A Song Called Life

In Episode #228, Dr. Adam Ratner joins Osi to talk about vaccine hesitancy—especially around measles—and how it connects to the recent rise in measles cases in Texas. They dig into the history of measles and how it was once eliminated in the US, why some parents today are choosing not to vaccinate their kids, and the deeper mistrust many Americans feel toward the healthcare system.

Adam Ratner is a pediatric infectious diseases physician based in New York City and the author of Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health. With extensive experience caring for patients during both the 2018-2019 measles outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic, he has developed a deep focus on vaccine-preventable diseases that affect children and their families. Dr. Ratner currently serves as an associate editor for Clinical Infectious Diseases and is an editor for the textbook Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.

In Episode #227, author Mike Pepi joins Osi to talk about the idea that technology is neutral—and why that’s a myth. They dig into the cycle of creating new technologies to solve problems caused by earlier ones, the hidden beliefs built into the platforms we use every day, and how those platforms shape the way we think, act, and connect with others.

Mike Pepi writes about art, culture, and technology. His work has appeared in frieze, e-flux, Flash Art, Art in America, DIS Magazine, The Straddler, The New Inquiry, Artforum, The Art Newspaper, this is tomorrow, 艺术界 LEAP, the Apollo Magazine blog, Spike Art, The Brooklyn Rail, Rhizome, and The New Criterion.

He organized Cloud-Based Institutional Critique (CBIC), a reading group focused on emerging digital technologies and their relationship to cultural institutions. In 2015, he guest-edited the Data Issue of DIS Magazine with Marvin Jordan. In 2018, he guest-edited a special issue of Heavy Machinery for SFMoMA's Open Space.

In Episode #226, podcaster and comedian Eddie McGee joins Osi for a wide-ranging conversation covering AI and the potential necessity of Universal Basic Income as millions of jobs face disruption, the recent DEI purge aimed at erasing Black history, the rising cost of living, and more.

Comedian and trucker Eddie McGee cohosts A Trucker's Mind Podcast, a show exploring current events and general topics about life, alongside cohost Keith Fings.

In Episode #225, humanist and Tech Agnostic author Greg Epstein joins Osi to talk about how we can stay thoughtful and ask the right questions in a world that’s being rapidly shaped by technology. They discuss what it means to think for ourselves instead of blindly trusting every new innovation—asking who really benefits from our faith in tech, how we can hold the industry responsible for its impact, and how we can stay connected to what makes us human in the middle of all this change.

Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist chaplain at both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and currently serves as president of the Harvard Chaplains Organization. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Good Without God, a landmark book that helped bring mainstream attention to the idea that secular individuals can lead lives of deep purpose, compassion, and community. His latest work, Tech Agnostic, builds on that foundation—exploring the intersection of technology, ethics, and humanism in an increasingly digital world. Greg’s writing on humanism, technology, politics, and ethics has appeared in The Boston Globe, CNN.com, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Salon, Critical Inquiry, and The Humanist.

In Episode #224, writer Adam Chandler joins Osi to dive into some of the most debated questions in American life: Is the belief that "hard work leads to success" a myth? Is success something we earn—or something we’re given? Drawing from his book 99% Perspiration, Adam takes a compelling look at how America’s obsession with hard work is unraveling in the face of growing inequality and economic strain. Together, he and Osi explore what happens when effort isn’t enough, how the myth of meritocracy took hold, why it still shapes our culture, and what it’s ultimately costing us.

Link to purchase 99% Perspiration: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/723824/99-perspiration-by-adam-chandler/

Adam Chandler is a journalist and author based in New York. A former staff writer at The Atlantic, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, WIRED, Vox, Bloomberg Businessweek, New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, Esquire, TIME, and elsewhere. Chandler is the author of Drive-Thru Dreams, which was named an NPR Favorite Book of the Year, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, and a Smithsonian Best Food Book of the Year. His second book, 99% Perspiration, explores the culture of work in American life is now available from Pantheon Books (Penguin/RandomHouse).

In Episode #223, author and Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Colias joins Osi to break down the huge changes happening in the car industry as it shifts from gas-powered engines to electric vehicles (EVs). The question isn’t whether EVs are coming—they’re already here. But how this transition plays out is the real story. They discuss the intense competition among car companies as they race to keep up with Tesla and fast-growing Chinese EV makers like BYD, along with the implications of a world where the U.S. and the rest of the world become reliant on China for the essential materials needed to build EVs.

Link to purchase Inevitable: Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles - https://www.amazon.com/Inevitable-Unstoppable-Transition-Electric-Vehicles/dp/1647825385

Mike Colias is a Wall Street Journal reporter and veteran of the US automotive beat. He is based in Detroit, where he has covered General Motors for fourteen years and, five years ago, added Ford to his duties. His agenda-setting coverage includes scoops on multibillion-dollar EV factory investments, executive hirings and firings, and closely guarded decisions to add or cut vehicle lines. With access to all the key players in the automotive industry, he has tracked the transition to electric vehicles from its earliest days, relying on hundreds of sources across the automotive sector. Colias has been a business journalist for more than twenty years.

In Episode #222, author and professor James Boyle joins Osi to discuss how AI’s growing ability to imitate human intelligence challenges our understanding of what it means to be a "person," pushing us to rethink the legal and moral lines that separate humans and intelligent machines.

Free link to The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=faculty_books

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. He joined the faculty in July 2000. He has also taught at American University, Yale, Harvard, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is the author of The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, and Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society and the editor of Critical Legal Studies (Dartmouth/NYU Press), Collected Papers on the Public Domain, and the co-editor of Cultural Environmentalism @ 10 (with Larry Lessig). He has also published two graphic novels: Bound By Law, on fair use and the permissions culture in intellectual property, and Theft: A History of Music, a 2000 year long history of musical borrowing from Plato to rap, and an open access casebook on Intellectual Property (all with Jennifer Jenkins).  His newspaper articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek and the Economist. Professor Boyle teaches Intellectual Property, Law and Literature, Jurisprudence and Torts. 

In Episode #221, author John A. Powell joins Osi to discuss his new book, Belonging without Othering. They explore how deeply ingrained tendencies to "other" shape societies, why current DEI efforts fall short, and what it truly takes to create inclusive communities where everyone belongs.

john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy.  He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.

In Episode #220, political scientist Mark Lilla joins Osi to discuss the paradoxical human impulse to seek knowledge while often resisting it at the same time. They examine this phenomenon of willful ignorance through history and examine how it shapes much of today’s American politics.

Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities, specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought. Before moving to Columbia in 2007 he taught in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and at New York University. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he is the author of Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know (2024),The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (2017), The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction (2016), The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007),The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (2001),and G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern (1993). He has also edited The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001) with Ronald Dworkin and Robert Silvers, and The Public Face of Architecture (1987) with Nathan Glazer. His latest book is Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know (2024)

In Episode #219, journalist and author Alex Cuadros joins Osi to discuss the remarkable story of the Cinta Larga, an Amazonian tribe that remained isolated from the Western world until the 1960s and later became involved in operating an illegal diamond mine in the 2000s—based on six years of immersive reporting and research.

Alex Cuadros is the author ofWhen We Sold God's Eye, published in December 2024, and Brazillionaires, which was recognized as a Financial Times Best Book of 2016 and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. A former Bloomberg reporter, his work has appeared inThe New York Times Magazine,The New Yorker,Harper's,The Atlantic, andThe Washington Post. His stories have been featured on Longform, and his article on the Amazon's ecological tipping point was included inThe Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024. Cuadros has received grants from the Pulitzer Center, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.