All Episodes

#1292 Nima Bassiri: Capitalism, Psychiatry, and the Emergence of Pathological Value

Aug 13, 2026

Dr. Nima Bassiri is a social theorist, historian & philosopher of the human sciences, and associate professor at Duke University, where he teaches in the Program in Literature, Duke’s interdisciplinary humanities and cultural studies program. He is also the co-director of Duke’s Institute for Critical Theory, where he convenes the Critical Theory Workshop. He is the author of Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value. More»
#1291 Christopher Kavanagh & Matthew Browne: Decoding the Gurus

Aug 10, 2026

Dr. Christopher Kavanagh is an Associate Professor in the College of Contemporary Psychology at Rikkyo University and a researcher in cognitive anthropology at the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA) at the University of Oxford. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behavior, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria. More»
#1290 Matthew Lindauer: The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts

Aug 7, 2026

Dr. Matthew Lindauer is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, and an Associate Professor of Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is co-director of the PsyPhi Lab. He works in moral and political philosophy and moral psychology, often at the intersections of these fields. He is the author of The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts. More»
#1289 Wataru Toyokawa: Social Learning, Collective Decision-Making, and the Wisdom/Madness of Crowds

Aug 6, 2026

Dr. Wataru Toyokawa is Unit Leader at the Computational Group Dynamics (COGNAC) Collaboration Unit at RIKEN CBS, Tokyo, and Visiting Scientist at Center for Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Constance. His research focuses on the computational underpinnings and eco-evolutionary implications of human social learning and their relationships with group decision-making and collective behavior. Using computational modelling and Bayesian statistical methods, coupled with online real-time behavioral experimentation, he is quantitatively approaching human social behavior and group dynamics. He also uses mathematical models to study population dynamics and evolutionary games. More»
#1288 Omer Bartov - Israel: What Went Wrong?

Aug 3, 2026

Dr. Omer Bartov is Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. Dr. Bartov's early research concerned the Nazi indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II, analyzed in his books, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945, and Hitler's Army. He then turned to the links between total war and genocide, discussed in his books Murder in Our Midst, Mirrors of Destruction, and Germany's War and the Holocaust. His latest book is Israel: What Went Wrong? More»
#1287 Audun Dahl - Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing

Jul 31, 2026

Dr. Audun Dahl is Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He is interested in development of morality across the lifespan. He is the author of Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing. More»
#1286 Hugo Drochon: Elites and Democracy

Jul 30, 2026

Dr. Hugo Drochon is an Associate Professor in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is a historian of modern political thought, with interests in Nietzsche's politics, democratic theory, liberalism and conspiracy theories. His latest book is Elites and Democracy. More»
#1285 Luke Kemp - Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse

Jul 27, 2026

Dr. Luke Kemp is Research Affiliate and former Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. He looks at the past (civilization collapses) and future (climate change and emerging technologies) to guide policy in the present. He is an honorary lecturer in environmental policy at the Australian National University (ANU), holds a PhD in international relations from the ANU and was previously a senior economist at Vivid Economics. He is the author of Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. More»
#1284 Lars Penke: Do Women's Mate Preferences Change During Ovulation?

Jul 24, 2026

Dr. Lars Penke is Full Professor of Biological Personality Psychology at the Georg August University of Göttingen. His research interests include the evolutionary significance of individual differences, social endocrinology, links of somatometric measures of the body and face with psychological traits, the evolutionary psychology of mate choice, romantic relationships and sexuality, neurostructural indicators of intelligence and cognitive ageing, behavior genetics, and life history theory. More»
#1283 Stijn Vanheule: Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy

Jul 23, 2026

Dr. Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, professor at Ghent University, and psychoanalyst in private practice. He is the author of the books "The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian perspective" and "Diagnosis and the DSM: A Critical Review", and of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research into psychopathology, and clinical diagnosis. His latest book is Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers. More»