Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History...

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education. On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusatio ...  Show more

The Politics of Failed Policies (Oxford UP, 2025) examines how the interplay of politics and data affects when failed policies get recognized. It shows how compelling data and analysis is an important political tool for highlighting failure. Importantly, the research demonstrates ...  Show more

Psychiatry: Laurie Taylor explores the social history of modern psychiatric practice. He's joined by Andrew Scull, Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of California and author of a magisterial study which asks if we are any closer to solving serious mental illness t ...  Show more

"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 ...  Show more

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 Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Endurin ...

Among the many challenges people with serious mental illness face is the stigma surrounding illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Kim Mueser, PhD, of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University, talks about the progress psychology has made in tr ...  Show more