PODCAST · society
The Whole Social
by Seth Jordan
A project dedicated to exploring the integral nature of society. With every article we try to take current events and drop below their surface to the deeper, more fundamental dynamics of social life. thewholesocial.substack.com
Episodes
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Listen (8 min): Does anyone understand Orwell's “1984”?
Earlier this year, the Trump administration removed exhibits on slavery from George Washington’s former home in Philadelphia. The removal was part of a nation-wide effort to rewrite history, which sounds bad, but they did it in the name of “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” which...
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Listen (21 min): Approaching Rudolf Steiner's ideas on organizational development
The 20th century spiritual researcher Rudolf Steiner is known for his work in many fields — education, agriculture, medicine, economics, religion, etc. — but his work in the field of organizational development is almost entirely unknown. In this talk (given at Harvard Divinity School on December...
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Is it possible to "threefold" an organization?
Seth Jordan, Nathaniel Williams, and Omri Elaad discuss how Rudolf Steiner’s social threefolding insights pertain to organizations. They look specifically at two texts that can be found here: https://thewholesocial.substack.com/p/possible-to-threefold-an-organization At the end of WWI, Steiner...
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Listen (21 min): How can we overcome prejudice? By "mapping" our differences.
This is a recording of an article from July 12th, 2025 (you can find the written version of the article here, and a brief description of the article here). Pictures from the original article, which are referred to in the audio article, are below. Get full access to The Whole Social at...
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Listen (11 min): The Supreme Court thinks it should decide what kids read
On April 22nd, 2025, the nine justices of the Supreme Court discussed a number of children’s picture books being taught in the nation’s schools and asked, What concepts are age-appropriate? What’s content neutral and what’s pushing a certain agenda? The justices felt responsible to answer such...
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Listen (14 min): The dying throes of a terminally ill country?
More and more it feels like our political life is driving us to the breaking point. But if we look a little more closely, then the illness can point us towards its cure — specifically, to the two constitutional changes we need to turn things around. This is a recording of an article from April…
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Listen (16 min): The first major takedown of "The Telepathy Tapes" only exposes its own magical thinking
The recent hit podcast The Telepathy Tapes gives a fascinating description of what appear to be telepathic abilities in non-speaking autistic children. How to understand this phenomenon is a vital question, but unfortunately, one that most mainstream scientists and journalists will likely never...
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Understanding "The Telepathy Tapes" in the light of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy
On Tuesday, March 18th, I sat down to discuss The Telepathy Tapes and Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy with three longtime teachers — Gleice da Silva, Jan Göschel, and Becky Rutherford — all of whom have worked extensively with children with developmental disabilities. We had a delightful,...
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Listen (28 min): John Steinbeck, social mystic
John Steinbeck was one of the great novelists of the 20th century, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. His works are multifaceted — one can find scathing social critiques, rich humor, and gentle humanity between their covers. But I wasn’t aware of his spiritual...
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Listen (11 min): How can we work for threefolding?
If we want to bring about real social change, then we need to understand society — we need to learn to see it whole. This is the task of social threefolding. But developing a new understanding won’t automatically bring about change, we need to find ways to enact it. So what have threefolders done...
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Listen (25 min): Most Americans think the system is broken. Here’s what a new one would look like.
The US presidential elections are less than a month away. Most Americans think the country is in desperate need of change — radical, systemic change — but who has any actual ideas that could change the system? Instead the candidates are busy trying to lure voters through tax cuts and social...
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Listen (13 min): Polyamory and the future of relationships
Polyamory — the practice of having multiple romantic partners at the same time — is having a moment right now. But is it just a moment, or is it part of a deeper trend in the evolution of relationships? And how should we work with relationships in the future if we want to bring them to health?…
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Real social change seems impossible. But looking back in history, it has always seemed that way.
I want to share one of the most interesting books I’ve read recently. On the surface, it’s a history of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, that describes an amazing life of high adventure lived between the courts of British royalty and the wilderness of 17th century America. But really...
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Listen (22 min): Rudolf Steiner on building healthy organizations
It’s not easy to work together. There’s a tension in it: Sometimes we want to be together — we find it inspiring and easier to get things done — but sometimes we want to be left alone — we want freedom. So which side is right? Of course both sides are right, but also neither of them, because what...
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How can we bring health to society?
I was recently teaching a course up in Toronto, and was invited by Eli Will of the Threefolding substack to give a public talk entitled “What will it take to bring health to society — the present-day challenges and prospects of working with Rudolf Steiner’s insights into a healthy threefold...
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Listen (9 min): The only solution for a lasting peace in Israel-Palestine
Many people have chronicled the history of violence — the actions and reactions, attacks and retaliations — that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the structural, systemic causes of the conflict have gotten far less attention, even though they’re far more significant. The most important...
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Listen (14 min): Critics of school choice have it wrong. It doesn’t violate the separation of church and state. It finally upholds it.
As more and more US states create programs that give parents choice in education — including money to send their kids to private and religious schools — critics claim it violates the separation of church and state. But a closer reading of the first amendment shows it’s actually the opposite…
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Listen (12 min): Has Andrew Sullivan found the only way to end the culture wars around gay and trans rights?
As the culture wars continue to rage, there’s almost no one looking at the question of peace: How could a lasting peace come about? What are the principles by which we could live together? So I was incredibly surprised to discover the political commentator Andrew Sullivan discussing such…
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Listen (17 min): The New York Times' publisher just wrote a generation-defining essay on independent journalism. And showed that he fundamentally doesn’t get it.
This past spring, the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote a major essay defending the ideal of independent journalism. At least, that’s what it claimed to be. In reality, it was an essay defending the ideal of objectivity, and attacking independence… which is all incredibly...
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Listen (15 min): MacKenzie Scott is giving away her fortune. The next step is doing away with Big Philanthropy all together.
While MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropic approach of “no-strings-attached giving” is a step in the right direction, it’s still part of the much larger problem of Big Philanthropy — the fact that billionaires play such an outsized role in the development of our cultural and political life. This has…
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Listen (14 min): Your work is not a commodity. It's your reason for being here.
It seems like our relation to work is crumbling. In recent years we’ve seen the Great Resignation followed by the phenomenon of “quiet quitting” — people staying in their jobs, but doing the least amount of work possible. If the work isn’t fulfilling, why should they go the extra mile? But is…
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Listen (16 min): Who should own the land?
Who should own the resources we all depend on — the land, factories, and machines — was a question that was once at the heart of the debate between capitalism and communism. We know their basic arguments — communists put all their faith in the state, and capitalists want private individuals to…
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Additional thoughts (and audio) on "Being mirrors for each other"
Students of Goethe’s color theory will know a simple, yet amazing experiment where the same color is placed against two differently colored backgrounds, with the result that it appears dramatically different in the two settings. Here’s one version of the experiment, a silkscreen by the artist…
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Listen (17 min): What has real value? Invisible art, NFTs, and the ongoing craze for crypto
Over the last couple years it seems like we’ve all become obsessed with crypto. Talking with people about it, I’ve been struck over and over by the fact that, behind all the excitement, everyone’s just trying to get something for nothing. While economists say such self-interest runs the economy,...
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Listen (17 min): Amnesty International blasted after criticizing Israel’s controversial “nation-state” law
A large part of the difficulty surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes from how we think about it — specifically, the fact that there’s a fundamental confusion about what it means to be a nation-state, and how oppression of minorities is built into the very idea. In a recent talk by...
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Listen (17 min): To end all wars
This is a recording of an article from March 4th, 2022. It looks at the war in Ukraine and beyond it to the deeper causes of war in general, especially the central role that ethnic nationalism plays in engendering hostilities. The article then looks at a solution that Rudolf Steiner proposed a...
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Listen (11 min): A crucial lesson of the Great Resignation
This is a recording of an article from November 7th, 2021. The topic of the Great Resignation might sound a bit dated to some, but the social phenomenon it describes — the “wage-price spiral” — is always with us and is one of the most significant social phenomena to grasp. The article explains…
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Listen (22 min): Can we have both medical freedom and public safety?
This is a recording of an article from December 8, 2021. It looks at the increasing pressure to force people to vaccinate, some reasons why people might not trust the government, scientific, and medical communities, and how such trust can be restored. The article asks whether the trade-off of...
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Listen (25 min): Society's open secret
This is a recording of the August 3, 2021, article that explored how society has its own nature and lawfulness — a fact borne out by the observations of social scientists, but still almost entirely misunderstood (to the detriment of us all). This lawfulness was described most recently by the…
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Listen (12 min): Welcome back to work. Now please hold still while we put your collar and leash back on.
This is a recording of the September 2, 2021, article that explored the nature of paid work and gave “a brief look at the dehumanizing labor market that has Americans refusing to return to work and many of China’s young people choosing to ‘lie flat.’” You can find the written version of the…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A project dedicated to exploring the integral nature of society. With every article we try to take current events and drop below their surface to the deeper, more fundamental dynamics of social life.
thewholesocial.substack.com
HOSTED BY
Seth Jordan
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Whole Social have?
The Whole Social currently has 30 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Whole Social about?
A project dedicated to exploring the integral nature of society. With every article we try to take current events and drop below their surface to the deeper, more fundamental dynamics of social life. thewholesocial.substack.com
How often does The Whole Social release new episodes?
The Whole Social has 30 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Whole Social?
You can listen to The Whole Social on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Whole Social?
The Whole Social is created and hosted by Seth Jordan.
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