Podcast

Homo economicus never existed but we still build policy like it does, and people keep getting hurt.

economics · psychology · philosophy · institutions

Transhumanism is terror management theory funded by venture capital, and it is telling on itself.

technology · philosophy

We engineered boredom out of existence and lost something we cannot get back from a screen.

philosophy · attention · psychology · culture

Nothing matters is the intellectual equivalent of not voting and it deserves the same respect.

philosophy

How mindfulness got stripped from its Buddhist roots and sold back as a productivity hack for corporate America.

philosophy · productivity · capitalism

The 'finding yourself' narrative assumes a fixed self waiting to be discovered; the research says you build one, and keep rebuilding it.

philosophy · psychology · culture

The mythologized past that authoritarian movements promise to restore never existed, but the longing they exploit is real.

politics · culture · history · psychology

Two billion people already lack reliable drinking water, and the conflicts over what's left are well underway.

environment · politics · climate

Mass incarceration looks like failure only until you ask what the system was built to do.

politics · institutions · united-states

If someone proposed the public library today, free and open to everyone with no purchase required, they would be called a socialist.

institutions · politics · culture

The word meritocracy was coined as satire, and we built an entire economic theology around the joke.

politics · economics · education

The harder you chase something, the more it evades you. Alan Watts' backwards law and the paradox of effortless action.

philosophy · taoism · productivity

We treat healthcare like a consumer product when it functions like a road or a power grid.

politics · economics · policy

Abolition is not the absence of safety but the presence of something better than cages.

politics · philosophy

The modern border regime is barely a century old, and pretending otherwise distorts every immigration debate we have.

politics · immigration · history · geography

Smart apartment tech is marketed as convenience for tenants and works as surveillance for landlords.

technology · housing

You bought it but you don't own it. Repair restrictions aren't a consumer inconvenience; they're a property rights crisis.

technology · policy · economics

The debate about AI art focuses on output quality. That misses the point entirely.

technology · AI

You cannot life-hack your way to meaning, and the productivity industry is counting on you not noticing.

philosophy · productivity

The entire internet runs on software maintained by exhausted volunteers. That's not a feature; it's a crisis.

technology · labor · economics