Struggle to Understand Stephen Clouse

Welcome back. Today’s episode features two returning guests:  Xavier Bonilla and Angel Eduardo. Xavier has a doctorate in psychology and is a professor of psychology in Maryland. Xavier is also the host of a podcast called "Converging Dialogues" which can be found here. Angel is an Advisory Board member and Director of Messaging and Editorial for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). In addition, Angel is a co-host of the FAIR perspectives podcast with Melissa Chen and a columnist at the Center For Inquiry.

This conversation is a marathon - both in length and subject matter. Trying to construct a cohesive summary of the contents would require a laundry list of subjects that would only add to the impressive run-time of this conversation. But a few highlights include a rather lengthy conversation about fandoms - including a rather protracted discussion of Star Wars and its fandom. We also discuss, as we did in prior conversations, topics surrounding identity, representation, and the role of art in constructing meaning and the truth. As the podcast comes to a close, we discuss some elements of identity politics and the pitfalls that may befall those who argue that demography is destiny, particularly among Latino voters in the United States.

It was wonderful having Xavier and Angel back on to give their shared perspectives on salient topics in our seemingly never-ending cultural quagmire. I hope you enjoy our marathon conversation!

Xavier can be found on Twitter @xaverbonilla87.

Angel can be found on Twitter @StrangelEdweird

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Brian Earp. Brian is the Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and The Hastings Center, and a Research Fellow for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and is currently finishing a joint Philosophy and Psychology PhD at Yale University. Given Brian’s wide experience, this conversation traverses a wide range of topics. We first speak about graduate school: its promise, problems, and our experiences with it. We then transition into a discussion about ethics and social science, taking up what’s been called the replicability crisis in social science as well as some of the perennial questions within the subfield of bioethics. The combination of these two elements leads us to a topic that is close to Brian’s heart: circumcision. We speak about male and female circumcision, why the latter is often called female genital mutilation but the former is rarely spoken of at all, as well as some of the myths and bad science that surround this topic. As you will see toward the end of our conversation, we seemingly have just begun to explore some of these topics when the reality of time intervenes in our conversation. Brian was tremendously gracious with his time and I hope to speak with him again soon, picking up from where we left off here.
Find Love and Other Drugs here. Brian's other work can be found here. He can also be found on Twitter here. 
Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here
Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Matt Dinan and Andrew Moore. Matt has a PhD from Baylor University and is an associate professor in the Great Books program at St. Thomas University. Andrew has a PhD from Western University and is an associate professor in the Great Books program also at St. Thomas University. We explore what is a liberal arts education and how it relates to the “great books” of the Western intellectual canon, the purpose of engaging with the great texts produced by human civilization, and ultimately why liberal arts education may be understood as an education in a kind of friendship. Liberal arts education can be defined both broadly and narrowly and this episode highlights how important it is to understand both facets of liberal arts and how, ultimately, the goal is facilitating people to live a more fully human life.

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

Today’s episode is the next in an on-going series I am doing on this podcast on collectibles and community. In this episode of that series, I speak with TMReviews who has a YouTube channel called “TMReviews.” On this channel, TM reviews collectibles and provides discussion and commentary for the community that has developed around those collectibles. Like others who engage in this kind of review and commentary, he deals some with official products but also with unlicensed or third-party products. We discuss how his frugal youth gave him a desire to own certain kinds of collectibles, how he left collecting during his teenage and college years, and why he ultimately returned to collecting. We then discuss why he started his YouTube channel and the problems and promise that have come with it. Finally, we turn to what he considers the most important element in collecting: the community. We speak to how he sees his role within the collecting community, specifically among Transformers collectors, but also how he has gone about cultivating his own community through his YouTube channel. I will repeat here, again, the central argument of this series because it becomes more clear with each subsequent discussion: popular culture and the collectibles that have been developed around them are centerpieces for developing community.

TMReviews can be found here. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

Today’s episode is the next in an ongoing series I am doing on this podcast on collectibles and community. In this episode, I speak with TMan978 who has a YouTube channel called “TMan978.” On this channel, TMan reviews collectibles and provides discussion and commentary for the community that has developed around those collectibles. Like others who engage in this kind of review and commentary, he deals some with official products but also with unlicensed or third-party products. We discuss how he started out collecting as a young man and how that has continued into his adulthood, how he came to being a collectible reviewer, and the importance of collectibles to him and the community he’s developed around them. We end our discussion by discussing YouTube, the challenges that people often face when dealing with certain kinds of comments and with starting their channel, but also the positive aspects of building an online community around shared common interests. Ultimately, as I’ve said before, popular culture and the collectibles that have been developed around them are centerpieces for developing community. This discussion further illustrates that central point.
Find TMan's YouTube channel here.
Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here.
Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

This is an episode in an on-going series on liberal arts education. In this episode, I speak with Jonathan Marks. Jonathan has a PhD from the University of Chicago and is a Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Ursinus College. We explore what is a liberal arts education and how it relates to the “great books” of the Western intellectual canon, the conflicts that have arisen from the “battle of the books” both in the 1990s and Jonathan’s new book “Let’s be Reasonable: A conservative case for liberal education.” Our discussion is a bit broader here than the first episode in this series but this broadness helps illustrate one of the benefits that comes from engaging in this form of pedagogy and participating with this ever-evolving canon of authors and works.

Find Jonathan's book here. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!