MindPop

An occasional podcast about ideas, politics, and culture. Each episode, David Sehat and his guests break down the questions of the day with a bigger picture perspective. If you want engaging discussion with interesting thinkers, welcome to MindPop.

Tweeting at @mindpoppodcast.
Subscribe to the show in iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or iHeartRadio.

MindPop 41: Food Safety, Food Politics June 23, 2019
E. coli. Listeria. Salmonella. When you turn on the news, it’s hard not to hear about some tragic outbreak caused by lettuce, or beef, or something unknown. Why do outbreaks occur with such regularity? Is a failure of big government? Or is it big business putting profits above its customers? Or is it a regulatory […]
MindPop 40: HAL 9000 March 18, 2018
When we think about Artifical Intelligence (AI), many of us have in mind HAL 9000 from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. But AI is here and it is not quite like the movies. So what does AI look like today? How it reshaping contemporary society and government? Whose interests does it serve and, for […]
MindPop 39: Solitude December 17, 2017
What does it mean to be alone? Is aloneness, as Thoreau said, necessary to live deliberately? Or is it perhaps a curse of modern life made worse by mass media and cultural fragmentation? In this episode, American Studies scholar Ina Bergmann talks about the cultures of solitude in past and present. Tweeting at @mindpoppodcast. On […]
MindPop 38: Network Error November 29, 2017
How should we understand public debate in the era of social media? Can the internet be salvaged for democracy promotion? Or is it a Trojan horse for a dystopian future? Phil Howard of the Oxford Internet Institute talks about social media and politics. Tweeting at @mindpoppodcast. On Facebook at facebook.com/mindpoppodcast. Subscribe to the show in […]
MindPop 37: Truth and Post-Truth November 15, 2017
How do we maintain a sense of fact and reality in a post-truth age? Are there any objective and universally accepted arbiters of truth left? How can democratic government, or even democratic argument, work without a mutually accepted body of information? Oxford politics scholar Nadia Hilliard talks about truth and post-truth in American government. Tweeting […]