The human mind loves nothing more than to build mental boxes -- categories -- and put things into them, then refuse to accept it when something doesn't fit. Nowhere is this more clear than in the idea that there are men, and there are women, and that's it. Alice Dreger is an historian of science, specializing in intersexuality and the relationship between bo ... Show More
Oct 6
331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse
Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as the cosmological constant and the mass of the Higgs boson, as well as features of the initial conditions like the curvature of space and the initial entropy. But they can't truly be ... Show More
1h 54m
Sep 22
329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge
Getting along in society requires that we mostly adhere to certainly shared norms and customs. Often it's not enough that we all know what the rules are, but also that everyone else knows the rules, and that they know that we know the rules, and so on. Philosophers and game theor ... Show More
1h 16m
Aug 2024
Joanna Wuest, "Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Scholars often narrate the legal cases confirming LGBTQ+ rights as a huge success story. While it took 100 years to confirm the rights of Black Americans, it took far less time for courts to recognize marriage and adoption rights or workplace discrimination protections for queer ... Show More
57m 20s
Mar 2022
Nancy Chodorow - “Thoughts for the times on women and men”.
Thoreau's cove, Lake Walden, Concord, Mass., Detroit Publishing Co., publisher, between 1900 and 1910. Courtesy Library of Congress. Nancy Chodorow is Training and Supervising Analyst Emerita, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Lecturer Part-time in Psychiatry at the Ha ... Show More
15m 42s
Apr 2025
Dána-Ain Davis and Christa Craven, "Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
How do we acquire knowledge about societies? Does how we acquire social knowledge shape what we know? How conscious must we be of our own experiences as we do our research? What does feminism add to our methods and modes of research?Now in its second edition, Feminist Ethnography ... Show More
56m 21s
Oct 2024
Consciousness and the limits of science PART 2 | Sean Carroll, Ellen Langer, and Tamar Gendler
Mind, matter, and everything - PART TWOCan science ever solve the problem of consciousness? Do our methods look for answers in all the wrong places? Join Sean Carroll, Ellen Langer, and Tamar Gendler as they debate the possibility of science providing answers to the hardest probl ... Show More
27m 34s
Sep 2024
Emily Nagoski: Author and Sex Educator
Emily Nagoski is a best-selling author, researcher, and sex educator. Emily studied psychology in college, and a fateful job as a peer health educator drew her immediately to the field of sex education and violence prevention. She went on to receive a master’s degree in counselin ... Show More
54m 34s
Jun 2024
Prom King and Queen: Stories from our fourth Proton Prom
In this week’s episode, we highlight two stories from this year's Proton Prom, Story Collider's annual fundraiser and celebration of science storytelling. Part 1: Pamela Toh is dead set on being the “bad kid” at school. Part 2: On a family vacation to Disney, Matthew Dicks become ... Show More
25m 38s
Mar 2025
527. Gay Marriage, Surrogacy, Divorce & Hookup Culture | Katy Faust
Jordan Peterson sits down with author, speaker, and founder and president of the children’s rights organization Them Before Us, Katy Faust. They discuss the ethics of surrogate pregnancies, the importance of both the mother and father in the home, the purpose of marriage being fo ... Show More
1h 28m