Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchWhat Makes Us Human? Kate O’Neill on the H Word, Verbal Slop, and the Meaning of Tech Humanism
Episode 2947
“AI companies are taking advantage of our natural tendency to ascribe an inner life to our interlocutors. They profit when you think the chatbot care…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Never Invite Sally Quinn: The Illustrious Washington Hostess on Ben Bradlee, Jill Biden and the Sexiness of Silence
Episode 2946
“I considered it elder abuse. She put him through the paces, not only before the debate, but after. She should have gotten him out of there immediate…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Gerontocracy in America: Samuel Moyn on How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth
Episode 2945
“Age is the modality in which class is lived in America today.” — Samuel Moyn
Yesterday we had 91-year-old Mordecai Kurz on the show. Tomorrow, it wi…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
The Trouble with Trillionaires: Mordecai Kurz on Capitalism, Democracy, and the Second Gilded Age
Episode 2944
“Between 1980 and 2019, the billionaires gained $25 trillion. By today it’s probably $35 trillion. The question is who will pay for reform? You go wh…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
The Vanishing Black Family: Delano Squires on Marriage, Moynihan, and the Crisis in Black America
Episode 2943
“Second wave feminism taught women that femininity was weak, masculinity was toxic, marriage was oppressive, the home was a prison, and children are …
3 months, 2 weeks ago
A Century of Orations: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal Listens to 2,500 Voices of the American Revolution
Episode 2942
“As early as 1805, you had orators getting up there — barely twenty years after American independence was recognised by Great Britain — saying: the R…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Up to the Stars and Down into the Gutter: Elon Musk's Ascent/Descent to SpaceX and White Nationalist Violence
Episode 2941
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1892 play Lady Windermere’s Fan. This week, Elon Musk m…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
No Statecraft for Old Men: Jack Watling on the New Rules of Power in a Chaotic World
Episode 2940
“Power trumps money fundamentally. And I think we’ve seen the extent to which these companies are very subservient to the US government. Because the …
3 months, 3 weeks ago
The David Frum Show: Frum on Gatsby, Trump the Fascoid and What It Means to Be an American
Episode 2939
“That’s not the America that I believed in and that I chose to merge my fate with.” — David Frum on Trump’s predatory foreign policy
What does it mea…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Save San Francisco’s Soul: Jonathan Weber on Technology and Politics in the City By the Bay
Episode 2938
“The same creative and political forces that gave rise to [San Francisco’s] boom nearly engineered its collapse.” — Jonathan Weber
In Hitchcock’s Ver…
3 months, 3 weeks ago