All Episodes

#1150 Mark Blyth - Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers

Sep 15, 2025

Dr. Mark Blyth is William R. Roads Professor of International Economics at Brown University. His research interests lie in the field of international political economy. More specifically, his research trespasses several fields and aims to be as interdisciplinary as possible, drawing from political science, economics, sociology, complexity theory, and evolutionary theory. His work falls into several related areas: the politics of ideas, how institutions change, political parties, and the politics of finance. His latest book is Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. More»
#1149 Sean McMeekin: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism

Sep 12, 2025

Dr. Sean McMeekin is Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College. His main research interests include modern German history, Russian history, communism, and the origins of the First and Second World Wars and the roles of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. He is the author of To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. More»
#1148 Owen Flanagan: What Is It Like to Be an Addict?

Sep 11, 2025

Dr. Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Duke University. His work is in philosophy of mind and psychiatry, ethics, moral psychology, and cross-cultural philosophy. He is the author of several books, including What Is It Like to Be an Addict?: Understanding Substance Abuse. More»
#1147 Charlotte Blease - Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us―and How AI Could Save Lives

Sep 8, 2025

Dr. Charlotte Blease is an interdisciplinary health researcher at the Department of Women's and Children's Health at Uppsala University, Sweden, and the Digital Psychiatry Division at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at the Harvard Medical School. She is a former Fulbright Scholar and a winner in 2012 of the UK-wide BBC Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers Competition. Dr. Blease has written extensively about the ethics of placebo and nocebo effects. Her research has been profiled by international news outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Sydney Morning Herald. Her latest book is Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us―and How AI Could Save Lives. More»
#1146 Brad Duchaine: Face Perception, Prosopagnosia, and Prosopometamorphopsia

Sep 5, 2025

Dr. Brad Duchaine is a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. He uses neuropsychology, psychophysics, and neuroimaging to explore the cognitive, neural, developmental, and genetic basis of social perception. Much of his work focuses on prosopagnosia, a condition defined by severe face recognition deficits. More»
#1145 Javier Suárez: Units of Selection in Evolution

Sep 4, 2025

Dr. Javier Suárez is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the Universidad de Oviedo. He is a philosopher of biology interested in the study of symbiotic interactions, and their implications for philosophy of biology (the concept of natural selection, the definition of species, etc.), and general philosophy of science (explanation, modelling, methodology of science, etc.). He is the author (with Elisabeth A. Lloyd) of Units of Selection (Cambridge University Press). More»
#1144 Nikhil Chaudhary: Cooperation, Social Learning, Breeding Systems, and Evolutionary Psychiatry

Aug 31, 2025

Dr. Nikhil Chaudhary is Lecturer in Human Evolutionary and Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. He is an evolutionary anthropologist interested in applying evolutionary theory to explain diversity in behavior and cognition across the entire spectrum of human societies. Currently, He is particularly focused on developing the field of evolutionary psychiatry. He is thinking about how evolutionary perspectives can advance our understanding of the etiology of mental illness. More»
#1143 Brian Lerch: Same-Sex Sexual Behavior, Indiscriminate Sexual Behavior, Attachment, and Divorce

Aug 29, 2025

Dr. Brian Lerch is a theoretical ecologist and evolutionary biologist who just received a PhD from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He is primarily interested in understanding feedbacks between ecology, evolution, and behavior. More»
#1142 Gül Salali: Social Dynamics, Culture, Mental Health and Physical Health in Hunter-Gatherers

Aug 28, 2025

Dr. Gül Salali is Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. Her research focuses on human behavior and health using evolutionary approaches. Since 2013, she has been conducting fieldwork in the Congo rainforest studying Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Some of her most recent research projects include: social learning and cultural evolution; evolutionary approaches to health-related behavior and mental health; and hunter-gatherer diet, health and physical activity. More»
#1141 Matti Häyry: Cloning and Antinatalism

Aug 25, 2025

Dr. Matti Häyry is Professor of Philosophy at Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Dr. Häyry’s main fields of interest have been moral and political philosophy and philosophical bioethics. His practical topics in bioethics have ranged from abortion, euthanasia, and resource allocation to genetics, systems biology, and synthetic biology. Theoretically, his work has centered on the main normative doctrines of European moral and political philosophy. He is the co-author of Pure Cloning. More»