Struggle to Understand – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome back. Today’s episode features two returning guests:  Xavier Bonilla and Angel Eduardo. Xavier has a doctorate in psychology and is a professor of psychology in Maryland. Xavier is also the host of a podcast called "Converging Dialogues" which can be found here. Angel is an Advisory Board member and Director of Messaging and Editorial for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). In addition, Angel is a co-host of the FAIR perspectives podcast with Melissa Chen and a columnist at the Center For Inquiry.

This conversation is a marathon - both in length and subject matter. Trying to construct a cohesive summary of the contents would require a laundry list of subjects that would only add to the impressive run-time of this conversation. But a few highlights include a rather lengthy conversation about fandoms - including a rather protracted discussion of Star Wars and its fandom. We also discuss, as we did in prior conversations, topics surrounding identity, representation, and the role of art in constructing meaning and the truth. As the podcast comes to a close, we discuss some elements of identity politics and the pitfalls that may befall those who argue that demography is destiny, particularly among Latino voters in the United States.

It was wonderful having Xavier and Angel back on to give their shared perspectives on salient topics in our seemingly never-ending cultural quagmire. I hope you enjoy our marathon conversation!

Xavier can be found on Twitter @xaverbonilla87.

Angel can be found on Twitter @StrangelEdweird

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Brian Earp. Brian is the Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and The Hastings Center, and a Research Fellow for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and is currently finishing a joint Philosophy and Psychology PhD at Yale University. Given Brian’s wide experience, this conversation traverses a wide range of topics. We first speak about graduate school: its promise, problems, and our experiences with it. We then transition into a discussion about ethics and social science, taking up what’s been called the replicability crisis in social science as well as some of the perennial questions within the subfield of bioethics. The combination of these two elements leads us to a topic that is close to Brian’s heart: circumcision. We speak about male and female circumcision, why the latter is often called female genital mutilation but the former is rarely spoken of at all, as well as some of the myths and bad science that surround this topic. As you will see toward the end of our conversation, we seemingly have just begun to explore some of these topics when the reality of time intervenes in our conversation. Brian was tremendously gracious with his time and I hope to speak with him again soon, picking up from where we left off here. Find Love and Other Drugs here. Brian's other work can be found here. He can also be found on Twitter here.  Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Scott Johnson, a high school science teacher who lives in Plainfield, Indiana. Scott has been a science educator for nearly 20 years with nearly a decade of that educating advanced and ambitious students in his anatomy and physiology courses. We speak about how he came to the teaching profession, what lessons he has learned from his experience as a classroom teacher – both positive and negative, and then turn to a conversation about how our educational systems often too often do not provide the kinds of outcomes we desire from them. In tandem with this, we discuss his experience of teaching through COVID, the constraints and opportunities the pandemic forced upon him, and how he believes the experience has made him a better teacher – and his students into better students. Given the centrality of public education in our lives today, we often become mired in discussions on how to fix teaching, fix teachers, fix schools, etc. but rarely spend enough time speaking to those who have dedicated their lives to seriously helping others improve their lives through education. As we discuss toward the end of this discussion, public educators have to teach the public and, In this way, they are civil servants engaging with a serious civic duty. Perhaps if we spent more time trying to understand what kinds of citizens we want to live with, and less time with what kind of workers we want to hire or what kind of consumers we want to fill our marketplace, we might be able to better tackle the challenges that come with teaching an increasingly diverse student population. Maybe this will better help us understand the public facet of public education a bit better and may, by extension, improve our collective lives as well.

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

I speak with Angel Eduardo, a staff writer for idealist.org and a columnist for the Center for Inquiry, who is also a musician, photographer, and designer who lives in New York City. Angel has a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts and Creative Writing so we spend time discussing the role of arts in how we communicate and also the art of communicating, specifically using a term he coined, star-manning. As Angel will explain more fully, star-manning is an extension of the intellectual exercise of steel-manning someone else’s argument; that is to say, to present an argument in its strongest form to deal with it in the most serious way. The conversation then turns to something that is far closer to my heart: superheroes. Angel has a particular affinity for the DC character Superman, so we speak at some lengths about the importance of such characters for kids and then how those same characters continue to have meaning well into adulthood. Both facets of this conversation, the art of communication and then communicating through the arts, are vital pieces for engaging in a shared life together. This conversation exemplifies both facets well and I hope you find it to be meaningful.

Angel's work can be found here. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Alex Priou, who teaches at the Herbst Center at the University of Colorado - Boulder. Alex has a PhD from Tulane University and his research focuses on Plato and the Pre-Socratics. This is the first conversation on my podcast that is dedicated to political philosophy and some of the questions inherent to the study of political philosophy. To that end, we spend quite a bit of time exploring questions like: what is political philosophy? Why study the liberal arts? Why take up questions of Platonic political philosophy? We also spend quite a bit of time exploring Leo Strauss and his impact on the way that we think about political philosophy and perhaps how this tradition can help us address the pressing questions of our time. Alex is a fantastic interlocutor and this conversation was a joy. 

Alex, along with two of his friends and colleagues, has a podcast that can be found here.

Alex's writings can be found here. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Iona Italia. Iona has a PhD in literature from Cambridge University and is an editor at Areo Magazine and currently lives in London. We speak about her background, both personally and academically, including her experience living in multiple countries and how that has shaped her worldview, how to be a good writer and issues that emerge from academic training, the humanities and the Enlightenment, and the importance of literature in our lives. Iona is a charming and humorous interlocutor and it was a joy to spend this time with her. 

Her podcast, Two for Tea, can be found here.

Her writings at Areo, here and her book here. 

You can find her on Twitter @ionaitalia.

Her website is here. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

Today, I speak with Xavier Bonilla, who has a doctorate in psychology and is a professor of psychology in Maryland. We speak about a wide range of topics including reacting to the seditious mob invading the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, then transitioning to conversations about political centrism, how to find meaning in a world that seems so often to be meaningless, and questions of how to explore themes and narratives in films or other elements in popular culture. Xavier is an excellent interlocutor and this conversation was a joy. 

Xavier is also the host of a podcast called "Converging Dialogues" which can be found here. His piece on Centrism can be found  

Xavier can be found on on Twitter @xaverbonilla87. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Alex Natale, who is a professor of physics. We talk about fundamental elements in physics, including dark matter, dark energy, and neutrinos, and the role they play in giving an account of nature, the relationship between physics and political philosophy, and the nature of the university and how we educate students. I decided not to break this conversation into multiple episodes because so much of the conversation is self-referential and integrated that there did not seem to be a natural break in the conversation. Having conversations like this one, where people who have interests in different facets of human knowledge discuss their experiences with trying to understand but such conversations push against the trend in the university. We need to invest in more conversations like this one. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

Today, in the second of two episodes, I continue my conversation with Roc, a data and systems analyst who currently lives in New York City. In this discussion, we discuss how talking to academics can be a struggle and perhaps why that is the case, what it means to be part of a community and the weight that may or may not come along with it, how we structure moral codes without religious belief, and we end with a way of viewing the value of currency in how we prioritize the values in our lives. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this conversation for me was our discussion of mercy and the importance that mercy has to play in our relationships with others but also in our relationship with ourselves. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!

In the first of two episodes, I speak with Roc, a data and systems analyst who currently lives in New York City. In this episode, we discuss Roc's life living in various places in the United States and the unique perspective this generates as well as having a fairly long exploration of our relationship with social media. 

Introductory music was written by Alex Yoder. Find him here

Please consider supporting the podcast here and following it on Twitter. Thank you for your support!