Robinson's Podcast

Support the Show:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsxwneBx6apV1mQ7CbWKfXQ/join Robert Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. In this episode, Robert and Robinson discuss why the Iran war has become an escalation trap for Donald Trump, the United States, and Israel. More particularly, they talk about Pape’s...

Rick Wilson is a political strategist, author, and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. After decades working in Republican politics, he became a prominent conservative critic of Donald Trump. In this episode, Rick and Robinson discuss the Republican Party Rick believes Trump has destroyed, America’s changing position in the world, and the struggle to defeat Trumpism. More particularly, they talk ab...

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic. Her work focuses on authoritarianism, democracy, and the history of Central and Eastern Europe. In this episode, Anne and Robinson discuss corruption, foreign policy, and the threat of autocracy in Donald Trump’s America. More particularly, they talk about Anne’s assessment of unprecedented corruption, Trump’s r...

Norman Finkelstein is a political scientist and author who received his PhD in politics from Princeton University. His work focuses on political theory, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the Holocaust. In this episode, Norman and Robinson discuss Gaza, Israel, and the Middle East three years after October 7. More particularly, they talk about changing public opinion, free speech on American campu...

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School. He is also co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of Economic Update. In this episode, Richard and Robinson discuss Donald Trump, socialism in the United States, and Richard’s disagreements with Victor Davis Ha...

Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends. He researches domestic and international finance, economic history, and the role of debt in shaping economies and societies. In this episode, Michael and Robinson discuss the war in Iran and Michael’s prediction that i...

Platypus Economics on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PlatypusEconomics Justin Wolfers is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Michigan, where his research spans macroeconomics, labor economics, political economy, and behavioral economics. He is also affiliated with the Brookings Institution, Peterson Institute for International Economics, and National Bureau of Economic...

Jason Stanley is the Bissell-Heyd-Associates Chair in American Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, where he is also Professor of Philosophy. Before moving to Toronto in 2025, he was the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Jason’s work focuses on propaganda, authoritarianism, democracy, free speech, and political langu...

Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor of Economics at MIT and a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Simon Johnson and James Robinson for research on how institutions shape prosperity. He is also the bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail, The Narrow Corridor, and Power and Progress. In this episode, Robinson and Daron discuss the future of li...

Why Is the World So Beautiful?: https://a.co/d/0d3LsupA Nicholas Humphrey is a theoretical psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics, where his work has focused on the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. Among his many contributions, he was the first to demonstrate “blindsight” in monkeys, studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey, and developed...

Joe Henrich is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His research focuses on cultural evolution, human psychology, sociality, prestige, cooperation, and the emergence of complex societies. In this episode, Robinson and Joe discuss how culture transformed human evolution and enabled our species to build increasingly la...

Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Emeritus, at Harvard University. A primatologist and biological anthropologist, he has studied wild chimpanzees in Uganda since 1987 and is known for his work on human evolution, the origins of violence, and the role of cooking in shaping our species. In this episode, Robinson and Richard discuss how humans diverged from our...

Daniel Lieberman is the Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where he studies the evolution of the human body and its relevance to health. In this episode, Robinson and Dan discuss the evolution of the human diet. More particularly, they talk about our last common ancestors with chimpanzees, how changes in the gut sh...

Adam Mockler is a liberal political commentator, YouTube host, and digital media creator who has become one of the most prominent Gen Z voices in American political media. He hosts The Adam Mockler Show and has built an audience of more than two million subscribers on YouTube, where he produces daily political commentary and reporting. In this episode, Robinson and Adam discuss the changing relati...

Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor at The New School, where he works on economics in the Marxist tradition. This is Richard’s twelfth appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and President of the Institute for the Stud...

Steve Keen is an economist and was most recently Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He has done research on a wide variety of topics, including Marxist economics, debt, complexity theory, and systems dynamics. In this episode, Steve and Robinson discuss his economic framework in relation to wars around the globe. More particularly, the discuss t...

Timothy Snyder holds the inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Snyder’s work has appeared in forty languages and has received a number of prizes, including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities. Snyder was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, has received the Carnegie and Guggenheim fellowships, and holds stat...

Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor at The New School, where he works on economics in the Marxist tradition. This is Richard’s eleventh appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. In this episode, Richard and Robinson discuss the ongoing war in Iran, as well as the war in Russia and Ukraine, our cold war with China, and the fut...

Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends. He researches domestic and international finance, the history of economics, and the role of debt in shaping class stratification, among many other topics. This is Michael’s Seventh appearance on the show. On past episo...

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia, and a faculty member of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. Jacob Barandes is Senior Preceptor in Physics at Harvard University, where he works widely across the philosophy of physics, with focuses on the foundatio...

Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist and Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University. Paul works on quantum mechanics, astrophysics, and cosmology, with emphasis on the origin and early stages of the universe, the quantum properties of black holes and the nature of time. He is interested in the nature and origin of life – including extraterrestrial life – beyond Earth, and in complex systems....

Priyamvada Natarajan is the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics at Yale University, where she is also the Chair of Astronomy. Priya researches broadly across astrophysics and cosmology; some topics she has worked on include gravitational lensing, black hole physics, the philosophy of science, and dark matter. In this conversation, Priya and Robinson large...

Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. In this episode, Robinson and Tim discuss the nature of philosophy. More particularly, they discuss philosophy’s origin, its connections to physics, what characterizes some of its well-known sub disciplines, and some of its biggest problems. If you’re interested in the...

Craig Callender is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC San Diego, where he is a leading philosopher of science and physics. Craig also appeared on episode 73, in which he and Robinson discussed pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, and epidote 114, where he, Robinson, and Tim Maudlin discussed the philosophy of time, including the reality of the pas...

Nate Soares is the President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and plays a central role in setting MIRI’s vision and strategy. Soares has been working in the field for over a decade, and is the author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment, including foundational work on value learning, decision theory, and power-seeking incentives in smarter-than-hum...