Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchIs It Possible to Change Your Entire Personality?
Episode 516
Is it really possible to change your entire personality in a year? An award-winning journalist experiments with her own personality to find out—and r…
1 year ago
The Trouble with Economic Data: Flawed Metrics, Flawed Decisions
Episode 515
The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely differen…
1 year ago
Did Shutting Down Schools Help or Hurt? A COVID-19 Postmortem
Episode 514
David Zweig's new book An Abundance of Caution (MIT Press) is an account of the decision-making process behind the extended closures of public school…
1 year ago
What's Holding You Back? Scott Barry Kaufman on Resilience in the Age of Fragility
Episode 513
It's tempting to see ourselves as damaged or powerless—defined by past traumas, overwhelming emotions, and daily struggles. But is that really the mo…
1 year ago
Why We Follow Orders: The Neuroscience of Compliance and Control
Episode 512
Why do ordinary people carry out extraordinary harm when simply told to do so? From the Holocaust to the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia, h…
1 year ago
Amanda Knox: Life After the Crime That Wasn't Hers
Episode 511
Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn't commit—and became a notorious tabloid story in the pro…
1 year ago
What Einstein Meant by God: Science, Spirituality, and the Search for Meaning
Episode 510
Albert Einstein remains renowned around the world for revolutionizing our understanding of the cosmos, but very few realize that the celebrated scien…
1 year ago
What Happened to the Intellectual Dark Web?
Episode 509
Outside of the academics and activists whose ideology came to dominate the West in the second decade of the twenty-first century, arguably no group i…
1 year, 1 month ago
Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Darwin's Strangest Idea (Matt Ridley)
Episode 508
In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reve…
1 year, 1 month ago
The Hoax of the Century: Iron Mountain
Episode 507
Phil Tinline, author of the new book Ghosts of Iron Mountain, explores the origins of the infamous Report from Iron Mountain, its role in conspiracy …
1 year, 1 month ago