Podcast Episodes

How much free speech is too much?

Free speech is often treated as a timeless and sacred right. But what if it’s more myth than reality?

This week, Sean is joined by historian Fara Dabhoiwala, author of What Is Free Speech? They trac…

Published on 8 hours ago

Imagine there's no billionaires

How much money is too much?

In today’s episode, political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns tells Sean that we need to cap the amount of wealth a person can accumulate. They talk about how extreme inequalit…

Published on 2 weeks ago

America's lawyers vs. China's engineers

America has a hard time building stuff. Roads. Trains. Bridges. Housing. Everything takes seemingly forever. Meanwhile, China seems to have no trouble at all: high-speed rails, solar panels, electric…

Published on 3 weeks ago

So, what exactly is the “New Right?”

A loose movement of radical intellectuals is driving American politics.  They’re called the “New Right,” and they share a basic hostility to American liberal democracy, a real desire to fundamentally…

Published on 4 weeks ago

America is losing big on sports betting

Almost every tech platform is designed to grab and hold your attention, to keep you clicking, scrolling, and buying for as long as possible.

Sports gambling has become one of the clearest examples o…

Published on 1 month ago

It’s time to get weird

The internet was supposed to set us free. But somewhere along the way, it became a tool for surveillance, extraction, and control. What happened? And is there still time to reclaim the weird, untappe…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

What if humans went extinct next Friday?

What comes after the human?

We’re living through multiple crises — ecological, technological, political. But beneath all of that is something even deeper: a crisis of the self. Who are we, really? H…

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

Can college survive Trump?

American higher education is under attack. Project 2025 laid out the battle plan pretty clearly: Get rid of the Department of Education, shut off federal funding, take control of the accreditation sy…

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

Hopeful pessimism

We live in a culture obsessed with hope. We are trained to believe that being hopeful is the key to success. Stay positive. The sun will come out tomorrow. Keep the faith. But maintaining that kind o…

Published on 2 months ago

If AI can do your classwork, why go to college?

What’s the point of college if no one’s actually doing the work? It’s not a rhetorical question. In the age of AI, it's incredibly easy for students to offload their assignments. AI tools can write e…

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago