Lost Prophets

Mar 05 2025 13 ep. 100 mins 18

Lost Prophets Podcast artwork

A podcast about the the lost prophets of solidarity — the voices we need to hear again.

www.lostprophets.org

Society & Culture Religion & Spirituality

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

#12: Colette Shade on The Y2K Era

Mar 05 2025 44 mins

To understand the accumulating fractures of our time, it’s important to look back at key earlier periods and try to discern: What were we thinking? Colette Shade — who has written for The New Republic, The Baffler, Interview Magazine, The Nation, and Gawker — reminds us that during the “dream state,” the years between 1997 and 2008, we were thinking things like the follow

#11. Paul Goodman (ft. Gregory W. Knapp)

Feb 13 2025 145 mins

It is slightly jarring to find the radically-minded Paul Goodman a welcome guest on the September 12, 1966 episode of William F. Buckley’s Firing Line television show. The topic was “Are Public Schools Necessary?”, to which Goodman responds in the negative—or at least with an alternative vision of small, decentralized schools that emphasized experience in the real life of t

#10. Dr. Strangelove's Prophecy of Technocracy

Jan 13 2025 63 mins

Just over one year after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear brinksmanship gone wrong was slated to premiere for a New York audience on November 22, 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy meant a delay of several weeks before the film opened in late January. The critics loved the dark sendup of the American military and its euphemi

#9. Dougald Hine on Work in the Ruins

Dec 18 2024 59 mins

We first encountered Dougald Hine about a year ago through the wide mycelium-like network of Ivan Illich fans—and we were glad we did. His new book was just out and we heard he was doing a book tour of the U.S. quite a few years after his first visit here. Our meetup in D.C. for Dougald a few weeks ago was a rich and delightful occasion — a time when we learned what T.S. Eliot

#8. Gary Snyder (ft. Peter Coyote)

Dec 03 2024 148 mins

He’s been called a poet of quiet revolution: a revolution staged to heal the rift between humanity and the natural world around us. Gary Snyder’s distinctive spirituality combines Eastern traditions like Zen Buddhism, Western concerns with deep ecology, and Native American wisdom.Over his 94 years, Snyder’s career ranges from his early friendship with Jack Kerouac and the Bea

#7. Marc Ellis on the Prophetic Diaspora

Nov 16 2024 104 mins

Marc H. Ellis (1952-2024) saw the prophet today as in a condition of exile, refusing to compromise with injustice, perhaps doomed, without protection, even without destination.It was while first reading Jewish theologian Marc Ellis’ writing that we realized the waters of the prophetic ran much deeper than we had first thought.We excitedly tore through several of his books on the

#6. L.M. Sacasas on Ivan Illich, Technopoly, and Human Flourishing

Oct 24 2024 50 mins

Here at Lost Prophets, we are interested not only in the seminal mid-century figures we feature, but also in those contemporaries who have imbibed their ideas and are extending them today. So we were happy to speak recently with one today’s great theorists of technology, L.M. Sacasas.A few years ago L.M. posted on his blog 41 (!) thoughtful and provocative questions we should ask

#5. Ella Baker, Septima Clark, and The Highlander Folk School (ft. Stephen Lazar and Daniel Marshall)

Oct 09 2024 159 mins

This episode takes us into the long history of the Civil Rights Movement as we talk about the methods and legacies of two long-distance runners, Ella Baker (1903-1986) and Septima Clark (1898-1987).Baker was a legendary organizer who espoused a group-centered form of leadership and insisted that deep change required the long-haul “spadework” of community organizing. Clark, know

#4. Ivan Illich (ft. David Cayley)

Sep 24 2024 146 mins

Ivan Illich (1926-2002) emerged in the late 1960s as a radical public intellectual. Many of his most radical insights have today become conventional wisdom. The wonderful essayist George Scialabba once entitled an otherwise generally sympathetic piece on Ivan Illich “Against Everything.” That was surely because Ivan Illich’s critique of modernity runs deeper than that of almo

#3. Peter Maurin (ft. Kelly Johnson)

Sep 17 2024 108 mins

Peter Maurin (1877-1949) was Dorothy Day’s great teacher and collaborator in establishing the Catholic Worker movement. He saw Catholic social teachings as the still-unexploded “dynamite of the Church.” If Dorothy Day is better known today than her close colleague, Peter Maurin, it is not for lack of praise from Dorothy herself. She never ceased to emphasize Peter’s influen