Frames of Space

Gary Winslett is a political science professor at Middlebury College and the writer behind the Substack "The Neoliberal Papers." He is a center-left Democrat who strongly supports free trade, the free market, housing deregulation, and more.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about the US economy, past and present: the merits of Biden's economic policies, the effect that AI seems to be having on the labor market, and ...

Robert Wright is the author of the Nonzero Newsletter and the host of the Nonzero Podcast. He is known for his commentary on evolutionary psychology, and how humans evolved to benefit from cooperation and coordination on larger and larger scales as history has progressed forward.

His latest book "The God Test" posits that artificial intelligence represents the next leap forward for evolutionary history and civilization. His view is...

Charlotte Swasey is the writer behind the Substack "Medium Data" and the Director of Analytics at the Searchlight Institute. Her work on electoral strategy often highlights how getting elected involves a juggling act: you have to factor many different variables into account at the same time, not the least of which include fundraising, coalition unity, issue taking, and more.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about w...

Announcement: this podcast will be publishing episodes twice as often as usual (so every single week on Thursdays) until the end of August, and possibly for even longer. Count yourself lucky in that regard 😉

Ryan Geddie is a prominent YouTuber known for his video essays on history, culture, and the current state of American politics. I brought him on my show to talk about his advice for the Democratic Party, and why he thinks it's...

The US's federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Is that actually enough for someone to afford basic necessities like food and shelter? Or is it a wage that'd lead to starvation, and would be practically impossible for someone to live off of?

Jack Whitcomb is the writer behind the Substack "Jackonomics," which covers economic subjects such as the cost of living, welfare reform, and monetary policy. He's recently become invested in t...

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist at King's College London and the founder of Ness Labs, a learning community designed to help people experiment and harness their curiosity more productively. She is the author of the recent book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about why working at Google was stressful enough to land her in the hospital, the cogni...

Darby Saxbe is a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at the University of Southern California. She writes the Substack "Natal Gazing," a blog devoted to pronatalism, gender roles, and the biological effects that parenting has on adults.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about her new book Dad Brain, which explores the complex biological and societal changes that men undergo as a result of becoming parents...

Bret Devereaux is a military historian and a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. He writes the blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry," which covers US foreign policy, the nature of military tactics in war, and the best sci-fi/fantasy stories.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about what Star Wars teaches us about modern insurgencies, why non-violent protest often works as a potent s...

Matthew Yglesias is the head of the Substack "Slow Boring" and co-host of the podcasts The Argument and Politix. He's been writing about politics for far longer than many people have been politically aware: he's written for Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and more. He even helped co-found the website Vox back in 2014.

Nowadays, his thesis is that Democrats need to moderate on many contentious issues: crime, non-renewab...

A few weeks ago, the AI company Anthropic announced something genuinely strange. They had built a new model, codenamed Mythos, that was so capable at cybersecurity tasks they decided not to release it to the public. Instead, they're using it, quietly, with a small group of partners, to patch vulnerabilities in the world's most important software before anyone else gets a model this talented.

Abi Olvera is the Research Director at t...

Jordan Schneider is the host of ChinaTalk, a podcast and newsletter covering China, US foreign policy, and the technology shaping both. He's been podcasting since 2017, and has learned a thing or two about how to shape conversations with guests to make them as interesting as possible.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about the nature of podcasting as a forcing function for learning, whether a more powerful UN is pr...

Kelsey Piper is a staff writer at The Argument, a publication dedicated to having productive arguments among people who disagree about important political topics. I tried my best to carry the spirit of The Argument with me when speaking with Kelsey in this episode, and I had a blast the entire time.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about her take on the AI extinction debate, the risk that AI will make it easier to ...

To what extent has income inequality worsened over the past few years and decades? Have the rich been getting richer and the poor poorer? Has capitalism led to a rise in worker exploitation? Is neoliberalism responsible for the rise in democratic backsliding throughout the world?

Tibor Rutar is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maribor and the writer behind the Substack "Political Economy, Stats, and Society....

Lyman Stone is a Substack writer and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. He is a pronatalist, which means that he wants society to have higher birth rates and more children.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about the nature of his online persona, the gap between desired and actual fertility rates, and the correlation between marriage and fertility.

Show No...

Announcement: this podcast will be returning to its traditional biweekly upload schedule for the foreseeable future. But I really enjoyed the run of weekly episodes that I've been able to pull off for the past few months, and I hope to do it again some time :)

Damon Linker is a senior lecturer of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and the writer behind the Substack "Notes from the Middleground," which covers the na...

Victor Kumar is an associate professor of philosophy at Boston University and the writer behind the Substack "Open Questions." He is known for his writing on political polarization, and the cultural reasons behind the state of civil culture in America.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about why he believes in the importance of a large Overton window, the positions he held about lockdowns during the pandemic, and wh...

Elena Bridgers is the writer behind the Substack "Motherhood Until Yesterday." She is known for her writing on evolutionary biology: specifically, the nature of hunter-gatherer societies, and how that explains why motherhood is so difficult in the present.

In the episode, I got a chance to speak with her about the tradeoffs that come with gender equity, how parenting has changed her conception of contemporary feminism, and the ways...

Lars Doucet is the President of the Center for Land Economics and the writer behind the Substack "Progress and Poverty." Lars is a Georgist, which means he believes that land is fundamentally different from other forms of property. From his point of view, we shouldn't be taxing what people build, earn, or produce—we should be taxing the value of the location itself.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about the ...