All Episodes

#1167 Allen Buchanan - Ideology and Revolution: Hierarchy, Resistance, Revolution, and Morality

Oct 24, 2025

Dr. Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Duke University, and Laureate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. He has written six books covering such topics as Marx, applied ethics (especially bio-medical ethics), social justice, and international justice, including the foundations of international law. His latest book is Ideology and Revolution: How the Struggle against Domination Drives the Evolution of Morality and Institutions. More»
#1166 Alexander Rosenberg: Why Economic Theory Can't Get Any Better...Why We Need It Anyway

Oct 23, 2025

Dr. Alexander Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. In 2016 he was the Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol. He has held fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 1993, Dr. Rosenberg received the Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science. In 2006-2007 he held a fellowship at the National Humanities Center. He’s the author of both fictional and non-fictional literature, including The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, The Girl from Krakow, How History Gets Things Wrong, and Blunt Instrument: Why Economic Theory Can't Get Any Better...Why We Need It Anyway. More»
#1165 Aubrey de Grey: The Science of Aging and Longevity

Oct 20, 2025

Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007). Dr. de Grey is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age-related causes. As an amateur mathematician, he has contributed to the study of the Hadwiger–Nelson problem in geometric graph theory, making the first progress on the problem in over 60 years. More»
#1164 Rafael Núñez: Embodied Cognition, Time, Space, and Mathematics

Oct 17, 2025

Dr. Rafael Núñez is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Núñez investigates cognition from the perspective of the embodied mind. He is particularly interested in high-level cognitive phenomena such as conceptual systems, abstraction, and inference mechanisms, as they manifest themselves naturally through largely unconscious bodily/mental activity (e.g., gesture production co-produced with a variety of conceptual mappings). He is the author of Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. More»
#1163 Herman Pontzer: How to Understand Human Biological Variation: "Race", Height, Gender, and More

Oct 16, 2025

Dr. Herman Pontzer is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health at the Global Health Institute at Duke University. Dr. Pontzer investigates the physiology of humans and other primates to understand how ecology, lifestyle, diet, and evolutionary history affect metabolism and health. He is particularly interested in cardiometabolic disease and the lifestyle factors that protect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other noncommunicable diseases that are common among industrialized populations but rare or absent in non-industrialized societies. His latest book is Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us. More»
#1162 Michael Huemer - Progressive Myths: Racism, Feminism, Gender, Science, and More

Oct 13, 2025

Dr. Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than seventy academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy, as well as several books, like Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, Ethical Intuitionism, The Problem of Political Authority, Approaching Infinity, Paradox Lost, and Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism. His latest book is Progressive Myths. More»
#1161 Anna Bocca @annabocca : The Origins, Spread, and Failures of Neoliberal Capitalism

Oct 10, 2025

Anna Bocca is a YouTuber (@annabocca). She makes videos about the scams of the corporate world, our economy, society, and other topics. More»
#1160 Edward Watts - The Romans: A 2,000-Year History

Oct 9, 2025

Dr. Edward Watts is presently the Vassiliadis Professor of Byzantine Greek History at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests center on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. He is the author of several books on ancient history, including Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny, and The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea. His latest book is The Romans: A 2,000-Year History. More»
#1159 Michael Hudson - Temples of Enterprise: Creating Economic Order in the Bronze Age Near East

Oct 6, 2025

Dr. Michael Hudson is President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of several books, including Temples of Enterprise: Creating Economic Order in the Bronze Age Near East. More»
#1158 Vibeke Ottesen: The Psychology of Political Violence

Oct 3, 2025

Dr. Vibeke Ottesen is a Norwegian criminologist with an interest in how nature and nurture combined create human behavior. She has a popular science blog – Biosocial - where she comments on news, scientific findings and literature relevant to her subject – more often than not with an evolutionary informed approach to understanding the subject matter. She has held numerous lectures on the benefits of an evolutionary informed approach to understanding the cross-cultural sex and age differences in anti-social and criminal behavior. More»