The brilliant anonymous blogger Cartoons Hate Her joined me to explore dating and attraction, marriage and work, raising children and being in the media -- and cleared up a lot of misunderstandings around seduction, trads, fame, monogamy, domination and disappointments.

Novelist and essayist A. Natasha Joukovksy joined me to talk about status and attraction, mimesis and uniformity, Girard and Austen, Batuman and Kierkegaard, Tolstoy and main character energy, Natasha's first novel and her new one in the making, the positive side of the imitation game, and how individuals can live freely from it all.

Podcaster star Dwarkesh Patel on how his eponymous podcast started, how his niche interests empower him, what he learned about scene-building and getting one's "lucky break", and how he succeeded at landing Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Blair, or Tyler Cowen as interviewees.

Professional end-of-life doula Emma Acker joined me to discuss the mystery of dying -- and the forgotten art of being there with the dying. Her job is just this, and we talked about the various stages of departure, how the family might react, what administrative things one needs to take care of. But also about dying when young versus old, when in pain versus no pain, when religious versus atheist. There is no one like Emma!

Musa al-Gharbi, sociologist, journalism professor, author of the new book 'We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite' (Princeton University Press), and today's popular explorer of Pierre Bourdieu's ideas around symbolic elites and symbolic capitalism talked to me about being an outsider in academia, how symbolic elites buy their legitimacy, and why intellectuals living in fear of cancellation is such bad news for everyone.

Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth joined me to talk about virtue and the arts, the campus and the political student of the future, and why he believes the humanities will save us.

Quillette founding editor Claire Lehmann joined me for this exceptional episode where we dive into all the conditions, ideals, and effort that ensure that a new magazine dedicated to democracy and free speech can achieve its goals.

Author, rationalist, finance expert Jacob Falkovich visited The Hope Axis. We talked about data and dating, rationality in love, fertility and polyamory, f*ckability as capital, what most people get wrong about love and family, and why people are not having kids (or even sex).

NYU professor Erica Robles-Anderson joins to discuss her theory of media generations, human suffering, ways of togetherness, what we can learn from megachurches, and the ways out of the loneliness epidemic (if that exists).

National Book Award winning Phil Klay, author of Redeployment and Missionaries, joined me for a conversation about humour and the absurd, humanity and violence, fatherhood and history, and what there remains to hope and work for.