Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Pope Leo, Opus Dei, and the battle for the soul of Catholicism

May 25, 2026

Reactionary Catholics are a small minority of core Republican voters, but in many ways they set the party’s agenda because they’re so well organized and have a much stronger intellectual tradition than the Evangelicals who dominate the Republican voting base. But this trend exists internationally as well, and Opus Dei, a lay-member organization founded in Spain, has become a political powerhouse in a number of different countries.Aside from the ridiculous caricatures of the group painted by D...

Uncertainty makes science powerful — and incredibly vulnerable

May 19, 2026

Thirty years ago, John Horgan had a dream—or rather a nightmare. Here and there, scientists were saying that all the major problems of the universe had essentially been solved, and that the work of the future was just going to be filling in the details of what we already knew.But those voices were largely drowned out in the generation of scientists who came of age promoting radical new ideas that they claimed would push their disciplines far beyond what was then-currently known. Despite their...

Chatbots aren’t conscious, but the specific details as to why are important

May 15, 2026

As artificial intelligence software like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and Claude are becoming more integrated into many people’s lives, it’s perfectly natural to wonder why and how these things work and what possible implications they have for philosophy.The current AI systems are not conscious, but unfortunately, a lot of people are becoming enamored with the idea that they might be, including Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, who actually wrote an entire book, which he seems t...