The Broken Constitution is a miniseries by Unknown History from Quick and Dirty Tips and Pushkin Industries. Over three bonus episodes, Noah Feldman talks about how Abraham Lincoln needed to break the Constitution in order to remake it. In this first episode, Noah explains why the US Constitution was built on a compromise that Lincoln devoted himself to preserving. Noah’s book, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, is out November 2 wherever books are sold.

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Author Michael Pollan discusses the psychedelic powers of plants and the history of how humans have harnessed, ignored, and controlled these powers. He also discusses his prolific career and his most recent book, This is Your Mind on Plants.

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Dr. David Rabin, neuroscientist, PhD psychiatrist and Medical Director of the Apollo Clinic, explains the ongoing research in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, including the mechanisms and risks associated with psychedelic-assisted mental health treatments.

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Writer Mark Oppenheimer spent the last few years documenting the recovery of Pittsburg's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a historic Jewish neighborhood and site of the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting. Oppenheimer discusses the history of Squirrel Hill, the lasting impacts of the attack, and what it means for American Jewish life today. 

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The process of approving booster shots for the COVID-19 vaccines in the US has been particularly fraught. Last week, two well-respected medical journals published contradictory conclusions regarding the use of vaccine boosters. Dr. Genevieve Kanter joins Deep Background to make sense of the existing research and weigh in on the booster approval process.

Dr. Kanter is an economist and Research Assistant Professor in the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Her research focuses on the regulation of biomedical technologies, industry influence in medicine, and statistical methods used for causal inference. 

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As we start a new school year, Tamar Gendler, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale, explains her vision for distributing power at Yale and the questionable future of America’s university system.

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Matthew Barzun, a political fundraiser and diplomat who served as US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, explains his collectivist method of generating power, even on deeply divided issues. Barzun’s latest book is “The Power of Giving Away Power: How the Best Leaders Learn to Let Go.”

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Dr. Susan Philip, Health Officer for the City and County of San Francisco and the Acting Director of the Population Health Division of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, weighs in on vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and what the new normal is starting to look like in San Francisco. 

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Emile Simpson, a military expert and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, discusses the end of the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s recent takeover. Simpson outlines the strategic failures that contributed to the current situation and comments on the United States’s responsibility to evacuate allied Afghans. 

Simpson is a former British Army officer who completed three tours in southern Afghanistan. He’s the author of the book, War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a staff writer for the New York Times, a MacArthur Genius, and the creator of The 1619 Project. In this conversation, Noah and Hannah-Jones dive deep into the myth of journalistic and historical objectivity. They also discuss the intense political and social criticism of The 1619 Project. 

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