Cooler Heads

A status update on AI…the financials, rogue agents, Anthropic at the Vatican, consciousness. Are we whistling in the graveyard or awakening to the glorious dawn of a new era? We break it down.

This week we take on one of Jung's proudest works, his 1952 book, "Answer to Job".

Rats will free a trapped cagemate even when chocolate is the alternative — no reward, just relief for another's distress. Elephants mourn their dead. But chimps, oddly, don't punish other chimps for stealing from someone else — only when they're the ones robbed. This episode digs into what these mixed results actually tell us about the roots of empathy, fairness, and revenge across species. Is mor...

This week we discuss the recent Florida primaries, from the "carpetbagger" scramble in FL-19 after Byron Donalds left to run for governor, to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's contested win in a redrawn, majority-minority FL-20, to Jared Moskowitz fending off a hard-left challenge from Oliver Larkin in FL-25. A state where redistricting, partisanship, and outsider ambition collided in nearly every major...

We watched the entirety of Christopher Nolan’s 3.5 hour “The Odyssey” and lived to tell the tale!

Word on the street is that people don’t and increasingly can’t read. What does this mean for education, for society, for entertainment, for the schism between the read and unread? We’re on it.

Friend of the show and author Evan Barker joins us to discuss her new book (and New York Times Bestseller!) “Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative.” Buy the book here: #evanbarker #nothingleft #woke #newyorktimes #dei

This week we deign to question the legacy of one of America’s most mythic and well-known presidents: Abraham Lincoln. What does it mean to interrogate such well trodden territory as Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction? When men become myths, what historical assumptions follow?

This week: America turns 250! 🎉 …or was that too enthusiastic? We dig into the numbers on where patriotism actually stands from a recent Gallop poll: who’s waving the flag, who’s proud, and who thinks the whole thing is deeply sus. Are we all just performing anti-American subversion for our social media followings? Is true blue pride possible in such a cynical environment? Oh beautiful, for spaci...

This week, we dig into history-literally. Author Kurt Deion joins us to talk about his quest to visit every presidential gravesite, the book it inspired, and why cemeteries might be America’s most underrated history museums. For more on Kurt’s work, visit his YouTube channel:

It’s June 16th — Bloomsday — and Johnny just finished one of the most legendary challenges in all of literature. In this episode, the crew celebrates his completion of James Joyce’s Ulysses, unpacking who Leopold Bloom really is, what it’s like to surrender to Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness prose, and how emerging from the other side of this 265,000-word masterpiece quietly changes you. A perfect...

This week, Jess emerges from the strange and exhausting world of California politics after helping run a campaign for Nancy Pelosi’s open congressional seat. We unpack the consultants, cash, dirty tricks, viral moments, manufactured narratives, and genuine human connections that define modern campaigns. What happens when months of effort, hope, and adrenaline all culminate in a single election nig...

This week, friend of the show Ilya joins us as we explore the strange world of dinosaur denialism and the history of early paleontology. Rather than dismissing skeptics out of hand, we try to steelman some of their arguments and ask a deeper question: why should anyone accept the scientific method in the first place? From the fierce competition surrounding early fossil discoveries to the birth of...

From Vatican roundtables on AI ethics to rabbis revisiting the legend of the golem to AI-generated fatwas in the Islamic world, the world’s major religions are confronting a strange new question: what happens when humanity creates something in its own image? This week, we explore faith, technology, and the possibility that there may be another ghost entering the machine.

This week, we descend into the occult stacks with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as our guide. Special guest Dr Marina Alexandrova of The University of Texas at Austin joins us to unpack the strange, sprawling world of Theosophy: imperial Russian mysticism, Eastern and Western esoterica, hidden masters, cosmic truths, and the utterly unbelievable life of the woman behind The Secret Doctrine. Check out...

This week, we speak with Johnny’s sister, Kristie, about the excitement of living abroad—the adventure of new places, fresh connections, and building a life somewhere new. We also touch on the feeling of being a stranger in a strange place, and how that experience shapes identity, independence, and connection while navigating expat life and being single abroad.

This week: chaos in the Middle East — the Iran war, ceasefires, and Strait of Hormuz brinkmanship — plus a blunt look at what Donald Trump’s foreign policy even is (if anything). Then we pivot to something far more human: a striking, intimate conversation between Ben Sasse and Ross Douthat on mortality, meaning, and how to live when time is suddenly finite.

This week, we unpack Louis Theroux’s newest documentary, “Inside the Manosphere” alongside a heated Jubilee face-off featuring Jillian Michaels and body positivity activists—two equal and opposite extremes in the ongoing battle of the sexes. When both sides push to the edge, what does a way forward actually look like?

This week we walk through how a “contained” war somehow managed to squeeze the Strait of Hormuz, rattle global markets, and drift into the familiar “no boots on the ground…unless” phase. None of it is surprising—every escalation was basically sitting in the pregame notes. Less fog of war, more willful blindness.

This week, a State of the Union with the tenor of a wrestling match: jeers, applause lines, and red-meat rhetoric set the tone for a country already on edge. We break down the drama in the chamber (Ilhan Omar vs Trump, “these people are crazy”, etc) before diving into the escalating fallout from the strikes on Iran: questions of war powers, international law, civilian risk, whether the operation d...

What shapes music — the artist, the audience, or the architecture? This week, we dive into How Music Works by David Byrne and explore the deeper currents behind sound itself. From cathedral ceilings to village drum circles, we unpack how environment, technology, and culture shape what gets composed — and what gets heard. We also discuss our own pasts with music, playing, and current projects. Draw...

This week: Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show—loved, loathed, endlessly litigated. Then we crack open the latest Epstein file drop. What’s new, what’s noise, and what does our fixation on the abyss say about us?

Aliens, awkward cosmic silence, and a cult that thought salvation came on a spaceship. We hop from global UFO sightings to the Fermi Paradox to the bizarre legacy of the Heaven’s Gate cult.

This week we dive into Greenland—its history and growing geopolitical importance—then unpack the emerging “Donroe Doctrine” of the Trump admin and how it compares to past administrations’ views of power.

This week, we welcome another friend of the show, Ilya, for a wide-ranging conversation on the evergreen subject of AI. We explore the origins of thought and language, and how early, habitual engagement with AI may atrophy those human capacities. Along the way, we examine a recent case involving a young man in Pennsylvania who used ChatGPT as both therapist and pickup-artist coach—with predictably...