Noam Chomsky’s Theory of the Good Life
How do you introduce Noam Chomsky? Perhaps you start here: In 1979, The New York Times called him “arguably the most important intellectual alive today.” More than 40 years later, Chomsky, at 92, is s...
23 Apr 20211h 12min
That Anxiety You’re Feeling? It’s a Habit You Can Unlearn.
This has been a bad year for the anxious among us — myself very much included. The pandemic was objectively terrifying. And many of us were trapped inside, with nothing we could do about it, severed f...
20 Apr 202159min
Why Adults Lose the ‘Beginner’s Mind’
Here’s a sobering thought: The older we get, the harder it is for us to learn, to question, to reimagine. This isn’t just habit hardening into dogma. It’s encoded into the way our brains change as we ...
16 Apr 20211h 1min
Your Success Probably Didn’t Come From Merit Alone
Prepping for a conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom is intimidating. McMillan Cottom is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a 2020 MacArthur fellow, co-host of the pod...
13 Apr 20211h 22min
The Best Explanation of Biden's Thinking I’ve Heard
With the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, the economic theory that is Bidenomics is taking shape. It’s big. It puts climate at the center of everything. It is more worried about political risks — losin...
9 Apr 202156min
Did the Boomers Ruin America? A Debate.
Donald Trump was the fourth member of the baby boomer generation to be elected president, after Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is a boomer. C...
6 Apr 20211h 10min
Humanity’s Awesome, Terrifying Takeover of Evolution
For years now, I’ve had the same recurring worry: Am I focusing on the trivial? When future generations look back on this moment in history, will they remember the daily political fights — or will eve...
2 Apr 202155min
The Author Behind ‘Arrival’ Doesn’t Fear AI. ‘Look at How We Treat Animals.’
For years, I’ve kept a list of dream guests for this show. And as long as that list has existed, Ted Chiang has been atop it.Chiang is a science fiction writer. But that undersells him. He has release...
30 Mar 202150min
