Taboo Trades

By Kimberly D Krawiec

A podcast about things we aren’t supposed to trade . . . But do anyway... more

· Society & Culture

5

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FAQs about Taboo Trades:

How many episodes does Taboo Trades have?

The podcast currently has 72 episodes available.

Taboo Trades episodes:

February 07, 2026 Taboo Patents with Andrew Gilden & Sarah Rajec
My guests today are Andrew Gilden, Southwestern Law School, and Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec, William & Mary Law School. They join me today to discuss their recent paper, Patenting the Taboo: Sex, Drugs, and Abortion, recently published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. It’s a really fun article that looks at patent applications in three taboo spaces: sexual pleasure, illicit drugs, and abortion technologies. Some of the themes are very similar to ones Andrew Jennings and I highlight in our recent paper, Vice Capital, in which we interview founders and investors in these same spaces. I highly recommend their paper, even if you don’t have a particular interest or expertise in patent law.
Show Notes
About Andrew Gilden
About Sarah Rajec
About Kim Krawiec
Gilden, Andrew, and Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec. "Patenting the Taboo: Sex, Drugs, and Abortion." Yale Journal of Law and Technology, forthcoming (2025).
Gilden, Andrew, and Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec. "Pleasure Patents." BCL Rev. 63 (2022): 571.
Jennings, Andrew K., and Kimberly D. Krawiec. "Vice Capital." UC Irvine Law Review 15 (2025): 427.
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52min
December 13, 2025 Season 6 Sign Off
My student co-hosts sign off, bringing Season 6 to an official close. Never fear, I'll be back throughout 2026 with exciting bonus episodes.
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4min
December 11, 2025 Eggonomics with Diane Tober
My guest today is Diane Tober, an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology and Institute for Social Science Research. She is a medical anthropologist with a focus on biocultural aspects of health, gender and sexuality, the commodification of the body, science and technology studies, bioethics, and social and reproductive justice. She has been conducting research exploring egg donors’ decisions and experiences within the global market for human eggs since 2013. She joins us today to discuss her recent book, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them (Routledge 2024). This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law 2Ls, Rachel Duffy and Rachel Greenbaum.
Show Notes
About Diane Tober
About Kim Krawiec
About Rachel Duffy
About Rachel Greenbaum
Diane Tober, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them (Routledge 2024)
Kimberly D. Krawiec, Gametes: Commodification and The Fertility Industry, in Routledge Handbook of Commodification, Routledge, 278–289 (1 ed. 2023).
Krawiec, Kimberly D. "Markets, repugnance, and externalities." Journal of Institutional Economics 19.6 (2023): 944-955.
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1h 6min
November 24, 2025 Reproductive Labor in India with Prabha Kotiswaran
My guest today is Prabha Kotiswaran, a Professor of Law & Social Justice at King’s College London. Professor Kotiswaran’s main areas of research include criminal law, transnational criminal law, feminist legal studies and sociology of law.
She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India, published by Princeton University Press (2011), which won the SLSA-Hart Book Prize for Early Career Academics. She joins us today to discuss two recent articles, linked in the show notes below, on egg donation and surrogacy in India.
This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law 3Ls Gabriel Andrade and Buddy Palmer.
Show Notes
About Prabha Kotiswaran
About Kim Krawiec
About Gabriel Andrade
About Buddy Palmer
Madhusree Jana and Prabha Kotiswaran, Legal (Dis)Orders A Feminist Assessment of India’s Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy LawsLinks to an external site., Amicus Curiae, Series 2, Vol 6, No 2, 300-323 (2025)
Jana, M., & Kotiswaran, P., Reproductive resistance, law, and informality: a critique of the Indian Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021Links to an external site.. Journal of Gender Studies, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2025.2490844Links to an external site. (2025)
Prabha Kotiswaran, Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India, Princeton University Press (2011).
Kimberly D. Krawiec, “
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1h
November 08, 2025 The Law of Intimate Obligations with Emily Stolzenberg
My guest today is Emily Stolzenberg, an Associate Professor of Law and Reuschlein Emerging Scholar at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law. Her research focuses on conflicts between individual autonomy and legal obligation in the fields of family law and property. She joins us today to discuss her forthcoming article, Toward a Private Law of Intimates’ Obligations, which will be published in the Iowa Law Review. This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law students Catherine Hu and Reide Petty.
Show Notes
About Emily Stolzenberg
About Kim Krawiec
About Catherine Hu
About Reide Petty
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1h 2min
November 02, 2025 Created To Be Killed with Jeff Skopek
My guest today is Jeff Skopek, a Professor of Law and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine, and Life Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge.
His research explores the normative and conceptual foundations of health law, focusing in particular on the health care system, biomedical research, and controversies about what constitutes a harm or benefit within medical care. His recent research also focuses on animal rights. He joins us today to discuss a work in progress, Created To Be Killed.
Show Notes
About Jeff Skopek
About Kim Krawiec
About Mason Marché
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56min
October 26, 2025 Market Solutions to Fish and Wildlife Preservation with Jonathan Adler
My guest today is Jonathan Adler, Cabell Research Professor and Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011). He has testified before Congress a dozen times, and his work has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2024 study identified Professor Adler as the seventh most cited legal academic in administrative and environmental law from 2019 to 2023. This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law 3L, Bradley Noble
Show Notes
About Jonathan Adler
About Kim Krawiec
About Bradley Noble
Adler, Jonathan H., and Nathaniel Stewart. "Learning how to fish: catch shares and the future of fishery conservation." UCLA J. Envtl. L. & Pol'y 31 (2013): 150.
Adler, Jonathan H. "Conservation through collusion: Antitrust as an obstacle to marine resource conservation." Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 61 (2004): 3.
Adler, Jonathan H. "Legal obstacles to private ordering in marine fisheries." Roger Williams UL Rev. 8 (2002): 9.
Adler, Jonathan H. "Water rights, markets, and changing ecological conditions." Environmental Law (2012): 93-113.
Adler, Jonathan H. "Taking property rights seriously: The case of climate change." Social Philosophy and Policy 26.2 (2009): 296-316.
Schmidtz, David. "When Preservationism Doesn't Preserve." Environmental Values 6.3 (1997): 327-339.
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1h 2min
October 14, 2025 The Market Limits of Free Exercise with Bailey Sanders
My guest today is Bailey Sanders, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Duke University. Her work examines how market competition can advance gender equality and the critical role of women’s representation in law and politics. Her research bridges antitrust, constitutional law, and gender equity, and has appeared or is forthcoming in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. She is also co-author of The Fundamental Voter: American Electoral Democracy, 1952–2020 (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Sanders received her JD and PhD in Political Science from Duke University before clerking for Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and practicing in the antitrust group at McDermott Will & Emery in Washington, D.C. Most importantly, she was my student at Duke Law School during the height of Covid, and one of the few bright spots in my zoom day.
She joins us today to discuss her paper, Religious Riders and the Sherman Act, forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review. This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law 2Ls Sari Mithal and Cindy Tran.
Show Notes
About Bailey Sanders
About Kim Krawiec
About Sari Mithal
About Cindy Tran
Sanders, Bailey, Religious Riders and the Sherman Act (January 01, 2024). Michigan Law Review, Forthcoming.
Bailey Sanders, Barak Richman, and Kierra B. Jones, “Growing Market Power Among Catholic Hospitals Restrains Access to Reproductive Health Care”, American Progress (SEP 29, 2025)
Bailey Sanders, “The Price of Fertility: Egg Donor Compensation in the United States Following Kamakahi v. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine,” Houston Journal of Health Law and Policy, Vol. 22 (2022)
Kimberly D. Krawiec, Sunny Samaritans and Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing in the Gamete Market, Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 72, No. 3, 2009.
Kimberly D. Krawiec, Gametes: Commodification and The Fertility Industry, The Routledge Handbook of Commodification, Vida Panitch and Elodie Bertrand eds., 2023.
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56min
September 28, 2025 Contract or Prison with Sadie Blanchard
My guest today is Sadie Blanchard, a Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. She teaches and writes about contracts, corporations, and international business law. Her research examines how legal institutions interact with social forces to shape behavior, especially in markets. She’s here today to discuss her recent article, Contract or Prison, in the University of Chicago Law Review. The paper discusses the expansion and privatization of “Incarceration Alternative” arrangements, such as electronic monitoring, criminal diversion, and parole and probation. Blanchard argues that, while the norm of expanded choice that justifies enforcement of contracts has prima facie plausibility in this context, the agreements ultimately fail under classical contract theory because they are made against the background of entitlements created to extract value from people using the coercive power of the criminal legal system. This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law 3L, Kyndall Walker.
Show Notes
About Sadie Blanchard
About Kim Krawiec
About Kyndall Walker
Sandie Blanchard, Contract or Prison (forthcoming, University of Chicago Law Review 2025)
Additional Reading Discussed (or relevant to the discussion):
John H. Langbein, Understanding the Short History of Plea Bargaining, 13 Law & Society Review 261 (1979)
John H. Langbein, Torture and Plea Bargaining, 46 Univ. Chicago Law Review 4 (1978); republished in Spanish as “Tortura Y Plea Bargaining,” in El Procedimiento Abreviado (J.B. Maier & A. Bovino eds.) (Buenos Aires 2001); substantially republished in The Public Interest (Winter 1980) at 43; latter version republished in The Public Interest on Crime and Punishment (N. Glazer ed. 1984)
Robert E. Scott & William J. Stuntz, Plea-Bargaining as a Social Contract, 101 Yale L. J. 1909 (1992). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/317
Emma Kaufman, "The Prisoner Trade," 133 Harv. L. Rev. 1815 (2020)
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1h 5min
September 17, 2025 The End Kidney Deaths Act with Elaine Perlman
My guest today is Elaine Perlman, an altruistic kidney donor, President of the Coalition to Modify NOTA, and Executive Director of Waitlist Zero. She is leading campaigns to pass the End Kidney Deaths Act (which is the subject of our discussion today) and the Honor Our Living Donors Act.
As a bit of background, the End Kidney Deaths Act (H.R. 2687/ EKDA) is a ten year pilot program that would provide a refundable tax credit of $10,000 each year for five years ($50,000 total) to living kidney donors who donate a kidney to a stranger, which would go to those who have been waiting longest on the kidney waitlist. You can read the full text of the End Kidney Deaths Act from the link in the show notes, along with other relevant sources that we discuss during today’s podcast.
Show Notes
About Elaine Perlman
About Kim Krawiec
About Denise Azadeh
End Kidney Deaths Act legislation
JAMA opposition article
Our JAMA response
Their JAMA reply
Good Morning America segment, Elaine’s son meeting his recipient (9 minutes)
Video about ethics and the End Kidney Deaths Act (3 minutes)
Video "Why Donate our Kidney to a Stranger (20 minutes)
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53min

FAQs about Taboo Trades:

How many episodes does Taboo Trades have?

The podcast currently has 72 episodes available.