What does it mean to be alone? Is aloneness, as Thoreau said, necessary to live deliberately? Or is it perhaps a curse of modern life made worse by mass media and cultural fragmentation? In this episode, American Studies scholar Ina Bergmann talks about the cultures of solitude in past and present. 

MindPop 39: Solitude

A podcast about ideas, politics, and culture. Each episode, David Sehat and his guests break down the questions of the day with a bigger picture perspective.  If you want engaging discussion with interesting thinkers, welcome to MindPop.

About the host: David Sehat teaches history at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is also the author of This Earthly Frame (2022), The Jefferson Rule (2015), and The Myth of American Religious Freedom (2011).

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Polyamory. If you’ve been paying any attention lately, you’ve probably heard the term. TV shows, books, magazines, and social media are abuzz with what appears to be widescale experimentation in consensual non-monogamy. But what does it mean? Where did the idea come from? How is it different than swinging, friends-with-benefits, having a side piece, or any of the other possible sexual arrangements? Christopher Gleason, author of American Poly: A History, explains.

MindPop 42: Polyamory

E. coli. Listeria. Salmonella. When you turn on the news, it's hard not to hear about some tragic outbreak caused by lettuce, or beef, or something unknown. Why do outbreaks occur with such regularity? Is a failure of big government? Or is it big business putting profits above its customers? Or is it a regulatory state that is underfunded and overtasked? Timothy Lytton, Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University, gives us some answers.

MindPop 41: Food Safety, Food Politics

When we think about AI, many of us have in mind HAL 9000 from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  But AI is here and it is not quite like the movies. So what does AI look like today?  How it reshaping contemporary society and government?  Whose interests does it serve and, for those pessimistic about its influence, is there anything that can be done to ameliorate its negative effects?  Tim Hwang, the Director of the Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative at Harvard and MIT works through the possibilities.

MindPop 40: HAL 9000

How should we understand public debate in the era of social media? Can the internet be salvaged for democracy promotion? Or is it a Trojan horse for a dystopian future? Phil Howard of the Oxford Internet Institute talks about social media and politics.

MindPop 39: Solitude

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