Half Hour of Heterodoxy

Nicholas Christakis is a physician and sociologist at Yale University, and Director of the Human Nature Lab at the Yale Institute for Network Science. His previous books included Connected, about how social networks affect our health and our lives, and Death Foretold, about the sociology of prognosis. We discuss his new book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society in which he writes about how evolutionary pressures gave human beings a set of social skills and desires that we can capitalize on to build a better society. We also talk about Human Universals by Donald Brown. A related newer book is Our Common Denominator: Human Universals Revisited by Christoph Antweiler. "Let’s Shake Up the Social Sciences,"an essay by Nick, may be of interest to social scientists. Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: Go to the show’s iTunes page and click “View in iTunes”* Click “Ratings and Reviews” which is to the right of “Details”*

My guest today is Angie Maxwell (@AngieMaxwell1). She received her PhD. In American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently associate professor of Southern Studies at the University of Arkansas. She also chairs the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics, which administers national polls of political attitudes that oversample residents of the Southern U.S. Her new book The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics, which is grounded in data from these polls, comes out on June 28, 2019. The book is coauthored by Todd Shields. Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: Go to the show’s iTunes page and click “View in iTunes”* Click “Ratings and Reviews” which is to the right of “Details”* Next to “Click to Rate” select the stars. See the full list of episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy >>

Professors and politicians warn that we face a crisis of civility today. But is civility really a virtue, and how much civility do we really need? Those questions are addressed by my guest today is Teresa Bejan, in her book Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, published in 2017. Teresa is an associate professor of political theory at the University of Oxford. Mere Civility critiques early modern debates about civility and how much disagreement we should tolerate, analyzing the views of two well-known thinkers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as well as Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island. She encourages us to follow Roger Williams in allowing all kinds of disagreement, including expressions of contempt, but to avoid physical violence. Transcript Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: Go to the show’s iTunes page and click “View in iTunes”* Click “Ratings and Reviews” which is to the right of “Details”*

Deb Mashek and Karen Gillo talk about the Heterodox Academy 2019 Conference, scheduled for June 20 and June 21 in New York City. The conference includes an awards dinner on June 20. Deb Mashek is executive director and Karen Gillo is communications director of Heterodox Academy. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: Go to the show’s iTunes page and click “View in iTunes”* Click “Ratings and Reviews” which is to the right of “Details”* Next to “Click to Rate” select the stars. See the full list of episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy >>

Maria Dixon Hall manages the Campus Cultural Intelligence program at Southern Methodist University. She has a background in multiple disciplines, having earned a masters of divinity, a masters of theology, and a PhD in Organizational Communication and Religion. Her work in cultural intelligence differs from the typical diversity training that’s done on college campuses, and as you’ll hear, it has received both positive and negative media coverage. Maria will be a panelist at the 2019 Heterodox Academy conference in New York City on June 20 and 21. Registration for the conference is open now -- register here! Related Links A New Model to Move Beyond Diversity by Maria Dixon Hall, Tulsa World Hard Questions, Honest Answers by Maria Dixon Hall, Chronicle of Higher Education Cultural Intelligence, a talk by Maria Dixon Hall at The United Methodist Church Texas Annual Conference Follow Maria her on Twitter Transcript Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on

This is a re-release of an episode from The Annex, a sociology podcast created by Joseph Cohen (CUNY Queens College), Leslie Hinkson (Georgetown), and Gabriel Rossman (UCLA). You can follow the Annex on Twitter and find previous episodes at www.theannexpodcast.com. The episode is an interview with Arthur Sakamoto from Texas A&M about explanations of Asian-Americans’ high educational achievement, and attributing this achievement to Asian culture, with special guest host Chris C. Martin. It was recorded on April 16, 2019. Discussants Arthur Sakamoto is a sociologist at Texas A&M. He wrote “Socioeconomic Attainment of Asian Americans” in the Annual Review of Sociology. Chris C. Martin is a sociologist at Georgia Tech who specializes in culture, mental health, and wellbeing. He hosts the Heterodox Academy‘s podcast Half Hour of Heterodoxy. Twitter: @ChrisMartin76. Joseph Nathan Cohen co-hosts The Annex and directs the Sociocast Project. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the City University of

Christopher Federico is a political psychologist with joint appointments in psychology and political science at the University of Minnesota. We talk about a new paper in which he and Ari Malka argue that people do not simply become liberal or conservative based on the strength of their psychological needs for security and certainty. Factors like political engagement, national history, and the influence of political journalists, writers, and academics play a role as well. Related Links "The contingent, contextual nature of the relationship between needs for security and certainty and political preferences: Evidence and implications" by Christopher Federico and Ari Malka, Political Psychology(Vol. 39, S1, pp. 3-48). Chris Federico on Twitter The more education Republicans have, the less they tend to believe in climate change by Kevin Quealy, New York Times A Wider Ideological Gap Between More and Less Educated Adults, Pew Research Center Transcript This is a transcript of the episode. Rating the Show

How political scientists have wrongly conflated racial identity and prejudice

Arthur Brooks’ book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt was published this month. This episode features him in conversation with Deb Mashek, executive director of Heterodox Academy, and the two co-hosts of How Do We Fix it?, Richard Davies and Jim Meigs. Arthur is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and former professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University. Before his academic career, he spent 12 years as a French hornist with the City Orchestra of Barcelona and other ensembles. Additional Links "Our Culture of Contempt." Arthur Brooks, New York Times, 2 March 2019. "No Hate Left Behind." Thomas Edsall, New York Times, 13 March 2019. "A Conservative's Plea: Let's Work Together." Arthur Brooks, TED Talk, February 2016. Transcript This is a transcript of the episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: * Go to the show's iTunes page and click “View in iTunes” * Click “R

Thanks for supporting the podcast. We're now at episode 50! In this episode, clinical psychologist Kathryn Gordon talks about whether prejudiced political expression can cause trauma in listeners. Katie worked as a professor in the psychology department at North Dakota State University (NDSU) for ten years. We also talk about Katie's podcast Jedi Counsel, which is co-hosted by Brandon Saxton. Jedi Counsel discusses psychological science through fictional characters, current events, and interviews. Related Links Blog post by Katie on college mental health Jedi Counsel episode about college mental health Studies Mentioned During the Episode: * Area racism and birth outcomes among Blacks in the United States * Testing the Association Between Traditional and Novel Indicators of County-Level Structural Racism and Birth Outcomes among Black and White Women * Perceived racism and mental health among Black American adults: a meta-analytic review. * Racism as a Determinant of Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analy

Are we facing a free speech crisis in higher education today? According to today’s guest, Jeffrey A. Sachs, lecturer in politics at Acadia University, the answer is mostly no. Jeff has published pieces about free speech and political bias on campus on the Heterodox Academy blog, the Niskanen Center blog, and the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog. He is on Twitter at @JeffreyASachs. Articles by Jeffrey Sachs Community and Campus: The Relationship between Viewpoint Diversity and Community Partisanship, Heterodox Academy. The "Campus Free Speech Crisis" Ended Last Year, Niskanen Center. The 'campus free speech crisis' is a myth. Here are the facts. Jeffrey Sachs, Washington Post. There Is No Campus Free Speech Crisis: A Close Look at the Evidence, Niskanen Center. Transcript Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: * Go to the show's iTunes page and click “View in iTunes” * Click “Ratings and Reviews” which is to the right of "Detai

I’m joined today by Julian Zelizer, historian at Princeton University and CNN Political Analyst. He has been among the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He has written over 900 op-eds, including his popular weekly column for CNN.com. He is also a regular contributor to The Atlantic. This year, he is the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York Historical Society where he is writing a book about Abraham Joshua Heschel. He’s the coauthor with Kevin Kruse of Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, which was published in January 2019. Kevin appeared on an earlier Half Hour of Heterodoxy episode. This book is based on the class that Julian teaches at Princeton (syllabus here). He is also the author and editor of 17 other books including The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (2015), the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the Best Book on Congress. In March 2020, Norton will publish his history of the downfall of Speaker o

Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) was founded by Eboo Patel, and its mission is to create a system of people and campuses where interfaith cooperation is the norm. The organization continues the tradition of modern interfaith work which started in 1893 with the Parliament of World’s Religions. However, IFYC is less focused on theoretical dialogue and more focused on action. They provide free educator resources on their website, organize training conferences, and provide grant funding for scholars to create or revise undergraduate courses that integrate interfaith themes. Noah Silverman is their senior director of learning and partnerships and Katie Baxter is their Vice President of Program Strategy. * The Chronicle of Higher Education's profile of Eboo Patel, IFYC's founder and president * Faith Is the Diversity Issue Ignored by Colleges. Here's Why That  Needs to Change by Eboo Patel, Chronicle of Higher Education * The first chapter of Eboo’s most recent book, Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the Amer

Deb Mashek and Musa al-Gharbi are the executive director and communications director of Heterodox Academy. They reflect on the organization’s activities in 2018 and present several new initiatives scheduled for 2019, including HxA Disciplines, member networking, and nationally representative data collection. 0:00 Rapid fire summary of 2018 8:30 Ideological diversity is connected to ethnic and religious diversity 12:22 Focusing on certain disciplines and public awareness 16:00 Revamping our Guide to Colleges 17:50 Nationally representative data on freedom of expression 21:10 Musa stepping away from communications position 22:35 Three key ideas Links More on HxA's history and current initiatives available here. More on the problem(s) HxA is trying to address here. Videos of the 2018 HxA Conference available here. Open Mind Platform Transcript Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: * Go to the show's iTunes page and click “View in iTunes” * Click

Xander Snyder and Erik Fogg host the ReConsider Podcast—their motto is "We don't do the thinking for you." You can visit reconsidermedia.com to learn more about their podcast, which covers politics, history, and society. This episode is longer than the typical episode because of it's a simulcast across two podcasts. 0:00 Introduction to Erik, Xander, and the Reconsider podcast 5:00 How do you "not do the thinking" for your listener? 17:20 Socratic dialogue as a technique 20:30 The difference between psychological facts and historical facts 32:00 Goals of Heterodox Academy 37:20 How to become more informed about history and propaganda 40:10 Common problems in learning Links Andrew Guess, Brendan Nyhan, & Jason Reifler -- Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the Consumption of Fake News Matt Grossman and David Hopkins – Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer on the RINO label Jarret Crawford’s research on as

In 2016, Jonathan Haidt gave a talk at a number of American universities in which he made the provocative argument that universities must choose either truth or social justice as their primary motive for operating. He argued that universities used to be centered around truth, and that going forward some universities could continue to do that, whereas others could be frank about declaring social justice to be their primary motive. He did not argue that students couldn’t pursue social justice at a university but simply that the university itself had to choose one primary goal. Today I’m talking to Chad Wellmon, an expert on the history of universities, about whether universities truly were motivated by the pursuit of truth or whether history is in fact more complicated. I’ve known Chad since 1995 when he and I were freshmen at Davidson College and in the same humanities class. Chad is now an associate professor of German Studies at the University of Virginia. His interests include European intellectual history,

Kevin M. Kruse, historian at Princeton University is my guest on this episode. He’s the author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, published in 2005, and One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, published in 2015. He and his colleague at Princeton, Julian Zelizer, have a new book coming out January 9th titled Fault Lines: A History of the U.S. Since 1974. It evolved from a course taught by Kruse and Zelizer at Princeton. We talk about Fault Lines in today’s episode. 0:00 What intrigues students about this period 9:00 Network, Nashville, Wall Street, Wargames 15:20 Revisiting White Flight 20:00 Abortion politics and evangelicals 28:20 Books by Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann; and E. J. Dionne 35:30 Scorched earth politics, Obama's naive hope of bipartisanship 42:00 Preparing students for misinformation 45:00 Kevin recommends books on racism in America 51:30 Kevin's next book Links Fault Lines: A History of the U.S. Since 1974 by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen is host of The Savvy Psychologist, which was picked as a Best New Podcast of 2014 on iTunes. Her work is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution. Her book, How to be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety was published in 2018. She's a clinical psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). Links The Savvy Psychologist Podcast How to Deal With Sarcastic People (Savvy Psychologist episode) How to Talk to (And Even Live With) Your Political Opposite (Savvy Psychologist episode) How to (Try to) Not Take Things Personally by Ellen Hendriksen Everett Worthington's Forgiveness Workbook Transcript Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: * Go to the show's 

My guests on today’s episode are Craig Frisby and Joshua D. Phillips. Craig Frisby is co-editor, with William O’Donohue, of a new book, Cultural Competence in Applied Psychology: An Evaluation of Current Status and Future Directions.  The book takes a critical look at what professionals in the fields of clinical psychology, counseling psychology, school psychology refer to as cultural competence, also referred to as cultural sensitivity or multicultural competence. Josh Phillips is the author of a chapter in the book titled The Culture of Poverty: On Individual Choices and Infantilizing Bureaucracies. Sean Stevens, our research director, has a chapter in the book titled Cultural Competence: A Form of Stereotype Rationality. The chapter is coauthored with Lee Jussim (Rutgers), Lillian Stevens (NYU), and Stephanie Anglin (Carnegie Mellon). Craig Frisby is a professor in the college of education at the University of Missouri, and author of Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students. Josh Phillips's

When you make moral judgments, what is happening at the psychological level? According to one theory, you’re applying a template of two roles: an intentional wrongdoer and a sensitive and vulnerable victim. The more closely that template fits a situation, the more likely you are to deem the situation immoral. Research by today’s guest, Tania Reynolds, shows how these moral evaluations intersect with gender, and it reveals that people more easily stereotype men as powerful wrongdoers, and women as sensitive victims. Tania is a social psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Kinsey Institute. She’s joining us from Bloomington, Indiana. Timeline 1:26 Kurt Gray’s Moral Theory 7:00 Stereotypes: men as agents, women as patients 8:46 Victims are presumed female 12:01 A study with non-Americans 17:00 Implications for policies like affirmative action 27:30 Do men assume the status quo is normal? 31:22 The double-edged sword for men Links * Tania Reynolds’s Google Scholar page * Kurt Gray, Liane Young, & Adam Wa