Olivia Fane: Why Sex Doesn’t Matter

The Book Club | 12 February 2020 | 0h 29m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Olivia Fane about her book Why Sex Doesn’t Matter. Explains that the idea that sex and love are related is a damaging twentieth-century invention and that if we could just recognise that sex was no more significant than scratching an itch we’d all be wiser and happier. Discusses how she reaches that conclusion — and what, if she’s right, we ought to do about it.

Frank Stephenson: Pushing the Limits of Innovation

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish | 18 February 2020 | 1h 31m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with renowned car designer Frank Stephenson discussing the path to mastery, innovation, and taking creative risks. Also gives a peek into the future of automobiles and what it means for us.

Decriminalising Domestic Violence

Big Ideas | 19 February 2020 | 0h 57m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Leigh Goodmark about her book Decriminalizing Domestic Violence. Argues that the criminal justice system, with its emphasis on incarceration, fails to protect women and doesn’t address the causes of male violence, or coercive and controlling behaviour.

Peter Singer on The Life You Can Save

EconTalk | 17 February 2020 | 1h 06m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Peter Singer about his book The Life You Can Save. Singer argues that those of us in the developed world with a high standard of living can and should give/forgo some luxuries and donate instead to reduce poverty and suffering in poor countries. This is a wide-ranging conversation on the potential we have to make the world a better place and the practical challenges of having an impact.

The Hundred Billion Dollar Scam with Cathryn Jakobson Ramin

The Breaking Muscle Podcast | 14 August 2017 | 1h 03m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Cathryn Jakobson Ramin about her book Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery. Exposes the $100b industry peddling often ineffective and sometimes harmful treatments to those suffering back pain. Describes a variety of therapeutic approaches that are proven to work. The book, and the Vox article that drew my attention to it, were a breakthrough for me after years of constant pain and ineffective quackery.

The Myth of the Tulip Bubble

The Readback | 8 May 2019 | 0h 12m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Anne Goldgar about her book Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. Sets out that much of what we think we know about Tulipmania is wrong, but the real story is just as fascinating.

West Africa before the Europeans

Dan Snow’s History Hit | 16 February 2020 | 0h 26m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Toby Green about his book A Fistful of Shells, which surveys the history of West Africa and West-Central Africa before the slave trade, and the effect the arrival of Europeans had on those societies. Explains how integrated the region was into the global economy, the impact of the slave trade on West Africa itself and how it turned the ruling elites against their populations which they now saw as fodder for slave traders.

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

In Our Time | 13 February 2020 | 0h 51m | Listen Later | iTunes
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Roman military disaster of 9 AD when Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed and destroyed three legions under Varus. The defeat ended Roman expansion east of the Rhine. Victory changed the development of the Germanic peoples, both in the centuries that followed and in the nineteenth century when Arminius, by then known as Herman, became a rallying point for German nationalism.