236. Fernanda Pirie on The Rule of Laws: A 4,...

Christopher Beha grew up Catholic in Manhattan, walked away during the New Atheist era, and spent years trying to build a secular worldview sturdy enough to live inside. It didn't hold. So he kept reading—Hume, Kant, Russell, the existentialists—and kept chasing the questions tha ...  Show more

Michael Shermer recounts the moment he discovered his name in the Jeffrey Epstein files and uses it as a jumping-off point to tell a few unforgettable stories about con men he's encountered over the years, and how their tactics work. 

Having discussed the ancient foundations of the religion that governed the minds of the Hellenes and the Romans, we now discuss how life in the city developed. The social order and the laws governing the cities were rooted in religious beliefs that were so old that they were now ...  Show more

State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Egor Lazarev explores the use of state and non-state legal systems by both politicians and ordinary people in postwar Chechnya. The book addresses two interrelat ...  Show more

Rules & Order: Laurie Taylor talks to Tim Newburn, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the LSE, about the social history of ‘orderly Britain’ – the way in which we’ve resolved everyday problems, from dog fouling to smoking and queuing. They’re joined by Lorraine Daston, ...  Show more

Folúkẹ́ Adébísí’s Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility (Bristol UP, 2023) details the ways in which the law is heavily implicated in creating, maintaining, and reproducing racialized hierarchies which bring about and preserve acute global dispa ...  Show more