All Episodes

#850 James McCann - Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop

Oct 20, 2023

Dr. James McCann is Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University. Dr. McCann’s research and teaching interests include agricultural and ecological history of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, field research methods in African studies, the agro-ecology of tropical disease, and the history of food/cuisine in Africa and the Atlantic world. He is the author of books like Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine; Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop; People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia; and From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: Rural History, 1900-1995. More»
#849 Claudio Tennie: The Differences Between Ape Culture and Human Culture

Oct 19, 2023

Dr. Claudio Tennie is a Tenured Research Group Leader (“Tools and Culture among Early Hominins”) in the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen. In addition, he is an adjunct scientist at the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes. His main research triangulates what (if anything) makes human cognition unique - as well as why (and relatedly, when this happened and how often). In particular, he uses various methods and pathways to study the factors and the prehistorical beginnings that enabled the typical modern human "variant of culture": cumulative culture of know-how. More»
#848 Robert Sapolsky - Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Oct 16, 2023

Dr. Robert Sapolsky is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor and Professor of Biology, of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky is the author of several informative and comical books that present cutting-edge psychoneurobiological knowledge in an enjoyable, easy-to-read format. His latest book is Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will. More»
#847 Lydia Moland: 19th-Century German Philosophy, Hegel, and Abolitionism in the US

Oct 13, 2023

Dr. Lydia Moland is a Professor of Philosophy at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she teaches courses on moral philosophy, aesthetics, and the history of modern philosophy. For most of her career, she has written on nineteenth-century German philosophy. Recently, she turned her attention to her own country and to women. She discovered the work of American abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, on whom she wrote a book titled Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (2022). More»
#846 Michela Massimi: Perspectival Realism

Oct 12, 2023

Dr. Michela Massimi is Professor of Philosophy of Science in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, affiliated with the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics. She works in the area of history and philosophy of science with a focus on the physical sciences. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Astronomical Society, corresponding Member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and elected Member of the Academia Europaea. Dr. Massimi is the recipient of the Royal Society’s Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture 2017 for her interdisciplinary work and communication of philosophy of science, especially modern physics. Dr. Massimi is the author of several books, including Perspectival Realism, which has won the 2023 Lakatos Award. More»
#845 Branko Milanović - Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War

Oct 9, 2023

Dr. Branko Milanović is Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center and a senior fellow at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at The City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Milanović’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, as well as historically, among pre-industrial societies (Roman Empire, Byzantium, and France before the Revolution), and even inequality in soccer. His latest book is Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War. More»
#844 Hakwan Lau - In Consciousness We Trust: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Subjective Experience

Oct 6, 2023

Dr. Hakwan Lau is Principal Investigator for the Laboratory for Consciousness at Riken Institute. He works on the neural mechanisms of conscious perception, attention, and sensory metacognition, using human fMRI and Bayesian computational modeling. He is the author of In Consciousness We Trust: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Subjective Experience. More»
#843 Émile Torres - Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation (Part 1)

Oct 5, 2023

Dr. Émile Torres is a researcher at Leibniz Universität Hannover, in Germany. Their work over the past decade has centered around a single theme: eschatology, whether religious, secular, or scientific. Recently, their work has been focused on the nature and causes of human extinction, its ethical implications, and the history of the idea. They are the author of Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks, and their latest book is Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. More»
#842 Kevin Mitchell - Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

Oct 2, 2023

Dr. Kevin Mitchell is Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He is interested in the development of connectivity in the brain, specifically in how this process is controlled by genes and how mutations in such genes affect the connectivity of neuronal circuits, influence behavior and perception and contribute to disease. His latest book is Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. More»
#841 Rebecca Tuvel: Feminism, Cultural Appropriation, Transracialism, and Animal Ethics

Sep 29, 2023

Dr. Rebecca Tuvel is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Rhodes College. She works in feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and the ethics of identity. Her book project Changing Race: The Ethics and Metaphysics of Transracialism explores the possibility and permissibility of changing one’s race. More»