Richard Bessel is a professor emeritus of twentieth century history at the University of York and a former member of the editorial boards of German History and History Today. He is a specialist in the social and political history of modern Germany, the aftermath of the two world wars, and the history of policing. He is the author of several books, published between 1984 and 2004, about the Nazi and post-Nazi eras of German history. His book, Violence: A Modern Obsession, published in 2015, explores how Western perceptions of violence have evolved over the last 150 years. This interview will focus on his recently published, Postwar Europe: A Very Short Introduction, part of The Oxford Very Short Introduction series.

Recorded 3/17/26.

David Sussillo is an internationally recognized neuroscientist, currently working as a senior research manager at Meta Reality Labs, leading a team that is developing brain-machine interfaces for next-generation computer technologies. He is also an adjunct professor in the electrical engineering department at Stanford University, where he conducts research in computational neuroscience and neural dynamics. This interview will focus on his soon-to-be published book, Emergence: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind, about his remarkable overcoming of profound childhood adversity, including his earliest years growing up with drug-addicted parents, followed by nearly a decade in orphanages. In this interview we will try to imagine what it was like for David during his childhood, including the hardships, the sources of engagement and hope, and what it took to achieve the improbable: a highly successful life, both professionally and personally.

Recorded 3/10/26.

Michael Boylan is a philosophy professor at Marymount University and a prolific writer who focuses on a wide range of ethical domains, including public health, the environment, medical advances, business practices, technological innovation, foundational philosophical texts from Ancient Greece, and the practice of teaching. He is also a poet and a fiction writer, exploring philosophical issues through his own writing of poetry, short stories, and novels. This interview will explore the major approaches to ethics, both in general terms and as applied to hypothetical, fictional, and real situations.

Recorded 3/3/26.

Nicholas — or Nick — Jelley, is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford, known for his expertise in renewable energy and energy science. He was the UK group leader for the Nobel Prize-winning Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment, a major achieve­ment in particle physics. More recently, he has conducted research on solar energy for use in the developing world. He has authored several books on energy topics, including the textbook, Energy Science: Principles, Technologies, and Impacts, co-written with John Andrews, and Renewable Energy: A Very Short Introduction, the second edition of which was recently published and which is the subject of today's interview.

Recorded 2/17/26.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, where he teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and a seminar examining police surveillance technologies, privacy, and civil rights. Before becoming a professor, Professor Ferguson worked as a public defender for seven years, representing adults and juveniles, and was also lead counsel in numerous jury and bench trials, arguing cases before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Ferguson has written over 35 law review articles and book chapters and provided legal commentary for the New York Times, the Economist, CNN, NPR, among other media. He is also the author of four books, including, Why Jury Duty Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Constitutional Action, published in 2012, which was the first book written for jurors on jury duty. His award-winning second book, The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement, was published in 2017. We’ll be discussing his recently published latest book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance (2026), which reveals how smart devices dramatically enhance the scope of potential evidence for criminal prosecution. Unfortunately, in the process, we’re giving away our privacy and rendering ourselves vulnerable to harassment or worse by an authoritarian government.

Recorded 2/10/26.

Nathaniel Greenberg is an Associate Professor of Arabic in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University, focusing on the intersection of technology, politics, and culture in the modern Middle East and North Africa. A Comparative Literature scholar by training, he also worked as a freelance journalist and was one of the few Americans to report on the first days of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Egypt. He is the author of four books, including How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring: The Politics of Narrative in Tunisia and Egypt, published in 2019, and The Long War of Ideas: American Diplomacy in Arabic After 911, to published this March.

Recorded 1/27/26.

Scott Wallace is an award-winning writer, television producer, and photojournalist, who for over 40 years, has focused on the environment, vanishing cultures, and conflict over land and resources around the world. He has written feature stories for the New York Times and The Smithsonian, among other major publications, and has been a frequent contributor to National Geographic. He is the author of the bestselling book, The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes, published in 2011, a firsthand account of an expedition through the land of a mysterious tribe living in extreme isolation deep in the Amazon rain forest. As a reporter for CBS News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newsweek, the Independent, and the Guardian, Wallace covered the civil wars in Central America throughout the 1980s, and is the author of and photographer for Central America in the Crosshairs of War: On the Road from Vietnam to Iraq, published in 2024. In 2017 he joined the faculty of the Journalism Department of the University of Connecticut. Today’s interview will focus on his earlier book, The Unconquered.

Recorded 1/22/26.

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.