All Episodes

#477 Ilana Redstone - Unassailable Ideas, Social Media, and Discourse in American Higher Education

Jun 3, 2021

Dr. Ilana Redstone is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Redstone's work has focused on legal permanent residents to the United States. Using a quantitative analytic approach, she has addressed questions surrounding a variety of dimensions of immigrant adaptation to the U.S. She has also written on the discipline of Sociology and the divisions therein. Dr. Redstone's current work focuses on campus climate and viewpoint diversity. She is the author of Unassailable Ideas: How Unwritten Rules and Social Media Shape Discourse in American Higher Education. More»
#476 Edward Slingerland - Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

May 31, 2021

Dr. Edward Slingerland is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He’s the Director of the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC), the Director of the Database of Religious History (DRH), and the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture (HECC). His most recent book is Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. More»
#475 Lee McIntyre - The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience

May 28, 2021

Dr. Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. He is interested in comparative methodology across the natural and social sciences. He is the author of books like Post-Truth, and The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience. More»
#474 Andrew Norman - Mental Immunity; Reason, Critical Thinking, Beliefs, and Morality

May 27, 2021

Dr. Andrew Norman teaches philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. He works on the conceptual and historical foundations of humanism. He has published widely on the nature of reason and the teaching of wisdom, and written books on critical thinking and the structure of dialogue. Dr. Andrew Norman is the former Director of CMU’s Ethics, History and Public Policy program, and is interested in constructive engagement with the religious and in developing naturalistic alternatives to destructive religious mythologies. He speaks regularly on such topics as reason and faith, science and religion, the foundations of ethics, and the evolutionary, cultural, and attitudinal roots of prosocial behavior. He is the author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. More»
#473 George Yancey: Racism in the US, and Anti-Christian Hostility

May 24, 2021

Dr. George Yancey is a Professor of Sociology at the Baylor University. He has published several research articles on the topics of institutional racial diversity, racial identity, academic bias, progressive Christians and anti-Christian hostility. His books include Compromising Scholarship, What Motivates Cultural Progressives, There is no God, So Many Christians, So Few Lions (Rowman and Littlefield) a book that assess Christianophobia in the United States. More»
#472 Aiyana Koka Willard: Religion, Cognition, Culture, and Human Universals

May 21, 2021

Dr. Aiyana Koka Willard is a Lecturer in the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London. Her research focuses around the culture and cognitive origins of supernatural and religious beliefs. She is particularly interested in how thinking about minds and causal reasoning is related to supernatural beliefs. Her current research focuses on witchcraft, karma, and evil eye beliefs. More»
#471 Darcia Narvaez: Moral Development, and Flourishing

May 20, 2021

Dr. Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She has written extensively on issues of character and moral development. Dr. Narvaez’ research explores questions of species-typical and species-atypical development in terms of wellbeing, morality, and sustainable wisdom. She examines how early life experience (the evolved nest) influences moral functioning and wellbeing in children and adults. She integrates evolutionary, anthropological, neurobiological, clinical, developmental and education sciences in her work. Her 2014 book - Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality - won the 2015 William James Book Award from the APA and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award for research. She also writes a popular blog for Psychology Today called “Moral Landscapes.” More»
#470 Olivier Sibony - Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

May 17, 2021

Dr. Olivier Sibony is Associate Professor at HEC Paris. He is a writer, educator and consultant specializing in strategy, strategic decision making and the organization of decision processes. His research interests center on the effect of heuristics and biases in strategic decision making and procedures to improve the quality of decisions. He is the author of Cracked It!, You're About to Make a Terrible Mistake, and, more recently, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. More»
#469 Tim Maudlin: Philosophy of Physics, Quantum Mechanics, and Metaphysics

May 14, 2021

Dr. Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. Her has interests primarily focused in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and logic. His books include Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, Truth and Paradox and The Metaphysics Within Physics. He is a member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow. More»
#468 Andreas Elpidorou: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead us to the Good Life

May 13, 2021

Dr. Andreas Elpidorou is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisville. He specializes in the philosophical study of the mind and has published extensively on the nature of emotions (especially, boredom), consciousness, and cognition. He is best known for his work on the function and value of boredom. He is the co-author of Consciousness and Physicalism: A Defense of a Research Program (Routledge, 2018), the co-editor of Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology: Conceptual and Empirical Approaches (Routledge, 2016), and the author of the recent book, Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead us to the Good Life. More»