Tom Hulme, "Belfastmen: An Intimate History o...

In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. ...  Show more

Monasteries are typically characterized by physical and symbolic limitations on access as they are usually known through written texts and accounts by nuns who live in that world but do not allow others to have access. This has often resulted in research based on indirect sources ...  Show more

Sam Harris speaks with Michael Sandel about the problem with meritocracy . They discuss the dark side of the concept of merit, the pernicious myth of the self-made man, the moral significance of luck, the backlash against "elites" and expertise, how we value human excellence, the ...  Show more

Dr. Adrian Wooldridge is a political editor at The Economist and author of the new book ‘The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.’ In this episode, Dr. Wooldridge and I discuss how his new book has been received, the history of meritocracy, how IQ testin ...  Show more

Why and how has India’s Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, become so adept at appealing to and recruiting people from the lower castes? And what does this mean for Indian politics in the short to medium term? In this episode we are joined by Samantha Agarwal to discuss the rise of ...  Show more