All Episodes

#1155 Adam Chandler - 99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life

Sep 26, 2025

Adam Chandler is a journalist and author based in New York. A former staff writer at The Atlantic, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, WIRED, Vox, Slate, New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, Esquire, TIME, and elsewhere. He is the author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom; and 99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life. More»
#1154 Michael Cook: A History of the Muslim World (Part 2)

Sep 25, 2025

Dr. Michael Cook is Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of several books, with the latest one being A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity. More»
#1153 Richard Wolff: Economic Inequality and Why We Need to Tax the Rich

Sep 22, 2025

Dr. Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He is also the co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. Over the last 25 years, in collaboration with his colleague, Stephen Resnick, he has developed a new approach to political economy. While it retains and systematically elaborates the Marxist notion of class as surplus labor, it rejects the economic determinism typical of most schools of economics and usually associated with Marxism as well. More»
#1152 Michael Cholbi: The Philosophy of Death and Dying

Sep 19, 2025

Dr. Michael Cholbi is Professor and Personal Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely in ethical theory, practical ethics, and the philosophy of death and dying. His books include Suicide: The Philosophical Dimensions, Understanding Kant’s Ethics, and Grief: A Philosophical Guide. He is the co-editor of the textbook Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. His work has also appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including Ethics, Mind, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics. More»
#1151 William Chopik: Partner Dynamics and Relationship Satisfaction

Sep 18, 2025

Dr. William Chopik is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University. He is a social-personality psychologist interested in how relationships and the people in them change over time and across situations. His research focuses on how factors both inside (biological, hormonal) and outside (social roles, geography) of people influence their approach to social relationships. His work examines phenomena as broad as how relationships and social institutions shape development and as focused as the hormonal mechanisms that underlie love and intimacy. More»
#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»