In the third episode of Season 5 of Madison’s Notes, Ryan Shinkel sits down with R. J. Snell, Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute, to examine the spiritual condition of the modern world.
Drawing on his book Lost in the Chaos (2023), Snell describes a world increasingly closed off to transcendence and therefore vulnerable to despair. Yet, as he argues, human beings cannot endure such despair for long. In its place, we generate substitutes—political rationalism, humanitarianism, and various forms of “re-enchantment”—which promise meaning but ultimately fail to satisfy.
The conversation turns to the distinction between these pale imitations and the real virtue of hope. Through examples ranging from Anglo-Saxon warriors to Soviet dissidents, R. J. Snell and Ryan Shinkel reflect on what genuine hope looks like in an age that often feels defined by its absence and why even our sense of hopelessness may be a summons to recover it.
