Colin Wayne Leach is a social and personality psychologist at Columbia University, who researches Schadenfreude -- i.e., deriving pleasure from witnessing someone else's misfortune -- and related emotions, such as Genugtuung, which means deriving pleasure from seeing justice done. Recorded 4/12/21 ..read more

Ran Barkai is the co-author, with Eyal Halfon, of the recently published book, They Were Here Before Us: Stories from the First Million Years. Dr. Barkai is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, who for 20 years has co-directed the excavations and research at Qesem Cave in northern Israel. His wide-ranging research interests encompass stone tool technology, human-elephant interactions, and altered states of consciousness. Recorded 5/14/24 ..read more

Vardit Ravitsky is a Professor of Bioethics at the University of Montreal and President of the International Association of Bioethics. Her research focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics/genomics and assisted reproductive technologies and their implications for women’s autonomy and for disability rights. She is President of the International Association of Bioethics; Director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics; member of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s (NHGRI) Genomics & Society Working Group; a 2020 Trudeau Foundation Fellow ..read more

Jay Joseph is a clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Joseph challenges the empirical evidence behind the mainstream view that mental illness is genetically based, and argues instead that the real causes include oppression, trauma, abuse, and psychologically unhealthy aspects of the social and political environment. He is the author of four books, most recently The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2015), and Schizophrenia and Genetics: The End of an Illusion (2017). He is a co ..read more

David Olds is a professor at the Pediatrics-Prevention Research Center at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He has devoted his long and distinguished career to the developing and testing of very early interventions in family and child functioning, starting prenatally and continuing through toddler age. After devoting decades to high quality, random assignment, longitudinal, comparison studies – showing the approach yielded dramatic benefits – Dr. Olds went on to win grant after grant, to implement what came to be called the Nurse-Family-Partnership program, now in 4 ..read more

In 2003, Ron Hoffman became the founder of an organization in Falmouth, Massachusetts called Compassionate Care ALS (CCALS.org), which has helped well over 1000 families with Lou Gehrig’s disease on both practical and spiritual levels, above all by being deeply present. His memoir, Sacred Bullet, published in 2014, reveals in powerful and personal terms, how his own healing is woven into his work. Ron has worked with individuals, families and healthcare professionals across the United States, inviting conversations around the choices and possibilities that arise for those living ..read more

Olivia Campbell is a journalist, essayist, and author focusing on the intersections of medicine, women, history, and nature. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and many other major publications. She is the author of the 2021 NY Times bestseller, Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine, which is the subject of today’s interview. Recorded 4/9/24 ..read more

Isabelle Mansuy, a professor in neuroepigenetics in the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and the Department of Health Science and Technology of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Specializing in neuroepigenetics and molecular psychiatry, Dr. Mansuy is doing cutting edge research, using mice, to separate nature from nurture in how the effects of trauma, environmental stress, and even diet can be biologically passed down to subsequent generations, but not irreversibly. Recorded 6/15/21 ..read more

Psychiatrist, professor, and researcher, Randolph Nesse, is a cofounder of the field of evolutionary medicine. Twenty-five years ago his book, Why We Get Sick, which he co-authored with George C. Williams, went on to sell more than 100,000 copies and to be translated into eight languages. He served for many years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he is a professor emeritus, and was also the founding director of the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, where he continues to be a research professor. His most recent book, Good Reasons for ..read more

Karen Valby is a culture writer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, Fast Company, and EW. She is also the author of two books. The first, Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town, was published in 2010. Her soon-to-be-released book, The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History, is the subject of today’s interview. Recorded /26/24 ..read more