Ralph Eubanks is the former Director of Publishing for the Library of Congress, former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia, and currently faculty fellow and writer-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Awarded the Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award for excellence in literature and appointed cultural ambassador for Mississippi, he is the author of numerous articles in major newspapers and magazines, as well as four books, Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past, published in 2003, The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South, published in 2009, A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through A Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, published in 2021, and most recently, When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land, published in 2026. Our interview will focus on his latest book, which brings out the rich and painful history of the region, its enduring consequences, and possible springboards for hope.

Recorded 1/12/26.

Patrick Alley is the former executive director and co-founder – along with Simon Taylor and Charmian Gooch – of Global Witness, an award-winning nonprofit organization, established in 1993, dedicated to exposing the links between corruption, environmental destruction, human-rights abuses and war. Since stepping down as executive director in 2023, he has continued his involvement as a board member and has also turned his focus to writing. His first book, Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption, was published in 2022, and his second, Terrible Humans: The World's Most Corrupt Super-Villains And The Fight to Bring Them Down, was published in 2024. Both books present gripping stories of high stakes challenges taken on by Global Witness and affiliated organizations, such as Citizen Lab, Sea Shepard, and the Wildlife Justice Commission in exposing evil and, in many cases, making a major contribution to eradicating it.

Recorded 1/5/26.

Anne-Marie Erickson is the author of the memoir, In the Evening, We’ll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love and Dementia, which bears witness to the demise of her beloved husband, Dick Cain. As might be expected, this is a sad story, but not only. Right up until the very end, about ten years ago, the couple was able to express their love of one another and, thanks to their mutual love of language, Ann-Marie was, much of the time, able to decipher Dick’s not-necessarily-intentional use of metaphor to convey deep insights into their relationship, the world, and mortality. It’s an inspirational book that assiduously avoids clichés and platitudes, deeply honest about what it’s like to stay committed to the love of one’s life. She acknowledges the heartbreak, the exasperation, and the rage that goes with this territory, but she also doesn’t allow herself to become mired in negativity, and manages to gather sacred moments as they come, of meaning and closeness, as jewels on a strand that ultimately must end.

Recorded 12/30/25.

Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, whose main interests include philosophy of mind, metaphysics, the nature of belief, the impact or lack thereof of ethical thinking on behavior, and classical Chinese philosophy. He is the author of four books: Perplexities of Consciousness, published in 2011, Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic co-written with Russell Hurlburt, also published in 2011, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, published in 2019, and The Weirdness of the World, published in 2024. He is also a science fiction writer and was a contributor to Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible. Starting in 2006, Eric has written a blog called, “The Splintered Mind.”

Recorded 12/9/25.

Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and journalist, a scholar of philosophy and literature, and a former teacher of Renaissance drama at the City University of New York, resigning in 2007 to pursue a full-time writing career ever since. He has written five novels, numerous essays for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, and four works of non-fiction: How Shakespeare Changed Everything published in 2011, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the Twenty-First Century published in 2017, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, published in 2022, and On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, published in 2023.

Recorded 12/3/25.

Rebekah Peeples is the Deputy Dean of the College at Princeton University with oversight of the undergraduate curriculum. Previously at Princeton, she taught sociology and writing. She is also the author of two books: Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2014, and Unchanged Trebles: What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity, published four weeks ago, and which is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 11/12/25.

Emma Duval is a self-described member of the “millennial generation,” who include the growing number of women who are childless and as, Emma puts it, “childfree” by choice. Although now married, Duval’s early inspirations were independent, unmarried women, and as a teenager she contemplated becoming a nun in rejection of societal norms surrounding marriage. She is the author-illustrator of the recently published book, Unwed & Unbothered: The Defiant Lives of Single Women, which celebrates the courageous lives and remarkable contributions of such women throughout history, going back thousands of years.

Recorded 11/5/25.

Suzanne Mettler is a senior professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell University. She is the author of several books, including The Submerged State and Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream, published in 2014, The Government-Citizen Disconnect, published in 2018, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, co-written with Robert C. Lieberman and published in 2024, and most recently, Rural vs. Urban: The Growing Divide that Threatens Democracy, co-written with Trevor E. Brown and published just a few weeks ago.

Recorded 10/16/25.