Latest Encyclopedia of opinion Podcast Episodes
Our Stone-Age Brains, with Maren Urner
On Opinion - August 31, 2022 17:03 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E29: Our Stone-Age Brains “We have mental mechanisms that have been there since the Stone Age and no longer function in this environment” Short-term thinking, lazy reasoning and stereotyping, and too much focus on what’s bad (the ‘negativity bias’)… all are throw-backs to our last major evo...
The Spirituality Movement, with Jules Evans
On Opinion - January 12, 2022 18:27 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E28: The Spirituality Movement “A lot of those who’ve left the church tend to be younger people, who nonetheless still consider themselves spiritual. They’ve been turned off by churches, but they haven’t necessarily gone full atheist, materialist…” Religion is declining around the world. Ev...
Generational Politics, with Bobby Duffy
On Opinion - November 15, 2021 16:30 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E27: Generational Politics “If you truly understand what’s different between generations, you have a much better idea of what’s coming up in the future.” It turns out there are very real differences between the generations. Key external events - a world war, a crippling global financial cra...
Political Predisposition, with John Hibbing
On Opinion - September 21, 2021 13:36 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E26: Political Predisposition “40% of the variance observed in political attitudes can be attributed to genetics” Twin studies have suggested that one third of our political orientation can be traced to our genes. But does that mean our politics are predisposed? John Hibbing is one of the ...
Emotional Politics, with Omar Kholeif and Jonathan Sklar
On Opinion - June 30, 2021 09:23 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E25: On Emotion “The world that we live in today is fuelled by heightened emotion…” Over the course of these two seasons of On Opinion, we’ve looked at opinions through the lens of philosophy, psychology, social science, anthropology and evolution. But one area we’ve missed is that of feeli...
The Journal of Controversial Ideas, with Francesca Minerva
On Opinion - June 23, 2021 10:41 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E24: The Journal of Controversial Ideas “You can’t have a good education if you’re not exposed to ideas you don’t agree with” Twelve years ago, Francesca Minerva published an academic article in the Journal of Medical Ethics giving a moral defence of infanticide. She was overwhelmed by the ...
The Evolution of Cooperation, with Nichola Raihani
On Opinion - June 16, 2021 09:43 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsS2 E23: The Evolution of Cooperation “Every multicellular being is a collective that operates as a whole - the individual is an ‘invention’ of evolution” Cooperation is at work up everywhere - from our ‘selfish’ genes working together in the genome, through to the democratic societies that reg...
Psychometrics: measuring ourselves, with John Rust
On Opinion - June 09, 2021 10:40 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings### S2 E22: Psychometrics: measuring ourselves > _“Psychometrics is one of the most important or influential areas of applied psychology”_ Psychometrics, the study of personality and ability, began with the Chinese Imperial Court exams, which measured intelligence and civility, as well as arch...
On Inhumanity with David Livingstone Smith
On Opinion - May 26, 2021 08:22 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“Dehumanisation both justifies and motivates acts of extraordinary violence - but it is not in any sense an innate disposition” Here lies the terrifying quandary: if humans are the most social of all primates and mammals, if our sociality and capacity for collaboration is at the very heart of o...
The Neuroscience of Dehumanisation, with Lasana Harris
On Opinion - May 19, 2021 09:53 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“Dehumanisation is a psychological process, and every psychological process can be used for good or bad.” Humanisation (attributing motive and consciousness) and dehumanisation are flip sides of common cognitive processes, what Harris calls “Flexible Social Cognition”, which he has measured via...
Post-Privacy Politics, with Michal Kosinski
On Opinion - May 12, 2021 11:25 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“We often treat privacy as a quick fix for much deeper social problems - like prejudice and bias” Our lives are constantly documented. Our Facebook likes, our Tweets and even our credit card statements all reveal information about us. But what about our faces? Michal Kosinski has demonstrated ...
Polarisation on the Couch, with Alex Evans
On Opinion - May 05, 2021 10:59 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“Our inner and outer crises are two sides of the same coin” There are many lenses through which to explain polarisation - economic, political, demographic, evolutionary… Alex Evans wants us to consider it from a psychological perspective. Alex has campaigned around inclusion and social justice...
Conflict is Good, with Ian Leslie
On Opinion - April 28, 2021 09:55 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“The avoidance of conflict is actually the real problem” We traditionally view an argument as a symptom of a problematic relationship, but relationship psychologists have found that they actually lead to healthier and happier people. Children who grow up arguing with their parents do better in ...
Investing in Injustice - System Justification Theory, with John Jost
On Opinion - April 21, 2021 10:21 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“The disadvantaged don’t make the world, they cope with it” Since Etienne de la Boetie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1577), we have asked ourselves why the weak, the poor and the marginalised accept injustice. Social scientists talk to economic and political oppression. John Jost’s work ...
Populism, with Jan-Werner Müller
On Opinion - April 14, 2021 10:19 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings"Populism is a permanent shadow of modern representative democracy, and a constant threat" The last few decades has seen a democratic drift, as populist leaders emerge all over the world - from Bolsonaro and Trump in the Americas, through Orban, Kaczynski and Erdogan in Europe, to Modi and Dute...
Infodemiology, with Jens Koed Madsen
On Opinion - April 07, 2021 09:41 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“The more we increase the connectivity of people, the more people get stuck in extreme positions and echo chambers on the extreme edges of our belief structures.” In December 2017, Jens Koed Madsen heard Mark Zuckerberg talking about the power of connectivity. Zuckerberg’s hypothesis was that t...
Why we Believe, with Michael Shermer
On Opinion - March 31, 2021 09:49 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsMichael Shermer is one of the world’s most prominent skeptics - founder of The Skeptic Society and editor of its magazine Skeptic. Once a fundamentalist Christian, Michael has spent his career uncovering the workings and causes of our 'Believing Brain'. “Our brains are wired to think more like...
The Backlash against Democracy, with Roberto Foa
On Opinion - March 24, 2021 12:32 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsRoberto Foa's research on Global Dissatisfaction with Democracy and Youth Dissatisfaction with Democracy uncovered the highest rates of dissatisfaction in decades, particularly amongst young people. “The majority of Americans today are dissatisfied with Democracy” 2019 represents the highest l...
Bridging the Gap, with Stephen Hawkins
On Opinion - March 17, 2021 11:11 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“There’s a subtle but crucial difference between ‘Opponent’ and ‘Enemy’” If Polarization is on the rise around the world, it takes different forms. The “Ideas Landscape” in the US, UK, France and Germany is very different, with the US - unfortunately - most radicalised across its politics. Ther...
The Securitarian Personality, with John Hibbing
On Opinion - March 10, 2021 11:31 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“The key division in all political systems is the result of two distinct perceptions of the most dangerous threats” Western politics have traditionally been divided into Conservatives and Liberals - tradition vs egalitarianism. John Hibbing, who more than anyone has put biology back into our un...
Collective Consciousness with Sarah Rose Cavanagh
On Opinion - March 03, 2021 11:10 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“We synchronise together through processes of emotional contagion and social conformity… This helps produce a shared experience of the world.” Human beings are social creatures. But is this social nature more than just a desire to be connected? Do we actually form one collective consciousness? ...
Polarisation around the World, with Thomas Carothers
On Opinion - February 24, 2021 10:46 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“You really do have to do bridge building at the community level. People have to learn to talk to each other across sides” The Left and the Right today are miles apart. In the past few years, polarisation has become an integral part of our societies. But has it always been this way - is polaris...
Dyadic Morality with Kurt Gray
On Opinion - February 17, 2021 10:40 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“Dyadic morality is ultimately about the link between perceived harm and immorality…” Why do we believe murder is “wrong”? Why can’t we compare the effects of a hurricane with the acts of a paedophile? Kurt Gray argues that human morality stems from “harm” - that moral acts have an intentional ...
Evolutionary Psychology and Politics with Hector Garcia
On Opinion - February 10, 2021 10:09 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“A lot of the human behaviour that seems perplexing, irrational (like politics or religion) is often most effectively explained by Evolutionary Psychology” We evolved to live in hunter-gatherer communities clustered in small units spread sparsely across the landscape. Existentially threatened b...
The Problem with MicroAggression, with Regina Rini
On Opinion - February 03, 2021 11:14 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“Microaggressions are so hard because they typically don’t meet traditional philosophical conceptions of blameworthiness…” Microaggressions are the latest front in the culture wars - seemingly harmless comments such as “yes, but where are you really from…” or misused pronouns, over time, can ca...
Saving Liberalism, with Timothy Garton Ash
On Opinion - January 27, 2021 10:54 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“We need to borrow from both the Left and the Right to achieve a renewal of liberalism…” As a journalist and political commentator, Timothy Garton Ash took a front row seat watching Eastern Europe open up in the 1990s - the heyday of Liberal expansionism around the world. Today, faced with po...
Negotiating with Warlords, with Hichem Khadhraoui
On Opinion - January 20, 2021 10:53 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“We have to come to the table, even if it’s just to say we disagree… then you have a chance to move forward” The number of armed groups created in the last 6 years surpasses the number created since WW2. States themselves have been creating them, globalisation has linked them up, and the popula...
How Cultures Think, with Julian Baggini
On Opinion - January 13, 2021 10:59 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings"By gaining greater knowledge of how others think, we can become less certain of the knowledge we think we have, which is always the first step to greater understanding" It goes without saying that the way we think is embedded in our own time and culture. The same is true even of Philosophers:...
Equalitarianism - the fundamental Liberal Bias, with Cory Clark
On Opinion - January 06, 2021 11:09 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“In their desire for groups to BE equal, Liberals have a bias towards PERCEIVING groups to be equal… Inequality must therefore always be explained through discrimination and prejudice, rather than evolved or genetic differences” Turi talks with Dr. Cory Clark about the origins of bias - why it ...
Why Bias is Rational, with Kevin Dorst
On Opinion - September 30, 2020 14:23 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 9 ratings“When evidence is ambiguous––when it is hard to know how to interpret it—it can lead rational people to predictably polarize.” Turi talks with philosopher Kevin Dorst to understand why all our cognitive ‘flaws’ - from confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, through our selective exposure to ...
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