This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky. Dr. James Lindsay is a public intellectual, a notable author on a range of subjects.

He holds a doctorate in mathematics and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, but his academic

and intellectual output expand well beyond the fields of physics and math.

His six books span a variety of fields from philosophy and science to religion and contemporary thought.

He's also the co-founder of new discourses.

His most recent book, Syneca Theories, how activist

scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity, and why this harms

everybody, he co-wrote with Helen Pluckrose. It's an important critique of critical theory and contemporary culture. It's a tour

to force looking at the intellectual landscape that we confront today. I'm looking forward to this conversation

with James Lindsay.

Dr James Lindsay, welcome to thinking in public.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here. Yeah, the title of your new book is Seneca theories, with the word critical crossed out the subtitle how activist

scholarship made everything about race, gender and identity and why this harms everybody.

You wrote the book with Helen Pluckrose and it's making quite a splash,

not only perhaps in academic circles, but also in a larger reach. And my guess is that was a part of the intention behind your writing of the book.

Yeah, the goal of writing the book was actually to try to get these ideas outside of the Academy. It's nice if we can get the

Academy to reckon with the argument that we've made, but it's more important from our

perspective for average people to understand this very academic language and to understand where these ideas have come from.

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