Are Capitalism and Democracy Fundamentally Incompatible? A Conversation with Mordecai Kurz
Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capital...
9 Juli 1h 3min
Joe P. L. Davidson, "Saving Utopia: Imagining Hopeful Futures in Dystopian Times" (MIT Press, 2026)
There is no alternative. The End of History. Climate Apocalypse. It seems that our contemporary moment is defined by the idea that things can only get worse or, in the most optimistic reading, perha...
17 Juni 1h 4min
Michael Brownstein et al., "Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change" (MIT Press, 2025)
A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference. Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that th...
6 Juni 1h 11min
Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)
Around 2016, buoyed by so-called data kranti ("data revolution"), an aspirational neo-middle class of users in India accessed internet for the first time on their mobile phones. Unlimited: Aspiration...
2 Juni 1h 1min
Yosef Grodzinsky, "How Deeply Human Is Language?: Chomsky, the Brain, and the AI Fantasy" (MIT Press, 2026)
How Deeply Human Is Language? Chomsky, the Brain, and the AI Fantasy (MIT Press, 2026) is Yosef Grodzinsky’s exploration of the criticality of the linguistic theories to the design of LLMs. The book ...
24 Maj 48min
Aymar Jèan Escoffery, "Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture" (MIT Press, 2025)
Can producing stories and developing platforms to support people who have been harmed by multiple, intersecting systems heal those systems? In Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to He...
15 Maj 1h
Silvia Danielak, "Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2026)
Roads, bridges, a renewable power plant, and an electricity grid: UN peacekeepers might be unusual infrastructure builders, but they’re certainly not unambitious. Since the beginning of the UN’s peace...
15 Maj 34min
Scott Solomon, "Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds" (MIT Press, 2026)
How living in space will affect future generations—and what the potential unintended consequences of space settlements are.We are on the cusp of a golden age of space travel in which, for the first ti...
30 Apr 1h 1min
