All Episodes

#1030 Joel Marks: Are Moral Values Objective?

Dec 9, 2024

Dr. Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. His main areas of scholarly interest have been theoretical and applied ethics, both having come together in recent years in thinking about animal ethics. Meanwhile a new area of interest is planetary defense (against comets and asteroids). He is the author of several books, including the latest one, The Spread: and other essays on moralism and guilt. More»
#1029 J. Doyne Farmer - Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World

Dec 6, 2024

Dr. J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. He was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World. More»
#1028 Sergio Almécija - Humans: Perspectives on Our Evolution from World Experts

Dec 5, 2024

Dr. Sergio Almécija is Senior Research Scientist in Biological Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. He studies the key adaptations defining different stages of ape and human evolution (i.e., hominoid evolution). He pays special attention to the process leading and following the split between humans and apes (i.e., “non-human hominoids”). He is the editor of Humans: Perspectives on Our Evolution from World Experts. More»
#1027 João Teixeira: The Evolution, Dispersals, and Interbreeding of Hominins

Dec 2, 2024

Dr. João Teixeira is Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative, School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University & Scientific Vice-Coordinator at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Coimbra. He is a population geneticist focusing on the evolution of humans and closely related species. His main research focus revolves around human evolution during the Pleistocene, in particular the admixture events between so-called modern and archaic humans after the out-of-Africa and before human colonization of Sahul. He is expert on uncovering signatures of natural selection in the genome, in particular balancing selection, and continue to study how advantageous genetic diversity can be maintained for millions of years in natural populations. More»
#1026 Robert Borofsky: An Anthropology of Anthropology

Nov 29, 2024

Dr. Robert Borofsky is the Director of the Center for a Public Anthropology and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hawaii Pacific University. He is the author or editor of eight books dealing with constructions of knowledge in the Pacific islands—such as Making History (1987) and Remembrance of Pacific Pasts (2000)—and the current state of cultural anthropology, including Assessing Cultural Anthropology (1994) and Yanomami (2005). He is also the author of An Anthropology of Anthropology: Is It Time to Shift Paradigms? More»
#1025 Katie Rose Hejtmanek - Gender and Power in Strength Sports: Strong As Feminist

Nov 28, 2024

Dr. Katie Rose Hejtmanek is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Children and Youth Studies Program at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Her current research examines sports practices and social change. Her teaching includes courses on the anthropology of sport, and gender and sexuality at New York University and Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA. She is a three-time competitor at IPF World Masters Powerlifting Championships and is a Trauma-Informed Weightlifting-certified strength coach. She is co-editor of Gender and Power in Strength Sports: Strong As Feminist. More»
#1024 Matthew McManus: The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

Nov 25, 2024

Dr. Matthew McManus is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is the author of books like The Emergence of Postmodernity, The Political Right and Equality, and The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. More»
#1023 Francesca Bellazzi: Biochemical Kinds and Functions, Genes, and Virtue Ethics

Nov 22, 2024

Dr. Francesca Bellazzi is Postdoctoral Researcher in the ERC project Assembling Life at the Centre for Philosophy and the Sciences (CPS) in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History, Art and Ideas (UiO) at the University of Oslo, Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Department of Science and Technology at UCL, and Honorary Visiting Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Bristol. She is interested in the complexity of the interactions between different entities. In particular, she is fascinated by the interface between chemistry and biology. She also has several side projects that consider the ethical aspects of science, in particular focusing on virtue ethics and epistemic injustice. More»
#1022 Vivek Venkataraman: Tree Climbing, Running, and Hunting across Human Societies

Nov 21, 2024

Dr. Vivek Venkataraman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. He is an evolutionary anthropologist who is broadly interested in the evolution of the human diet and food systems, and their relation to life history and behavior. He is assistant director of the Guassa Gelada Research Project, and also the co-founder and co-PI of the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OAHeLP). More»
#1021 Richard Wolff (@RichardDWolff): Socialism, Marxism, and Trump's Second Term

Nov 18, 2024

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»