Podcast: Joel Kotkin Thinks About God and the Pandemic

This Week’s Guest: Joel Kotkin

Many of this podcast’s guests, especially the rabbis and religious leaders, tend to look at the world from a traditional and Orthodox orientation. But this week’s guest is—at least professionally—an outsider to that world. Joel Kotkin is not a rabbi or theologian but a social scientist, one who has lately turned his attention to the world of religion.

Kotkin recently published an essay in Quillette called “God and the Pandemic.” This week he joins Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to talk about that essay, and to assess what’s happening in American religious culture as the pandemic continues to take its toll. Kotkin, looking at religious life empirically, examines the role of technology and human adaptability in the present religious environment, and he tries to think about the long-term effects COVID-19 will have on synagogues, churches, mosques, and other religious communities across the country.