Abstract art and oppression In his short story “The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim”, Borges describes a protagonist who participates in a...

(04/08/2022) We discuss the many determinants of hierarchy and equality, and many other aspects of social form, in the cross-cultural...

(04/07/2020) In 2050, weary beyond reckoning but not quite dead, Arnold recounts the crises of the 2020s and the revolutionary changes...

(03/31/2022) In this episode, we examine the relationship between psychological variation, social role differentiation, and power,...

(03/23/2022) It's easy enough to use exquisitely rarefied, niche terminology to talk about politics, but do we even have a foundation of...

(03/16/2022) If last episode described how we become trapped in a suicidally destructive feedback loop between biology and technology,...

This is chapter one of my forthcoming book, and corresponds roughly to podcast episodes 25, "The World Is a Lot Like the Internet", and...

(02/24/2022) Why is the world looking more and more like the paranoid delusions of 19th century mental patients? Why do political systems...

(02/21/2022) Arnold's father, George, comes to visit, and tells stories of hanging out with a revolutionary pachuco poet, covering...

(02/10/2022) We continue our mashup of political psychology, the biology of aggression, and left-right brain hemisphere differences, in...

(01/31/2022) In this, the most wild journey we have undertaken thus far, we examine the notion that reality consists of a tension between...

When I first concluded that atmospheric greenhouse gas removals are absolutely necessary, I was preparing to call a railroad signal...

(01/24/2022) As grief and terror about the ecological crisis intensifies, it seems increasingly curious that for many years a radical...

(12/27/2021) Because it couldn't possibly be more clear that existing political systems are committed to behaviors that will cause our...

(12/20/2021) In this episode, we conclude our broad sweep of human history, venturing fearlessly into the truly tangled wilderness of...

(10/30/2021) Just for fun and for absolutely no other reason whatsoever, a very high, very post-surgical Arnold relates a youthful tale...

(10/09/2021) Assuming a continuous legacy of political struggle from the earliest stages of human evolution to conflicts over power...

(08/18/2021) In this episode, we examine not how biology pervades politics, but how politics pervades biology: how the course of...

(08/07/2021) When we speak of revolution, aren't we are ultimately speaking of the creation of a different culture? And if so, how...

(07/30/2021) But seriously: is there any point to doing anything at all? Or is the world truly just going to end so soon we really might...