The benefits of utopian thinking
Why don’t we spend more time imagining a better future? Sean Illing is joined by Kristen R. Ghodsee, the author of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Lif...
21 Aug 202353min
What Clarence Thomas really thinks
In this episode, which was originally published in August 2022, Sean Illing talks with Corey Robin, author of a 2019 book about the life and thought of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Robin dis...
14 Aug 20231h 3min
The new crisis of masculinity
What does masculinity mean these days? Sean Illing speaks with Christine Emba, a columnist at The Washington Post who wrote the piece “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.” Together they ...
7 Aug 20231h 1min
How we all became a brand
What does it mean to be “authentic” in the digital age? Sean Illing speaks with Tara Isabella Burton about her new book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From Da Vinci to the Kardashians. They discu...
31 Jul 202352min
The therapeutic potential of MDMA
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, MDMA (also known as molly or ecstasy) was dismissed as a club drug and became the target of anti-drug propaganda. Today, it’s on the brink of being legalized for use in clinical ...
24 Jul 202347min
Is the journey to self-discovery pointless?
There are many ways people are trying to know themselves these days – from taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test to analyzing their astrological birth charts to identifying their attachment styl...
17 Jul 202352min
Parenting through the climate crisis
Does being a parent today necessarily mean also being a climate activist? Sean Illing speaks with moral philosopher and political theorist Elizabeth Cripps about her new book Parenting on Earth, in wh...
10 Jul 202347min
Seeing ourselves through darkness
When we find ourselves in a dark place, what if we didn't "lighten things up"? Sean Illing talks with philosopher Mariana Alessandri, whose new book Night Vision offers a new way of understanding our ...
29 Jun 202356min
