Elections loom large in our everyday understanding of democracy. Yet we also acknowledge that our familiar electoral apparatus is questionable from a democratic point of view. Very few citizens have access to the kinds of resources that could enable them to stand for election; consequently, political candidates (thus officeholders) tend to come from elite so ... Show More
Jan 10
Kenneth Aizawa, "Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A Granular Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
How do scientists reason when they posit unobservables to explain their observed results? For example, how did Watson and Crick reason that DNA had a double-helix structure when they observed Franklin’s image 51, or how did Hodgkin and Huxley reason that sodium ions carried the c ... Show More
1 h
Dec 16
Mariana Ortega, "Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad" (Duke UP, 2024)
How can habits of racialization be affected by art, in its reception and its creation? How can a carnal aesthetics help us understand Latinx life? What if we listen to photographs? How might they undo us? Can we be undone? In Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad (Duke UP, ... Show More
1h 16m
Nov 10
Amie Thomasson, "Rethinking Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The word “metaphysics” conjures up thoughts of very hard questions about reality and deep, perhaps unresolvable, metaphysical mysteries. But is that the right way to think about the subject matter of metaphysics? According to Amie Thomasson, very clearly no. In her new book, Reth ... Show More
1h 3m
Jul 2024
#376 — How Democracies Fail
<p dir="ltr">Sam Harris and Anne Applebaum discuss the nature of modern autocracies and how democracies fail. They discuss the power of ideas, why autocracies seek to undermine democracies, cooperation among dictators, how Western financial experts and investors have enabled auto ... Show More
1h 7m
Sep 2023
Emilee Booth Chapman, "Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Emilee Booth Chapman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, has a new book that examines the idea of the vote, and what this experience means for citizens, for the structure of government, and, as the title indicates, for democracy. Booth Chapman is a p ... Show More
52m 19s
Feb 2025
Aidan McGarry, "Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups (Oxford UP, 2024), Aidan McGarry examines the agency of marginalised people, emphasizing the processes through which different communities around the world articulate their political voices. McGarry develops an innov ... Show More
58m 36s