All Episodes

#1035 L. Syd M. Johnson: Controversies About Brain Death

Dec 20, 2024

Dr. L. Syd M. Johnson is a philosopher/bioethicist/neuroethicist, a Clinical Ethics Consultant, and Associate Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She is a member of the Neuroethics Working Group of the NIH BRAIN Initiative, Associate Editor for Neuroethics, and the co-founder of the American Society for Bioethics + Humanities Animal Bioethics Affinity Group. Her research focuses on ethical issues related to brain injuries, including sport-related neurotrauma, brain death, and disorders of consciousness. She is the author of Philosophical, Medical, and Legal Controversies About Brain Death. More»
#1034 Elise Zipkin: Population Dynamics, Biodiversity, and Climate Change

Dec 19, 2024

Dr. Elise Zipkin is Red Cedar Distinguished Professor and Director of the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program in the Department of Integrative Biology at Michigan State University. She is a quantitative ecologist who connects the complexities of natural communities with the precision of mathematics to shine light on mysteries in ecology and conservation. Dr. Zipkin and her team develop analytical frameworks to address grand challenges in the study of biodiversity loss and the effects of anthropogenic activities, such as climate change. More»
#1033 Michael Levin: Self, Collective Intelligence, Cognition, Life after Death, & More

Dec 16, 2024

Dr. Michael Levin is Distinguished Professor in the Biology Department and Vannevar Bush Chair, as well as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University. His work is focused on understanding the biophysical mechanisms that implement decision-making during complex pattern regulation, and harnessing endogenous bioelectric dynamics toward rational control of growth and form. More»
#1032 Craig Callender: The Physics of Time

Dec 13, 2024

Dr. Craig Callender is Tata Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and a Founding Faculty and Co-Director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego. His main area of research and teaching is philosophy of science, ranging from the nature of time to various applied social and ethical issues. More»
#1031 Peter Lindert: How Government Social Spending Works

Dec 12, 2024

Dr. Peter Lindert is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Lindert studies the causes and effects of modern fiscal redistribution; and the history of inequality, political voice and economic growth. He is the author of several books, including Making Social Spending Work. More»
#1030 Joel Marks: Are Moral Values Objective?

Dec 9, 2024

Dr. Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. His main areas of scholarly interest have been theoretical and applied ethics, both having come together in recent years in thinking about animal ethics. Meanwhile a new area of interest is planetary defense (against comets and asteroids). He is the author of several books, including the latest one, The Spread: and other essays on moralism and guilt. More»
#1029 J. Doyne Farmer - Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World

Dec 6, 2024

Dr. J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. He was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World. More»
#1028 Sergio Almécija - Humans: Perspectives on Our Evolution from World Experts

Dec 5, 2024

Dr. Sergio Almécija is Senior Research Scientist in Biological Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. He studies the key adaptations defining different stages of ape and human evolution (i.e., hominoid evolution). He pays special attention to the process leading and following the split between humans and apes (i.e., “non-human hominoids”). He is the editor of Humans: Perspectives on Our Evolution from World Experts. More»
#1027 João Teixeira: The Evolution, Dispersals, and Interbreeding of Hominins

Dec 2, 2024

Dr. João Teixeira is Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative, School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University & Scientific Vice-Coordinator at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Coimbra. He is a population geneticist focusing on the evolution of humans and closely related species. His main research focus revolves around human evolution during the Pleistocene, in particular the admixture events between so-called modern and archaic humans after the out-of-Africa and before human colonization of Sahul. He is expert on uncovering signatures of natural selection in the genome, in particular balancing selection, and continue to study how advantageous genetic diversity can be maintained for millions of years in natural populations. More»
#1026 Robert Borofsky: An Anthropology of Anthropology

Nov 29, 2024

Dr. Robert Borofsky is the Director of the Center for a Public Anthropology and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hawaii Pacific University. He is the author or editor of eight books dealing with constructions of knowledge in the Pacific islands—such as Making History (1987) and Remembrance of Pacific Pasts (2000)—and the current state of cultural anthropology, including Assessing Cultural Anthropology (1994) and Yanomami (2005). He is also the author of An Anthropology of Anthropology: Is It Time to Shift Paradigms? More»