Thinking in the Midst

Meredith Broussard and Sasha Sidorkin sit down with Cara and Derek to talk about what artificial intelligence can be, how it works, what it’s for, and what it all means.

For Meredith’s books on the subject, click here and here.

For Sasha’s latest books, click here and here (and for an AI-generated podcast about the most recent book — WHAT ARE CARA AND I EVEN DOING ANYMORE — click here).

To recommend future guests and topics, please us...

Cam Scribner and Kathleen Knight Abowitz join Cara and Derek to discuss a topic arising out of Scribner's contribution to Concordia University's fall institute on “Political Challenges of/for/in 21st Century Schools: Addressing Polarization in the Classroom.” There's a lot of talk about "small-c conservatism" in this one.

For more of Cam's work, click here, here, and here.

For Kathleen's work. click here...

Doctoral students Phoebe Gilpin, Martha Perez-Mugg, and Arham Kazi sit down with Cara and Derek to talk about the writings that drew them to philosophy in the first place, the books they've encountered through their studies, and the works that they find themselves drawing upon in their own writing, as well.

As always, please use this form to recommend future topics and guests.

Works we talked about in this episode:

Plato's Eut...

Dave Backer and Heather DuBois Bourenane join Cara and Derek to talk about how schools are funded, the way investment vehicles (as well as quantities) reflect certain social commitments, and what it all means for the way we (literally) value schooling.

For Heather's organization, WPEN, click here.

For Dave's forthcoming book, click here.

The Shanker Institute's School Finance Indicators Database

The bond statement search engine tha...

In this episode, we're featuring a philosophical conversation in a different register, re-releasing a conversation between Derek and Annie Schultz about the 1998 film You've Got Mail. Is Nora Ephron an early object-oriented ontologist? What can we expect or hope to learn from fictional characters?

The New Yorker article on Nora Ephron we referenced

The Atlantic piece on the gentrification of the self.

Please use this form to recomm...

PEN America's Jeremy Young and the University of Connecticut's Michael Lynch join Cara and Derek to talk about the use of state power to restrict what can be discussed and studied in educational institutions, particularly, though not exclusively, colleges and universities.

Jeremy's report, America's Censored Classrooms 2024

Michael's forthcoming On Truth in Politics (available for preorder)

Use this form to recommend future episode...

Casey Burkholder, Stephanie Jones, and Lauren Bialystok join Cara and Derek to talk about what ELSE we're teaching when we teach -- and argue about -- sexuality, and how it might be different.

For more of Casey's work, click here, here, here, and here.

Here is Lauren's book, and here is the book chapter she mentioned in the episode.

And for Stephanie's work, click here, here, here, and here.

Please use this form to recommend futur...

Sara Hardman and Elizabeth O'Brien join Cara and Derek to talk about -- I don't know how else to say it -- the mattering of the spaces where teachers work and children learn: how valorization and valuation work in and through educational settings.

For Elizabeth's book, click here.

For Sara's dissertation, hopefully a preview of the book to come, click here.

As always, please use this form to recommend future guests and topics for t...

Paula McAvoy and Pablo Wolfe join us to discuss the whys and the hows of fostering conversations about even the most fraught political issues in educational spaces like classrooms.

LINKS:

Here is Paula's The Political Classroom (with Diana Hess). More recent work of hers to help practitioners with these issues can be found here and here.

And here is Pablo's The Civically Engaged Classroom. His organization, the Coalition o...

Krystal Dillard and Kyle Greenwalt talk about the hows and whys of doing schooling beyond the schools.

Here is Natural Creativity, the organization that Krystal co-directs.

The 74 covered Krystal's work, as well, in this piece.

Kyle's work is all available on his ResearchGate page, but these two pieces in Ed Theory and The Conversation are particularly worth highlighting.

As always, use this form to recommend future topics ...