El Podcast

A wide-ranging conversation on the collapse of trust in legacy media, the economics driving bias and clickbait, and whether journalism can survive the internet and AI era with Drew Holden. 

👤 Guest Bio

Drew Holden is the managing editor of Commonplace and author of the Holden Court Substack. He is a journalist and media critic whose work focuses on media bias, institutional trust, and the changing economics of journalism.

🧠 Topics Discussed

Dr. Cory J. Clark breaks down how the rise of women in academia may be reshaping institutions—shifting priorities from merit and competition toward equity, harm avoidance, and social dynamics.

Guest Bio: Dr. Cory J. Clark is a psychology professor at New College of Florida whose research focuses on moral judgment, political psychology, and academic culture. She is known for her work on sex differences, self-censorship in academia, and her paper “From Warriors to Worriers: The Cultural Rise of Women.”

Topics Discussed

A deep dive with Dr. Garrett Jones on how immigration, culture, and intelligence shape long-run economic outcomes—and why economists sharply disagree on the issue.

Guest Bio

Garett Jones is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of The Culture Transplant, Hivemind, and 10% Less Democracy. His work focuses on how national traits—such as intelligence, culture, and institutions—affect economic growth, immigration outcomes, and political systems. He has also served as an economic policy advisor in the U.S. Senate.

Topics Discussed

A wide-ranging discussion on whether we’re truly in a “golden age” of television—or just drowning in content—with sharp critiques of streaming economics, woke storytelling, and modern TV bloat.

Guest Bio

Graham Hillard is a TV critic for the Washington Examiner and editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. He writes cultural criticism focused on television, media trends, and the intersection of politics and entertainment.

Topics Discussed

A long-term expat breaks down the real economics, trade-offs, and lifestyle realities of retiring abroad—arguing Vietnam and Southeast Asia offer unmatched value if you fully commit.

Guest Bio

Evan Eh is a YouTuber and long-term expat who has lived abroad for 15+ years across Mexico, Australia, China, and Vietnam. He creates content helping North Americans relocate overseas, with a focus on cost-of-living arbitrage, lifestyle design, and practical logistics of living in Southeast Asia.

Topics Discussed

Anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss argues that expanding repatriation policies and identity-driven academic trends are restricting access to skeletal collections and reshaping anthropology away from empirical science.

Guest bio
Elizabeth Weiss is a physical anthropologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at San José State University. She studies skeletal remains, taught human osteology and forensic anthropology, curated the Ryan Mound collection, and is the author of On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors and Repatriation and Erasing the Past.

Topics discussed

An economist explains why the American Dream isn’t dead—and how policy, not just personal effort, shapes who gets ahead.

👤 Guest Bio 

Dr. Justin Callais is Chief Economist at the Archbridge Institute, co-editor of Profectus, and author of the Substack Debunking Degrowth. His research focuses on economic growth, social mobility, and policy-driven barriers to opportunity.

🧠 Topics Discussed

One-line summary: Chris Consultant joins Jesse to explain why he is leaving Germany, arguing that high taxes, bureaucracy, demographic decline, energy policy failures, and shrinking free speech have made Europe increasingly hostile to productive people.

Guest bio:

Chris Consultant is a banking and finance consultant, entrepreneur, YouTuber, and Substack writer.

He creates content about taxes, economic decline, bureaucracy, demographics, AI, and the reasons behind his decision to leave Germany for Spain, with a longer-term goal of leaving Europe altogether.

Topics discussed:

A philosophy professor/lawyer argues that med-school “holistic” + diversity-weighted admissions are less predictive than a numbers-based algorithm—and that the stakes show up downstream in physician quality, access, and patient outcomes.

Guest bio:

Dr. Steven Kirschner (as stated in your intro) is a distinguished teaching professor of Philosophy at SUNY Fredonia and also an attorney; he authored the 2024 paper “The Diversity Argument for Affirmative Action in Medical School: A Critique” (Journal of Controversial Ideas).

Topics discussed:

Canada’s MAiD program has expanded rapidly—Dr. Ramona Coelho argues the system increasingly serves vulnerable people, with uneven safeguards and serious ethical, legal, and social risks.

Guest bio:

Dr. Ramona Coelho (MDCM, CCFP) is a family physician in London, Ontario, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and co-editor of Unravelling MAiD in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care. She has provided testimony and policy input on MAiD and serves on Ontario’s MAiD Death Review Committee with the Office of the Chief Coroner.

Topics discussed:

A lively tour from Cold War “The Thing” to today’s surveillance capitalism—showing how audio capture, too much data, and automation pressures helped turn listening into AI.

Guest bios:

A former Silicon Valley insider explains how MBA-style “spreadsheet management” is breaking software—and why it’s making tech, AI, and everyday products worse.

Guest bio:

Darryl Campbell is a former tech industry insider who spent 15 years in Silicon Valley at companies including Amazon and Uber and at early-stage startups. He’s the author of Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.

Topics discussed:

MIT Free Speech Alliance president Wayne Stargardt explains how a few high-profile cancellations can drive widespread faculty self-censorship—even at a STEM powerhouse like MIT.

Guest bio:

Wayne Stargardt is the president of the MIT Free Speech Alliance (independent of MIT) and an MIT alumnus (Class of 1974) who focuses on academic freedom, free expression, and open debate at STEM universities.

Topics discussed

In this episode, Jesse talks with Fordham University School of Law corporate-law professor Sean J. Griffith about why “go woke, go broke” hasn’t really played out—and why big, publicly traded firms can stay “woke” even when consumers or politicians claim there’s backlash. The core theme: modern corporate power often runs through managers, compliance systems, and financial intermediaries, not “owners,” and that structure changes what accountability looks like.

They unpack:

Political beliefs often matter more than data or methods in shaping how social scientists think about controversial issues. In this episode, sociologist Dr. Mark Horowitz explains why many professors line up by politics on hot-button questions, drawing on moral psychology, groupthink inside universities, and the idea that some topics become treated as morally untouchable “sacred victims.”

Guest bio:

Dr. Mark Horowitz is a Professor of Sociology at Seton Hall University whose research uses large surveys of faculty to study political bias, motivated reasoning, and viewpoint diversity in the social sciences.

Topics discussed:

Evolutionary psychologist Debra Lieberman explains how “disgust” and other built-in mental programs shape attraction, kinship, morality, and even law—while modern technology and social media scramble the cues those systems evolved to track.

Guest bio:

Dr. Debra Lieberman is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and an evolutionary psychologist who studies how evolved “mental apps” shape social life—kinship, cooperation, morality, sexuality, and emotions. She’s the co-author of Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law.

Topics discussed:

Amanda Litman argues U.S. leadership is too old, local races are dangerously uncontested, and the fastest fix is getting more young people to run—backed by better pay and campaign-finance reform.

Guest bio 

Amanda Litman is the co-founder and president of Run For Something (launched 2017), which supports young people running for local and state office and has helped elect 1,600+ officials in nearly every state.

Topics discussed (in order)

Social media isn’t “crack for your brain” for most people—Jeffrey Hall argues the best evidence shows tiny average effects on wellbeing, lots of measurement mess, and a bigger story about relationships, leisure, and moral panic.

Guest bio (short)

Dr. Jeffrey Hall is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas and Director of the Relationships and Technology Labs, researching social media, communication, and how relationships shape wellbeing.

Topics discussed (in order)

Economic historian Tobias Straumann breaks down how Germany’s debt meltdown in 1931 crashed the global economy—and how a surprisingly generous 1953 debt deal helped spark the German economic miracle by putting growth ahead of punishment.

GUEST BIO: Tobias Straumann (Switzerland) is Professor of Modern & Economic History at the University of Zurich; author of Out of Hitler’s Shadow and 1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

A cognitive psychologist explains why college student IQ now averages about 102, why that shift is mathematically inevitable as enrollment expands, and how outdated testing norms and student-evals can quietly wreck both education and clinical decisions.

GUEST BIO
Dr. Bob Uttl is a cognitive psychologist and professor at Mount Royal University (Canada) who researches psychometrics, assessment, and how intelligence tests are interpreted and misused in real-world settings.

TOPICS DISCUSSED (IN ORDER)

Jeff Davis breaks down why the Highway Trust Fund has been insolvent since 2008 and what fixes (and tradeoffs) are realistic as EVs grow.

GUEST BIO
Jeff Davis is a Senior Fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation and Editor of Eno Transportation Weekly. He has more than 30 years of experience in federal transportation policy, including eight years working in Washington, D.C., advising on the federal budget, the Highway Trust Fund, and long-term infrastructure funding and governance.

TOPICS (IN ORDER)

Harvard’s Shane Greenstein explains why Acquired wins by treating each episode like an audiobook—high-signal, audience-first, and built for durable value.

GUEST BIO: Dr. Shane M. Greenstein is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he teaches technology, operations, and management and writes HBS case studies on modern businesses.

TOPICS DISCUSSED (IN ORDER): 

Tenured sociology professor Mark Horowitz explains why falling preparedness, grade inflation, and perverse incentives are eroding college standards—and why “broke, woke, stroke” helps describe the pattern.

GUEST BIO: Dr. Mark Horowitz is a sociology professor at Seton Hall University and co-author of a survey-based study of tenured faculty perceptions about academic standards, grade inflation, student preparedness, and institutional incentives in higher education.

TOPICS DISCUSSED IN ORDER:

A wide-ranging conversation with economist and AI consultant Dr. Emmanuel Maggiori on why Modern Monetary Theory overpromises a “free lunch,” what really causes inflation, how Bitcoin and AI are misunderstood, and why seductive economic stories are so dangerous.

GUEST BIO:
Emmanuel Maggiori is an armchair economist, computer scientist, and AI consultant based in the UK. Originally from Argentina, he has a PhD (earned in France), works with companies to build AI systems, and writes widely about economics and artificial intelligence. He is the author of several books, including If You Can Just Print Money, Why Do I Pa...

Independent journalist James Corbett joins Jesse to trace how media, tech, and elite power have reshaped the information landscape—from Time’s 2006 “You” to today’s post-truth, AI-saturated world.

GUEST BIO:
James Corbett is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Japan. Since 2007 he’s run The Corbett Report, an open-source intelligence project covering geopolitics, media, finance, and technology through long-form podcasts, videos, and essays.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

Sociologist Dr. Jennie Bristow joins Jesse to dismantle “generation wars” rhetoric—especially Boomer-blaming—and re-center the real story: stalled economies, broken higher ed, housing dysfunction, and a culture that’s leaving young people anxious and unmoored.

Guest bio:
Dr. Jennie Bristow is a professor of sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK and a leading researcher on intergenerational conflict, social policy, and cultural change. She is the author of Stop Mugging Grandma: The Generation Wars and Why Boomer Blaming Won’t Solve Anything and the forthcoming Growing Up in the Culture Wars, which examines how Gen Z is...

Investigative health journalist Julia Belluz breaks down what really drives obesity and chronic disease—metabolism myths, ultra-processed food, bad incentives, and why our entire food environment is quietly rigged against us.

Guest bio: 
Julia Belluz is a Paris-based health and science journalist and co-author of Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us, written with NIH researcher Dr. Kevin Hall. Over more than a decade reporting for outlets like Vox and The New York Times, she’s become one of the sharpest explainers of nutrition science, chronic disease, and the politics of the g...

Tech economist Dr. Jeffrey Funk argues that today’s AI boom is the biggest bubble in history—far larger than dot-com or housing—because colossal infrastructure spending is chasing tiny, unprofitable revenues.

Guest bio:

Jeffrey Funk is a technology economist and author of Unicorns, Hype and Bubbles: A Guide to Spotting, Avoiding and Exploiting Investment Bubbles in Tech. A longtime researcher and professor of innovation and high-tech industries, he now writes widely on startup hype, AI economics, and investment manias, including a popular newsletter and presence on LinkedIn.

Topics discussed:

Steven Ross Pomeroy, Chief Editor of RealClearScience, joins the podcast to discuss NASA’s abandoned nuclear propulsion programs, the future of AI and white-collar work, the rise of “scienceploitation,” and how information overload is reshaping human cognition.

GUEST BIO:
Steven Ross Pomeroy is a science writer and Chief Editor of RealClearScience. He writes frequently for Big Think, covering space exploration, neuroscience, AI, and science communication.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

A wide-ranging conversation with Northeastern’s John Wihbey on how algorithms, laws, and business models shape speech online—and what smarter, lighter regulation could look like.

Guest bio: John Wihbey is a professor of media & technology at Northeastern University and director of the AI Media Strategies Lab. Author of Governing Babel (MIT Press). He has advised foundations, governments, and tech firms (incl. pre-X Twitter) and consulted for the U.S. Navy.

Topics discussed:

Finance professor Spencer Barnes explains research showing postseason officiating systematically favors the Mahomes-era Chiefs—consistent with subconscious, financially driven “regulatory capture,” not explicit rigging.

Guest bio: Dr. Spencer Barnes is a finance professor at UTEP. He co-authored “Under Financial Pressure” with Brandon Mendez (South Carolina) and Ted Dischman, using sports as a transparent lab to study regulatory capture.

Topics discussed (in order):

How human babies, big brains, and social life likely forced Homo sapiens to invent precise speech ~150–200k years ago—and what that means for learning, tech, and today’s kids.

Guest Bio:
Madeleine Beekman is a professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney and author of Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why. She studies social insects, collective decisions, and the evolution of communication.

Topics Discussed:

A candid conversation with psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer on why human judgment outperforms AI, the “stable world” limits of machine intelligence, and how surveillance capitalism reshapes society.

Guest bio: Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer is a German psychologist, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, a leading scholar on decision-making and heuristics, and an intellectual interlocutor of B. F. Skinner and Herbert Simon.

Topics discussed:

How a tech insider who helped build billion-view machines explains the attention economy’s playbook—and how to guard your mind (and data) against it.

Guest bio:
Richard Ryan is a software developer, media executive, and tech entrepreneur with 20+ years in digital. He co-founded Black Rifle Coffee Company and helped take it public (~$1.7B valuation; $396M revenue in 2023). He’s built multiple apps (including a video app released four years before YouTube) with millions of downloads, launched Rated Red to 1M organic subscribers in its first year, and runs a YouTube network—led by FullMag (2.7M subs)—th...

Dr. Luke Kemp, an Existential Risk Researcher at the University of Cambridge shows how today’s plutocracy and tech-fueled surveillance imperil society—and what we can do to build resilience.

Guest bio:
Dr. Luke Kemp is an Existential Risk Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge and author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. His work examines how wealth concentration, surveillance, and arms races erode democracy and heighten global catastrophic risk.

Topics discussed:

A deep dive with historian Dr. Fyodor Tertitskiy on how North Korea’s dynasty survives—through isolation, terror, and nukes—and why collapse or unification is far from inevitable.

Guest bio:
Fyodor Tertitskiy, PhD, is a Russian-born historian of North Korea and a senior research fellow at Kookmin University (Seoul). A naturalized South Korean based in Seoul, he is the author of Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung. He speaks Russian, Korean, and English, has visited North Korea (2014, 2017), and researches using Soviet, North Korean, and Korean-language sources.

Topics discussed:

Dr. Devon Price unpacks “the laziness lie,” how AI and “bullshit jobs” distort work and higher ed, and why centering human needs—not output—leads to saner lives.

Guest bio: Devon Price, PhD, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago, a social psychologist, & writer. Prof Price is the author of Laziness Does Not Exist, Unmasking Autism, and Unlearning Shame, focusing on burnout, neurodiversity, and work culture.

Topics discussed:

Dr. Joseph Crawford unpacks how AI is reshaping higher education - eroding student belonging, redefining assessment in a post-plagiarism era, and raising the stakes for soft skills.

Guest bio
Dr. Joseph “Joey” Crawford is a Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Tasmania and ranks among the top 1% of most-cited researchers globally. His work centers on leadership, student belonging, and the role of AI in higher education, and he serves as Editor-in-Chief of a leading education journal.

Topics discussed

Author Eric Weiner argues that happiness depends less on wealth or location than on relationships, meaning, trust, and realistic expectations—while tech and social media often push the other way.

Guest bio:
Eric Weiner is a bestselling author and former NPR foreign correspondent whose books include The Geography of Bliss, The Geography of Genius, The Socrates Express, and Ben and Me. He writes about place, meaning, creativity, and how to live well.

Topics discussed:

A conversation with Stella Morabito on how the weaponization of loneliness—from Soviet propaganda to modern social media—threatens free speech, family, and community.

👤 Guest Bio

Stella Morabito – Writer and former CIA intelligence analyst specializing in Soviet propaganda and media during the 1980s. She is the author of The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer (2022) and a senior contributor at The Federalist.

📌 Topics Discussed