Delving In with Stuart Kelter

#184. The Conditions and Challenges of Post-War Europe

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:00:00 -0600

Richard Bessel is a professor emeritus of twentieth century history at the University of York and a former member of the editorial boards of German History and History Today. He is a specialist in the social and political history of modern Germany, the aftermath of the two world wars, and the history of policing. He is the author of several books, published between 1984 and 2004, about the Nazi and post-Nazi eras of German history. His book, Violence: A Modern Obsession, published in 2015, explores how Western perceptions of violence have evolved over the last 150 years. This interview will focus on his recently published, Postwar Europe: A Very Short Introduction, part of The Oxford Very Short Introduction series.

Recorded 3/17/26.

#183. A Neuroscientist Tells the Story of his Remarkable Overcoming of Profound Childhood Adversity

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:00:00 -0600

David Sussillo is an internationally recognized neuroscientist, currently working as a senior research manager at Meta Reality Labs, leading a team that is developing brain-machine interfaces for next-generation computer technologies. He is also an adjunct professor in the electrical engineering department at Stanford University, where he conducts research in computational neuroscience and neural dynamics. This interview will focus on his soon-to-be published book, Emergence: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind, about his remarkable overcoming of profound childhood adversity, including his earliest years growing up with drug-addicted parents, followed by nearly a decade in orphanages. In this interview we will try to imagine what it was like for David during his childhood, including the hardships, the sources of engagement and hope, and what it took to achieve the improbable: a highly successful life, both professionally and personally.

Recorded 3/10/26.

#182. Alternative Approaches to the Philosophy of Ethics

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:45:00 -0600

Michael Boylan is a philosophy professor at Marymount University and a prolific writer who focuses on a wide range of ethical domains, including public health, the environment, medical advances, business practices, technological innovation, foundational philosophical texts from Ancient Greece, and the practice of teaching. He is also a poet and a fiction writer, exploring philosophical issues through his own writing of poetry, short stories, and novels. This interview will explore the major approaches to ethics, both in general terms and as applied to hypothetical, fictional, and real situations.

Recorded 3/3/26.

#181. Decisive Breakthroughs in Renewable Energy

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:00:00 -0600

Nicholas — or Nick — Jelley, is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford, known for his expertise in renewable energy and energy science. He was the UK group leader for the Nobel Prize-winning Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment, a major achievement in particle physics. More recently, he has conducted research on solar energy for use in the developing world. He has authored several books on energy topics, including the textbook, Energy Science: Principles, Technologies, and Impacts, co-written with John Andrews, and Renewable Energy: A Very Short Introduction, the second edition of which was recently published and which is the subject of today's interview.

Recorded 2/17/26.

#180. The Power and Dangers of Digital Self-Surveillance

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 20:30:00 -0600

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, where he teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and a seminar examining police surveillance technologies, privacy, and civil rights. Before becoming a professor, Professor Ferguson worked as a public defender for seven years, representing adults and juveniles, and was also lead counsel in numerous jury and bench trials, arguing cases before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Ferguson has written over 35 law review articles and book chapters and provided legal commentary for the New York Times, the Economist, CNN, NPR, among other media. He is also the author of four books, including, Why Jury Duty Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Constitutional Action, published in 2012, which was the first book written for jurors on jury duty. His award-winning second book, The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement, was published in 2017. We’ll be discussing his recently published latest book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance (2026), which reveals how smart devices dramatically enhance the scope of potential evidence for criminal prosecution. Unfortunately, in the process, we’re giving away our privacy and rendering ourselves vulnerable to harassment or worse by an authoritarian government.

Recorded 2/10/26.

#179. U.S. Efforts to Influence Values and Allegiances in the Middle East

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:30:00 -0600

Nathaniel Greenberg is an Associate Professor of Arabic in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University, focusing on the intersection of technology, politics, and culture in the modern Middle East and North Africa. A Comparative Literature scholar by training, he also worked as a freelance journalist and was one of the few Americans to report on the first days of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Egypt. He is the author of four books, including How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring: The Politics of Narrative in Tunisia and Egypt, published in 2019, and The Long War of Ideas: American Diplomacy in Arabic After 911, to published this March.

Recorded 1/27/26.

#178. An Expedition into the Brazilian Amazon to Establish the Boundaries of a Totally Isolated, Uncontacted tribe.

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 09:45:00 -0600

Scott Wallace is an award-winning writer, television producer, and photojournalist, who for over 40 years, has focused on the environment, vanishing cultures, and conflict over land and resources around the world. He has written feature stories for the New York Times and The Smithsonian, among other major publications, and has been a frequent contributor to National Geographic. He is the author of the bestselling book, The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes, published in 2011, a firsthand account of an expedition through the land of a mysterious tribe living in extreme isolation deep in the Amazon rain forest. As a reporter for CBS News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newsweek, the Independent, and the Guardian, Wallace covered the civil wars in Central America throughout the 1980s, and is the author of and photographer for Central America in the Crosshairs of War: On the Road from Vietnam to Iraq, published in 2024. In 2017 he joined the faculty of the Journalism Department of the University of Connecticut. Today’s interview will focus on his earlier book, The Unconquered.

Recorded 1/22/26.

#177. What African-Americans Endured Throughout the History of the Mississippi Delta

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:00:00 -0600

Ralph Eubanks is the former Director of Publishing for the Library of Congress, former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia, and currently faculty fellow and writer-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Awarded the Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award for excellence in literature and appointed cultural ambassador for Mississippi, he is the author of numerous articles in major newspapers and magazines, as well as four books, Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past, published in 2003, The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South, published in 2009, A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through A Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, published in 2021, and most recently, When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land, published in 2026. Our interview will focus on his latest book, which brings out the rich and painful history of the region, its enduring consequences, and possible springboards for hope.

Recorded 1/12/26.

#176. Exposing How Financial Corruption is Tied to Environmental Destruction, Human-Rights Abuses, and War

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 10:15:00 -0600

Patrick Alley is the former executive director and co-founder – along with Simon Taylor and Charmian Gooch – of Global Witness, an award-winning nonprofit organization, established in 1993, dedicated to exposing the links between corruption, environmental destruction, human-rights abuses and war. Since stepping down as executive director in 2023, he has continued his involvement as a board member and has also turned his focus to writing. His first book, Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption, was published in 2022, and his second, Terrible Humans: The World's Most Corrupt Super-Villains And The Fight to Bring Them Down, was published in 2024. Both books present gripping stories of high stakes challenges taken on by Global Witness and affiliated organizations, such as Citizen Lab, Sea Shepard, and the Wildlife Justice Commission in exposing evil and, in many cases, making a major contribution to eradicating it.

Recorded 1/5/26.

#175. Maintaining Love Throughout Her Husband's Dementia

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0600

Anne-Marie Erickson is the author of the memoir, In the Evening, We’ll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love and Dementia, which bears witness to the demise of her beloved husband, Dick Cain. As might be expected, this is a sad story, but not only. Right up until the very end, about ten years ago, the couple was able to express their love of one another and, thanks to their mutual love of language, Ann-Marie was, much of the time, able to decipher Dick’s not-necessarily-intentional use of metaphor to convey deep insights into their relationship, the world, and mortality. It’s an inspirational book that assiduously avoids clichés and platitudes, deeply honest about what it’s like to stay committed to the love of one’s life. She acknowledges the heartbreak, the exasperation, and the rage that goes with this territory, but she also doesn’t allow herself to become mired in negativity, and manages to gather sacred moments as they come, of meaning and closeness, as jewels on a strand that ultimately must end.

Recorded 12/30/25.

#174. Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I.

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:30:00 -0600

Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, whose main interests include philosophy of mind, metaphysics, the nature of belief, the impact or lack thereof of ethical thinking on behavior, and classical Chinese philosophy. He is the author of four books: Perplexities of Consciousness, published in 2011, Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic co-written with Russell Hurlburt, also published in 2011, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, published in 2019, and The Weirdness of the World, published in 2024. He is also a science fiction writer and was a contributor to Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible. Starting in 2006, Eric has written a blog called, “The Splintered Mind.”

Recorded 12/9/25.

#173. Scenarios for Another Civil War in the U.S.

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 16:00:00 -0600

Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and journalist, a scholar of philosophy and literature, and a former teacher of Renaissance drama at the City University of New York, resigning in 2007 to pursue a full-time writing career ever since. He has written five novels, numerous essays for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, and four works of non-fiction: How Shakespeare Changed Everything published in 2011, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the Twenty-First Century published in 2017, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, published in 2022, and On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, published in 2023.

Recorded 12/3/25.

#172. Positive Masculine Identity, As Nurtured by the Mother of a Boy Soprano

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -0600

Rebekah Peeples is the Deputy Dean of the College at Princeton University with oversight of the undergraduate curriculum. Previously at Princeton, she taught sociology and writing. She is also the author of two books: Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2014, and Unchanged Trebles: What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity, published four weeks ago, and which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 11/12/25.

#171. The Remarkable Contributions of Unwed, Childless Women Throughout History

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 14:30:00 -0600

Emma Duval is a self-described member of the “millennial generation,” who include the growing number of women who are childless and as, Emma puts it, “childfree” by choice. Although now married, Duval’s early inspirations were independent, unmarried women, and as a teenager she contemplated becoming a nun in rejection of societal norms surrounding marriage. She is the author-illustrator of the recently published book, Unwed & Unbothered: The Defiant Lives of Single Women, which celebrates the courageous lives and remarkable contributions of such women throughout history, going back thousands of years.

Recorded 11/5/25.

#170. The Origins and Remedies for the Rural-Urban Political Divide

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 11:30:00 -0600

Suzanne Mettler is a senior professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell University. She is the author of several books, including The Submerged State and Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream, published in 2014, The Government-Citizen Disconnect, published in 2018, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, co-written with Robert C. Lieberman and published in 2024, and most recently, Rural vs. Urban: The Growing Divide that Threatens Democracy, co-written with Trevor E. Brown and published just a few weeks ago.

Recorded 10/16/25.

#169. On Being a Wilderness Fire Watcher

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 11:15:00 -0600

Philip Connors is a National Parks Service fire watcher in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness since 2002. In addition to essays in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, Connors is the author of Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout, published in 2011; All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found, published in 2015; and A Song for the River -- about the threat to the Gila River, one of the last wild rivers in the western U.S., threatened by a proposed dam -- published in 2018. His work has won the National Outdoor Book Award, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Reading the West Award for Nonfiction, the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition, a Southwest Book Award, and an n+1 Writer's Fellowship. His fourth book, The Mountain Knows the Mountain: A Fire Watch Diary, published just a few weeks ago, blends haiku and diary entries that beautifully convey his experience of solitude, his reverence for nature, and his witnessing of devastating forest megafires on an unprecedented scale. He also speaks to our longstanding foolish overconfidence in the ability to indefinitely prevent forest fires.

Recorded 8/8/25.

#168. The Power of Followers to Restrain Toxic Leaders

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:15:00 -0600

Ira Chaleff is past President of Executive Coaching & Consulting Associates and award-winning author of several books, including The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and for Our Leaders, published in 2009; Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told to Do Is Wrong, published in 2015; Intelligent Disobedience for Children: A Handbook for Parents and Other Caregivers, published in 2018; To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Brake a Toxic Leader, published in 2024, and in a completely different genre, a collection of original poems about aging, Falling Apart Into Wholeness, published in 2020. Ira has conducted workshops on Leader-Follower relations for a wide range of organizations, including multinational corporations and governmental agencies. He served as Executive Director, as well as Chair of the Board, of The Congressional Management Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit group that provides management research, training and consulting for the U.S. Congress.

Recorded 9/16/25.

#167. A BBC Journalist and News Anchor on How His Two Identities, as Journalist and Jew, Inform One Another

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0600

Tim Franks has been a journalist with the BBC since 1990, as a producer, reporter, and presenter. He has covered British politics, including the conflict Northern Ireland in the years leading up to the Good Friday Agreement, as well as international issues, as a foreign correspondent on the scene in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, and in war zones, such as Iraq during the war of 2003, and in Gaza during the current war there. Since 2013 he has been a presenter – or in American parlance, an anchor – for Newshour, the BBC World Service flagship radio news program. This interview will focus primarily on his recently published book, The Lines We Draw: The Journalist, the Jew, and an Argument About Identity.

Recorded 9/9/25.

#166. Nature's Symbiotic Relationships, Some Mutually Beneficial and Others Parasitic

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 17:30:00 -0600

Sophie Pavelle is a U.S. born and UK-based science writer and communicator, whose debut book, Forget Me Not: Finding The Forgotten Species of Climate-Change Britain, won The People’s Book Prize for Non-Fiction (2023) and was long-listed for the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing. She worked for conservation charity Beaver Trust for four years, presenting their award-winning documentary Beavers Without Borders (2020), and also sat on the Advisory Committee of the UK based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Today’s interview will focus on her latest book, published in May of this year, To Have or to Hold: Nature’s Hidden Relationships, a wide-ranging exploration of symbiotic relationships between unrelated species.

Recorded 9/2/25.

#165. Why the U.S. War in Afghanistan Failed

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 20:30:00 -0600

Amin Saikal is an emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University, where he was also the Founding Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. He has won several academic awards and is a member of many national and international academic organizations. In addition to numerous articles in international journals, he has also written feature articles in major international newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and The Guardian and has been a frequent commentator on radio and television news programs. He has written several books about relations between Islam and the West and on political developments in Iran, Arab countries, and his home country, Afghanistan. This interview will focus on his most recent book, How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan, published in 2024.

Recorded 8/26/25.

#164. An Actor/Playwright Reflects on Fifty Years of Deep Relationships with Holocaust Survivors

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:00:00 -0600

Henry ("Hank") Greenspan is an emeritus psychologist and oral historian in Holocaust studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, award-winning playwright and actor, lyricist, essayist, and poet, and social activist in the area of healthcare rights. During the interview he’ll be performing one of the monologues from his remarkable play, REMNANTS, in which he channels the personalities and pivotal experiences of holocaust survivors with whom he formed deep relationships over the course of 50 years. (A video of his performance of the complete play can be viewed, at no charge, here.) We’ll also be talking about his new book, released just last week, REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors, which for the first time publishes the text of the play, as well as providing reflections on its history, production, and reception. (A long excerpt of another of his plays discussed during the interview, The Mad Jester of the Warsaw Ghetto, can be viewed, at no charge, here.)

Recorded 8/19/25.

#163. The Rationale and Controversies of Gender-Affirmative Health Care

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0600

Psychologists Diane Ehrensaft and Michelle Jurkiewicz are the co-authors of the recently published book, Gender Explained: A New Understanding of Identity in a Gender Creative World. Diane is cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is also a researcher and professor of pediatrics. She is the author of two previous books on this subject: The Gender Creative Child and Gender Born, Gender Made. Michelle Jurkiewicz is a gender specialist in private practice in Berkeley, California and an early pioneer and trainer in gender-affirmative care with transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive youth.

Recorded 8/13/25.

#162. How Developed Countries Perpetuate Their Economic Power (and the Obstacles to Joining Their Ranks)

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 07:45:00 -0600

Remi Adekoya is a political science lecturer at the University of York in the UK, focusing on national and sub-national identities and their role in international relations, especially as they affect Africa. Before joining academia, Remi was a journalist, whose writing appeared in major mainstream publications in Europe, the U.S. and Africa. He has also provided analysis and commentary for wide-ranging international media and is the host of the podcast How to Become a Leader in Africa. Remi’s cultural background – as the son of a Nigerian father and a Polish mother, growing up in Nigeria and living as an adult in Warsaw and now London – give him multifaceted, first hand, international perspectives. Today’s interview will focus on his book, published in 2023: It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth: How the Economics of Race Really Work.

Recorded 7/29/25.

#161. How Women Runners Refuted the Myth of Female Fragility

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0600

Maggie Mertens is a journalist in Seattle, who covers gender, culture, and sports. She has written essays and stories for such major publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Guardian and has also been interviewed on NPR affiliates, as well as national and regional television and numerous podcasts. In 2021, she was nominated for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sports Writing. Her recently published first book, Better, Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 7/23/25.

#160. The Concept of Race in Latin America

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 18:00:00 -0600

Iñigo García-Bryce is a history professor at New Mexico State University and the director of NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies from 2011-2016. His research focuses on Latin American social and political history. He is the author of Crafting the Republic: Lima’s Artisans and Nation-Building in Peru, 1821-1879, published in 2004 and Haya de la Torre and the Pursuit of Power in Peru and Latin America, published in 2018. García-Bryce speaks English, Spanish and French fluently, and also has proficiency in Quechua, Latin, Italian, Portuguese and German.  He has presented his research in England, Germany, Peru and Argentina.  He has lived in Lima (Peru), Prague (Czech Republic), Berlin and Munich (Germany), Paris (France) and Colombo (Sri Lanka).  He has also worked as a journalist and a Spanish interpreter and translator.

Recorded 4/28/20. (Note that the recording is occasionally a bit choppy, due to a sub-optimal internet connection.)

#159. The History of "Rule By Law" and How Autocratic Rulers Co-opt the Concept to Consolidate Power

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 11:00:00 -0600

Aziz Huq is a professor of comparative and constitutional law at the University of Chicago, focusing recently on democratic backsliding and the regulation of Artificial Intelligence. He has written articles for Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other mainstream publications, in addition to many scholarly articles, and award-winning books, including Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror with coauthor, Frederick Schwarz, published in 2007; How to Save a Constitutional Democracy with coauthor Tom Ginsberg, published in 2018; The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, published in 2021; and, most recently, The Rule of Law: A Very Short Introduction, a contribution to the Oxford “Very Short Introduction” series, published in 2024. He has an active pro bono practice and is on the boards of the American Constitution Society, the Seminary Co-op, the New Press, and the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to becoming a law professor, he litigated cases in both the US Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court, and was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Recorded 7/16/25.

#158. Black Entrepreneurship with a Social Conscience

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 21:30:00 -0600

Rachel Laryea is a Ghanaian-American entrepreneur and author of the recently published book, Black Capitalists: A Blueprint for What Is Possible. She secured a summer an internship at Goldman-Sachs while still in college at NYU and upon graduation was offered a high-paying job there, thereby introducing her to the cutthroat, hyper-competitive world of high finance. She left that world to pursue a dual Ph.D. in African-American Studies and Sociocultural Anthropology at Yale University. Currently Laryea works as an Asset Wealth Management researcher at J.P. Morgan-Chase and is also the founder and CEO of Kelewele, a plantain-inspired food startup based in Brooklyn, New York, with the goal of providing non-exploitive work opportunities. Her work focuses on Black participation in capitalist economies, both in the U.S. and Africa.

Recorded 7/15/25.

#157. Racial and Other Biases in Scientific Research, Medical Practices, and Everyday Attitudes

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 11:15:00 -0600

Shoumita Dasgupta is a Professor of Medicine at Boston University, where she has held many leadership positions. She is Assistant Dean of Diversity and Inclusion, formerly Assistant Dean of Admissions, Founding Director of Graduate Studies in Genetics and Genomics; Past President of the Association of Professors of Human and Medical Genetics, and Fulbright Specialist, serving as a U.S. State Department, short-term expert at academic institutions abroad. As a scientist educator, she has focused on genetics and genomic medicine, diversity and inclusion, and mentoring of graduate students. She is the author of the recently published, Where Biology Ends and Bias begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA, which is the focus on today’s interview.

Recorded 7/1/25.

#156. An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 13:15:00 -0600

Meg Kissinger is an investigative journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who spent more than two decades reporting on the failures of the American mental health system. She has won more than a dozen national honors, including two George Polk Awards and the Robert F. Kennedy National Journalism Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She had her first big break as a journalist when she broke the story about the whereabouts of fugitive, Abbie Hoffman. Her recently published memoir, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence, was named an Outstanding Work of Literature winner and an editors’ choice by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, Goodreads and Independent Booksellers Association. Audible chose it as the Best of the Year. The book tacks the intertwined topics of mental illness and family dysfunction so ably and so eloquently that she has surely taken out several bricks, at least, in the twin walls of shame and aversion that keep these problems from being effectively addressed.

Recorded 6/25/25.

#155. Generating a Love for Math and Math History

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:15:00 -0600

David Pengelley is a retired math professor from New Mexico State University (NMSU). We'll be talking about math education, math history, and learning math from primary source material. Dr. Pengelley, who also does original theoretical as well as historical mathematical research, rediscovered the work of the first known female research mathematician, Sophie Germain.

Recorded 7/21/20.

#154. The Hazards and History of Forever Chemicals

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 15:15:00 -0600

Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and The New Republic. She was a Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism at Harvard University. Blake is the author of the recently published, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. The book investigates the chemical industry's decades-long campaign to hide the dangers of forever chemicals, the courageous individuals who sued these corporations, and the precautions each of us can take to protect ourselves in a polluted world.

Recorded 6/4/25.

#153. Jessy Randall's New Poems on Women in Science, The Path of Most Resistance

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 09:30:00 -0600

Jessy Randall is curator of special collections at Colorado College and the author of several poetry collections, including: Suicide Hotline Hold Music, (which includes her own accompanying comics), There Was an Old Woman, Injecting Dreams into Cows, and A Day in Boyland, which was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She has also written a young adult novel, The Wandora Unit, about poetry nerds in high school, and a collection of collaborative poems, Interruptions, written with Daniel M. Shapiro. In a previous appearance on Delving In, on 11/13/22, she shared her poems from Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science. Today's interview returns to this subject with new poems from her latest book, The Path of Most Resistance.

Recorded 5/27/25.

#152. How Games and Game Theory Shape Our Social World

Sun, 25 May 2025 10:30:00 -0600

Kelly Clancy is a neuroscientist who has held research positions at M.I.T., Berkeley, the University College London, and the A.I. company, DeepMind, focusing on biological information processing and agency. In 2014 she was awarded the Regeneron Prize for creative innovation in biomedicine. Her writing has appeared in several major publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and The New Yorker. She is the author of the recently published book, Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World.

Recorded 5/21/25.

#151. The Successful Struggle to Organize the First Union at Starbucks

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 14:30:00 -0600

Jaz Brisack is a experienced union organizer, starting with the United Autoworkers campaign at the Nissan factory in Canton, MS and volunteering as a Pinkhouse Defender at the state’s last abortion clinic. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, they got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, NY, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping to organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States. As the organizing director for Workers United in upstate New York and Vermont, Jaz subsequently worked with organizing committees that successfully formed a workers’ union at a Ben & Jerry’s store in Burlington, VT and less successfully at a Tesla facility in Buffalo, NY.

In 2018, Jaz co-founded the Inside Organizer School and is currently developing it further as a Practitioner in Residence at the Labor Center of the University of California at Berkeley. The school teaches non-union workers and activists how to organize their workplaces from within. It also brings together organizers, activists, and workers from a variety of industries, unions, and campaigns, with the aim of creating a community that builds a vibrant, diverse, and democratic labor movement. Jaz is the author of Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 4/22/25.

#150. Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:45:00 -0600

James Danckert is a cognitive scientist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, focusing on the neuroscience of attention and the consequences of strokes. He has written numerous journal articles on the psychology of boredom and is the co-author, with John Eastwood, of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom, published in 2020, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 4/17/25.

#149. A Mother and Five Children, Upwardly Striving and Homeless

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:00:00 -0600

Jeff Hobbs is the author of five books, including a novel, The Tourists, and four books that apply a novelist writing style to the struggles of individuals striving to overcome racial, class, and social disadvantages. These include The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man who Left Newark for the Ivy League, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Show Them You’re Good: Four Boys and the Quest for College; Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System; and most recently and the subject of today’s interview, Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America.

Recorded 4/3/25.

#148. Nearly Dying While Giving Birth, Followed by Seven Years of Recovery

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 08:45:00 -0600

Samina Ali teaches fiction writing at Stanford University and is an award-winning author, whose debut novel, Madras on Rainy Days, published in 2004, won several literary awards, including Poets & Writers Magazine’s Top Debut of the Year. She has been a columnist for the New York Times Book Review and other publications and has been interviewed by national media.

Samina has been an activist for Muslim women’s rights and has served as a cultural ambassador to several European countries for the U.S. State Department. A founding member of the American Muslim feminist organization, Daughters of Hajar, she curated the acclaimed global exhibition, Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, showcasing work by Muslim women artists, activists, and thought leaders from around the world.

Samina’s just released second book, Pieces You’ll Never Get Back, which is the subject of today’s interview, tells the story of her unlikely survival and seven years of recovery, after nearly dying during the birth of her son. The memoir disarmingly invites the reader to relive her harrowing experience with her, as she taps into its medical, psychological, spiritual, cultural, and familial dimensions.

Recorded 3/25/24.

#147. Fraud in Alzheimer's Research that Underpins the Dominant Model of the Disease

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 22:00:00 -0600

Charles Piller is an award-winning investigative journalist for Science magazine, reporting on such topics as public health, biological warfare, and infectious disease outbreaks. In addition to articles in major newspapers, he is the co-author, with Keith Yamamoto, of Gene Wars: Military Control over the New Genetic Technologies, published in 1988, which examines the U.S. military biotechnology program and discusses the future of genetic arms control. He is the author of The Fail-Safe Society: Community Defiance and the End of American Technological Optimism, published in 1991, about the opposition by community groups to scientific and technological projects that endanger their communities. This interview focuses on his recently published book, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's, the book-length version of his exposé, “Blots on a Field,” that he wrote for Science magazine on July 21, 2022.

Recorded 3/18/25.

#146. The History of Antisemitism in the Arab World

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 16:30:00 -0600

Omar Mohammed was the previously anonymous blogger who courageously reported on the atrocities he witnessed that were perpetrated by the Islamic State, also called ISIS, when in 2014 it took over Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Currently, he teaches Middle East History, Cultural Heritage Diplomacy, and Counter Terrorism at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and is also the head of the Antisemitism Research Initiative at George Washington University. He’ll be talking with us about ancient and often prominent Jewish communities that, until seventy years ago, had flourished in Arab and Muslim lands, despite facing long-standing discrimination and sometimes violent oppression.

Recorded 3/11/25.

#145. The Case for Government Supported Housing

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 11:00:00 -0600

Jonathan Tarleton is a writer, urban planner, and oral historian. He previously served as the chief researcher for Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, as editor in chief of the online magazine Urban Omnibus, and as a real estate project manager with Urban Edge, a Boston-based community development corporation. Currently, he teaches writing and argumentation at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore, Maryland and serves as a senior advisor at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins. He is also sits on the board of Shelterforce, an online publication that reports on issues related to affordable housing. In addition to dozens of essays on housing issues, he recently published his first book: Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons.

Recorded 2/25/25.

#144. Native Alaskan Resistance to Russian Expansion into North America

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:15:00 -0600

Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees are co-authors of two books, The Tsarina's Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck, published in 2020 and The Last Stand of the Raven Clan: A Story of Imperial Ambition, Native Resistance, and How the Tlingit-Russian War Shaped a Continent, which was just published a few months ago and is the subject of today’s interview. Gerald Easter is a political science professor at Boston College, focusing on Russia and Eastern Europe. Reconstructing the State, published in 2000, examines the personal networks and informal sources of power than contributed to the expansion of the Soviet control over its multi-ethnic satellite states, as well as to the empire’s later disintegration. His award-winning book, Capital Coercion, and Post-Communist States, published in 2012, explores the disparate outcomes, democratic vs. authoritarian, of post-Soviet satellite states. Mara Vorhees is a travel writer and photographer who has contributed to over forty guidebooks published by Lonely Planet, about such diverse destinations as New England, Central America, and Russia. She also the creator and writer of the blog, Have Twins, Will Travel: Adventures & Misadventures in Family Travel.

Recorded 2/4/25.

#143. How American Capitalists Harnessed the American Work Ethic

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 11:30:00 -0600

Erik Baker is a historian, writer, and teacher based in Boston, a lecturer in the History of Science department at Harvard University and associate editor of The Drift, a magazine about culture and politics. In addition to articles about labor, politics, and American history, he recently published his first book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, which explores how social scientists and management intellectuals reshaped the American work ethic during the turbulence of twentieth century U.S. capitalism.

Recorded 1/28//25.

#142. The South's Long War on Black Literacy

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:30:00 -0600

Derek W. Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina, where he directs the Constitutional Law Center. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts in education law and policy, on such topics as school funding and ensuring equal opportunities for disadvantaged students. His research is often cited in court opinions and briefs, including in the U.S. Supreme Court. He has served as an expert witness and consultant in school funding, voucher, and federal policy litigation. His essays have appeared in major newspapers, and he has been frequent guest on national, regional, and local radio and television programs. He is the author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy, which warns of educational trends that retreat from foundational commitments to democracy and public education. His new book, Dangerous Learning: The South’s Long War on Black Literacy, which is the subject of today’s interview, documents the South’s repression of black education and freedom literature before and after the Civil War, providing historical context for the hostility often faced by public school teachers, curricula, and libraries.

Recorded 1/21/24.

#141, Whether Dictatorship, Democracy, or Corporation: What It Takes to Stay in Power

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 08:15:00 -0600

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political science professor at New York University and past president of the International Studies Association, who has served as an adviser to the U.S. government on national security and to numerous corporations on business negotiations. In addition to many articles in the professional literature and major newspapers, he is the author of 23 books. Perhaps his best known, as well as most accessible, is The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, co-authored with Alistair Smith, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 1/14/25.

#140. Malcolm Before X: Family Background, Childhood, and Incarceration

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 17:30:00 -0600

Patrick Parr is an historian and biographer of writers and civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, and Kato Shidzue. Teaching in Japan since 2018, he currently writes a history column for Japan Today, about historical figures or businesses coming to Japan for the first time. His new book, Malcolm Before X, provides an in-depth accounting of Malcolm X’s family history, childhood, and transformative experiences during his six year incarceration in his early 20s. The book was published this past December and was named A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2024.

Recorded 12/17/24.

#139. The Amazing New Science of Smell

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 15:30:00 -0600

Jonas Olofsson is a professor at Stockholm University in Sweden, where he directs the Sensory Cognitive Interaction Lab, with a particular focus on the sense of smell, as well as its loss, as it interacts with memory, emotion, language, and information processing. He is the author of the recent book, The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 12/18/24.

#138. The History and Enduring Effects of the 2022 Uprising in Iran

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 23:00:00 -0600

Farhad Khosrokhavar is a retired professor and former Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, whose work focuses on the social movements in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, the uprisings during the Arab Spring of 2010-12, the Jihadist movements in France and the rest of Europe, and the philosophical foundations of the social sciences. He has published more than 30 books, eight of which were either translated or directly written in English, some translated into several languages, and has also written around 100 articles in French and English, which have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and Persian. His latest book, Revolt Against Theocracy: The Mahsa Movement and the Feminist Uprising in Iran, is the focus of today's interview.

Recorded 12/24/24.

#137. Science, Pseudoscience, and the Co-opting of Quantum Physics by the New Age Movement

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 12:45:00 -0600

Sadri Hassani is a professor emeritus of Physics at Illinois State University, who continues to teach courses in thermal and quantum physics as the University of Illinois. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University, has authored several books on mathematical physics for undergraduate and graduate students, and in addition has a strong, ongoing interest in raising the scientific awareness of the general public. We’ll be talking about his latest book, Quanta in Distress: How New Age Gurus Kidnapped Quantum Physics.

Recorded 12/11/24.

#136. The Complicated History of Native American Identity

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 11:00:00 -0600

For seven years Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz was a policy advisor in the Obama Administration, focusing on homelessness and Native policy. In addition to an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Denmark. She currently teaches public policy at the University of Iowa, and is also the Director of the Native Policy Lab. An enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, she was awarded the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2023 for her debut nonfiction book, The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 12/4/24.

#135. Where Does Economic Inequality Come From?

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:00:00 -0600

Jeffrey Zax is an economics professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose research focuses on labor economics, public economics, and urban economics. He has served as a consultant for various public entities, including the Attorneys General of several states. He has also been a Fulbright Lecturer and has taught at the University of Ghana. This interview focuses on the economic causes and dynamics of inequality and discrimination.

Recorded 8/27/20.

#134. Reflecting on (an Unusally) Long Career as a Child Protective Worker

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 17:30:00 -0600

Tom Russell is a retired Child Protective Services investigator and foster care worker, who was employed by the state of Michigan. Although this honest and thoughtful interview does not go into graphic detail about child abuse, it may nevertheless be upsetting to some. Listener discretion is advised.

Recorded 9/10/20.

#133. Benjamin Franklin's Scientific Dimension Underpinned Everthing Else

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:15:00 -0600

Author and environmental activist, Richard Munson, has served as senior director of the Environmental Defense Fund, and senior vice president at Recycled Energy Development. He has been a coordinator for the Northeast-Midwest Institute and Congressional and Senate Coalitions and several other environmental organizations, including bipartisan caucuses that conduct policy research and draft legislation on issues pertaining to agriculture, economic development, energy, the environment, and manufacturing. Munson has received numerous public-service awards and, has served on several boards of environmental organizations and a Public Library. His has written biographies of scientists, including Tesla: Inventor of the Modern and Cousteau: The Captain and His World. He has also written Tech to Table: 25 Innovators Reimagining Food, From Edison to Enron, and Cardinals of Capitol Hill, which traces the machinations of congressional appropriators who control government spending. We’ll be talking about his most recent book, Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist.

Recorded 11/12/24.

#132. A Religious Movement that is Reshaping American Politics and is Threatening Our Democracy

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:15:00 -0600

Matthew Taylor is a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, American Islam, Christian extremism, and religious politics. He also serves as an associate fellow at the Center for Peace Diplomacy in New Orleans, where he works on preventing religion-related violence surrounding U.S. elections. We’ll be talking about his new book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy, which explores the roots, belief system, and goals of a non-denominational evangelical movement, the New Apostolic Reformation. In Taylor’s analysis, this movement is reshaping the culture of the religious right in the U.S. and was a major instigating force for the January 6th Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building.

Recorded 10/30/24.

#131. A Daughter of Holocaust Survivors Reflects on Intergenerational Trauma, Memory, and Listening

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:45:00 -0600

Award-winning novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer, Elizabeth Rosner, talks about themes from Survivor Café: the Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, published in 2017, and her latest book, Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner became attuned not only to words and sounds, but to different kinds of silences, as well.

Recorded 10/22/24.

#130. State Laws that Promote Vigilante Intimidation

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 07:45:00 -0600

David Noll is the former associate dean for faculty research and a professor of law at Rutgers University Law School. His scholarly work encompasses a broad set of interlocking aspects of the law, including complex litigation, governmental legislation, regulation, and administration, and the framework of constitutional law in which all of these are grounded. He has written both for major scholarly journals, as well as for general audiences in the New York Times, Politico, Slate, among other publications. He is the co-author, with UCLA law professor, Jon Michaels, of the recently published Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 10/14/24.

#129. An Evangelical Mega-Church that Fights Racism

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 11:15:00 -0600

Hahrie Han is a Political Science Professor at Johns Hopkins University, whose research focuses on grass-roots political activism, particularly against systemic racism. She has partnered with a wide range of civic and political organizations and movements around the world, including those in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Korea, helping develop the leadership skills of young scholars and practitioners, especially women and people of color. In addition to writing columns in major news publications and articles in leading scholarly journals, she has written five books. Her most recent book, Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 10/1/24.

#128. Space, Time, and the Universe

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0600

Wladimir Lyra is an astronomer at New Mexico State University, whose research focuses around high-end computer simulations of planet formation, both in our own solar system and beyond, i.e., exoplanets and their solar systems. In this interview, we discuss empirically-based theories of time and space, their relationship to each other, and current ideas about the beginning and end of time.

Recorded 9/24/20.

#127. White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 20:00:00 -0600

Thomas Schaller and Paul Waldman and the co-authors of Rural White Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.

Tom Schaller, who is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House; Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South; and co-author, with fellow UMBC political scientist Tyson King-Meadows, of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century. He is a former political columnist for the Baltimore Sun and his commentaries have appeared in major newspapers, as well as in radio and television interviews. He has given lectures on American elections in 19 countries on behalf of the U.S. State Department.

Paul Waldman is a journalist and opinion writer, whose commentaries have appeared in dozen of major newspapers, magazines and digital media. He is the author or co-author of four previous books on media and politics: The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World , written with Kathleen Hall Jamieson; Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You; Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success; and Free Ride: John McCain and the Media.

Recorded 9/19/24.

#126. The Paranoia and Drama of the McCarthy Era

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 07:45:00 -0600

Historians Andrea Balis and Elizabeth Levy are co-authors of the Bringing Down a President: The Watergate Scandal, published in 2019, and Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare, published just this year and the subject of today’s interview. Andrea was a professor at the City University of New York for 30 years, has worked as a theater director and playwright, and has written young adult fiction and non-fiction. Elizabeth is prolific and award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adults.

Recorded 9/10/24.

#125. Immigrant Workers Take on America's Largest Meatpacking Company

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 10:15:00 -0600

Alice Driver is a writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is the author of More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico, published in 2015, and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, published in 2022. Her latest book, The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company, was published this year and won the Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Alice has also written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Oxford American, and National Geographic.

Recorded 9/3/24.

#124. Hypochondria: A Personal Story and Historical Exploration

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 14:15:00 -0600

Caroline Crampton is a writer and a podcaster, and the author of two books. The Way to the Sea, published in 2019, recounts the stories, literature, and history about the Thames Estuary in the U.K. Her second book, published in 2024 and the subject of today’s interview, is A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria. Crampton creates and hosts the award-winning detective fiction podcast Shedunnit, curates articles as editor-in-chief of The Browser, and writes reviews and essays for such publications as Time, Literary Hub and The Guardian.

Recorded 8/29/24.

#123. Space Archaeology: Preserving Artifacts on the Moon

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 10:45:00 -0600

Beth O’Leary is a Professor Emerita at New Mexico State University, whose areas of interest include both cultural anthropology and archaeology. She is one of the creators and experts in Space Archaeology and Heritage, investigating the heritage status of the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base site on the Moon. In 2010, she and colleagues successfully nominated objects and structures at the Tranquility Base to the State Registers of Cultural Properties in both California and New Mexico. Her books include: The Final Mission: Preserving NASA’s Apollo Sites (co-authored with L.Westwood and M.W. Donaldson in 2017), (2015) The Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space (co-edited with, P.J. Capelotti, in 2015); and The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage (co-edited with A. Darrin, CRC Taylor, and Francis Press in 2009). Dr. O’Leary has chaired five international symposia on Space Archaeology and Heritage. Dr. O’Leary has also conducted research on Athapaskan cultures in Canada and the U.S.

Recorded 11/17/20.

#122. The Life, Times, and Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, a Founding Thinker of the Enlightenment

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 10:15:00 -0600

Ian Buruma is a Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. Originally from the Netherlands, he is a prolific writer with broad interests, including Japanese and Chinese culture and history, organized religion and religious intolerance, and intellectual and political freedom or lack thereof. He has been a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, New Republic, New Yorker, and The Guardian and has also written two novels. His most recent book, published earlier this year and the subject of today’s interview, is Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah. Buruma provides historical and biographical context to Spinoza’s life, as well as drawing out the relevance of Spinoza’s value system to current political controversies.

Recorded 8/20/24.

#121. Doing Philosophy with Children

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 13:45:00 -0600

This interview is dedicated to Samantha Keleher Bursum, who died on March 1 of 2024 in a car accident at the age of 14. She participated in this interview, at age 11, with her mother, Lori Keleher, who is a philosophy professor at New Mexico State University. Together they share the joys and benefits of philosophical conversations with children, starting from a surprisingly early age.

Recorded 12/29/20.

#120. A Muslim Scholar, Who Converted to Islam, Promotes Interfaith Dialogue

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:00:00 -0600

Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Islamic intellectual history, gender studies, and ethics. Her 2020 monograph, Women and Gender in the Qur'an, won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award and was featured by the American Academy of Religion for Women's History Month. Ibrahim is also the author of Islam and Monotheism (2022), an accessible primer on core Islamic beliefs. Ibrahim also writes on spiritual care, chaplaincy, religious leadership, and related themes.

Ibrahim offers courses and lectures at educational and civic institutions around the world and is a trusted voice for media outlets, including NPR, PBS, and Netflix. She is a faculty member at Groton School in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy where she also holds an appointment as the Muslim Chaplain. She has held multiple teaching fellowships, including through the New York Times Learning Network and Teachers College at Columbia University.

Recorded 12/3/20.

#119. A History of American Inequality.

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 11:30:00 -0600

Jamie Bronstein has been a history professor at New Mexico State University since 1996. She is the author of six books about American and British History: Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862 (published in 1999); Caught in the Machinery: Workplace Accidents and Injured Workers in 19th-century Britain (2008); Transatlantic radical: John Francis Bray (2009); with Andrew Harris, Empire, State and Society: Modern Britain, 1830-present (2013), and The Happiness of the British Working Class (2023). Today’s interview focuses on her book, published in 2016, Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of American Inequality.

Recorded 12/17/20.

#118. Unjust Inequities in Bankruptcy Law

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 22:30:00 -0600

Melissa Jacoby is a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches commercial and bankruptcy law. Melissa is a frequent commentator in the news media and has spoken with thousands of people about debt, lending, commercial law, and bankruptcy. In 2021 the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, appointed her to help design educational programming for the nation’s bankruptcy judges. She is a recipient of multiple awards, including the Grant Gilmore Award for scholarship from the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers and the Byrd Award for creative teaching. Melissa’s first book, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal was named one of the Financial Times’ best summer economics books for 2024.

Recorded 8/6/24.

#117. A Cause Fraught with Peril: Exposing Abusive Medical Research

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 15:15:00 -0600

Carl Elliott is a philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a recipient of the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. His work focuses on the influence of market forces on medicine, the ethics of enhancement technologies, research ethics, the philosophy of psychiatry, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Walker Percy. His articles have appeared in such major publications as The New Yorker, Mother Jones, and The Atlantic Monthly, often covering dark topics with satiric humor.

Elliott has authored or edited seven books, including White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine, published in 2010. His latest book, published earlier this year, is The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No, which explores the events, motivations, and outcomes when whistleblowers try to expose scandalously abusive medical research.

Recorded 7/30/24.

#116. What is the Universe Made of and What is its Destiny?

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 17:45:00 -0600

Harry Cliff is a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge. He is a member of an international team of around 1400 physicists, engineers and computer scientists who use the CERN particle accelerator in search of answers to some of the biggest questions in modern physics, such as the nature of dark matter and why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. Harry has written two popular science books. The first, How To Make An Apple Pie From Scratch In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origin of Atoms to the Big Bang, was published in 2021 and was named by Kirkus as one of the best science books of the year, His second, Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe, was published in March of 2024. He also shares his love physics with the public by giving TED Talks, curating science exhibitions, and appearing as a frequent guest on television, radio, and podcasts.

Recorded 7/23/24.

#115. Women and War

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 10:15:00 -0600

David Jacobson, Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida. Today's interview, focuses on his book, Of Virgins and Martyrs: Women and Sexuality in Global Conflict. Published in 2013, the book explores the interplay among cultural, political, economic, and historical forces that shape gender relations and violence, individualistic vs. communitarian values, and tensions between globalism and traditional, tribalist societies. Jacobson is the co-founder of The Global Resolve Initiative, which helps villagers in developing countries develop alternative energy technologies, with a pilot project in Ghana. Global Resolve received the 2009 Creasman Award for Excellence.

Recorded 1/19/21.

#114. Real World Harms Created by Advances in Artificial Intelligence

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 13:45:00 -0600

Madhumita Murgia is a writer specializing in artificial intelligence and its impact on society. She was the artificial intelligence editor for Wired magazine and in February 2023 was appointed as the first A.I. Editor of the London-based Financial Times. Her recent book, Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of A.I., was shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. The book explores how A.I. algorithms affect everyday workers around the world, their contribution to growing inequalities of wealth and power, and even to dystopia outcomes.

Recorded 7/11/24.

#113. A Renaissance Man Reflects on the Creative Process and the Honing of Artistic Skills

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 14:45:00 -0600

Las Cruces’s very own renaissance man, Bob Diven -- an accomplished painter, sculptor, set designer, actor, playwright, composer, actor, satirist, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, folk guitarist; columnist, and more -- reflects on the creative process and the development of artistic skills.

Recorded 2/13/21.

#112. Reclaiming the Vietnamese Heritage Her Refugee Father Never Shared

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 14:15:00 -0600

Vietnamese-American Christina Vo is the author of two memoirs. The first, entitled The Veil Between Two Worlds: A Memoir of Silence, Loss, and Finding Home, was published in 2023. Our interview will focus on her second book, published this past April, entitled, My Vietnam, Your Vietnam: A Father Flees. A Daughter Returns. A Dual Memoir. This book consists of alternating passages written by Christina and her father, Nghia M. Vo, a retired physician and author of numerous books on Vietnamese culture and history.

Recorded 6/27/24.

#111. The National Park Service, Its Mission, and How it was Co-opted by the South to Celebrate the Confederacy

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Dwight Pitcaithley, the former Chief Historian of the National Park Service, discusses NPS's history and its three-fold mission of preservation, research, and education, with the last segment focusing on the controversies surrounding Civil War monuments.

Recorded 2/10/21.

#110. Research that Proved the Toxic Effects of Lead in Our Gasoline and in Our Drinking Water

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 17:45:00 -0600

Joel Schwartz won a MacArthur Award for work that made a major contribution to the phase-out of lead in gasoline. Ronnie Levin worked at the Environmental Protection Agency to help establish federal standards and more robust testing to protect consumers from lead in drinking water. Both Schwartz and Levin teach at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Recorded 2/24/21.

#109. Finding Meaning After Catastrophic Illness or Injury

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 11:15:00 -0600

Dr. Keith Rafal, medical director of the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island and creator of the non-profit organization and website, Our Heart Speaks, through which people from around the world share inspirational stories and artistic expressions about their rehabilitation, healing, connection, and meaning.

Recorded 3/7/21.

#108. The Amazing Auditory World of Sea Creatures

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 17:00:00 -0600

Amorina Kingdon is an award-winning science writer, at Hakai Magazine until 2021 and as a contributor to publications at the University of Victoria and the Science Media Center, both in Canada. She is also a writer of fiction, published in PRISM and Flash Fiction magazine. The subject of today’s interview is her recently released book, Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water, which explores an amazing and under-appreciated world that surely deserves to become better known.

Recorded 6/4/24.

#107. Teaching Social Justice Issues to White Students in a Wealthy Suburb of Boston

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:00:00 -0600

David Nurenberg is a professor, educational consultant, and writer in the Boston area who teaches courses at both the high school and graduate level, in suburban, urban, and international teaching and learning environments. He shares his insights on all things educational in his podcast, Ed Infinitum, and is the author of the book, What Does Injustice Have to Do With Me? Covering both theory and practice, the book provides detailed descriptions of how to both raise awareness and develop critical thinking in the teaching of social justice issues to privileged white students in a wealthy suburban school.

Recorded 3/23/21.

#106. The Incredible Potential and Daunting Risks of Stem Cell Therapy

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 15:15:00 -0600

Sheldon Krimsky was a professor of humanities and social sciences at Tufts University and a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution. His long and distinguished career focused on the links between public policy and science and technology, environment and health, and ethics and values. His work stressed the importance of public understanding of science-related issues, and his many books for the nonspecialist attested to his commitment to providing the public with the best information available about such issues, often well ahead of the general media. Today’s interview will focus on his 2015 book, Stem Cell Dialogues: a Philosophical and Scientific Inquiry Into Medical Frontiers. Krimsky died on 5/5/22 at age 80.

Recorded 3/31/21.

#105. How Mandela Averted Civil War in South Africa

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:45:00 -0600

Justice Malala is one of South Africa’s foremost political commentators, both in print and on television. A longtime weekly columnist for The Times of South Africa, he has also written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Financial Times, among other major publications. He is the author of the #1 bestseller, We Have Now Begun Our Descent: How to Stop South Africa Losing its Way. His most recent book, entitled The Plot to Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 5/28/24 (just before national elections in South Africa).

#104. The Promise and Shortcomings of Massive Open Online Courses

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 10:15:00 -0600

Justin Reich is a professor in Comparative Media Studies and director of the Teaching Systems Lab, both at MIT. He is the host of a podcast called TeachLab; one of the earliest researchers in the development of Harvard X, which was one of the first initiatives in massive scale online course offerings; and developer and host of five open online courses on MIT and Harvard’s EdX, including “Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning” and another entitled, “Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices.” He is the author of the 2020 book, Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education.

Recorded 4/6/21.

#103. Cognitive Biases that are Amplified by Social Media

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 10:00:00 -0600

Amanda Montell is a linguist, cultural commentator, and host of the weekly podcast Sounds Like a Cult. In addition to essays published in Time, Cosmopolitan, and other magazines, she has published three books. Her first, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, released in 2019, established her as a writer who deconstructs biases in our culture, using humor, anecdotes, and discussions of research to enlighten us about our own linguistic and cognitive tendencies. Her second book, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, published in 2021, was partially inspired by the experiences experiences of Montell's father, who spent his teen years in the cult Synanon. Her third book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, which was just published in April 2024 and is the subject of today’s interview, explores the cognitive biases that form the warp, if not the woof, of human nature.

Recorded 5/23/24.

#102. How Bayesian Statistics Underpins Both Scientific Prediction and Everyday Functioning

Mon, 27 May 2024 11:00:00 -0600

Tom Chivers is a science writer who has won several awards, including the Royal Statistical Society’s award for statistical excellence in journalism, the Association of British Science Writers’ science journalist of the year, and the Times’s science books of the year. He has written three books. His first, The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity’s Future, was published in 2019. His second book, How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them) was published in 2021. His just-released third book, entitled Everything is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 5/21/24.

#101. Schadenfreude (Pleasure From Someone Else's Misfortune)

Wed, 22 May 2024 17:15:00 -0600

Colin Wayne Leach is a social and personality psychologist at Columbia University, who researches Schadenfreude -- i.e., deriving pleasure from witnessing someone else's misfortune -- and related emotions, such as Genugtuung, which means deriving pleasure from seeing justice done.

Recorded 4/12/21.

#100. What Life Was Like in the Prehistoric Past

Sun, 19 May 2024 17:15:00 -0600

Ran Barkai is the co-author, with Eyal Halfon, of the recently published book, They Were Here Before Us: Stories from the First Million Years. Dr. Barkai is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, who for 20 years has co-directed the excavations and research at Qesem Cave in northern Israel. His wide-ranging research interests encompass stone tool technology, human-elephant interactions, and altered states of consciousness.

Recorded 5/14/24.

#99. Ethical Dilemmas of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing

Fri, 03 May 2024 11:15:00 -0600

Vardit Ravitsky is a Professor of Bioethics at the University of Montreal and President of the International Association of Bioethics. Her research focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics/genomics and assisted reproductive technologies and their implications for women’s autonomy and for disability rights. She is President of the International Association of Bioethics; Director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics; member of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s (NHGRI) Genomics & Society Working Group; a 2020 Trudeau Foundation Fellow and Chair of the Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Committee, as well as Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Hastings Center.

Recorded 4/14/21.

#98. Re-examining the Evidence for the Genetic Basis of Mental Illness

Fri, 03 May 2024 10:30:00 -0600

Jay Joseph is a clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Joseph challenges the empirical evidence behind the mainstream view that mental illness is genetically based, and argues instead that the real causes include oppression, trauma, abuse, and psychologically unhealthy aspects of the social and political environment. He is the author of four books, most recently The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2015), and Schizophrenia and Genetics: The End of an Illusion (2017). He is a contributor to the Mad in America website, and the creator of https://thegeneillusion.blogspot.com/.

Recorded 4/16/21.

#97. How to Best Help the Most Vulnerable Children? Start Before They're Even Born!

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:00:00 -0600

David Olds is a professor at the Pediatrics-Prevention Research Center at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He has devoted his long and distinguished career to the developing and testing of very early interventions in family and child functioning, starting prenatally and continuing through toddler age. After devoting decades to high quality, random assignment, longitudinal, comparison studies – showing the approach yielded dramatic benefits – Dr. Olds went on to win grant after grant, to implement what came to be called the Nurse-Family-Partnership program, now in 40 states and 8 foreign countries, today serving close to 40,000 families in the U.S. and 18,000 families abroad. The program has shown positive, substantial, long-term effects in the prevention of child abuse and neglect, school failure, injuries, depression, anxiety and anti-social behavior in children. Research from Nurse-Family-Partnership program (https://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/) have served as the primary evidentiary foundation for a $2.3B federal investment in evidence-based home visiting.

Recorded 5/3/21.

#96. Compassionate Care for a Devastating Disease

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 22:45:00 -0600

In 2003, Ron Hoffman became the founder of an organization in Falmouth, Massachusetts called Compassionate Care ALS (CCALS.org), which has helped well over 1000 families with Lou Gehrig’s disease on both practical and spiritual levels, above all by being deeply present. His memoir, Sacred Bullet, published in 2014, reveals in powerful and personal terms, how his own healing is woven into his work. Ron has worked with individuals, families and healthcare professionals across the United States, inviting conversations around the choices and possibilities that arise for those living with a terminal illness. He has been relentless in his determination to change the systems that hinder rather than help the dying, with profound implications for how healthcare systems in general desperately need to be humanized.

Recorded 5/25/21.

#95. The Amazing Grit and Determination of the First Women Doctors

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 20:15:00 -0600

Olivia Campbell is a journalist, essayist, and author focusing on the intersections of medicine, women, history, and nature. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and many other major publications. She is the author of the 2021 NY Times bestseller, Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 4/9/24.

#94. Can Trauma Be Inherited?

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 11:30:00 -0600

Isabelle Mansuy, a professor in neuroepigenetics in the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and the Department of Health Science and Technology of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Specializing in neuroepigenetics and molecular psychiatry, Dr. Mansuy is doing cutting edge research, using mice, to separate nature from nurture in how the effects of trauma, environmental stress, and even diet can be biologically passed down to subsequent generations, but not irreversibly.

Recorded 6/15/21.

#93. An Evolutionary Perspective on Mental Illness and Human Suffering

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 20:30:00 -0600

Psychiatrist, professor, and researcher, Randolph Nesse, is a cofounder of the field of evolutionary medicine. Twenty-five years ago his book, Why We Get Sick, which he co-authored with George C. Williams, went on to sell more than 100,000 copies and to be translated into eight languages. He served for many years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he is a professor emeritus, and was also the founding director of the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, where he continues to be a research professor. His most recent book, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 4/2/24.

#92. The Trailblazers of the Dance Theatre of Harlem

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:45:00 -0600

Karen Valby is a culture writer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, Fast Company, and EW. She is also the author of two books. The first, Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town, was published in 2010. Her soon-to-be-released book, The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded /26/24.

#91. The Corporatization of American Health Care

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 09:15:00 -0600

Robert W. Derlet, MD is a Professor Emeritus at the medical school of the University of California, Davis, former Chief of Emergency Medicine at the Davis Medical Center, candidate for Congress in 2016, and author of the recent book, Corporatizing American Health Care.

Recorded 6/16/21.

#90. Symbiotic Relationships with Bacteria

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 08:45:00 -0600

Michele Nishiguchi, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced, she runs the Nishiguchi Symbiosis Lab, specializing in the study of the association and interaction between the tiny Bobtail squid and a light emitting bacteria called Vibrio fischeri, which are relevant to the evolution of both beneficial and detrimental bacteria in humans. Before her recent move to UC Merced she was for 21 years a professor at New Mexico State University, where she was recognized for her outstanding contributions by receiving numerous awards, including the designation of Regents Professor in 2015.

Recorded 6/29/21.

#89. The History and Continued Threats of White Supremacist Terrorism

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 11:15:00 -0600

Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware are the coauthors of the recently published, God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America. Dr. Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University, professor emeritus of terrorism studies at the University of St Andrews, Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, and a Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and at DeSales University. He serves on the editorial boards for the academic journal, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and the Irregular Warfare Initiative at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Recorded 3/19/24.

#88. The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:00:00 -0600

Coleman Hughes is a writer, podcaster, and musician, focusing on race, public policy, and applied ethics. At the age of 28, he is already becoming a well-known commentator and critic on issues related to race-based policies. He was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a fellow and contributing editor at their City Journal. He is also the host of the podcast, Conversations with Coleman. In 2019, he testified before a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee at a hearing on reparations for slavery, arguing against the campaign. In 2023, he delivered a talk at the annual TED conference, in Vancouver, Canada, advocating a societal goal of color blindness, i.e., treating people without regard to race, both personally and in public policy. Internal opposition from TED prevented the internet posting of this talk, which was eventually released after Hughes agreed to its being paired with a debate between him and New York Times columnist James Bouie. In addition to writing columns for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications, Hughes is the author of the recently published book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, which is the subject of today’s interview.

#87. Hard Choices that the Green Revolution Poses

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 17:30:00 -0600

Ernest Scheyder is a senior correspondent for Reuters covering the green energy transition and the mining of the minerals required for its implementation. He previously covered the U.S. shale oil revolution, politics, and the environment. He is the author of the recently published book, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power our Lives.

Recorded 3/6/24.

86. How Religious Practice Creates Faith, Rather than the Other Way Around

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 20:45:00 -0600

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is an anthropologist of religion at Stanford University, whose work focuses on the edge of human experience: hearing voices, having visions, the world of the supernatural, and the world of psychosis, whether on the streets of Chicago with homeless and psychotic women, with people who hear voices in India, Ghana, and southern California, with evangelical Christians who seek to hear God speak back, with Zoroastrians seeking mystical dimensions, and with people who practice magic. She has written articles for the New York Times and the New Yorker, as well as several books, including When God Talks Back, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. Her most recent book, entitled How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others is the subject of today’s interview.

#85. The History of Myanmar (Burma)

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 15:15:00 -0600

Ken Hammond is a professor of East Asian and global history at NMSU since 1994, who lived in Beijing from 1982 to 1987 prior to completing his PhD at Harvard in 1994. He subsequently joined the history faculty of NMSU, specializing in East Asian history, particularly 16th century China. From 2007 to 2015 he was co-director of the Confucius Institute at NMSU. Long interested in human rights and protest movements, he was a leader in the Students for a Democratic Society at Kent State University from 1967 to 1970. Today’s interview will focus on the historical context for recent events in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Recorded 7/12/21.

#84. Reflections of a Human Rights Leader

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 18:15:00 -0600

Richard ("Dick") Scobie was the Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee from 1972 to 1998. Under his direction, the UUSC defended human rights and promoted humane solutions to social problems worldwide, from war zones in Central America, Africa and Asia, to America’s broken systems of criminal justice and child welfare. His memoir, To Advance Justice, published in 2005, provides a detailed account of his 27 years of leadership of UUSC.

This interview was recorded on 7/29/21, less than two years before his death on February 1, 2023 at age 88.

#83. Unseen, Unheard, Yet a Clear Sense of Another’s Presence

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Ben Alderson-Day is a professor of psychology at Durham University in the UK, researching the phenomena of voice-hearing and unusual sensory experiences. Specializing in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the Early Career Hallucinations Research group, a network comprising 24 countries. Before moving to Durham he completed a PhD on autism at the University of Edinburgh, and worked as a research coordinator for a child & adolescent mental health research team for the National Health Service (NHS) in York. He is the author of PRESENCE: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other, which is the topic of today’s interview.

Recorded 2/13/24.

#82. Why Is It So Difficult to Promote Social Mobility and Equality of Opportunity?

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:45:00 -0600

Aveek Bhattacharya was the Chief Economist and is now the Interim Director of the Social Market Foundation (SMF), a non-partisan think tank based in the U.K., which aims to promote evidence-based policy and cross-party co-operation in politics. Prior positions include Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute of Alcohol Studies, researching and advocating for policies to reduce alcohol-related harm. With interests in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, he earned his PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics. Aveek is co-editor of the book Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future. Today’s interview focuses on an essay he recently wrote for the Social Market Foundation entitled, “Social Mobility and its Critics,” published in July of 2023.

Recorded 2/6/23.

#81. The Neurology of Memory in the Continuity of Experience and Personal Identity

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Michael Yassa is a professor at the University of California at Irvine, where he is the director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. His research focuses on how the brain learns and remembers information, and how learning and memory mechanisms are altered in aging and neuropsychiatric disease, especially dementia. Today's interview also explores the crucial role of memory in the construction of personal identity and lived experience.

Recorded 8/3/21.

#80. Political Dynamics of the Drug Cartels of Mexico

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:00:00 -0600

Neil Harvey is a professor and academic department head in the Government Department at New Mexico State University. His main areas of interest encompass politics in Mexico and Latin America, especially social movements in the struggle for democracy and new forms of political representation. He has carried out field research in Chiapas, Mexico, into their independent peasant movements, land conflicts and agrarian reform. He has also been researching the causes of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in 1994 as well as the subsequent development of autonomous governments run by Indigenous communities. He is the author of The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle of Land and Democracy. Today’s interview focuses on the political dynamics and history of the drug cartels of Mexico and countries to the south.

Recorded 8/10/21.

#79. A Long-Neglected Form of Government with the Potential to Revitalize Democracy

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 09:30:00 -0600

Roger Berkowitz is a professor of Political Studies and Human Rights, as well as the founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, both at Bard College. He is the author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, an account of how the rise of science led to the divorce of law and justice and the editor of Revenge and Justice, a special issue of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. In October of 2021, the Arendt Center hosted a conference entitled, “Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom,” about a mode of government that originated in ancient Greece with great potential for our own times. The Center has also provided trainings in the large scale use of digital tools for citizens around the world to enhance their involvement in policy-making.

#78. Life-Affirming Ritual and Poetry for Believers and Skeptics Alike

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 10:45:00 -0600

Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet and historian, teacher and public speaker, the author of several intellectually provocative books, translated into many languages. Her bestseller, Doubt: A History, explores religious and philosophical doubt throughout the world and over the centuries. Her book, entitled Stay, focuses on the history of suicide and a secular argument against it. The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology won Phi Beta Kappa’s 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. The Happiness Myth brings a historical eye to modern wisdom about how to lead a good life. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, written articles for major newspapers and magazines, and appeared in numerous television and radio interviews. Her books of poetry – which include The Next Ancient World, Funny, and Who Said – have won accolades and major awards. Her most recent book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives, published in March 2023, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 1/16/24.

#77. The Challenges of Facilitating Conflict Resolution

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 13:15:00 -0600

Jay Rothman has been a professor, practitioner, and author in the field of conflict resolution for the past 30 years. In the course of his career, Jay has worked with diplomats, business executives, opposing leaders of embattled communities, union leaders, university leadership, school boards and superintendents, community activists, and students around the world. He has lectured and taught around the country and the world, including the University of Cincinnati and Antioch College in the U.S., and Hebrew University and Bar Ilan University in Israel. He is also the founder of the Aria Group, an independent firm focusing on conflict resolution, consultation, and training. In today's interview Jay provides detailed examples of his work with Israelis and Palestinians and also racially charged tensions regarding police conduct in Cincinnati.

Recorded 8/16/21.

#76. The History of the Theory of Evolution

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 11:30:00 -0600

Hans-Dieter Sues is a senior research geologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, specializing in the study of dinosaurs and other vertebrates from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. Dr. Sues has collected fossil vertebrates across the United States as well as in Canada, China, Germany, and Morocco. Today’s interview will focus on the history of evolutionary theory and some of its more surprising elements, concluding with thoughts about the paradoxical relationship between science and ignorance.

Recorded 8/31/21.

#75. Antisemitism, Clear and Not-So-Clear

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 11:15:00 -0600

Dov Waxman is a political science professor and chair of Israel studies at UCLA, whose research focuses on the conflict over Israel-Palestine, Israeli politics and foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations, American Jewry’s relationship with Israel, Jewish politics, and anti-Semitism. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/Defining the Nation, published in 2006, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within, published in, 2011, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel, published in 2016, and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know, published in 2019. He has also been widely published in mainstream news media and has been a frequent commentator on television and radio. Today’s interview will focus primarily on the subtleties of antisemitism in the United States, such as how to tell if and when anti-Zionism crosses the line into antisemitism. He also shares his recommendations for educational initiatives to combat antisemitism, which places less emphasis on the teaching about the Holocaust.

Recorded on 1/9/24.

#74. The Historical and Intellectual Roots of our Current Political Crisis

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 11:30:00 -0600

Seth David Radwell is an internationally known business executive and thought leader in consumer marketing with a keen interest in democratic values and American public policy. Past leadership roles include President of eScholastic, the digital arm of the global children’s publishing and education conglomerate; President of Bookspan/ Bertelsmann, which includes Book of the Month Club, Doubleday Book Club, and Literary Guild; and many other leadership roles in the world of corporate marketing. His book, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation, written during the Covid-19 pandemic and published in 2021, won the 2022 International Book Award for best general non-fiction.

#73. Media Literacy for Older Children

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 16:00:00 -0600

Pamela Pereyra is the founder and CEO of Media Savvy Citizens and the New Mexico Chapter Chair of Media Literacy Now. She conducts media literacy trainings with teachers throughout New Mexico, facilitates workshops in digital literacy skill-building with families, and leads networking meetings for NM educators statewide and nationally. Her works involves multiple audiences: students and families, educators and administrators, organizations and businesses, civic leaders and legislators. In 2021 she received the Media Literacy Community Award by the National Association for Media Literacy Education and in 2019 the Media Literacy Champion Award by Media Literacy Now.

Recorded 12/28/23.

#72. Media Literacy for Young Children

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 09:15:00 -0600

Faith Rogow is a media literacy leader, innovator, and author, who for twenty years has been one of the few people in the United States advocating for and creating media literacy education for young children. She is the founder of Insighters Educational Consulting, the founding president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education or NAMLE, a founding editorial board member of the Journal for Media Literacy Education, a founding advisor to Project Look Sharp at Ithica College, and co-author of NAMLE’s “Core Principles of Media Literacy Education in the U.S.,”published in 2007. She is the author of widely circulated teachers’ materials on the subject, including her book, Media Literacy for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates, published in 2022.

Recorded 12/19/23.

#71. Disgust, the Emotion of Aversion

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 16:45:00 -0600

Philip Powell is a senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield in London, who studies a universal emotion that has only recently become the object of empirical investigation -- disgust -- exploring how it affects on decision-making, psychological functioning, and well being. He is a contributor to and co-editor, with Nathan Consedine, of the Handbook of Disgust Research, the first ever compilation of disgust research, published in November, 2021. An alternative title for this interview: Disgust Discussed.

Recorded 9/12/21.

#70. A Close Look at the Brief History of East Germany

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:45:00 -0600

Katja Hoyer is a German British historian and journalist who was born in East Germany and moved to the UK as a young adult.. A visiting research fellow at King’s College London and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she is a columnist for the Washington Post and host of the podcast, The New Germany. Hoyer has published two books about the history of Germany. Her first book, Blood and Iron was about the German Empire from 1871 to 1918. Her second book, Beyond the Wall, about the history of East Germany from 1949 to 1990, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 12/11/23.

#69. Genes Are Only One Part of the Story

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 11:15:00 -0600

Kostas Kampourakis is author and editor of several books about evolution, genetics, philosophy, and the history of science, and the editor of the Cambridge University Press book series, Understanding Life. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science and Education, as well as two other science education book series. He is currently a researcher at the University of Geneva, where he also teaches at the Section of Biology and the University Institute for Teacher Education. Today’s interview focuses on his latest book, Understanding Genes, which explores the many ways in which, contrary to popular belief, the influence of genes is only one component of a much more complicated picture.

Recorded 9/21/21.

#68. The Communal Nature of Knowledge

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 10:45:00 -0600

Steven Sloman is a professor in the department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences at Brown University, who studies how our habits of thought influence the way we see the world, how we make decisions, how we process conversations, and how we respond to conflict. His current research focuses on collective cognition, or how we think as a community, explored in his book co-authored with Phil Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, published in 2017, which is the topic of today’s interview.

Recorded 9/28/21.

#67. Ecologist Carl Safina on his Relationship with an Owl

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 11:00:00 -0600

Carl Safina is a world-renowned ecologist and conservationist, award-winning writer and professor, political activist and visionary. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the MacArthur Genus Prize and National Science Foundation Fellowships. Audubon magazine named Carl Safina among its “100 Notable Conservationists of the 20th Century” and Utne Reader listed him among “25 Visionaries Changing the World." His lyrically inspirational writing has appeared in major newspapers and magazines and his many books include the NY Times best-seller, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. His most recent TED Talk received a million views in its first month. His latest book, Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 11/20/23.

#66. A Window into the History of U.S.-Latin American Relations

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 07:45:00 -0600

Iñigo García-Bryce is a Professor of History at New Mexico State University since 1999, whose research focuses on Latin America, especially Peru, where he grew up. His books include Crafting the Republic: Lima’s Artisans and Nation-Building in Peru, 1821-1879 published in 2004 and Haya de la Torre and the Pursuit of Power in Twentieth Century Peru and Latin America, published in 2018. He was the Director of NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies since 2011-2016.

Recorded 10/5/21.

#65. How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (the Real Thing, Not an Illusion)

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 10:45:00 -0600

Kevin Mitchell is a professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College, Dublin. His research focuses on the genetic program for the wiring of the brain, as it affects psychiatric and neurological diseases, as well as perceptual conditions, such as synaesthesia. He is editor of The Genetics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, published in 2015, is the author of Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, published in 2018, and of Wiring the Brain, a science blog for general audiences.

The subject of today’s interview focuses on his most recent book, Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, published in October of 2023. Mitchell discusses his robust and humanizing theory of the biological evolution of agency and identity, as well as the capacity for meaning and values. The upshot is a scientific explanation for what many scientists believe is only an illusion: free will.

Recorded 11/7/23.

#64. How Terrorism Ends

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 16:45:00 -0600

Audrey Kurth Cronin is one of the world’s leading experts on security and how conflicts end. A Professor of Security and Technology, she was the founding director of the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology at American University, the director of War and Statecraft at the US National War College, and a Specialist in Terrorism at the Congressional Research Service, advising Members of Congress in the aftermath of 9/11. She was the director of Studies for Oxford University’s Changing Character of War program, was Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Terrorism of the World Economic Forum, and has held a number of positions in the federal government’s executive branch, including in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy. Currently, she is the founding director of the Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Strategy and Technology. She is the author of four books on terrorism, including How Terrorism Ends, published in 2009 and Power to the People, published in 2019. Today’s interview will focus on the ideas contained in How Terrorism Ends, particularly as applied to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Recorded 11/7/23.

#63. Period. End of Sentence: A New Chapter in the Fight for Menstrual Justice

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:00:00 -0600

Anita Diamant is a novelist, journalist, essayist, and author of five guidebooks to contemporary Jewish life on such topics as weddings, parenting, and mourning practices. As a journalist, her feature stories and columns in the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal included profiles of prominent people, stories about medical ethics, and first-person essays about everything from politics to popular culture, from pet ownership to food. Anita’s best-known book, The Red Tent, published in 1997, is a novel inspired by the brief yet provocative story about Jacob’s only daughter, Dina, from the book of Genesis. The book became a word-of-mouth and New York Times bestseller thanks to reader recommendations, book groups, and support from independent bookstores, has been published in more than 25 countries, and was adapted as a two-part, four-hour miniseries by Lifetime TV. Her latest book, published just this year, is Period. End of Sentence: A New Chapter in the Fight for Menstrual Justice, which is the topic of today’s interview.

Recorded 10/13/21.

#62. A Photographer and Poet of Volcanoes

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 16:30:00 -0600

Meg Weston is a photographer and poet whose frequent subject is volcanoes. Based in Maine, she has traveled around the world pursuing her desire, as she puts it, to witness the power and beauty of the earth in its raw processes of creation and transformation. Her poetry and photography express her connection to the earth in all its sensual, emotional, and spiritual power. Meg’s images can be seen on her website www.volcanoes.com. In 2020, she and Kathrin Seitz cofounded ThePoetsCorner.org, an online forum to bring together poets worldwide, to “bring community to the often solitary yet transformational experience of writing poetry and prose.”

Recorded 11/9/21.

#61. Emerging Uses of A.I. for Social Control and Weapon Systems

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 18:00:00 -0600

Paul Scharre is the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security, an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit organization that develops strong, pragmatic, and principled national security and defense policies. An expert in emerging weapons technologies, he led working groups at the U.S. Department of Defense to establish policies on autonomous weapon systems, as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance programs. His prior experiences in the military include multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving as a special operations reconnaissance team leader.

Scharre has published articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, among other prominent print media and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and the BBC. He has testified before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and has presented at the United Nations, NATO, the Pentagon, the CIA, and other national security venues. He holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London and an MA in political economy and public policy and a BS in physics from Washington University in St. Louis.

His first book, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, won the 2019 Colby Award and was named one of Bill Gates’ top five books of 2018 and by The Economist as one of the top five books to understand modern warfare. In 2023, TIME magazine named him as one of the “100 most influential people in AI.” His most recent book, entitled Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 10/17/23.

#60. How Powerful People Get Away With It

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 22:15:00 -0600

Elie Honig is a former federal and state prosecutor for over fourteen years at the renowned Southern District of New York and later as deputy director of New Jersey’s Division of Criminal Justice. He prosecuted and tried cases involving organized crime, public corruption, and human trafficking, achieving convictions of over 100 members of the American mafia, including members of the Genovese and Gambino crime families.

In 2018, he became a CNN senior legal analyst, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. He writes a weekly column for CAFÉ and Vox Media, is the host of two podcasts, Third Degree and Up Against the Mob, and has produced a documentary for CNN on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He has also published two books. The first, Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutors’ Code and Corrupted the Justice Department, was published in 2021 and became a national bestseller. His recently published second book entitled, Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 10/12/23.

#59. The Neuroscience of Time

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 16:00:00 -0600

Dean Buonomano is a neuroscientist at UCLA since 1998, and a leading researcher of the neuroscience of time. His first book, Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Buonomano is the rare combination of cutting edge researcher and talented and engaging communicator of science to the general public. He has been interviewed about his research on timing and neural computation for Newsweek, Discover Magazine, Scientific American, The New Yorker and on NPR’s Fresh Air. His most recent book, Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time was published in 2017 and is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 12/8/21.

#58. The Science and Meaning of Touch

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 15:30:00 -0600

Sushma Subramanian is a freelance journalist and associate professor at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. Her writing on science and health has appeared in Slate, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and Discover. She has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and was the winner of a Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award. She is the author of the recently published book, How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 12/14/21.

#57. The Neurology of Individual Differences

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 11:45:00 -0600

Chantel Prat, is a Professor at the University of Washington in the Departments of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, with affiliations at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, the Center for Neurotechnology, and the Institute for Neuroengineering. A cognitive neuroscientist by training, her interdisciplinary research investigates the biological basis of individual differences in cognition, with emphasis on understanding the shared neural mechanisms underpinning language and higher-level executive functions. Her work has garnered multiple awards and has been profiled, among other places, in Scientific American and National Public Radio. Her recently published the book, The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours, is the subject of today’s interview.

#56. Philosophical Examination of Concepts in Psychology and Psychiatry

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:30:00 -0600

Lisa Bortolotti is a philosopher at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., focusing on the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry. She investigates faulty reasoning and irrational beliefs; delusions, confabulations and distorted memories; and the limitations of self-knowledge given our unreliable self narratives and self-deception. She is the author, co-author, and editor of several books on such subjects and the editor-in-chief of the academic journal, Philosophical Psychology.

#55. How to Best Encourage Individual Action on Climate Change

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 11:45:00 -0600

Gregg Sparkman is a professor of Social Psychology, who directs the Social Influence and Social Change Lab at Boston College. Using national surveys and field studies, his research focuses on harnessing the power of social influence, identity, moral reasoning, and beliefs to enhance the possibility of significant change. The findings can translate into large scale motivational interventions, in collaboration with non-profit, public, and private organizations, to address social problems related to the environment, health, and social inequity.

#55. Creative Approaches to Asynchronous Online Learning

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 20:00:00 -0600

Sarah Haavind is a Senior Research Project Manager -- and specialist in asynchronous learning -- at Concord Consortium, a nonprofit educational research and development organization based in Concord, Massachusetts, and Emeryville, California. From the earliest days of the Internet, Sarah has devoted her career to the development of creative and engaging online curricula for both student learning and teacher training. She has taught at every grade level from elementary to graduate school and has led teacher professional development in multiple STEM subjects. She has designed and participated in virtual schools and virtual professional development in ways that have helped define the field. She is a co-author of the book Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators, published in the year 2000, based on the Concord Consortium’s early work with virtual teaching and learning.

Recorded 12/28/21.

#54. Speaking Truth to Power: Physicians for Human Rights

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 20:00:00 -0600

Susannah Sirkin is the Director of Policy and a senior advisor at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), where she has worked since 1987. From 1992 to 2001 she served as a member of the Coordination Committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which was the co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace. She has organized health and human rights investigations in dozens of countries, documenting genocide and systematic rape in Darfur, Sudan; exhumations of mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; attacks on health care facilities in Syria, Yemen, and other war zones; and Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. In 2019 and again in 2020, she addressed the U.N. Security Council about the deliberate targeting of hospitals in Syria.

Recorded 12/22/21.

#53. The Assumptions Upon Which Science Rests

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 14:30:00 -0600

David Wallace is a philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in the philosophy of physics. He is interested in emergence and reductionism, structural realism, decision theory, and especially the Everett interpretation of quantum theory, often called the “Many-Worlds Interpretation. His book on that topic, entitled, The Emergent Multiverse, was published in 2012. He is also the author of The Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction, published in 2021.

#52. The Spanish Conquest of Mexico

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 20:15:00 -0600

Stefan Rinke is a professor at the Department of History at the Institute for Latin American Studies and the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute at the Free University of Berlin. He was awarded the Alzate research award by the Mexican Academy of Sciences, an honorary doctorate by the The National University of General San Martín in Argentina, as well as the Einstein Research Fellowship. His latest book, Conquistadors and Aztecs, was published in German in 2019. The English version, Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan, was published in 2023.

Recorded 1/12/22.

#51. An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 18:00:00 -0600

Ilyon Woo is a New York Times best-selling author, whose writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times. She is the author of two books, each of which combines history and biography, based on painstaking research and employing a novelistic, narrative writing style. Her first book, The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, was published in 2010. This interview focuses on her recent book, Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, which subsequently was selected by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of 2023.

Recorded 8/22/23.

#50. Culture and Justice Among the Maasai of Tanzania

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 11:15:00 -0600

Dorothy L. Hodgson is the recently retired Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Previously she served as President of the African Studies Association, Chair and Graduate Director of the Department of Anthropology, and Director of the Institute for Research on Women, all at Rutgers University. She was also President of the Association for Feminist Anthropology and editor-in-chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia on African Women’s History. As a historical anthropologist, she worked in Tanzania, East Africa, for over thirty years on such topics as gender, ethnicity, and cultural politics; colonialism, nationalism, and the missionary encounter; and transnational organizing and the indigenous rights movement. She is the author of several books, and editor of others, about life and social structures in Africa, especially the Maasai in Tanzania. Her most recent book, Gender, Justice and the Problem of Culture: From Customary Law to Human Rights in Tanzania was published in 2017 and is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 8/15/23.

#49. How the Brain Processes Pain... and its Relief

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 16:00:00 -0600

Richard Ambron is a Columbia University professor emeritus of cell biology, anatomy, and pathology, specializing in neuroscience research, working in the same lab as Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, Eric Kandel. For 25 years, he taught clinical anatomy to medical and dental students and was ten times voted teacher of the year. For forty years he ran a neuro-research lab at Columbia, focusing on the mechanisms of neuronal regeneration and the identification of the molecular signals for pain, which succeeded in patenting a potent and selective drug that targets a key enzyme in certain kinds of chronic pain. He is the author of the recent book, The Brain and Pain: Breakthroughs in Neuroscience.

Recorded 1/18/22.

#48. The Challenges of Being a Single Woman in India

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 10:30:00 -0600

Sarah Lamb is a professor of cultural anthropology at Brandeis University, who focuses on how people construct their socio-cultural world and identity from the interlocking multiple dimensions of age, gender, the body, family, religion, and nation. From the points of view of those she studies, she explores the experiences and the often taken-for-granted assumptions of people in West Bengal, India and also among Indian immigrants as well as older white Americans in the San Francisco, Boston, and Bible Belt areas of the United States. Sarah is the author of several books and is the recipient of several major grants and awards, including a 2019 to 2023 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. Her most recent book — Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility — is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 8/1/23.

#47. A Child of Holocaust Survivors

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 10:15:00 -0600

Helen Epstein is an acclaimed writer of memoir, journalism, and biography. In her career as a journalist she interviewed such legendary musicians as Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein, and Yo-Yo Ma. She is the author of three books about the transmission of intergenerational trauma. The first, Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors was originally published in 1979; the second, Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History, in 1999; and the third, The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma, in 2018. All three books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year and represent a forty year process of self discovery.

Recorded 1/25/22.

#46. Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Making of Gender Equality Law

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 15:00:00 -0600

Philippa Strum is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center’s former Director of the Division of United States Studies. For two decades, she was a Professor of Political Science and is now Professor Emerita at the City University of New York, focusing on constitutional law; civil liberties and human rights, especially the intersection of women’s rights, law and politics. She has also taught at universities throughout the U.S. and abroad, lecturing in Australia, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, Great Britain, Mexico, Czechoslovakia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and China. She has been an expert lecturer in the Middle East and Central Asia for the Department of State and for the U.S. Supreme Court. She recently received a lifetime achievement award from the ACLU, where she devoted 40 years as a researcher and board member. Dr. Strum is the author of award-winning books on human rights struggles both in the U.S. and internationally. One of her books, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People, published in 1984, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in biography. Her most recent book, On Account of Sex: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Making of Gender Equality Law, was published in the Summer of 2022.

Recorded 7/27/23.

#45. Bizarre, Counter-Intuitive, and Seemingly Impossible, Yet True: Quantum Physics

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:15:00 -0600

New Mexico State University physics professors, Boris Kiefer and Matthew Sievert, explain in everyday language the strange, yet fundamental, phenomena of quantum physics. Boris Kiefer has been at NMSU since 2003, following post-docs at Princeton. His research and teaching interests include Quantum Mechanics; Computational Physics; Materials Science, and even more esoterically, Quantum Telecloning. Matthew Sievert has been at NMSU since 2020, following post-docs at Brookhaven and Los Alamos National Laboratories. His research focuses on theoretical nuclear physics that makes use of observations of high energy sub-atomic particles at various accelerator facilities. He is also an advocate for the construction of a future electron-ion collider in the United States.

Recorded 7/25/23.

#44. Breaking Out of the Underclass in India

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:15:00 -0600

Shilpa Raj was one of five girls featured in the four-part Netflix documentary, Daughters of Destiny, about growing up from age four in a residential school called Shanti Bhavan in Tamil Nadu, India, near Bangalore. Founded by and originally fully funded by Indian-American businessman and philanthropist, Abraham George, the school’s mission is to help children and their families break out of the underclass. Shilpa was one of the first students at the school, which opened in 1997, the new home away from home for 300 children, from rural villages or urban slums, from families earning less than $2 per day, nearly all from the group or caste called Dalit or Untouchable. In 2017, the same year as the release of Daughters of Destiny, Shilpa published a memoir, The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter. She has gone on to earn a master’s degree in psychology and is currently enrolled in a psychology doctoral program at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York.

Recorded 2/1/22.

#43. The Complexity of Gender Differences

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0600

Hilary Lips is a Professor Emerita of Social Psychology at Radford University, where she founded the Center for Gender Studies, was its director from 1989 to 2015, and was also the chair of the Department of Psychology from 2003 to 2015. She is the author of a variety of books, including Women, Men and the Psychology of Power; Sex and Gender: An Introduction; A New Psychology of Women: Gender, Culture and Ethnicity; and Gender: The Basics. She also co-authored The Psychology of Sex Differences with Nina Colwill, published in 1978, which explored multiple contributors to sex differences, including genetics, hormones, and social learning, attributable in large measure to differential power dynamics, rather than stable inherited traits.

Recorded 7/18/23.

#42. The History and Science of Dreaming

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 15:15:00 -0600

Sidarta Ribeiro is a Brazilian neuroscientist, writer, and science communicator. He is the Founder and Vice Director of the Brain Institute at Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, where he has been a full professor since 2008. His fields of research include memory, sleep and dreams, neuroplasticity, symbolic competence in non-human animals, computational psychiatry, and psychedelics. His most recent book The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams – published in the original Portugese in 2019 and in English in 2021 – is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 2/16/22.

#41. The Philosopher Who Tried to Save (Secular) Morality

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 15:00:00 -0600

David Edmonds is a British philosopher and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is the author of many books, including The Murder of Professor Schlick, Would You Kill the Fat Man?, Caste Wars: A Philosophy of Discrimination, and Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time . He is also coauthor with John Eidinow, of the international best-seller Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, and co-author with Hugh Fraser, of the children’s book, Undercover Robot. He is an ad hoc columnist for the Jewish Chronicle, a former contributing editor to Prospect Magazine, and cohost with Nigel Warburton of the popular podcast series Philosophy Bites, which has had over 44 million downloads. He also runs two other blogs: Philosophy 247 and Social Science Bites. He was a multi-award winning presenter/producer at the BBC, host of The Big Idea, and was also a regular presenter on BBC Analysis. His latest book is entitled, Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 7/4/23.

#40. Alabama Sues the New York Times for Reporting on Racism and Civil Rights Protests in the Early 1960s

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 17:15:00 -0600

Samantha Barbas is a legal and cultural historian and the author of several books on media history and legal history topics, with a focus on journalism, privacy, defamation, and the First Amendment. A Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo, she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. Her latest book, Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan, is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 6/25/23.

#39. A Successful Recovery from Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.)

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 20:00:00 -0600

Lyn Barrett is an author, speaker, pastor, retreat leader, and survivor of early childhood trauma. Diagnosed in 1992 with Multiple Personality Disorder, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.), she endured several decades of inner chaos and deep pain. Even so, most of the time, she was able to maintain a professional life as an elementary school teacher and principal, as well as persevere to a satisfactory outcome with her personal and family life. Crediting her therapist, Sonya Nowak, with guiding her to health and wholeness and to close friends for emotional support, Lyn recently published a memoir entitled Crazy, about her intense psychological journey.

(Recorded 3/29/22.)

#38. Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Intriguing New Data from the James Webb Space Telescope

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 15:45:00 -0600

Wladimir Lyra is an astronomer at New Mexico State University whose research focuses on high-end computer simulations of planet formation, both in our own solar system and beyond, i.e., exoplanets and their solar systems. In today’s interview we’ll be focusing mainly on the theory of the Big Bang, black holes, and the possible implications of new observational data recently made available by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope.

(Recorded 6/15/23.)

#37. A V.A. Surgeon Channels His Richly Varied Life Experiences Into Community Activism

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 14:45:00 -0600

Reuben Last has been a general surgeon for over 20 years at the Albuquerque Veteran’s Administration Medical Center. We’ll hear about the diverse experiences and family background that led to his career choices, as well as his insights into the history of medicine and the current conditions for health professionals. Reuben has made good use of his multifaceted skills and passions in helping to create the Endorphin Power Company, an Albuquerque-based non-profit organization providing support and advocacy to people recovering from substance abuse. In a similar spirit, Reuben is currently on the board of directors of OslerSymposia.org, which addresses and pushes back against the forces that cause burn-out for all types of medical personnel.

Recorded 4/3/22.

#36. The People’s Hospital: Better and Less Costly Medical Care, Putting Patients’ Needs Above Profit

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 13:30:00 -0600

Ricardo Nuila is a writer, physician, and professor of medicine, medical ethics, and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine, where he teaches the practice of hospital medicine and directs the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab. The son of Salvadoran immigrants and a native Houstonian, Ricardo has worked as an attending physician in the city’s largest safety-net facility, Ben Taub Hospital, for more than ten years. His fiction has appeared in the Best American Short Stories anthology and his journalistic pieces have been published on the website of the New Yorker, covering such subjects as the medical response to Hurricane Harvey and to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has won awards for his teaching and advocacy, as well as for his writing, including the New England Review’s inaugural Award for Emerging Writers. He recently published his first book, The People’s Hospital, which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 6/6/23.

#35. Past Cataclysmic Changes in Climate Across the World Since its Beginning, with Lessons for Today

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 11:15:00 -0600

Peter Frankopan is a Professor of Global History at Oxford University with comprehensively wide-ranging interests, including the history and politics of the Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, ancient Persia and modern Iran, Central Asia, and China. Peter often writes for the international press and is the author of The First Crusade: The Call from the East, The Silk Roads: a New History of the World, and The New Silk Roads: The Future and Present of the World, which have been translated into forty languages, become international best-sellers, and garnered multiple, prestigious awards. His latest book, which is the subject of today’s interview, is The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, an environmental history of both the human and natural past, from billions of years ago until the present, across the entire planet.

(Recorded 5/30/23.)

#34. The Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy

Mon, 29 May 2023 17:30:00 -0600

Jonathan Reisman is a doctor of internal medicine, pediatrics, and emergency medicine, who recently published his first book, The Unseen Body: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy. With the excitement of an explorer, the book recounts his hard-won medical knowledge with the flair of a poet, the attention to narrative detail of a journalist, the adroitness of skills enhanced by unusual interests pursued before medical school, and the wisdom to notice and appreciate the patterns that the human body shares with the rest of the natural world. He has practiced medicine in the most extreme latitudes, both north and south, as well as extreme altitudes in Nepal. He has worked in Kolkata’s slums and with the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota, and heads a non-profit to improve healthcare and education in India. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, and the Washington Post.

(Recorded 8/28/22.)

#33. On Climbing Everest and Denali

Sun, 28 May 2023 18:45:00 -0600

Stuart Kelter interviews Las Crucen, Ron Lautenbach, about his experiences of, and life lessons in, climbing Everest and Denali (McKinley). With humor and insight, he conveys his penchant for adventure and intensity, his reverence for nature and faith in a higher power, his love and respect for people, and his hard-won wisdom to take measured risks that included possible death as part of the equation.

(Recorded 5/16/23.)

#32. Values in Science? You Bet!

Tue, 23 May 2023 14:15:00 -0600

Kevin Elliott is a philosophy professor at Michigan State University, who studies the role of values in science and the ethical issues related to science and technology, such as conflicts of interest involving environmental pollution and financial stakes in research. He also collaborates with environmental scientists at the European Food Safety Authority and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the book, Is a Little Pollution Good for You? Incorporating Societal Values in Environmental Research, published in 2011. He is also the author of the 2017 book, A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science, and the 2022 book, Values in Science for the Cambridge University Press Series, Elements in the Philosophy of Science.

(Recorded 5/15/23.)

#31. The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

Sun, 14 May 2023 16:15:00 -0600

Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at The Financial Times, London. He has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award. He was a member of the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking in 2010–11. The Wikipedia entry on Wolf notes that he is widely regarded as one of the most influential economics journalists in the world. Lawrence H. Summers has called him "the world's preeminent financial journalist. "Paul Krugman wrote of him that "Wolf doesn't even have a PhD. And that matters not at all; what he has is a keen sense of observation, a level head, and an open mind.” Wolf is the author of five books on broad-ranging economic issues. His latest book, published just this year, is entitled, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, which is the subject of today’s interview.

(Recorded 5/2/23.)

#30. The History of the Right to Privacy

Sun, 14 May 2023 15:45:00 -0600

Amy Gajda is a professor of law at Tulane Law School, a former journalist, and a nationally recognized expert in the topic of privacy and the media. She was an award-winning legal commentator on Illinois public radio stations, has written for the NY Times and Slate, and has provided commentary for several prominent print and television news media. Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals including the American Historical Review, California Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and Washington Law Review, among many others. She is the recent author of Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy, which is the subject of today’s interview.

(Recorded 5/11/22.)

#29. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

Sun, 14 May 2023 15:30:00 -0600

Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and her TED Talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. She is the author of several books on the intersection between politics and science, including Why Trust Science? published in 2019 and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean published in 2021. Oreskes and co-author Erik Conway have collaborated on three books, including the recently published The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market, which is the subject of today’s interview.

(Recorded 5/8/23.)

#28. On the Receiving End of (Six!) Psychiatric Misdiagnoses

Tue, 09 May 2023 14:00:00 -0600

Sarah Fay is a professor at DePaul and Northwestern Universities, a critic, scholar, and creative writer. Her writing has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Time, as well as many literary publications such as Bookforum, BOMB, and The Paris Review, where she served as an advisory editor. She is the recipient of many awards and prestigious writing residencies and is the author of the recently published memoir, Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses and the founder of Pathological: The Movement, a public awareness campaign devoted to making people aware of the lack of scientific evidence for psychiatric diagnoses and the danger of identifying with an unproven mental illness.

(Recorded 6/23/22.)

#27. Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began

Mon, 01 May 2023 08:15:00 -0600

Leah Hazard is an American-Scottish midwife and author, whose recent book is entitled, Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began. Leah graduated from Harvard University, working in print journalism and television before the births of her two daughters prompted her to change direction. She is now a practicing NHS midwife in Scotland and has worked in a wide variety of clinical areas, from labor wards to outpatient clinics, delivering hundreds of babies and caring for countless families along the way. Her memoir, Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story was a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK. Leah hosts the popular podcast What the Midwife Said and is a frequent commentator on women’s health across the media.

(Recorded 4/20/23.)

#26. Sixty-Six Years of Figuring Out How the Brain Makes a Mind

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 09:00:00 -0600

Stephen Grossberg is one of the principal founders of the fields of computational neuroscience, connectionist cognitive science, and artificial neural network research. At Boston University he has been Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems since 1989, founder of the Center for Adaptive Systems since 1981, and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering. In 1987 he founded the International Neural Network Society and its journal, Neural Networks, which became the official journal of the three major neural modeling societies in the world, and was its Editor-in-Chief until 2010. Grossberg has won numerous awards for his work for “seminal contributions to understanding brain cognition and behavior and their emulation by technology.” His recently published book, Conscious MIND, Resonant BRAIN: How Each Brain Makes a Mind, is about Adaptive Resonance Theory, his model of how our brains pay attention, recognize, and predict objects and events in a changing world.

(Recorded 4/18/23.)

#25. How Did Life Originate on Earth?

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 16:45:00 -0600

Loren Williams is a biophysicist, biochemist, astrobiologist, and professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. His research passions include the structural basis for macromolecular reactions, from the role of nucleic acids as targets of chemotherapeutics to the ancestral biochemistry of the ribosome during the origin of life. He is currently director of the NASA-funded Center for the Origin of Life (COOL) at Georgia Tech and a Co-Lead of the Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environment Consortium. In 2021, he was elected Fellow of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life. Since 2008, Williams' research group has been focusing on the ribosome across the tree of life, constructing models of ancestral ribosomes by combining biophysical chemistry, molecular biology, and bioinformatics.

(Recorded 4/19/22.)

#24. The Demands of Classical Violin, Time Distortion within Performance Anxiety, and the Wonder of Musical Improvisation

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 10:30:00 -0600

Natalie Hodges is both a writer and a classical violinist. Born and raised in Denver and currently living in Boulder, Colorado, she has performed throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. She graduated from Harvard University, where she studied English and music. Her recently published first book, a memoir entitled Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time, explores the intersections of music and time, lived experience as flow states and their interruption, the price and rewards of devotion to art, and coming to peace with the relinquishing, or at least transformation, of a lifelong professional ambition.

(Recorded 3/28/23.)

#23. Aztec History and Culture Before the Spanish Conquest

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 11:45:00 -0600

Camilla Townsend is a distinguished professor of history at Rutgers University, whose scholarship focuses on indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and in the relations between natives and newcomers. She is deeply immersed in the study of Nahuatl, the Aztec language, particularly the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings left to us by Native American historians. Through the historical annals they produced, we catch a glimpse of indigenous conceptualizations of history as they existed at first contact.

In 2010, Townsend was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to in recognition of her work in analyzing the Nahuatl historical annals from the 16th and 17th centuries, written by the Nahuas (or Aztecs) in their own language, using the Latin alphabet taught to them by Spanish friars for the purpose of reading the Bible to more easily convert them to Christianity. Her 2019 book, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, won the 2020 Cundill History Prize.

(Recorded 7/26/22.)

#22. Common Misconceptions About the Relationship Between Sleep and Mental Health

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 11:15:00 -0600

Barry Krakow, MD, is a board certified internist, sleep medicine specialist, and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, Georgia, having earlier established a sleep clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his 30+ years in the field, he has pioneered innovative techniques for the treatment of chronic nightmares, chronic and complex insomnia, upper airway resistance syndrome, obstructive and central sleep apnea and restless legs syndrome and periodic limb movement disorder. He is the author four books on sleep disorders, including the just published Life-Saving Sleep: New Horizons in Mental Health Treatment.

(Recorded 3/16/23.)

#21. Two Identities: A Physicist-Administrator at Los Alamos and Also a Rabbi

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 16:45:00 -0600

Jack Shlachter is a Ph.D. physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico for over three decades, also at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, as well as two organizations based in Vienna, Austria: the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. Dr. Shlachter's training was as an experimentalist creating and diagnosing plasmas, high temperature mixtures of electrons and ions, with applicability to nuclear fusion, a potentially carbon-neutral source of nearly unlimited energy.

At Los Alamos, he served as Division Leader of the Physics Division and later of the Theoretical Division, the only individual to have held both roles in the history of the Lab. These positions involved the responsibility for budgets in excess of $100M and the management of hundreds of scientists, technicians, administrators, students, and postdoctoral assistants.

Dr. Shlachter is also a rabbi, having been ordained in 1995 by Rabbi Gershon Winkler of Cuba, New Mexico. He has held Jewish leadership roles both in Los Alamos and in Santa Fe, and well as serving as a visiting rabbi in Vienna and Beijing. In addition to his current pulpit in Santa Fe, he conducts lifecycle events – such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and funerals – under the banner of “Judaism for your nuclear family.”

(Recorded 7/28/22.)

#20. The Awesome Benefits and Potential Dangers of Recent Advances in Gene-Editing Technology

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 10:30:00 -0600

Fyodor Urnov is a Professor of Molecular Therapeutics at UC Berkeley and a Scientific Director at its Innovative Genomics Institute. He co-developed the toolbox of human genome and epigenome editing and led the team that developed a strategy for genome editing in the hemoglobinopathies, sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia, that has yielded sustained clinical benefit for subjects in several ongoing clinical trials. At the IGI Fyodor directs efforts to develop scalable CRISPR-based approaches to treat diseases of the immune system, sickle cell disease, neurodegeneration, and neuroinflammation. His recent op-ed in the New York Times describes a major goal for the field of genome editing, and a key focus of Fyodor's work at the IGI - expanding access to CRISPR therapies for N=1 genetic disease.

(Recorded 3/2/23.)

#19. The High-Stakes Work of a Pediatric Neurosurgeon

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 14:45:00 -0600

Jay Wellons MD, MSPH is a Professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery, Pediatrics, Plastic Surgery, Radiology, and Radiological Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and University. He is Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery and Vice Chair of the Departments of Neurological Surgery and the Section of Surgical Sciences. He also co-founded and directs SOCKs, the Surgical Outcomes Center for Kids. He has published over 250 scientific and medical articles on all aspects of pediatric neurosurgery and is a recognized national lecturer and expert in fetal neurosurgery, the Chiari Malformations, brachial plexus surgery, surgical clinical outcomes research, and health care disparity.

Today’s interview focuses on his memoir, All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience. As the title suggests, the book recounts dramatic stories of pediatric neural surgery, but the book also conveys what it is like to live a life of high-stakes, heightened reality, emotionally viable through profound appreciation of patients and their parents, supportive colleagues, friends and family, and inspiring life lessons from his father.

(Recorded 3/23/22.)

#18. Land Conservancy in the Private Sector: Values and Process

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 14:00:00 -0600

“Jack” Wright (legal name “John Wright”) is a Regents Professor in the Department of Geography at New Mexico State University (NMSU), whose research encompasses land conservation, cultural geography, and environmental planning. He helped found and served as Chair of the New Mexico Land Conservancy (NMLC) from 2003-2012 and recently returned to it is board. He is the co-author of Saving the Ranch: Conservation Easement Design in the American West (2004) and has published widely on conservation easements and other land protection techniques.

(Recorded 2/23/23.)

#17. Human Waste: Underappreciated Treasure for Energy Production, Water Reclamation, Medical Interventions, and the Tracking of Epidemics

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 12:00:00 -0600

Bryn Nelson is a PhD microbiologist who changed course to become an award-winning science journalist. In addition to several years as a staff writer at Newsday, focusing on genetics, stem cell research, evolution, ecology, and conservation, he has written for dozens of other news outlets as well, including the New York Times, Nature, and the BMJ, among others. His writing has garnered nearly a dozen awards for pieces on health, medicine, and ecology. His recently published book, Flush: The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure is the subject of today’s interview.

(Recorded 9/28/22.)

#16. The Transition of Hong Kong to Chinese Rule

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 09:00:00 -0600

Karen Cheung is a writer and journalist from Hong Kong, who has written about politics, music, and books for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Rumpus, This American Life, The Offing, and others. She was formerly a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press, and currently works as an editor at an arts archive. Her first book, The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir, published in 2021, is the subject of today’s interview.

(Recorded 2/9/23.)

#15. Ethical Complexities in Assisted Dying

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 11:00:00 -0600

Katie Engelhart is a writer and producer based in Toronto and New York, whose recent work has focused on healthcare and bioethics. She has been interviewed on major television networks and produced documentaries for NBC News. Katie has won awards for her magazine stories, including one that documented a months-long investigation into the first COVID outbreak in an American nursing home — with broad implications about the for-profit nursing home industry. She is the author of the book, The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die, published in 2021.

(Recorded 1/31/23.)

#14. A Neuroscientist Challenges the Prevailing Model of Physiological Regulation

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 17:00:00 -0600

Peter Sterling is a senior professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose research focused on the three-dimensional microanatomy of the retina. He has also developed an alternative conceptual understanding of physiological regulation and behavior, with implications for the practice of medicine as well as social justice issues. Together with Joseph Eyer, he coined the term allostasis, meaning “stability through change.” Unlike the concept of physiological homeostasis, allostasis takes into account how the brain predicts and prepares the body in advance for situational demands and needs. He is the author of the recent book, What Is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design, published in 2020.

(Recorded 1/24/23.)

#13. Human-Wildlife Conflict: Ill-Fated Attempts at Control vs. Cultivating an Attitude of Coexistence

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 06:00:00 -0600

Bethany Brookshire is a science writer and a host of the podcast, Science for the People. From 2013 to 2021, she was a staff writer with Science News magazine and Science News for Students, a digital magazine covering the latest in scientific research for young audiences. She loves to write about neuroscience, pharmacology, environmental science, science fiction, and the practice and pressures of the scientific life. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and The Washington Post, among other places, and her voice heard on NPR and the CBC. She is the author of the recently published book, Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.

(Recorded 12/20/23.)

#12. Congressman Jamie Raskin’s Inspiring Response to Two Unthinkable, Juxtaposed Traumas: The Insurrection of January 6th, the Day after Burying His Beloved Son

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 18:15:00 -0600

Jamie Raskin represents Maryland’s Eighth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and in 2021 was the Lead Manager in the second impeachment of Donald Trump, in response to the January 6 insurrection that aimed to block the certification of Joe Biden as resident-elect. Raskin is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the Rules Committee, the Oversight and Reform Committee, and the Administration Committee. He is also a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capital.

Raskin is considered one of the most progressive members of Congress, continuing in the same spirit as he had when serving as Majority Whip of the MD state senate, leading successful fights for marriage equality, abolition of the death penalty, passage of of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, among many other issues. Before entering politics, Raskin was a constitutional law professor and author of several books, including two on the Supreme Court.

His most recent book, a memoir, published on January 1 of 2022, is Unthinkable — Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, which delves into two juxtaposed, unthinkable events: having to bury his 25 year old son, Tommy, on January 5, 2021 a few days after his dying by suicide, and then the very next day, attending Congress on January 6 and personally living through the horrific violence of the insurrection.

(Recorded 10/6/22.)

Note: This episode won First Prize in the Podcast Division of the New Mexico Press Women 2023 Communications Contest.

#11. How Does the Brain Enable Us To Perceive, Make Sense Of, and Learn From Sound?

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 12:00:00 -0600

Nina Kraus is a scientist, inventor, and amateur musician who studies the biology of auditory learning, its connection to other sense modalities, to physical and mental health, and especially to music and language. A professor at Northwestern University, and the Director of Brainvolts Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, she describes her recent book, Of Sound Mind, as her love letter to sound, how sound connects us, makes us humans who we are, how it affects the world, and its implications for education, health, and social policy.

(Recorded 10/20/22.)

#10. Coming Soon(ish): Human Hibernation!

Sun, 18 Dec 2022 12:00:00 -0600

Kelly Drew, is a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and the Director for Transformative Research in Metabolism, whose lab focuses on hibernation biology. Inspired by the hibernation talents of the arctic ground squirrel, Kelly studies how its biology protects the brain as it goes in and out of hibernation. The work, as documented by extensive publications in professional research journals, has potential practical applications in extending the protection of the brains of patients in in medically-induced comas. And, further in the future, Kelly’s work is relevant to the necessity of hibernation — or suspended animation — in astronauts traveling to Mars.

(Recorded 12/13/22.)

#9. An Audacious Vehicle for Fostering Math Appreciation and Fascination

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 08:45:00 -0600

Manil Suri, is a distinguished university professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and is also the author of three internationally acclaimed novels set in his native India: The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva, and The City of Devi, which have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have won multiple literary awards. As a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, he has written several widely read pieces on mathematics, India, and LGBTQ+ issues. His recently published book, which marshals his talent for storytelling in the sharing of his love of mathematics, is entitled The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math.

(Recorded 10/25/22.)

#8. The Momentous Lawsuit that Determined Who Owns Your DNA

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 09:00:00 -0600

Jorge Contreras is a law professor at the University of Utah, specializing in the areas of intellectual property law, technical standardization, and antitrust and science policy. In 2020 he received the University of Utah's Distinguished Research Award and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and has served on several national counsels pertaining to intellectual property, anti-trust laws, and the intersection between law and science, especially medicine. In addition to his scholarly articles, which have appeared in leading scientific, legal and policy journals, he has also been interviewed by both U.S. and foreign major media outlets and was awarded the Rossman Memorial Award by the Patent & Trademark Office Society in 2022. His recent, widely acclaimed book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA, is the subject of today’s interview.

(Recorded 11/29/22.)

#7. Civilization and Water

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 13:55:00 -0600

Giulio Boccaletti is one of the world’s foremost experts on the interface between geophysical and ecological science, world history, and economics as they pertain to water security. As a global consultant he worked on dozens of private, not for profit, and public sector projects across multiple industries, from health to finance, producing several public reports on key sustainability issues. Giulio later joined the Nature Conservancy, one of the largest conservation organisations in the world, first as its Global Managing Director for Water, then as its Chief Strategy Officer. For his work on water, the World Economic Forum nominated him as a Young Global Leader in 2014. He is the author of Water: A Biography, which has been translated into 8 languages and was rated by the Economist as one of the best books of 2021. The book, which explores the 5000+ year history of the relationship between society and the management of water on five continents.

(Recorded 11/14/22.)

#6. How Placebo Effects Complicate Medicine

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 07:00:00 -0600

Kathryn T. Hall is a researcher at Harvard Medical School’s Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter. After earning her PhD at Harvard in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University she spent 10 years in the biotech industry tackling problems in drug development, first at Wyeth and then at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where she became an Associate Director of Drug Development. In 2014 she completed a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. In 2015 she published a landmark paper identifying genetic marker for placebo responders, Her research has been the focus of numerous articles including features in Science, The Atlantic, The economist and Discover magazines. She is the author of the book, Placebos, recently published as part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series. (Recorded 10/19/22.)

#5. Early Women Scientists: Their History and a Poem for Each

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:00:00 -0600

Did you realize there were dozens and dozens of early women scientists? Each one deserves a poem! A conversation and recitations with poet Jessy Randall.

Jessy Randall is curator of special collections at Colorado College and the author of several poetry collections, including Suicide Hotline Hold Music, (which includes her own accompanying comics), There Was an Old Woman, Injecting Dreams into Cows, and A Day in Boyland, which was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She has also written a young adult novel The Wandora Unit, about poetry nerds in high school, and a collection of collaborative poems, Interruptions, written with Daniel M. Shapiro. Randall’s most recent book, Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science,” empathizes with the challenges these women faced and their complex responses, conveying a mix of reverence and vicarious irreverence, outrage and bemusement, anger and equanimity, pride and cheerful self-effacement.

(Recorded 11/1/22.)

Note: This episode won Second Place in the Podcast Division of the New Mexico Press Women 2023 Communications Contest. (The Delving In interview with Jamie Raskin (Episode #12) won First place.)

#4. Race Relations in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:00:00 -0600

Eve Fairbanks is a journalist and essayist who grapples with the processes and meanings of change: in cities, countries, landscapes, morals, values, and our ideas about ourselves. A former congressional correspondent for The New Republic, her essays and long-form journalism have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Her reporting has been funded by grants from the Fulbright Program, the Institute of Current World Affairs, the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the Writing Invisibility project at the Max Planck Institute. From a young age growing up in Virginia, Eve was transfixed by the moral questions raised by the Civil War and the unfinished changes in its aftermath. Drawn to also exploring racial tensions in post-Apartheid, South Africa, she traveled there on a Fulbright award, moving first to Capetown and then to Johannesburg, where she still lives. Her recently published book, The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning is the subject of this interview.

(Recorded 8/4/22.)

#3. Recently Disclosed Vatican Records about Pius XII, the Pope During WWII

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:00:00 -0600

A professor of social science, anthropology, and Italian studies at Brown University, David Kertzer is the author of thirteen books. The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 and the American Historical Association prize for best book in Italian history. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a National Book Award finalist in 1997 and will be adapted for film by Steven Spielberg, with the screenplay by Tony Kushner. His latest book, published this year, is The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, which is the subject of this interview.

(Recorded 9/22/22.)

#2. A Promising Approach to Schizophrenia

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:00:00 -0600

An alternative approach to Schizophrenia: shepherd the young adult through developmental crisis rather than treating the symptoms as the onset of a lifelong brain disease to be forever managed with medication. “Soteria” as it is called, was first introduced in the 1970s in northern California by Loren Mosher, the first Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the National Institute of Mental Health. Despite his success, documented in dozens of random assignment research studies, Mosher’s ideas were rejected by mainstream psychiatry.

The approach is being revived anew only recently, especially in Israel. The former Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Amercian-Israeli Dr. Pesach Lichtenberg was the director of a closed psychiatric hospital ward for 25 years before being fired for implementing ideas that violated mainstream psychiatric principles. He went on to become the founder and professional director of Soteria- Israel, a non-profit organization that provides a home-like alternative to psychiatric hospitalization for recovery from acute psychosis. Unlike in the U.S., Soteria-Israel, and similar community-based approaches to psychosis, have garnered support from government funders and the Israeli Psychiatric establishment.

(Recorded 7/11/21.)

#1. The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 11:46:00 -0600

Stuart Kelter interviews Dr. Chris Churchill, a professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University, whose work focuses on the evolution of galaxies using chemical line spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with state-of-the-art cosmological simulation software. He has also taught futuristic classes – entitled, “Life in the Universe,” “Into the Final Frontier,” and “Space Colonization.”

(Recorded 8/19/21.)