Delving In with Stuart Kelter

Wladimir Lyra is an astronomer at New Mexico State University, whose research focuses around high-end computer simulations of planet formation, both in our own solar system and beyond, i.e., exoplanets and their solar systems. In this interview, we discuss empirically-based theories of time and space, their relationship to each other, and current ideas about the beginning and end of time. Rec...

Thomas Schaller and Paul Waldman and the co-authors of Rural White Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. Tom Schaller , who is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House; Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South; and co-author, with fellow UMBC...

Historians  Andrea Balis  and  Elizabeth Levy are co-authors of the  Bringing Down a President: The Watergate Scandal,  published in 2019, and  Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare,  published just this year and the subject of today’s interview .  Andrea was a professor at the City University of New York for 30 years, has worked as a the...

Alice Driver is a writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is the author of  More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico,  published in 2015, and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, published in 2022. Her latest book,  The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Compan...

Caroline Crampton is a writer and a podcaster, and the author of two books.  The Way to the Sea , published in 2019, recounts the stories, literature, and history about the Thames Estuary in the U.K. Her second book, published in 2024 and the subject of today’s interview, is  A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria.  Crampton creates and hosts the awa...

Beth O’Leary is a Professor Emerita at New Mexico State University, whose areas of interest include both cultural anthropology and archaeology. She is one of the creators and experts in Space Archaeology and Heritage, investigating the heritage status of the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base site on the Moon. In 2010, she and colleagues successfully nominated objects and structures at the Tranquility Bas...

Ian Buruma is a Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. Originally from the Netherlands, he is a prolific writer with broad interests, including Japanese and Chinese culture and history, organized religion and religious intolerance, and intellectual and political freedom or lack thereof. He has been a regular contributor to the  New York Review of Books , the  New York...

This interview is dedicated to Samantha Keleher Bursum, who died on March 1 of 2024 in a car accident at the age of 14. She participated in this interview, at age 11, with her mother, Lori Keleher, who is a philosophy professor at New Mexico State University. Together they share the joys and benefits of philosophical conversations with children, starting from a surprisingly early age. Recorded 12/...

Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Islamic intellectual history, gender studies, and ethics. Her 2020 monograph, Women and Gender in the Qur'an, won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award and was featured by the American Academy of Religion for Women's History Month. Ibrahim is also the author of Islam and Monotheism (2022), an accessible primer on cor...

Jamie Bronstein has been a history professor at New Mexico State University since 1996. She is the author of six books about American and British History: Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862 (published in 1999); Caught in the Machinery: Workplace Accidents and Injured Workers in 19th-century Britain (2008); Transatlantic radical: John Francis Bray (...

Melissa Jacoby is a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches commercial and bankruptcy law. Melissa is a frequent commentator in the news media and has spoken with thousands of people about debt, lending, commercial law, and bankruptcy. In 2021 the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, appointed her to help design educational programming for t...

Carl Elliott   is a philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a recipient of the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. His work focuses on the influence of market forces on medicine, the ethics of enhancement technologies, research ethics, the philosophy of psychiatry, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and&n...

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...