All Episodes

#759 Chad Orzel - A Brief History of Timekeeping; from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks

Mar 23, 2023

Dr. Chad Orzel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College in Schenectady, NY, where he teaches a wide range of classes, and does research on atomic, molecular, and optical physics. He writes a blog about physics for Forbes.com. He is the author of several books, including Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, and Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects. His latest book is A Brief History of Timekeeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks. More»
#758 Eli Alshanetsky: Articulating a Thought

Mar 20, 2023

Dr. Eli Alshanetsky is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Previously, he was an Andrew W. Mellon fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University. He received his PhD in philosophy from NYU. Dr. Alshanetsky's research and teaching interests are at the intersection of the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and cognitive science. He is the author of Articulating a Thought. More»
#757 Quentin Atkinson: Comparing Cultures, Climate Change, and Religion

Mar 17, 2023

Dr. Quentin Atkinson is a Professor in Psychology at the University of Auckland, where he runs the Language, Cognition and Culture Lab, and co-Director of the University of Auckland Behavioural Insights Exchange (UoABIX). He uses lab and field experiments, computer modelling and evolutionary theory to shed light on the evolution of human culture and cognition. This work answers questions including the origins of linguistic diversity, the function of religion, the psychology of climate change, how evolved cognitive biases shape our social behavior and why political systems vary the way they do around the globe. More»
#756 Donald Hoffman: The Case Against Reality, and the Interface Theory of Perception

Mar 16, 2023

Dr. Donald Hoffman is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. He is the author of The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. More»
#755 Alexandra Kalev - Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn't

Mar 13, 2023

Dr. Alexandra Kalev is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. She is developing an evidence-based approach to managing diversity in corporations and universities. She is the author, together with Frank Dobbin, of Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn't. More»
#754 Jerome Wakefield: What is a Mental Disorder?; Depression, and Anxiety

Mar 10, 2023

Dr. Jerome Wakefield is a Professor at NYU Silver as well as an NYU University Professor with multidisciplinary appointments, particularly affiliate faculty in Philosophy and affiliate faculty in Bioethics. Dr. Wakefield’s scholarly specialty is the conceptual foundations of clinical theory. Much of his recent work has concerned the concept of mental disorder, especially how normal negative responses to a problematic social environment can be distinguished from mental disorder and how DSM diagnostic criteria fail to adequately draw this distinction. He’s the author of several books, including The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder, and All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders. More»
#753 R. Paul Thompson: Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society

Mar 9, 2023

Dr. R. Paul Thompson holds appointments as Professor in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on evolutionary theory, population genetics, mathematical modelling in biology, theory structure in biology, philosophy of medicine, and ethics. He is the author of Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society. More»
#752 Paul Bloom - Psych: The Story of the Human Mind

Mar 6, 2023

Dr. Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Dr. Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is the author of seven books, including his latest Psych: The Story of the Human Mind. More»
#751 Leslie Sponsel - Yanomami in the Amazon: Toward a more Ethical Anthropology beyond Othering

Mar 3, 2023

NOTE: All of the royalties from Dr. Sponsel's book are donated to Survival International on behalf of their continuing vital help with the Yanomami. More»
#750 Adam Rutherford - Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics

Mar 2, 2023

Dr. Adam Rutherford is Lecturer in Biology and Society at University College London’s Department of Genes, Evolution, and Environment, and President of Humanists UK. His interests are in evolution, genetics and developmental biology, and the history of biology. He has written extensively on Darwin, the development of evolutionary theory, the Modern Synthesis, early microscopy, synthetic biology and genetic engineering, behavioral ecology, gene-culture co-evolution, human evolution, and ancient DNA. He is the author of several books, including Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics. More»