This week we’re talking all things substance-related with psychologist and Columbia professor Carl L. Hart. In his new book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, he outlines a bold new approach to drug use in America.  If we are indeed the land of the free, he argues, we need to...

America’s “justice” system is broken. If the events of the last year haven’t cemented that notion in your head yet, our latest episode with Alec Karakatsanis of Civil Rights Corps will. During our conversation with Alec, he made two dramatic—and accurate—points. First, our justice system is not designed to mete out justice, promote public safety,...

This week we’re delving into the shadowy world of white-collar crime with lawyer Jennifer Taub, so we thought it was only fitting to take a quick retrospective on the “most complex” white-collar crime case in FBI history: The Enron Scandal.  Enron was born of two Texas energy companies in 1985. After hiring Jeffrey Skilling,  Enron...

We often conflate sexual assault and sexual harassment, but they’re quite different things and we should understand the difference. So, when celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum stopped by our (virtual) studio recently to discuss her newest book, Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation, she gave us a quick lesson on the differences. “Sexual assault,...

According to conventional wisdom, every history textbook in America, and any speech remotely about Abraham Lincoln, America no longer enslaves people. Further, with the passage of the 13th Amendment some seven-score-and-sixteen years ago, we left our history of chattel slavery behind—right? Well, that’s not quite true. According to the 13th Amendment, “Neither slavery nor involuntary...

If you’re living in poverty in America, it almost certainly isn’t your fault. Instead, argues our latest guest Mark Rank, you’re a victim of a system that doesn’t have enough opportunities to go around.  “What we’re doing in this country is basically playing a large-scale version of musical chairs,” he told Mila. “And the question...

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raged this week, our latest interview with seasoned peacebuilder Séverine Autesserre gained an urgent new edge. Autesserre spoke to Mila about her new book, The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World, which looks at the ways bottom-up peacebuilding succeeds.  Bottom-up peacebuilding is the idea that peace depends...

Fracking is a complicated issue in shale-rich communities of the country, which start with American property rights. They are unique almost the entire world over. When America was getting itself going, the Founding Fathers were highly impressed with enlightenment thinker John Locke. Locke had particular ideas about property, which he laid out in his Second...

This week on Future Hindsight, we teach you to change other people’s minds! …Sort of. Actually, Andy Norman, renowned philosopher, professor, and author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, breaks it down for us. Be sure to listen to the full episode and check back May 18...

It’s 2021, and America’s oldest political party is busy dismantling the norms and institutions that allowed them to exist in the first place, seemingly at the whim of a down-and-out megalomaniac who cares not a whit for them. The fact that sentence wasn’t a shock to write and probably isn’t one to read shows how...