A special Thanksgiving episode about gratitude featuring journalist, author, and lecturer A. J. Jacobs, whose book Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey was published this Monday. His other books include The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to become the Smartest Person in the World, and My Life as an Experiment: One Man’s Humble Quest to Improve Himself. This episode has three co-hosts: Deb M...
Nov 15, 2018•27 min•Ep. 39
An interview with Lucia Martinez Valdivia, assistant professor of English and Humanities at Reed College. Chris talks to Lucía about how to use and misuse the concept of identity. We’ll discuss how people have multiple identities that go beyond what a college typically asks students to focus on. And Lucía explains how the identity of student or learner can unify the students on a college campus. Timeline 0:00 Intro and the humanities course 9:17 A hierarchical identity vs. many identities per pe...
Nov 14, 2018•31 min•Ep. 38
When sociologists explain why men and women have different careers, different interests, and different priorities, they rely on socialization as an explanation. But is that explanation complete? I talk to sociologist Charlotta Stern about this question.
Oct 30, 2018•29 min•Ep. 37
Show Notes In today’s episode, Chris talks to Julie Wronski, professor of political science at the University of Mississippi. In a new paper, she and her coauthors show a difference between the average authoritarianism of Bernie Sanders voters and Hillary Clinton voters. Most of us know how to identify authoritarian leaders, but in today’s interview Julie explains how to define authoritarianism among voters, and why her findings matter to people outside political science. Timeline 0:00 Intro 3:0...
Oct 15, 2018•31 min•Ep. 36
Show Notes Do college students think that freedom of speech is important? Do they think their campus climate supports free expression? And do they believe First Amendment freedoms are secure in today’s America? To answer these questions, the Knight Foundation and Gallup conducted two surveys of college students in America. The surveys were conducted in 2016 and 2017, so they also reveal which attitudes changed between these consecutive years. Heterodox Academy is now hosting this dataset. This e...
Oct 01, 2018•25 min•Ep. 35
Show Notes A discussion of The Coddling of the American Mind, just published this month, with the authors Greg Lukianoff and Jon Haidt. Greg Lukianoff is director of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Jon Haidt is a founder of Heterodox Academy and professor of ethical leadership at NYU's Stern school. Timeline The history behind the Coddling article 1:59 Greg's battle with depression 6:15 Nietzsche or Stoic views of pain 9:00 The untruth of good and evil people 12:20 Is no on...
Sep 17, 2018•28 min•Ep. 34
Show Notes Jason Stanley is Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He formerly specialized in the philosophy of language, but has recently changes his focus to populism and politics, with his books How Propaganda Works, published in 2015, and How Fascism Works, which hits bookstores this month. The chapters of the book, each describing a characteristic of fascism are: The Mythic Past Propaganda Anti-Intellectualism Unreality Hierarchy Victimhood Law and Order Sexual Anxiety So...
Sep 06, 2018•31 min•Ep. 33
Show Notes Robert Quinn is the executive director of Scholars at Risk Network, which helps protect and relocate members of higher education communities whose freedom and security are threatened in their home countries. Since the founding of Scholars at Risk in 2000, SAR has assisted over 1000 scholars through temporary research and teaching visits. You can join the network here. You can find out more about Scholars at Risk at www.scholarsatrisk.org and on Twitter at @ScholarsAtRisk. Rob's MOOC i...
Aug 29, 2018•26 min•Ep. 32
Show Notes Jessica Good is a social psychologist at Davidson College. She received her PhD in social psychology from Rutgers University and has taught at Davidson since 2011. Her research focuses on stereotyping and discrimination. I invited her to the show to talk about her new paper on multiculturalism, a contentious topic in the political world and academia. Her new paper is called Valuing Differences and Reinforcing Them: Multiculturalism Increases Race Essentialism. Her coauthors on this pa...
Aug 15, 2018•24 min•Ep. 31
Show Notes Rick Mehta (@RickRMehta) is a professor of psychology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. His research focuses on the mechanisms involved in decision making. He has recently begun to study viewpoint diversity in universities and Canadian psychology departments specifically. His talk Free Speech in Universities: Threats and Opportunities covers the philosophy and psychology of free expression. The Canadian state of affairs [0:00] Rick’s big talk on free speech [3:52] Drug deal...
Jul 30, 2018•26 min•Ep. 30
Fabio Rojas is a professor of sociology at Indiana University at Bloomington. He’s the author of From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement and Theory for the Working Sociologist published by Columbia University Press. He blogs at Orgtheory.wordpress.com. 06:30 Understanding the rules of activism 08:13 Doing activist work that’s unsatisfying but important 11:18 Visiting Wellesley University’s Freedom Project 22:15 Is understanding necessary for effective activism? 26:34 Two...
Jul 17, 2018•30 min•Ep. 29
Robert Wright is a former senior editor at The New Republic, and he currently hosts The Wright Show. He’s also the author of several bestselling books on evolution and society. His latest book Is Why Buddhism Is True. Behind Bob’s Mindful Resistance Newsletter [0:00] Tribal tweets and popularity [5:28] Evaluating Heterodox Academy [16:00] The Google Memo [21:40] The intellectual dark web/Evolutionary psychology [25:25] Bob’s near-term plans [31:45] Mindfulness and De-Biasing Oneself [37:46]...
Jun 29, 2018•45 min•Ep. 28
0:00 The uniqueness of Evergreen State 5:42 Activities since leaving Evergreen 10:10 Economic privilege in academia 15:00 Safe space, identity politics, etc. 20:10 Why Evergreen needs a better president
Jun 19, 2018•31 min•Ep. 27
John Inazu is professor of law and religion at Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms—specifically speech, assembly, and religion. His first book is about freedom of assembly. His second book, which we discuss, is Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference. It was published in 2016 and a paperback edition with a new introduction comes out this year.
Jun 05, 2018•24 min•Ep. 26
Arthur Sakamoto (@sakamoto_arthur), sociologist at Texas A&M, discusses three myths about Asian Americans. 0:00 The questionable claim of a high Hmong dropout rate 08:00 The poverty rate and wealth of Asians and non-Asians 14:01 Are Asians disadvantaged by living in costly neighborhoods? 20:10 Assimilation and the mobile labor market 23:40 Why do sociologists selectively talk about cost of living? 25:31 White privilege and the alleged bamboo ceiling...
May 15, 2018•33 min•Ep. 25
Caroline Mehl and Raffi Grinberg direct the OpenMind Platform, an interactive tool to help individuals learn perspective taking and intellectual humility using principles from psychology. There are beta versions of Open Mind for use in corporations, organizations, and religious communities. You can check out Open Mind at openmindplatform.org and follow Open Mind on Twitter at openmindusa.
Apr 24, 2018•31 min•Ep. 24
Show Notes My guest today is Richard Reeves. He’s a social and political commentator and he has written for the several newspapers and magazines in the US and the UK including the Guardian and The Atlantic. He has also written a biography of John Stuart Mill, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand. Between 2010 and 2012, Richard was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. He has also served as director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank. He is currently a s...
Apr 09, 2018•27 min•Ep. 22
Show Notes David Frum (@davidfrum) is a senior editor at the Atlantic Magazine and a frequent contributor at MSNBC. He is a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and is known for coining the phrase “axis of evil.” He has been a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor at the National Review. He is the author of nine books including most recently Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, which we discuss today. Selected Quote Chris Martin: How do you currently de...
Mar 26, 2018•30 min•Ep. 21
Show Notes Musa al-Gharbi is a research associate at Heterodox Academy and a PhD student in sociology at Columbia University. He is a writer whose work has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and several other venues. The topics of his research include terrorism, extremism, war, antiracism, and, more recently, U.S. political elections. Selected Quote So there’s this real problem where in order to move the needle on a lot of the social issues that progressives ...
Mar 15, 2018•31 min•Ep. 20
Show Notes Deb Mashek (@DebMashekHXA) is the new executive director of Heterodox Academy. She is currently professor of psychology at Harvey Mudd College, but will be leaving that position to serve full time as executive director. We talk about her career and her three priorities for 2018. Selected Quote "I regularly have students and colleagues swinging by for closed-door conversations where they say things like, 'There is this question I wanted to ask in class, or there’s an idea I wanted to r...
Feb 27, 2018•20 min•Ep. 19
Show Notes Frank Lechner is a professor of sociology at Emory University. He did his undergraduate work in sociology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and then moved to the U.S. for his PhD. He’s the author of four books and two edited volumes—his most recent book is The American Exception, a book about American exceptionalism that covers several aspects of American life including religion, law, sports, and media. I invited him to the show in part to have a dialogue about a piece I publi...
Feb 08, 2018•41 min•Ep. 18
Show Notes Jennifer Earl is professor of sociology and a professor of government and public policy at the university of Arizona. Her research focuses on Internet and social movements, social movement repression, and the sociology of law. She is the 2017 winner of the William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award, awarded by the communication, information technologies, and media sociology section of the American Sociological Association. I invited her to the podcast to talk about the use of the inte...
Jan 21, 2018•17 min•Ep. 17
John McWhorter: Transcript of an interview
Dec 15, 2017•2 min•Ep. 17
Show Notes Cristine Legare is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas-Austin and she’s on the executive board of Heterodox Academy. She is the winner of the APS Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. In this episode, I talk to her about two teaching issues: how to teach a politically and religiously diverse student body, and how to approach controversial issues. You can learn more about Cristine Legare at www.cristinelegare.com. Selected Quotes “There...
Nov 13, 2017•35 min•Ep. 15
Half Hour of Heterodoxy is now an audio-only podcast. We suggest that you subscribe through iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or any other app of your choice, or listen using the audio player in the blog post. Show Notes Alice Dreger is an historian of medicine and science, a sex researcher, and an advocate of academic freedom. She is the author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice. In this episode, I talk to her about why she blames university brand mana...
Oct 30, 2017•23 min•Ep. 14
Half Hour of Heterodoxy is now an audio-only podcast. We'll still upload episodes to Youtube if you'd prefer to get them there, but we suggest that you subscribe through iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or any other app of your choice,
Oct 10, 2017•27 min•Ep. 13
Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. He has taught previously at Boston, Harvard and Northwestern Universities, and the University of Michigan. He hosts the Glenn Show at Bloggingheads.tv, where he has talked to John McWhorter, Rob Montz, Amy Wax, and others about campus politics and the censorship of unorthodox views. 0:00 Intro; NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly at Brown, and the aftermath 9:36 Faculty appr...
Sep 27, 2017•38 min•Ep. 12
Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) is a co-founder and executive director of Heterodox Academy. He is a professor of business ethics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and has written The Happiness Hypothesis: Findi...
Sep 21, 2017•22 min•Ep. 11
Norm Ornstein (@NormOrnstein), is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has written and co-written a number of books about gridlock and partisanship in the American political system including The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (1995), The Broken Branch (2006), and It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (2012). 0:00 What students should know about US politics 4:34 How the parties have realigned 13:00 And how they’re continuing to realign 15:05 We’ve moved from partisanship to tribalism…Newt...
Sep 15, 2017•30 min•Ep. 10
Scott Lilienfeld is professor of psychology at Emory University. Here, he talks about his 2016 article evaluating the psychological literature on microaggressions and his 2017 article about revoking the Goldwater rule. Scott is an Association for Psychological Science fellow, and he has published numerous studies in personality psychology, social psychology, political psychology, and clinical psychology. He also has an interest in debunking popular myths. His popular books include Brainwashed: T...
Sep 05, 2017•34 min•Ep. 9
