Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, and technology and human behavior. She is also a monthly columnist for Commentary magazine, one of the cohosts of The Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and senior editor at The New Atlantis. She was previously a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library of Congress. Rosen is the author or coauthor of many books and book chapters. Her books include The Extinction of Experience (W. W. Norton, 2024); My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood (PublicAffairs, 2005), which was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by the Washington Post; and Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (Oxford University Press, 2004). Her opinion pieces, articles, and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, National Affairs, National Review, the New Atlantis, the New Republic, the New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Politico, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New England Journal of Medicine, among other outlets. Rosen has a PhD in history, with a major in American intellectual history, from Emory University and a BA in history from the University of South Florida. She also holds a third-degree black belt in Aikido and is a martial arts instructor. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.
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Episode 396
Christine Rosen
Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World | Christine Rosen
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, and technology and human behavior. She is also a monthly columnist for Commentary magazine, one of the cohosts of The Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and senior editor at The New Atlantis. She was previously a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library of Congress. Rosen is the author or coauthor of many books and book chapters. Her books include The Extinction of Experience (W. W. Norton, 2024); My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood (PublicAffairs, 2005), which was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by the Washington Post; and Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (Oxford University Press, 2004). Her opinion pieces, articles, and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, National Affairs, National Review, the New Atlantis, the New Republic, the New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Politico, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New England Journal of Medicine, among other outlets. Rosen has a PhD in history, with a major in American intellectual history, from Emory University and a BA in history from the University of South Florida. She also holds a third-degree black belt in Aikido and is a martial arts instructor. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.
In Episode 396 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Christine Rosen about her book, “Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” which explores the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology and its effects on our experience of life as embodied human beings.
Christine is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, and technology and human behavior. Rosen is also a monthly columnist for Commentary Magazine, one of the cohosts of the popular Commentary Podcast.
Demetri and Christine spend the first hour of their conversation focused on the philosophical and moral questions that arise from our unreserved embrace of virtual realities and mediated experiences. They explore questions about the nature of reality, how embodiment shapes experience, and whether the virtualization of our lives is the natural progression of our interplay with technology or if it represents something fundamentally different and profoundly immoral about the world we are building.
In the second hour, Kofinas and Rosen discuss the effect that these technologies and the logic that animates them have on our sense of self, agency, and freedom. They explore how time spent inside virtual spaces hosted on large tech platforms may be contributing to the rising levels of depression, anxiety, antisociality, and other mental and personality disorders that we may or may not recognize in each other and in ourselves. They also discuss what can and should be done, both at an individual and societal level, to begin to address the problem.
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Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, and technology and human behavior. She is also a monthly columnist for Commentary magazine, one of the cohosts of The Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and senior editor at The New Atlantis. She was previously a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library of Congress. Rosen is the author or coauthor of many books and book chapters. Her books include The Extinction of Experience (W. W. Norton, 2024); My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood (PublicAffairs, 2005), which was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by the Washington Post; and Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (Oxford University Press, 2004). Her opinion pieces, articles, and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, National Affairs, National Review, the New Atlantis, the New Republic, the New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Politico, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New England Journal of Medicine, among other outlets. Rosen has a PhD in history, with a major in American intellectual history, from Emory University and a BA in history from the University of South Florida. She also holds a third-degree black belt in Aikido and is a martial arts instructor. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
