All Episodes

#596 George Zarkadakis - Cyber Republic: Reinventing Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines

Mar 7, 2022

Dr. George Zarkadakis is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, a science communicator, an Artificial Intelligence engineer, a futurist, and a digital innovation professional. He writes fiction and non-fiction books, and he’s also working with private and public organizations to reimagine business and democratic institutions in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He views the arts, the humanities, the natural sciences and engineering not as discrete disciplines but as a continuum, a wonderful canvas continuously enriched by human creativity and imagination. He is the author of several books, including Cyber Republic: Reinventing Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines. More»
#595 Susan Fiske: Social Categorization, Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Mar 4, 2022

Dr. Susan Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Dr. Fiske's research addresses how stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are encouraged or discouraged by social relationships, such as cooperation, competition, and power. More»
#594 James Salzman - Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

Mar 3, 2022

Dr. James Salzman is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law with joint appointments at the UCLA School of Law and at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara. In twelve books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, his broad-ranging scholarship has addressed topics spanning drinking water, trade and environment conflicts, ownership engineering, and creating markets for ecosystem services. He is the author of Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives. More»
#593 Brian Boyd - On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction

Feb 28, 2022

Dr. Brian Boyd is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on literature and evolution. He is the author of On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. More»
#592 Rodolfo Leyva: Neoliberalism, Social Media, Fake News, and Political Polarization

Feb 25, 2022

Dr. Rodolfo Leyva is a Fellow in the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Lecturer in the University of Birmingham. He has a PhD in Political Sociology from the King’s College London School of Education, Communication and Society. Prior to his current appointment, he has been a lecturer at several universities and have led various quantitative and qualitative research methods, sociology, and media modules. He has also worked as a post-doctoral research assistant on various mixed-methods communications, psychology, and education studies. More»
#591 John Petrocelli - The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit

Feb 24, 2022

Dr. John Petrocelli is Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University. He is a social psychologist and his research involves experimental social cognition and judgment and decision making. His specific research interests include attitude strength and persuasion, bullshitting, counterfactual thinking and metacognition. He is the author of The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit. More»
#590 Thomas Costello: Authoritarianism on the Right and the Left, and Sexual Objectification

Feb 21, 2022

Thomas Costello is a Ph.D. Candidate at Emory University. Certain personality traits, thinking styles, and worldviews give rise to maladaptive political attitudes and behaviors, such as violence, extreme partisanship, and authoritarianism. Thomas’ research leverages the tools and expertise of personality psychology and clinical science to understand, measure, and statistically model the psychological causes and correlates of these attitudes and behaviors. More»
#589 Ashley Thomas: Naïve Sociology, and How Children Think About Hierarchies and Social Relations

Feb 18, 2022

Dr. Ashley Thomas is a postdoctoral fellow at the center for research on open and equitable scholarship at MIT. She is interested in humans as a social species. She investigates what infants, toddlers, and children think about social relationships (i.e., their naive sociology). She has studied how they think and feel about social hierarchy (i.e. situations where there is a 'winner' and a 'loser' or when someone is 'in charge.'). Currently, she is working with Elizabeth Spelke and Rebecca Saxe, and they are investigating how infants interpret social interactions that involve their own caregivers as well as how infants, toddlers, and children think about social intimacy. She has also studied people's moral judgments of parenting decisions. More»
#588 Jennifer Lackey: The Epistemology of Groups; Groups Assertions, Groups Lies, and Responsibility

Feb 17, 2022

Dr. Jennifer Lackey is Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. Jennifer Lackey specializes in epistemology, with a particular emphasis on a broad range of issues in social epistemology. Her recent work focuses on false confessions, the criminal justice system, the duty to object, norms of credibility, the epistemic status of punishment, the epistemology of groups, expertise, and the distribution of epistemic goods. She is the author of several books, including The Epistemology of Groups. More»
#587 Victoria Dougherty: Nihilism, Horror, Depression, Love, and Writing

Feb 14, 2022

Victoria Dougherty is the author of The Bone Church, Welcome to the Hotel Yalta, and Cold. She writes fiction, drama, and essays that revolve around lovers, killers, curses, and destinies. Her work has been published or profiled in the New York Times, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, and elsewhere. Earlier in her career, while living in Prague, she co-founded Black Box Theater, translating, producing, and acting in several Czech plays. Her blog – COLD – features her short essays on faith, family, love, and writing. WordPress, the blogging platform that hosts some 70 million blogs worldwide, has singled out COLD as one of the Top 50 Recommended Blogs by writers or about writing. More»