All Episodes

#1142 Gül Salali: Social Dynamics, Culture, Mental Health and Physical Health in Hunter-Gatherers

Aug 28, 2025

Dr. Gül Salali is Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. Her research focuses on human behavior and health using evolutionary approaches. Since 2013, she has been conducting fieldwork in the Congo rainforest studying Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Some of her most recent research projects include: social learning and cultural evolution; evolutionary approaches to health-related behavior and mental health; and hunter-gatherer diet, health and physical activity. More»
#1141 Matti Häyry: Cloning and Antinatalism

Aug 25, 2025

Dr. Matti Häyry is Professor of Philosophy at Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Dr. Häyry’s main fields of interest have been moral and political philosophy and philosophical bioethics. His practical topics in bioethics have ranged from abortion, euthanasia, and resource allocation to genetics, systems biology, and synthetic biology. Theoretically, his work has centered on the main normative doctrines of European moral and political philosophy. He is the co-author of Pure Cloning. More»
#1140 Will Storr: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate and Persuade

Aug 22, 2025

Will Storr is a British author, journalist and former photographer. He has been a contributing editor at Esquire and GQ Australia. He is the author of several books, including The Science of Storytelling, The Status Game, and A Story is a Deal: How to use the science of storytelling to lead, motivate and persuade. More»
#1139 Kristen Ghodsee: Real-Life Utopian Societies

Aug 21, 2025

Dr. Kristen Ghodsee is an award-winning author and professor and chair of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as a member on the graduate groups of Anthropology and Comparative Literature. Dr. Ghodsee’s articles and essays have been translated into over twenty-five languages and have appeared in publications such as Dissent, Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The Baffler, The New Republic, Quartz, NBC Think, The Lancet, Project Syndicate, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung, The Washington Post, and the New York Times. She is the author of 12 books, including Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. More»
#1138 Adam Bode: The Science of Romantic Love

Aug 18, 2025

Adam Bode is an interdisciplinary romantic love and human mating researcher who employs an ethological framework in his theory and analysis. He has a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) and a Bachelor of Laws from the Australian National University. He is currently enrolled in a PhD in Biological Anthropology at the Australian National University’s School of Archaeology and Anthropology and holds a position as a Sessional Academic at Federation University Australia in the Institute of Health and Wellbeing. Adam’s research investigates romantic love using methods and approaches from biological anthropology, human ethology, and psychology. Adam is a proponent of a new approach to the science of romantic love which takes a broad definition of romantic love, uses an ethological framework, and suggests it evolved by co-opting mother-infant bonding. More»
#1137 Scott Hershovitz: Law Is a Moral Practice

Aug 15, 2025

Dr. Scott Hershovitz is the Thomas G. and Mabel Long Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He directs the University’s Law and Ethics Program. And he co-edits Legal Theory. Dr. Hershovitz writes about law and philosophy. He is the author of Law Is a Moral Practice. More»
#1136 Ronald de Sousa: Why It's OK to Be Amoral

Aug 14, 2025

Dr. Ronald de Sousa is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Toronto. His research interests include ancient philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of sex. He is the author of several books, his latest one being Why It's OK to Be Amoral. More»
#1135 Ian James Kidd: What Is Misanthropy?

Aug 11, 2025

Dr. Ian James Kidd is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Most of his current research concerns epistemology, virtues and vices, misanthropy (on which he is writing a book) and pessimism, and south and east Asian philosophies, especially Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism. More»
#1134 Norbert Peeters: Botanic Philosophy, von Humboldt, Darwin, and Why Plants Matter

Aug 8, 2025

Norbert Peeters is a teacher at Wageningen University and a PhD student at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University. His research is focused on an investigation of the philosophical and historical roots, implicit founding presuppositions and argumentative structure of the concept of wilderness, and its practical application in Dutch wildlife conservation projects. The first part of his dissertation will focus on the historical roots and the philosophical conceptual structure of our current wilderness concept. The second part will take a more practical approach. By studying several wilderness areas, as denoted by Natura 2000, this dissertation will investigate to what degree the idea of wilderness poses practical problems and solutions to wildlife management. More»
#1133 Blake Roeber - Political Humility: The Limits of Knowledge in Our Partisan Political Climate

Aug 7, 2025

Dr. Blake Roeber is the Michael P. Grace II Associate Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame. He is also an Associate Editor at Philosophical Studies. He specializes in traditional epistemology, and he has further research interests in formal and social epistemology. His work focuses on the relationship between knowledge and rational action, the nature of belief, the value of knowledge, and issues in epistemology that shed light on fake news, political polarization, and related phenomena. He is the author of Political Humility: The Limits of Knowledge in Our Partisan Political Climate. More»