Sarah Irving-Stonebraker: re-enchanting the ahistorical age

In our age of self-invention, we are profoundly disconnected from the history that once gave us identity.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A woman sitting in an empty church talks to the camera and gestures with one hand.

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Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is an Australian historian whose new book Priests of History: stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, says that, in our age of self-invention, modern people are profoundly disconnected from the stories, practises and history that once gave them their identity.

Justin and Belle talk to Sarah about re-enchanting an ahistorical age and about her own journey from atheism to Christianity as a young academic at Cambridge and Oxford in the early 2000s.

Visit Sarah Irving-Stonebraker's web site. https://www.stonebraker.com.au/

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Podcast

Podcasts

Seen & Unseen Aloud

12 May 2025

1 min read

The Met Gala, that conclave, and artificial intelligence

New episode. why the pope counts, who wasn't at that gala, and how we handle AI.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

A gather of cardinals in the Sistene Chapel.

This week, Belle Tindall takes us to the Met Gala in NYC and asks whether the unseen exists; Graham Tomlin considers why the choice of the next Pope is so important and Callum Elwood asks if AI animation really is harmless fun?

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