37 - Thought Lab 4: The Psychology of Horror

This episode is a crossover collabo with Graham Culbertson of the Everyday Anarchism podcast. Graham asked me over to talk Athenian democracy, Plato, anarchism and how modern meritocratic education su...

11 Maj 20231h 4min

War tends to bring out the human propensity for atrocity. Nobody likes indiscriminate killing, torture and so on. What to do about it? One response is to avoid war altogether. According to Yale prof S...

5 Sep 20221h 5min

Samuel J. Huntington’s 1993 “The Clash of Civilizations?” is the most assigned article in American political science. It predicts a worldwide culture war (but not the kind you're thinking of). The boo...

17 Aug 202236min

Americans hate when the state tells them what to do. They’ve got freer speech, freer access to guns and less regulation on business than any other rich country. So why do they let their work bosses w...

6 Juni 202254min

Matthew Stewart is a philosophy PhD and author. He’s also a Princeton guy and former management consultant so he knows rich people. His new book, The 9.9%, is about them. Not the super-rich, but the ...

2 Maj 202254min

Big tech companies tell us they’re our servants, existing to fulfill our desires more cheaply and conveniently than ever. Alfie Bown doesn’t think so. He thinks Deliveroo, Tinder, Pornhub etc. aren’t...

18 Apr 202258min

Is democracy the worst form of government except for all the others or is it just the worst? This is a crossover with the delightful Morality of Everyday Things podcast. Jake and Ant and I discuss ...

8 Feb 20221h 14min

Rhetoric is supposed to inspire. Imagine Cicero exhorting the Roman people, Churchill vowing to “fight on the beaches.” Yet, when politicians speak today, it’s almost always boring or obnoxious. Why? ...

24 Jan 20221h 13min