Pulled Up Short

Featuring Karin Nisenbaum (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Scott Seider (commentator)

Do you believe in fate? Whether you think everything happens for a reason or is completely up to chance, tune into this episode to reimagine the role of fate in our lives. Join Karin Nisenbaum as she offers an interpretation of character as a kind of destiny.

Featuring Kenneth Gergen (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Samantha Ha DiMuzio (commentator)

Usually, we envision ourselves as individuals who build relationships, comprise communities, and make our own decisions. In this episode, Ken Gergen troubles this notion of individualism and instead offers an alternative perspective based on relationality and coordination. What if relationships come before the individual? 

Featuring Andy Hargreaves (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Allison Skerrett (commentator)

In conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is not uncommon to discuss differences along axes of race, gender, or sexual orientation. However, what about the pervasive impact of socioeconomic status? In this episode, Andy Hargreaves explores the strong influence of class and why it should not be excluded from our contemporary conversations.

Featuring Mark Freeman (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Suzanne Kirschner

There is no doubt that dementia is a painful and heartbreaking disease. However, in accompanying his mother in her own experience with dementia, Mark Freeman comes to some unexpected insights about how dementia can sometimes be understood as more than just loss and deterioration.

Featuring William Damon (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Howard Gardner (commentator)

In conversations about human development, talk about purpose often centers on providing meaning to the present and guiding our future life trajectory. However, William Damon draws upon his own experience unpacking his family history as an example to consider how we can look backward to our past as a resource to create purposeful futures.

Featuring Constantine V. Nakassis (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Michael Lempert (commentator). 

We often feel that there is a sharp distinction between the world of fiction and the "real world." For example, is there really any doubt that the Marvel superheroes are not real, that they only live in fictional representations? Costantine Nakassis, however, draws our attention to the unsettling, though common ways in which we blur the boundary between fact and fiction all the time. Join Constantine in exploring the boundary between reality and representation.

Featuring Marina McCoy (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Alexandra Michel (commentator)

We often turn to experts in our lives for all kinds of matters. It isn't uncommon, for example, to turn to surgeons for medical expertise or call upon expert testimonies in the court room. However, Marina McCoy argues that our commonsense understandings of expertise also pose major problems and expose us to undesirable outcomes.

Featuring Anna Stetsenko (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Megan Laverty (commentator)

It is far from a secret that contemporary schools aren't perfect, but should we really stop teaching students? In this episode, Anna Stetsenko offers us the provocation to stop teaching as we know it and radically reimagine a kind of teaching that might be better described as learning.

Featuring Matt DelSesto, David Sellers, and Allison Pyo (guests) with Stanton Wortham

Large walls and secure perimeters physically isolate prisons from the rest of society. This episode, however, draws on insights from the Boston College Inside-Out Program to explore how what happens within prison walls is often more connected to the rest of society than we might think. The program instructor and former participants discuss how their experiences related to ideas about perpetrators, victims, harm, and punishment blur the boundaries between life inside and outside of prisons.

Featuring Andrea Vicini (guest) with Stanton Wortham (host) and Kristina Wirtz (commentator)

The possibility of extra-terrestrial or beyond human life is a common theme in popular culture. However, in this episode, Andrea Vicini asks us to seriously entertain what an encounter with the Other might help us learn about our own humanity.