Originally broadcast at 1:00 p.m. ET Wednesday August 11, 2021.

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. His column appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Previously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic and a blogger on its website.

He is the author of The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery, forthcoming in October of 2021. His other books include The Decadent Society (2020), To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism (2018), Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (2012), Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (2005), and he is the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008). He is the film critic for National Review.

Ross lives with his wife and four children in New Haven.

This program is made possible by the H. Parker and Emma O. Sharp Lectureship Fund.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.