470. The Pros and Cons of America’s (Extreme)...

It’s a hard time to run a university: public trust is low, political pressure is high, and finances are fragile. But Daniel Diermeier, who trained as a political scientist, has Vanderbilt humming. How? He says the key is choosing magnets over wedges. SOURCES: Daniel Diermeier, ch ...  Show more

Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. In this update of a 2025 episode, Stephen Dubner discovers where all this sludge comes from — and how much it’s costing us. SOURCES: Benjamin Handel, pro ...  Show more

Social psychologist Dannagal Young breaks down the link between our psychology and politics, showing how personality types largely fall into people who prioritize openness and flexibility (liberals) and those who prefer order and certainty (conservatives). Hear why both sets of t ...  Show more

Can we hold multiple truths at once? Listen to find out!

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes

Many still remain convi ...

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson contemplates the political world order in his Reith series entitled 'Peace in the Family of Man'. In this lecture entitled 'The United States of the World', Lester Pearson contemplates the concept of natio ...  Show more

We love to judge. To gossip. To belittle.

Not everyone, and not all the time, but enough for these feelings to fuel multi-billion dollar industries.

Even if we never say it out loud, we derive a certain pleasure from others' misfortune. There's even a name for the ...