Science, Culture, Reason, Public Policy, & Fascinating Ideas
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING NOW TO SAVE THIS FAMILY!
There are many tragedies in Afghanistan, and thousands of people who need help. We cannot right all the wrongs, but we can save these 8 people. We can…
Helen Pluckrose has been a formidable voice in the cultural and intellectual debates surrounding critical social justice, liberalism, and free speech. I've admired her work for some time, particularl…
Wendy Freedman, the former director of the Carnegie Observatories and now distinguished professor at University of Chicago, has been a leading figure in observational cosmology and astronomy for over…
I was very happy to finally have the opportunity to have an extended conversation for our podcast with renowned theoretical physicist Lenny Susskind. Lenny has been a friend and colleague for many y…
This is my second dialogue with filmmaker extraordinaire and force of nature, Werner Herzog. But after I read his amazing new memoire Every Man for Himself, and God Against All, which takes its name …
Many of you will have been waiting for this podcast after my brief review of Annie Jacobsen’s new book Nuclear War: A Scenario on Critical Mass. I took advantage of our discussion to flesh out some …
Michael Turner has been one of the leading pioneers in the emerging field of particle-astrophysics: the effort to understand the large scale properties of our universe by exploring the fundamental mi…
Jeffrey Sachs was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history when he was promoted only a few years after receiving his PhD. And for good reason. He is one of the most remarkable intellects …
You’ve probably heard of Serotonin, or Dopamine. Those are the sexy neurotransmitters that get all the press. However, you have probably not heard of Glutamate. Which is a shame because it is proba…
I admit I was somewhat intimidated when the prospect of hosting Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist Charles Duhigg on the podcast was raised. What caused my angst was the subject matter we would discus…
I have had the privilege of working closely with Frank Wilczek for over 40 years, on and off, and we have written perhaps a dozen scientific papers together over that time. Our collaborations togeth…
I first stumbled upon the journalist Katherine Brodsky, who has been a commentator and writer for various media outlets, when I heard about her new book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice…
Irwin Shapiro is a remarkable human being by almost any standard. Following his education in physics at Cornell and Harvard, he had a job at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory working on various problems in pl…
I first became aware of Jonathan Kay through his writing for the online magazine, Quillette. And for full disclosure, I got to know him better because he is one of their editors, and he has edited s…
In mid October the Origins Project Foundation ran two public events in California. The second event was held at the Air and Space Museum in San Diego. I had asked my colleague Brian Keating, who te…
Greg Lukianoff is a First Amendment lawyer by training. During his education he began to see how, even among organizations ostensibly created to help protect free speech, how actual free speech was…
Scott Aaronson is one of the deepest mathematical intellects I have known since, say Ed Witten—the only physicist to have won the prestigious Fields Medal in Mathematics. While Ed is a string theori…
Richard Dawkins and I have appeared together onstage many times, been the subject of the documentary The Unbelievers, and have collaborated on various writing projects as well. Thus it may come as a…
Carlo Rovelli is well known as a popularizer of science. His short book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, was an international bestseller. I have known Carlo as a physicist ever since he used to visi…
I have been a fan of Robert Sapolsky’s for a long time. He is a creative force, with wide ranging knowledge, from primatology to neuroscience, and he is also a wonderful expositor of science. His p…