All Episodes

#1282 Turi Munthe - Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs

Jul 20, 2026

Turi Munthe is a journalist and policy analyst turned media entrepreneur and writer. As a journalist and Middle East policy analyst, Turi has written for the Economist, Guardian, TLS, THES, the Nation, Spectator, and many others. He has appeared on the BBC, Fox, CNN, al-Jazeera, NBC and others, and given lectures at universities all over the world - Oxford, Sciences Politiques Paris, CUNY, and elsewhere. He has also advised governments across Europe and the Middle East. He is the author of Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs. More»
#1281 Francesca Rossi: The Benefits and Risks of AI

Jul 17, 2026

Dr. Francesca Rossi is an IBM fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader. She works at the T.J. Watson IBM Research Lab, New York. Her research interests focus on artificial intelligence, specifically they include constraint reasoning, preferences, multi-agent systems, computational social choice, collective decision making, and AI value alignment. She is also interested in ethical issues in the development and behavior of AI systems. More»
#1280 Rafael Ruiz: Is "Woke" Good, Actually?

Jul 16, 2026

Rafael Ruiz is a Philosophy Ph.D. Student at the London School of Economics (LSE). He is currently working on questions about Moral Progress, which include conceptual ("what is moral and social progress?"), causal ("what sorts of mechanisms drive progress?"), and policy-related questions ("how do we promote progress?") from an interdisciplinary perspective. More»
#1279 Patrick Hassan: An Open Conversation About Suicide with a Philosopher

Jul 13, 2026

Dr. Patrick Hassan is a Senior Lecturer at the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University. His primary areas of interest are moral and existential philosophy. Currently, I work on 19th century philosophy (particularly Nietzsche and Schopenhauer), ethics and its relation to aesthetics, and environmental philosophy. He is the author of Nietzsche's Struggle against Pessimism. More»
#1278 Paul Pettitt: Human Mortuary Practices, and Other Animals' Awareness of Death

Jul 10, 2026

Dr. Paul Pettitt is Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Durham University. He specializes in Palaeolithic art and in the long-term development of the treatment of the dead. His survey of the biological and behavioral evolution of Homo sapiens was published by Thames and Hudson in 2022 (Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting our Origins). He is currently researching aspects of the visual psychology that underpins the earliest cave art. More»
#1277 Matthew McManus: The Right Wants You Stupid, and Steven Pinker Is Wrong About Marxism

Jul 9, 2026

Dr. Matthew McManus is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is the author of books like The Emergence of Postmodernity, The Political Right and Equality, and The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. More»
#1276 Daisy Dixon - Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art

Jul 6, 2026

Dr. Daisy Dixon is a philosopher of art and an artist, and a Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. Her research falls at the intersection of philosophy of art, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. She explores how visual art behaves like speech, and how curators and interpreters can affect what an artwork communicates to its audience. She is the author of Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art. More»
#1275 Orna Donath: Women Who Regret Having Children

Jul 3, 2026

Dr. Orna Donath is a sociologist, lecturer, writer and feminist activist. She teaches at Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, and the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo. Her field of study focuses on the social expectations projected on women, both those who are mothers and those who are not, especially by choice. She is the author of Regretting Motherhood: A Study. More»
#1274 Julian Kiverstein: 4E Cognition, Phenomenology, Culture, and Science

Jul 2, 2026

Dr. Julian Kiverstein is Senior Researcher at the Lemon Tree Center for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. He is currently writing a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan entitled The Significance of Phenomenology, and editing a comprehensive handbook for Routledge Taylor Francis on the philosophy of the social mind. He is associate editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences and was until recently Book Review Editor for the Journal of Consciousness Studies. In 2006 he was one of the main architects of a successful cross disciplinary, Europe-wide project proposal on consciousness, part of the ESF Programme, Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context. More»
#1273 Helen Pearson - Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works

Jun 29, 2026

Helen Pearson is a science journalist, author and Chief Magazine Editor for the journal Nature, where she oversees the journalism and opinion content. Her latest book is Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works. More»