Today
Devin Kennedy, "Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Long before Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, computer technology shaped how people worked, how markets operated, and how businesses became big. After World War II, military officials and their partners in industry looked to the newly invented electronic computer as they sought to cu ... Show More
56m 51s
Today
The Resurgence of War and the Collapse of Arms Control
How the nuclear guardrails were dismantled. What arms control actually did (risk management, predictability, geography), how it unravelled from the 2000s onward, and why its collapse matters more now as we see a resurgence of strategic instability and armed conflict. Learn more a ... Show More
34m 10s
Jan 2021
Lucas Richert - Psychiatry and the Counterculture
<p><span class="dropcap dropcap2">L</span>ucas Richert is the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and historical director for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His work explores prescription and illicit drugs, t ... Show More
34m 25s
Dec 2023
the radical therapist: therapy means change, not adjustment [preview]
<p>In this exclusive preview of a premium episode, join me as we launch a virtual book club to read and reflect on an out-of-print gem from the 1970s, <em>The Radical Therapist</em>. In part one of our exploration, we dive into the book's provocative critique of the psychiatric e ... Show More
19m 45s
May 2024
The Power and Promise of Psychedelics in Therapy
Bad trips, anti-drug PSAs, and the crackdown under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 helped stigmatize psychedelics in the U.S. But now, there’s renewed clinical inquiry into whether these drugs can ease emotional trauma. To understand the future of psychedelics, Audie calls ... Show More
38m 24s
Jun 2024
how psychiatry lost its way: bad science, bad medicine and the mistreatment of the mentally ill with robert whitaker
<p>Join me for a crucial conversation with Robert Whitaker, the fearless journalist and author whose investigations have profoundly challenged our understanding of mental health care. Robert's seminal works, including <em>Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Endurin ... Show More
1h 17m
Mar 2023
Psychedelic therapy: Will it be a game changer for mental health treatment? with Albert Garcia-Romeu, PhD
In just a few years, psychedelics have gone from being a symbol of the 1960s counterculture to being touted as highly promising mental health treatments. Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeu, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University, talks about whether the research backs up the hype; the state of ps ... Show More
39m 15s
Jan 2022
Improving psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness
Australia's mental health system is broken and needs to change. On this, psychiatrists, as well as those with a mental illness, agree. But what needs to be done? Are we pathologizing normal human distress, and prescribing too much medication? Could psychedelic drugs, and therapy, ... Show More
54m 5s
Jan 2023
Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its proponents developed environmental explanations of mental health, arguing that socioeconomic problems such as poverty, inequality, ... Show More
43m 12s
Aug 2023
the crisis of contemporary psychiatry with dr. bruce levine
<p>Has psychiatry lost its way? Increasingly, voices within and beyond the profession argue that Western mental health institutions may be perpetuating psychological suffering rather than alleviating it. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Bruce E. Levine, a clinical psychologis ... Show More
2h 8m
"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A "Radical Caucus" formed within the psychiatric professi ... Show More