanize, Wesley J. Smith’s guest is the internationally famous novelist Dean Koontz. Dean and Wesley discuss how he came to be an author, how life is filled with meaning, his art, the...
06.28.2022
Catherine Glenn Foster on Abortion and the Dawning of a Post-Roe America
In 1973, nearly 50 years ago, the United States Supreme Court conjured a right to abortion in the Constitution, short-circuiting the democratic debate then ongoing in the states about whether to legalize pregnancy terminations, and if so, under what circumstances....
05.23.2022
Robert Marbut on America’s Homelessness Crisis, Strategies for Uplifting the Homeless, and Effective Government Policies
Homelessness has reached crisis proportions. Few issues of human dignity are as heart wrenching as the wretched scenes in our most prosperous cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle — where one can drive down main thoroughfares and...
05.09.2022
Joseph Bottum on Cyber Ethics, Poetry, Culture, and Community
In this episode of Humanize, Wesley has a wide-ranging a conversation with his close friend Joseph Bottum, one of our most well read and original thinkers, a true intellectual in the best sense of that term. Their conversation ranges from...
04.25.2022
O. Carter Snead on Bioethics, ‘What It Means to Be Human,’ and the Pro-Life Movement After Dobbs
Perhaps no field in society has the naked power, as does bioethics, to impact our individual lives and those of the ones we love. Bioethics focuses on the challenges of mortality, how we care for the ill and vulnerable, and...
04.11.2022
Lynn Vincent on ‘Lawless,’ the Truth About the Terri Schiavo Case, and Why Terri Still Matters
When Terri Schiavo collapsed with a cardiac arrest in 1990, she could have had no idea that 32 years later people all over the world would know her name and care very much about the manner in which she died....
03.28.2022
Roger Severino on Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Conscience Rights in a Divided America
It is no secret that our country is badly divided and riven by profound moral, religious, and political differences about what constitutes the good, the best means of promoting human flourishing, and even the proper meaning of the term, “civil...
03.14.2022
Emily Cook on Texas Right to Life, the Texas Heartbeat Act, and Futile Care Protocols
The usual canard about the pro-life movement goes something like this: “Pro-lifers care so much about babies before they are born, but not much after. The thing about canards is that, by definition, they are not true. Pro-lifers also work...
02.28.2022
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on COVID-19, Authentic Public Health, and the Biosecurity State
The COVID pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Which seems odd. Usually, a universal external threat unite societies and rallies populations to focus on the common foe. Instead, American society fractured...
02.21.2022
Ryan Hanlon on Adoption, the National Council for Adoption, and the Importance of Families
Adoption didn’t used to be a matter of significant controversy. Public and private adoption agencies worked diligently to place children needing families with those who wanted to love them. Private adoptions often happened without a hitch. These days, adoption has...
02.14.2022
David Berlinski on Architectural Nihilism, Human Nature and the Holocaust, and Emotivism
We live in intellectually mediocre times, when commitment to true debate as a means of ascertaining truth — and the understanding that reasonable people can have different opinions — has been replaced by a desire among the culturally powerful to...
02.07.2022
Pat Nolan on Criminal Justice Reform, Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, and the First Step Act
Is criminal justice a “human dignity issue?” Wesley’s guest, Pat Nolan makes a compelling case that it is and for improving the manner in which—and attention we pay to—the care and rehabilitation of incarcerated people. In their conversation, Nolan discusses...
01.24.2022
Robert P. George on teaching and free thought, defending Peter Singer, and natural law
People of true principle are rare commodities in this age of bitter political divisions and cultural discord. What matters exclusively for too many, is winning. Indeed, we live in such strident times that some find it difficult to be friends...
01.17.2022
Alveda King on the American Civil Rights Movement, Critical Race Theory, and the American Dream
Since the murder of George Floyd, the nation has been embroiled in racial unrest of a kind not seen in decades. It is a disturbing time. Is racism best struggled against through the colorblind approach of the Reverend, Dr. Martin...
01.10.2022
Kathryn Jean Lopez on Truth, Dorothy Day, and ‘A Year With the Mystics’
“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus. That is a most human question, because of all the known species in the universe, only we even understand the concept of Truth with a capital T. As moral beings, most of...
01.03.2022
Nina Shea on the Chinese Communist Party, Minority Rights, and Religious Freedom
Since the Holocaust, we have agreed to the idealistic vision of “Never Again,” that is, the kind of evil perpetrated by the Third Reich against Jews and others can never be allowed to be repeated. But do we mean it?...
12.20.2021
Zoltan Istvan on Transhumanism, ‘Good Eugenics,’ and Immortality
Every now and then, our electoral system produces one of those quintessentially American characters who coopts the energy of the presidential voting cycle to become a national celebrity and elevate an obscure social movement into greater popular visibility. In 2016 that...
12.13.2021
Dr. J. Benjamin Hurlbut on science, restoring public trust, and transcending ideology
There was a time when the fields of “science” and “public health” were not controversial. There were good reasons for that widespread public trust. Because of advances in fighting infectious disease, life expectancy materially increased. The scourge of smallpox was...
12.06.2021
Rebecca Friedrichs on exposing the sexualizing of children in schools and ‘For Kids and Country’
In a previous program with Donna Rice Hughes, Wesley discussed how children are victimized by commercial sources of pornography and obscene Internet content. It was an important conversation, and if you missed it, you can listen to it here: Donna...
11.29.2021
Joni Eareckson Tada on embracing life, disability rights, and choosing solidarity and hope
In this edition of Humanize, Wesley hosts one of the people he most admires in the public sphere. Joni Eareckson Tada is an artist, an international humanitarian, a disability rights activist, a Christian evangelist, and a defender of the sanctity...
11.22.2021
Dr. Stephen C. Meyer on the ‘God Hypothesis’ and the materialists’ increasingly fringe rationales for life and the universe
In this episode of the Humanize podcast, Wesley interviews Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, about his new book The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind...

What's Humanize about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Humanize episodes:

Thomas Linzey on the Nature Rights Movement

Mark Davis Pickup on Living with Intense Suffering and Experiencing a Miraculous Healing

Dr. Charles Camosy on Current Trends in Bioethics

Stephen C. Meyer on the Crisis of Trust in Science

The Rev. Dr. Arthur Cribbs, Jr. on His Book HollyWatts: From the Promised Land to Purgatory and the Crisis in Race Relations

Jennifer Lahl Her Newest Film, ‘The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood’

Mark Krikorian on the Southern Border Crisis

Clarke Forsythe on the History and Future of the Pro-Life Movement

Jonathan Choe on the Crisis of our City Streets

Henry Olsen on the Crisis in American Politics

Dr. Keri D. Ingraham on the Crisis in American Education

Alice Stewart on the Crisis of Trust in the American Media

Sam Brownback on the Importance of Religious Freedom to World Peace and Prosperity

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on the Need for a COVID Response Truth Commission

Stephen B. Levine M.D. on the Science of Gender-Affirming Care

Dr. Gale L. Pooley on the Ideology of Scarcity and the Potential to Achieve “Super Abundance”

Todd Myers on Democratizing Environmentalism by ‘Thinking Small’

Rod Dreher on the Crisis of Western Civilization

Alex Schadenberg on the Canadian Euthanasia Epidemic

Tim Goeglein on the Case for Teaching the Great American Story

Dr. Peggy Hartshorn on Heartbeat International, Pregnancy Resource Centers, and Abortion Pill Reversal

Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman on the Design of the Human Body

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on COVID-19 as One of the Most Divisive Events in American History

Chen Guangcheng on the Current Tyranny in the People’s Republic of China

Dr. Jay Wesley Richards on What Every Parent Should Know About Gender Ideology and Gender-Affirming Care

Jennifer Lahl on ‘The Detransition Diaries: Saving our Sisters’

Ward Connerly on Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Individual Rights

Robert J. Marks II on Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism, and Whether Computers Will Ever Be More Than ‘Human’

Ambassador Sam Brownback on the Threat to Religious Freedom in America

Dean Koontz on His Vocation as an Author, Art and Meaning in Life, and Human Exceptionalism

Catherine Glenn Foster on Abortion and the Dawning of a Post-Roe America

Robert Marbut on America’s Homelessness Crisis, Strategies for Uplifting the Homeless, and Effective Government Policies

Joseph Bottum on Cyber Ethics, Poetry, Culture, and Community

O. Carter Snead on Bioethics, ‘What It Means to Be Human,’ and the Pro-Life Movement After Dobbs

Lynn Vincent on ‘Lawless,’ the Truth About the Terri Schiavo Case, and Why Terri Still Matters

Roger Severino on Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Conscience Rights in a Divided America

Emily Cook on Texas Right to Life, the Texas Heartbeat Act, and Futile Care Protocols

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on COVID-19, Authentic Public Health, and the Biosecurity State

Ryan Hanlon on Adoption, the National Council for Adoption, and the Importance of Families

David Berlinski on Architectural Nihilism, Human Nature and the Holocaust, and Emotivism

Pat Nolan on Criminal Justice Reform, Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, and the First Step Act

Robert P. George on teaching and free thought, defending Peter Singer, and natural law

Alveda King on the American Civil Rights Movement, Critical Race Theory, and the American Dream

Kathryn Jean Lopez on Truth, Dorothy Day, and ‘A Year With the Mystics’

Nina Shea on the Chinese Communist Party, Minority Rights, and Religious Freedom

Zoltan Istvan on Transhumanism, ‘Good Eugenics,’ and Immortality

Dr. J. Benjamin Hurlbut on science, restoring public trust, and transcending ideology

Rebecca Friedrichs on exposing the sexualizing of children in schools and ‘For Kids and Country’

Joni Eareckson Tada on embracing life, disability rights, and choosing solidarity and hope

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer on the ‘God Hypothesis’ and the materialists’ increasingly fringe rationales for life and the universe