Art of the Question

Julius Moorman

Conversations about science, technology, philosophy, psychology, self-improvement, media, and culture.

  1. 1h ago

    Why Are People Leaving Big Cities? - Prof. Steven Pedigo - #66

    Steven Pedigo is an urban economic development expert and professor who has advised more than 100 cities, universities and companies on growth and innovation. Raised in a small town in rural East Texas, he studied at the University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Illinois, and spent about 15 years working alongside urbanist Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. He later became the inaugural director of the Urban Lab at NYU's Schack Institute of Real Estate, founded the LBJ Urban Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a founding partner of the advisory firm CivicSol. In this episode he traces how Austin grew from a sleepy college town into one of America's fastest growing cities, and what that growth cost the people who lived there. He also explains why the predicted death of big cities like New York and Los Angeles was overstated, and why Americans have now largely stopped moving. Expect to learn whether people are really leaving big cities like New York and Los Angeles, why second tier cities like Austin and Nashville boomed, why Americans have stopped moving, how AI is shrinking entry level jobs for graduates, how Richard Florida's creative class theory shaped Austin, what rapid growth costs a city's culture and affordability, why residents are pushing back on data centers, whether a city can grow without losing its identity, why Europe lags behind the US on innovation, whether companies are really leaving California for Texas, what European and American cities can learn from each other, and how climate change could reshape where Americans move. Steven Pedigo online: Website: https://iamstevenpedigo.com CivicSol: https://civicsol.com X: @iamstevenpedigo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamstevenpedigo Instagram: @iamstevenpedigo 0:00 Introduction 0:34 How Steven got into urbanism 2:46 Why cities breed acceptance 4:27 Growing up in Amsterdam 7:14 Are people leaving big cities 10:25 Cost of living and clustering 13:06 Amsterdam versus Texas house prices 15:08 Why Americans stopped moving 18:05 AI and the graduate job market 20:05 Why Austin became so popular 22:07 The creative class theory 25:13 How the pandemic accelerated Austin 27:35 Austin's growing pains 29:47 The death of Austin story 31:44 Can cities grow and keep identity 33:39 Why city priorities changed 36:27 Why residents oppose data centers 41:21 Federal investment and the CHIPS Act 44:28 America's university advantage 45:31 Why Europe lags on innovation 47:01 Immigration and American innovation 48:37 Are companies leaving California 52:04 Lessons between European and US cities 54:45 How cities attract and keep talent 57:13 Where city migration goes next 58:29 Climate change and migration 1:00:06 Austin the teenage city 1:01:19 Where to follow Steven

    Why Are People Leaving Big Cities? - Prof. Steven Pedigo - #66

  2. 3d ago

    The Dystopian Rise of Flock Cameras - Prof. Steven Keener - #65

    Steven Keener is an assistant professor of criminology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia and one of the few researchers who has studied Flock license plate reader cameras in depth. He directs CNU's Center for Crime, Equity, and Justice Research and Policy, which he co-founded in 2021, and serves on the board of Justice Forward Virginia, a nonpartisan criminal justice reform organization. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, specializing in criminology and criminal justice policy. When a federal judge forced the release of every publicly funded license plate camera location in Hampton Roads, Keener and his colleagues ran the first full geospatial analysis of how these cameras are deployed. They found that race and poverty, not violent crime, best predict where the cameras go. That research is published as "Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Cameras." Expect to learn what Flock cameras capture beyond your license plate, how pandemic stimulus money helped Flock dominate the market, why the "nothing to hide" argument falls short, how a Dutch court stopped the tax authorities from using highway cameras, whether Flock cameras violate the Fourth Amendment, why state guardrail laws keep failing, how federal agencies get side door access to local camera data, how police officers have used the cameras to stalk people, why the cameras cluster in Black and low income neighborhoods, whether the cameras reduce crime, and how one Virginia town got rid of them. Steven Keener online: Email: steven.keener@cnu.edu CNU profile: https://cnu.edu/faculty/stevenkeener.html Research: Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Cameras 0:00 Introduction 0:41 What Flock cameras are 1:53 License plate readers before Flock 4:03 How Flock won over police 5:25 How the cameras work 7:35 What the cameras capture 9:17 Tracking pedestrians and drones 10:02 The nothing to hide argument 11:53 Wrongly accused by cameras 15:06 A Dutch highway camera case 19:25 Are Flock cameras legal 22:10 The Schmidt v Norfolk lawsuit 25:02 A rare bipartisan issue 26:29 Virginia's guardrails law 30:08 Police hot lists 32:45 Penalties for misuse 33:36 Searches logged as 123 36:49 Stalking and audit logs 38:57 Mapping where the cameras are 40:09 Judge forces locations public 43:33 Race and poverty findings 45:02 The legacy of redlining 47:00 Testing the crime explanation 49:27 Predictive policing and tech washing 51:59 How placement was decided 53:38 Do the cameras reduce crime 57:43 Is a safe version possible 1:02:29 Where surveillance is heading 1:06:01 How Harrisonburg removed Flock 1:07:42 Data centers and surveillance 1:09:32 Bluetooth scanners and tsunami cameras 1:11:55 Steven's next research 1:12:58 Where to follow Steven

    The Dystopian Rise of Flock Cameras - Prof. Steven Keener - #65

  3. Oct 13

    Why Do People Cheat on Someone They Love? - Prof. Dylan Selterman - #64

    Dylan Selterman is a social-personality psychologist and Director of Research and Resource Development at Heterodox Academy, where he also leads the Mike and Sofia Segal Center for Academic Pluralism. He teaches psychology as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, after four years there as an Associate Teaching Professor and more than ten years as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland. His research covers attraction, relationships and sexuality, moral psychology and dreaming, and he has published in journals including Social Psychological and Personality Science and Archives of Sexual Behavior. His studies on infidelity, including a survey of Ashley Madison users who reported low regret alongside high love for their spouses, challenge the long-held idea that people only cheat when their relationship is failing. He writes the Substack column Sharing A Brain and the Psychology Today column The Resistance Hypothesis. Expect to learn how researchers define cheating, whether infidelity can happen in an open relationship, what eight motives drive people to cheat, why most cheating has little to do with an unhappy relationship, how those motives predict whether couples break up or stay together, how long affairs typically last, how men and women differ in why they cheat, what a study of Ashley Madison users revealed about love and regret, why we condemn cheaters even when no one is harmed, whether humans are biologically built for monogamy, why being cheated on hurts so much, and why expecting one partner to meet every emotional need can backfire. Dylan Selterman online: Website: dylanselterman.com Substack: sharingabrain.substack.com Instagram: @seltermosby X: @SelterMosby Psychology Today column: The Resistance Hypothesis, psychologytoday.com 0:00 Defining cheating 2:38 Cheating in open relationships 3:21 Eight motives for cheating 8:00 Mismatched sex drives 11:17 Alcohol and mixed motives 13:49 What happens after an affair 17:31 Why cheaters hide affairs 20:06 How long affairs last 23:56 Why men and women cheat 26:55 The Ashley Madison study 31:18 Sexless marriages and low regret 35:52 Surprising null findings 39:22 Why we judge cheaters 42:53 Loyalty, purity and morality 46:37 Are humans meant to be monogamous 52:52 Paternity, evolution and STIs 57:27 Why being cheated on hurts 59:20 Talking about monogamy early 1:02:55 What hurts men and women most 1:03:54 Lessons from Temptation Island 1:05:29 The case against emotional exclusivity 1:10:00 Dylan's current research

    Why Do People Cheat on Someone They Love? - Prof. Dylan Selterman - #64

  4. Oct 12

    The Science of Dark Humor - Dr. Sonja Heintz - #63

    Sonja Heintz is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, where she studies the psychology of humour and positive psychology. She earned her PhD at the University of Zurich under Willibald Ruch, one of the leading figures in humour research, and has spent around fifteen years studying what makes people laugh and how humour styles differ from person to person. Her work builds a framework of distinct comic styles, expanding the field's long-standing handful of categories into a far more detailed model that now distinguishes twenty-three. One of her studies looked at whether people who enjoy dark humour score higher on so-called dark personality traits, and found everyday sadism to be the strongest predictor. She has also worked with emergency responders, cancer patients, clinic clowns and hospice patients to understand how dark humour helps people cope with adversity. Expect to learn how humour researchers define humour and why the field settled on such a broad definition, what positive psychology is and how humour fits into it, how the comic styles framework maps the different kinds of funny, whether animals have a sense of humour, why humour may have evolved as a mating signal, how dark humour works as a coping mechanism for illness and grief, what Sonja's study found about dark humour and the dark tetrad of personality traits, why sadism predicts dark humour enjoyment more than narcissism does, why a joke is only funny when no one is actually hurt, why men engage in mockery-based humour more than women, how anonymity online changes what people find acceptable to joke about, whether humour can be trained to make you happier, and why some people seem born without a sense of humour at all. Sonja Heintz online: Website: plymouth.ac.uk/staff/sonja-heintz Research: Do Dark Humour Users Have Dark Tendencies, in Behavioral Sciences 2024 0:00 Introduction 3:15 What positive psychology is 5:10 The comic styles framework 12:53 Defining humour and why we have it 18:33 Humour as a defense mechanism 22:10 Inside a dark humour study 25:43 Do you have to be a psychopath 32:38 Why men like dark humour more 37:02 Being the target of a dark joke 44:38 Dark humour in emergency services 46:56 The history of humour 52:46 Can humour make you happier 55:21 People born without humour 58:28 What Sonja is working on next 1:04:33 Where to find Sonja's work

    The Science of Dark Humor - Dr. Sonja Heintz - #63

  5. Oct 9

    The Controversial History of The Nobel Prize - Prof. Robert Marc Friedman - #62

    Robert Marc Friedman is a historian of science and playwright, professor emeritus at the University of Oslo, and one of the first scholars to work in the secret Nobel Prize archives. Born in the United States and now a Norwegian citizen, he studied physics, meteorology and theater at New York University, earned his PhD in the history of science at Johns Hopkins, and taught at the University of California, San Diego before moving to Oslo. When the Nobel Foundation opened its files to researchers, he dug into the committee reports, private letters and diaries behind the physics and chemistry prizes, and published his findings in Nature in 1981, which caused a stir in Stockholm. In this episode he explains how a handful of Swedish professors shaped who became a scientific legend, from Einstein's missing prize for relativity to the scandal of Lise Meitner. His book The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science (2001) remains the most detailed study of those archives, and he has turned the same material into stage plays, including Remembering Miss Meitner. Expect to learn what the official Nobel reports leave out, why one committee member wrote burn the letter at the end of his notes, what Alfred Nobel actually wanted his prize to do, how the early prizes became an Olympics of science and national pride, why astrophysics and meteorology were pushed out of physics, how Allvar Gullstrand tried to block Einstein, how Einstein finally got his prize for the law of the photoelectric effect, why Lise Meitner was denied a prize for nuclear fission, what power and nuclear politics had to do with it, whether the same biases still shape the prize today, and whether the obsession with Nobel Prizes is bad for science. Robert Marc Friedman online: Paper: The 100th Anniversary of Einstein's Nobel Prize, Facts and Fiction (Annalen der Physik, 2022), open access at https://duo.uio.no/handle/10852/99569 Book: The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science (2001), a new Chinese edition is due in December Play: Remembering Miss Meitner, available in Spanish, Catalan and Italian editions 0:00 Introduction 1:11 Who is Robert Marc Friedman 3:41 Reading the secret Nobel reports 4:55 Burn the letter 6:54 Alfred Nobel and the merchant myth 10:51 What Nobel wanted from his prize 12:39 An Olympics of science 16:42 Opening the Nobel archives 19:40 The Nature article 20:57 Why the committees decide everything 23:09 What counts as physics 26:18 Einstein must never win 30:24 How Einstein finally got his prize 37:37 Who was Allvar Gullstrand 41:38 Scientists rewriting Nobel history 47:30 No objective way to pick winners 50:16 The Sakata letter 52:26 Why the prize seems infallible 53:50 Nobel Prizes and national pride 58:51 Is the prize still biased today 1:08:12 Why his research stops in 1950 1:10:57 The overlooked parity experiment 1:13:08 Lise Meitner and nuclear fission 1:25:26 Who controlled Swedish nuclear science 1:31:37 Is the Nobel bad for science 1:36:40 The Nobel Prize and the Oscars 1:40:41 Great science the prize leaves out 1:44:48 His book and new projects 1:50:24 A new play about Einstein 1:53:28 Losing the Nobel Prize

    The Controversial History of The Nobel Prize - Prof. Robert Marc Friedman - #62

  6. Oct 6

    The Philosophy of Free Will - Prof. Taylor Cyr - #61

    Taylor W. Cyr is a philosophy professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, specializing in free will, moral responsibility, and the metaphysics of time. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Riverside, where he was supervised by John Martin Fisher, and holds undergraduate degrees in philosophy and religion from Florida State. He co-produces The Free Will Show, a podcast of interviews with academics working on free will that he runs with Matthew Flummer, and has recorded more than a hundred episodes on the topic. His own position is semi-compatibilism, the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism even if determinism rules out the freedom to do otherwise. He has just finished a short book on time travel for the Cambridge Elements series, the final quarter of which connects the grandfather paradox to long-running debates about free will. Expect to learn what philosophers actually mean by free will, why moral responsibility rather than physics is the real heart of the debate, whether it makes sense to thank an AI that has no free will, why medieval Europeans put a pig on trial for murder, what determinism is and whether quantum physics has settled it, how compatibilism and incompatibilism divide the field, what a Frankfurt case is and how a brain chip shows you can be responsible without being able to do otherwise, why some people feel far more agency over their lives than others, how moral luck should make us more humble about praise and blame, whether subconscious decisions can still be free, and how the grandfather paradox turns time travel into a question about free will. Taylor Cyr online: Website: taylorwcyr.com Podcast: The Free Will Show Papers: available on academia.edu and PhilPapers 0:00 Introduction 4:44 Defining free will 7:03 Free will in daily life 11:46 Thanking AI and animal trials 17:52 What determinism is 23:51 Compatibilism versus determinism 28:48 Frankfurt cases and semi-compatibilism 36:07 Does agency differ between people 46:24 Subconscious decision making 50:01 What changed over a hundred episodes 52:41 Teaching free will in the classroom 56:59 Time travel and the grandfather paradox 1:01:14 Where to find Taylor's work

    The Philosophy of Free Will - Prof. Taylor Cyr - #61

  7. Oct 3

    How Did a Plumber Help Save Flydubai Flight 1073? - Prof. Shawn Pruchnicki - #60

    Shawn Pruchnicki is an associate professor in the Department of Aviation and Integrated Systems Engineering at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, who testified before the US Senate on Boeing's safety culture in 2024. His specialty is cognitive engineering, automation design and advanced flight deck design, and he also researches disasters outside aviation. Before academia he flew as an airline pilot, and he still works as an accident investigator through his consulting company. In this emergency episode, recorded days after Flydubai Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv went into a violent nosedive following an attack in the cockpit, he walks through the public flight data, the cabin footage and the claims circulating online. Together they look at how the Boeing 737 MAX 8 held together and landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and what can and cannot be known until the investigation reports. Expect to learn how a passenger's pull on the yoke could have broken the plane apart, why off-duty pilots were on board, how accurate public flight tracking data is during extreme moments, whether airplanes disintegrate in a nosedive, why the rudder tore off and why jets can land without one, what G-forces the passengers likely felt, why the oxygen masks did not drop, why a dive does not wreck a cabin the way severe turbulence does, what the black entertainment screens do and do not mean, how crews choose an emergency airport, who gets to investigate the incident and whether the flight data will ever be made public. Shawn Pruchnicki online: Website: hfie.org (Human Factors Investigation and Education) Senate testimony: Examining Boeing's Broken Safety Culture: Firsthand Accounts, April 17, 2024 0:00 Introduction 1:59 First reaction to the news 4:07 Why this case is so rare 7:08 How the cockpit door opens 11:02 The plumber who leveled the plane 13:22 Why off-duty pilots were aboard 15:56 Could anyone land a plane 19:53 The Flightradar24 data 24:26 Limits of ADS-B data 29:28 A go-around at JFK 33:43 What extreme forces do to aircraft 35:15 The CNN pilot clip 38:56 Do planes disintegrate 41:08 Rudder flutter explained 44:03 G-forces on the passengers 49:40 Footage from inside the cabin 52:34 Fake videos online 53:29 Why the oxygen masks stayed up 56:07 Overhead bins versus turbulence 1:01:55 The black entertainment screens 1:05:02 Choosing an emergency airport 1:07:11 Both engines kept running 1:09:08 Will the data be public 1:13:20 Who leads the investigation 1:14:45 Open questions for investigators 1:16:33 Trauma for those on board 1:19:00 Where to find Shawn

    How Did a Plumber Help Save Flydubai Flight 1073? - Prof. Shawn Pruchnicki - #60

  8. Oct 1

    The Explosive Rise of Peptides - Dr. Matthew Dunn - #59

    Matthew Dunn is an associate professor at Deakin University in Australia and one of the world's leading researchers on performance and image enhancing drugs. He has spent almost two decades studying why people use substances to change their bodies and performance, how illicit drug markets set price, purity and availability, and how the social determinants of health shape all of it. He came up through the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales before joining Deakin in 2011, and he now co-edits the journal Performance Enhancement and Health. In this conversation he explains how peptides went from a niche corner of bodybuilding to a mainstream phenomenon, riding the wave of Ozempic and a collapse in public trust of medical authority. He is candid about the real dangers of buying unregulated vials online, where you may have no idea whether you are injecting the drug, nothing at all, or lead. Expect to learn what peptides actually are and why the word now covers everything from anti-aging injectables to Ozempic, how these drugs rose to fame so quickly, why the stigma around weight-loss drugs vanished while the taboo on steroids remained, what food noise is and why switching it off changes people's lives, why insulin is the one substance even hardcore bodybuilders refuse to touch, why trust in medical authority collapsed and what psychedelics and steroids have to do with it, why people are no longer willing to wait a decade for a clinical trial, what is really inside a vial bought off Instagram or from someone at a gym, how the flow of peptides from China shapes the market, whether doctors should be less of a gatekeeper, and where this whole boom is heading next. Matthew Dunn online: Deakin University profile: https://experts.deakin.edu.au/2166-Matthew-Dunn LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/matthew-dunn-0aa41650 Journal: co-Editor in Chief of Performance Enhancement and Health Timestamps 0:00 Intro 3:52 What peptides actually are 10:08 Where peptides came from 11:38 How they went mainstream 17:55 Ozempic and losing the stigma 24:22 Who is using them now 30:31 Why trust in medicine collapsed 38:04 The dangers of unregulated use 48:59 Real-world evidence versus trials 53:52 What is actually in the vial 57:00 Chinese peptides and supply 1:03:47 Where this is all heading

    The Explosive Rise of Peptides - Dr. Matthew Dunn - #59
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About

Conversations about science, technology, philosophy, psychology, self-improvement, media, and culture.

Information

  • Creator
    Julius Moorman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    66
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Julius Moorman
  • Show Website
    Art of the Question