Delving In with Stuart Kelter

Harry Cliff is a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge. He is a member of an international team of around 1400 physicists, engineers and computer scientists who use the CERN particle accelerator in search of answers to some of the biggest questions in modern physics, such as the nature of dark matter and why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. Harry has written two...

David Jacobson , Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida. Today's interview, focuses on his book, Of Virgins and Martyrs: Women and Sexuality in Global Conflict. Published in 2013, the book explores the interplay among cultural, political, economic, and historical forces that shape gender relations and violence, individualistic vs. communitarian values, and tensions between globa...

Madhumita Murgia  is a writer specializing in artificial intelligence and its impact on society. She was the artificial intelligence editor for  Wired  magazine and in February 2023 was appointed as the first A.I. Editor of the London-based  Financial Times . Her recent book,  Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of A.I. ,  was shortlisted for the 2024 Women...

Las Cruces’s very own renaissance man, Bob Diven -- an accomplished painter, sculptor, set designer, actor, playwright, composer, actor, satirist, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, folk guitarist; columnist, and more -- reflects on the creative process and the development of artistic skills. Recorded 2/13/21.

Vietnamese-American Christina Vo is the author of two memoirs. The first, entitled  The Veil Between Two Worlds: A Memoir of Silence, Loss, and Finding Home,  was published in 2023. Our interview will focus on her second book, published this past April, entitled,  My Vietnam, Your Vietnam: A Father Flees. A Daughter Returns. A Dual Memoir.  This book consists of alternating pas...

Dwight Pitcaithley, the former Chief Historian of the National Park Service, discusses NPS's history and its three-fold mission of preservation, research, and education, with the last segment focusing on the controversies surrounding Civil War monuments. Recorded 2/10/21.

Joel Schwartz won a MacArthur Award for work that made a major contribution to the phase-out of lead in gasoline. Ronnie Levin worked at the Environmental Protection Agency to help establish federal standards and more robust testing to protect consumers from lead in drinking water. Both Schwartz and Levin teach at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Recorded 2/24/21.

Dr. Keith Rafal, medical director of the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island and creator of the non-profit organization and website, Our Heart Speaks , through which people from around the world share inspirational stories and artistic expressions about their rehabilitation, healing, connection, and meaning. Recorded 3/7/21.

Amorina Kingdon is an award-winning science writer, at  Hakai Magazine  until 2021   and as a contributor to publications at the University of Victoria and the Science Media Center, both in Canada. She is also a writer of fiction, published in  PRISM  and  Flash Fiction  magazine. The subject of today’s interview is her recently released book,   Sing Li...

David Nurenberg is a professor, educational consultant, and writer in the Boston area who teaches courses at both the high school and graduate level, in suburban, urban, and international teaching and learning environments. He shares his insights on all things educational in his podcast,  Ed Infinitum,  and is the author of the book,  What Does Injustice Have to Do With Me?  Co...

Sheldon Krimsky was a professor of humanities and social sciences at Tufts University and a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution. His long and distinguished career focused on the links between public policy and science and technology, environment and health, and ethics and values. His work stressed the importance of public...

Justice Malala is one of South Africa’s foremost political commentators, both in print and on television. A longtime weekly columnist for  The Times  of South Africa, he has also written for T he Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Financial Times , among other major publications. He is the author of the #1 bestseller,  We Have Now Begun O...

Justin Reich is a professor in Comparative Media Studies and director of the Teaching Systems Lab, both at MIT. He is the host of a podcast called TeachLab ; one of the earliest researchers in the development of Harvard X, which was one of the first initiatives in massive scale online course offerings; and developer and host of five open online courses on MIT and Harvard’s EdX, including “Sorting...

Amanda Montell is a linguist, cultural commentator, and host of the weekly podcast  Sounds Like a Cult . In addition to essays published in  Time,   Cosmopolitan , and other magazines, she has published three books. Her first, W ordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language , released in 2019, established her as a writer who deconstructs biases in our culture, using...

Tom Chivers is a science writer who has won several awards, including the Royal Statistical Society’s award for statistical excellence in journalism, the Association of British Science Writers’ science journalist of the year, and the  Times ’s science books of the year. He has written three books. His first,  The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Ar...

Colin Wayne Leach is a social and personality psychologist at Columbia University, who researches Schadenfreude -- i.e., deriving pleasure from witnessing someone else's misfortune -- and related emotions, such as Genugtuung, which means deriving pleasure from seeing justice done. Recorded 4/12/21.

Ran Barkai is the co-author, with Eyal Halfon, of the recently published book,  They Were Here Before Us: Stories from the First Million Years .  Dr. Barkai is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, who for 20 years has co-directed the excavations and research at Qesem Cave in northern Israel. His wide-ranging research interests encompass stone tool technology, human-ele...

Vardit Ravitsky is a Professor of Bioethics at the University of Montreal and President of the International Association of Bioethics. Her research focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics/genomics and assisted reproductive technologies and their implications for women’s autonomy and for disability rights. She is President of the International Association of Bioethics; Dir...

Jay Joseph is a clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Joseph challenges the empirical evidence behind the mainstream view that mental illness is genetically based, and argues instead that the real causes include oppression, trauma, abuse, and psychologically unhealthy aspects of the social and political environment. He is the author of four books, most recently&nb...

David Olds is a professor at the Pediatrics-Prevention Research Center at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He has devoted his long and distinguished career to the developing and testing of very early interventions in family and child functioning, starting prenatally and continuing through toddler age. After devoting decades to high quality, random assignment, longitudi...

In 2003, Ron Hoffman became the founder of an organization in Falmouth, Massachusetts called Compassionate Care ALS ( CCALS.org ), which has helped well over 1000 families with Lou Gehrig’s disease on both practical and spiritual levels, above all by being deeply present. His memoir,  Sacred Bullet,  published in 2014, reveals in powerful and personal terms, how his own healing is w...

Olivia Campbell is a journalist, essayist, and author focusing on the intersections of medicine, women, history, and nature. Her work has appeared in  The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine , and many other major publications. She is the author of the 2021 NY Times bestseller,  Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine,  which i...

Isabelle Mansuy , a professor in neuroepigenetics in the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and the Department of Health Science and Technology of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Specializing in neuroepigenetics and molecular psychiatry, Dr. Mansuy is doing cutting edge research, using mice, to separate nature from nurture in how the effects of trauma, environmental stre...

Psychiatrist, professor, and researcher,  Randolph Nesse , is a cofounder of the field of evolutionary medicine. Twenty-five years ago his book,  Why We Get Sick , which he co-authored with George C. Williams, went on to sell more than 100,000 copies and to be translated into eight languages. He served for many years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he is a professor e...

Karen Valby is a culture writer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, Fast Company, and EW. She is also the author of two books. The first,  Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town , was published in 2010. Her soon-to-be-released book,  The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and th...