We live in an age of peak cringe. People are drowning in cynicism, told daily that civilization is doomed. But something is stirring. A new generation is rediscovering what William James called "the strenuous mood": the deep human need to struggle for something greater than comfort and safety.

In this first episode of Pioneers, host Carl Youngblood, President of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, lays out why the show exists. Drawing on Orwell, William James, Jason Crawford, and Joseph Smith, he argues that the human hunger for meaning and struggle doesn't go away when we refuse to feed it. It just finds worse food. The question isn't whether we'll embrace the strenuous mood, but what we'll do with it.

The MTA believes the frontier never closed. It expanded: beyond Earth into the cosmos, beyond biology into transformation, beyond death into resurrection. Pioneers will sit down with the scientists, engineers, philosophers, and theologians exploring the frontiers of what humanity can become, and ask not just what they're building, but why.

Pioneers is a podcast from the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more: https://transfigurism.org
Transfigurist artwork series: https://transfigurism.org/store

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