In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Natalie Foster about the guarantee framework for economic stability for all Americans. They discuss what is the guarantee and why government involvement is essential, FDR and basic rights, the rise of neoliberal and neoconservative policies, and the features of the guarantee over the past 15 years. They discuss the importance of community organizing, the great recession and bank bailouts, the rise of right-wing and left-wing populism, debt and inflation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the future of the guarantee framework.

Natalie Foster is the President and co-founder of the Economic Security Project and a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative. Previously, she was the CEO and co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for people–driven economic change, with Van Jones. She served as digital director for President Obama’s Organizing for America (OFA) and the Democratic National Committee. She built the first digital department at the Sierra Club and served as the deputy organizing director for MoveOn.org. She’s been awarded fellowships at the Institute for the Future, Rockwood Leadership Institute and New America California, and is a board member of the California Budget and Policy Center, the Change.org global foundation and Liberation in a Generation, a project to close the racial wealth gap. She is the author of the latest book, The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy.

Website: https://nataliefoster.me/

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Tricia Rose about systemic racism in the United States. They discuss why and how racism persists, how it looks different from decades past, and how it evolves in institutions. They define metaracism, discuss individuals vs. institutions, understanding systems theory, colorblindness, and many more topics.

Tricia Rose is Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. She has her Bachelors in Sociology from Yale and her PhD in American Studies from Brown University. She has received numerous scholarly fellowships including from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the American Association of University Women. She is the author of the latest book, Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives—And How We break Free.

Website: https://www.triciarose.com/

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Robert Merry about the Presidency of James Polk. They give and overview of James Polk, influence of Andrew Jackson, Polk’s personality and trajectory, and the four major issues he tackled as President. They discuss Polk’s expansionism, the Mexican-American War, Polk’s one-term deal, legacy, and many more topics.

Robert W. Merry has an extensive background as a reporter, newsroom manager, and publishing CEO. He has both his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Journalism. Currently, he is the author of numerous books on American history and foreign policy, including, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent.

Website: https://www.robertwmerry.com/

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Alex Edmans about misinformation and the role of human biases. They discuss how to look at data, confirmation bias, statements not facts, facts not data, and the value and limits of the scientific method. They also discuss data mining and ethics with stats, correlation not being causation, data with social issues, and many more topics.

Alex Edmans is Professor of Professor of Finance at London Business School. He has a degree from Oxford University and a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar. Prior to teaching at LBS, he taught at Wharton and became tenured in 2013. He is a Director of the American Finance Association, Vice President-Elect of the Western Finance Association, Fellow, Director, and Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Management Association, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. From 2017-2022, he was Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe.

Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioral finance. He is a Director of the American Finance Association, Vice President-Elect of the Western Finance Association, Fellow, Director, and Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Management Association, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. From 2017-2022 he was Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe.

Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports. He is the author of the latest book, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It.

Website: https://alexedmans.com/

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Stephanie Ternullo about the political shift from liberal to conservative in the American heartland over the 20th century. They discuss how she constructed her study, makeup of the three Midwest cities used in the study, New Deal coalition, place-based partisanship, role of unions, and many more topics.

Stephanie Ternullo is Assistant Professor in Government at Harvard University. She has her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Her research uses multiple methods to explore the bidirectional relationship between place and politics – both how politics shape places, and how places shape political identity and behavior. She is the author of the book, How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics.

Website: https://stephanieternullo.com/

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Paco Calvo about the intelligence of plants. They discuss plant blindness, plant intelligence, sun tracking and internal representations, predictive processing, and what is it like to be a plant. They discuss domesticated and wild plants, time, individuality of plants, ethics, and many more topics.

Paco Calvo is a cognitive scientist and philosopher of biology, known for his groundbreaking research in the field of plant cognition and intelligence. He is a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab), focusing on the study of minimal cognition in plants. Calvo’s interdisciplinary work combines insights from biology, philosophy, and cognitive science to explore the fascinating world of plant behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving. He is the author of the book (with Natalie Lawrence), Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence.

Website: https://www.um.es/mintlab/

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Andrew Boryga about his novel on victimhood. They discuss how he approaches writing novels vs. non-fiction pieces, choosing themes for the novel, personal influence on fictional characters, evolution of characters, and using tragedy and victimhood for clout. They also discuss dealing with social justice themes, shaped by environment, stereotypes, talking about experiences honestly, and many more topics.

Andrew Boryga is a writer, editor, and author who’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Daily Beast, and many other outlets. He has also taught fiction and non-fiction writing to elementary school students, college students, and incarcerated men in Florida. He is the author of the new novel, Victim.

Website: https://www.andrewboryga.com/

Substack:

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Cole Bunzel about the Islamic branch of Wahhābism. They talk about the current landscape of Wahhābism, extreme and non-extreme uses of Wahhābism and some of the differences between terrorists groups that use Wahhābism. They discuss Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and how he started a movement, modeling himself after the Prophet Muhammad, being against polytheism and the cult of saints, and why Wahhābism was designed to be aggressive. They discuss the critics of Wahhābism, role of Sufism, major doctrines, three Saudi states, legacy of Wahhābism, and many other topics.

Cole Bunzel is a historian and fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He studies the history and contemporary affairs of the Islamic Middle East, with a particular focus on violent Islamism and the Arabian Peninsula. He has his MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and his BA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He has been a research fellow in Islamic law and civilization at the Yale Law School, and is a nonresident fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism. He is the editor of the blog Jihadica and has written widely on the ideology of Sunni jihadism, including his most recent book, Wahhābism: The History of A Militant Islamic Movement.

Twitter: @colebunzel