Best Ben Joseph Stewart Podcasts (2025)

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Susan D. Stewart. "On the Rocks: Straight Talk about Women and Drinking" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) 28:18

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1d ago28:18

28:18

Existing portrayals of women who drink typically fall into two categories: disturbing stories of women hitting “rock bottom,” resulting in ruined careers, families, and futures, or amusing stories of fun and harmless “girls’ nights out,” with women drinking and overindulging as a temporary escape from a never-ending list of work and family demands.…

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Ben Answers Your Cleopatra Questions 40:44

11m ago40:44

40:44

Ben Mankiewicz received hundreds of voicemails about Cleopatra, and now he's answering them! Well, as many of them as he can. In this special bonus episode, Ben weighs in on the six-hour cut of Cleopatra, what Richard Burton thought of the movie, Judy Garland's love for Joe Mankiewicz... and much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcas…

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Free Will in a Skinner Box 37:37

5h ago37:37

37:37

Have you ever heard of a Skinner box? BF Skinner was a behavioral psychologist who felt humans have no free will and can be controlled through an algorithmic like reward schedule that installs an impulsive behavior. He believe we should dispose of the fiction called "free will". In this episode I make a nuanced argument against Skinner's oversimpli…

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Ask Ben Your Cleopatra Questions! 1:00

26d ago1:00

1:00

We’re doing our first-ever Q&A bonus episode, and we want your questions! Call 404-885-0013 to leave a voicemail for Ben. You can ask about Cleopatra, Ben's great-uncle Joe Mankiewicz or the stars of the movie. Remember to tell us your first name and where you're calling from. We might use your voice in the episode so keep it clean! And be on the l…

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Susan C. Boyd, "Heroin: An Illustrated History" (Fernwood, 2022) 45:23

16d ago45:23

45:23

Dr. Susan Boyd is a scholar/activist and Distinguished Professor emerita at the University of Victoria. Her research examines a variety of topics related to the history of drug prohibition and resistance to it, drug law and policy, including maternal drug use, maternal/state conflicts, film and culture, radio and print media, heroin assisted-treatm…

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Wildly Successful and Much Maligned 46:54

1M ago46:54

46:54

The fate of 20th Century Fox hangs in the balance as Cleopatra premieres. Critics and audiences weigh in, Elizabeth and Richard face momentous life decisions, and Joe sinks into a deep depression. For years to come, Joe and the Mankiewicz family reckon the difficult legacy of Cleopatra. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc…

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Mankiewicz vs. Zanuck 45:54

26d ago45:54

45:54

Joe’s body reaches its breaking point, and he’s forced to film the last few scenes from a wheelchair. But when production wraps, Fox installs a new studio head, Darryl F. Zanuck, who undercuts Joe’s authority and takes over the edit of Cleopatra. Soon, Joe and Zanuck wage a very public battle for control of the movie, just months before it’s finall…

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Our Body is a Super Computer 19:00

1M ago19:00

19:00

In this episode I explore the most incredible technology known to man. That is the body of man itself. Specifically the myofascial network of living tissues in the body that communicate fractally across its fiber optic scaffolding, gives form to our anatomy, orients us in time and space, and moves fluids through the body for hydration and cleansing…

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Le Scandale 46:57

1M ago46:57

46:57

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s love affair becomes a tabloid sensation. Richard drinks and Elizabeth cries, they fight and make up, all while trying to keep the affair from their spouses and the public. When the press infiltrates the set and reports on every ugly development, Joe struggles to hold the production together. But as the budget b…

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Melody Glenn, "Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis" (Beacon Press, 2025) 43:35

2M ago43:35

43:35

Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER. While working at a methadone clinic, she realized how effective harm reduction treatments could be and set out to discover why they weren’t used more broadly. That’s when she found Dr. Marie Nyswand…

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Judith Grisel, "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Doubleday, 2019) 1:00:13

1M ago1:00:13

1:00:13

By Marshall Poe

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Tricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018) 1:00:09

1M ago1:00:09

1:00:09

How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections between tobacco, gender, and empire in her latest monograph, Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia (Cornell University Press, …

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The Girl is on Salary 50:53

1M ago50:53

50:53

Joe Mankiewicz decides to recast two leading men and hires Richard Burton and Rex Harrison – major talents who turn out to be major headaches. He also moves filming to a new country, where the budget spirals out of control. Joe works against the clock to meet the studio’s deadline to start shooting, and he nearly pulls it off… until Richard Burton …

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Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018) 57:27

2M ago57:27

57:27

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Starting in 1988, when the American drug war was taking its current shape, he led the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), one of the federal governmen…

1
Joe 56:36

2M ago56:36

56:36

While Elizabeth Taylor fights for her life in a London hospital, Joe Mankiewicz begins to grapple with the movie he’s inherited. The script is dreadful, the sets are grotesque, and none of the footage is usable. Joe decides to start over from scratch. A look at Joe’s long career in Hollywood gives some clues as to how he’ll handle this epic product…

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Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019) 45:03

2M ago45:03

45:03

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist whose best-selling 2019 book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic (Grove Press, 2019), was one of the first to take fentanyl seriously as both a social phenomenon and a national threat. Since its release, Westhoff has become a policy exper…

1
London Slog 50:51

2M ago50:51

50:51

20th Century Fox pays Elizabeth Taylor a record-breaking salary to play Cleopatra, then tries to save money by filming the movie in England. That turns out to be a disastrous decision. The weather doesn’t agree with Liz, who suffers one health problem after another, delaying production for months. Fox then faces the question: pull the plug on this …

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Season 6 Trailer: Cleopatra 3:53

2M ago3:53

3:53

His studio was collapsing. His budget was skyrocketing. And his two stars were making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Those were just some of the headaches facing Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the director of one of the most expensive and infamous movies ever made: Cleopatra. With Mankiewicz calling the shots and the luminous Elizabeth Taylor in the t…

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Owen Flanagan, "What Is It Like to Be an Addict?: Understanding Substance Abuse" (Oxford UP, 2025) 40:47

3M ago40:47

40:47

A powerful and important exploration of how addiction functions on social, psychological and biological levels, integrated with the experience of being an addict, from an acclaimed philosopher and former addict. What is addiction? Theories about what kind of thing addiction is are sharply divided between those who see it purely as a brain disorder,…

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The Great Distraction from the Financial Revolution 23:23

3M ago23:23

23:23

I personally believe the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is a red herring to cover up the greatest wealth transfer and financial restructuring of all time. On par with the Bretton Woods Agreement after World War II, this monetary revolution is going purely digital. With Cryptocurrencies (digital assets) on the rise in every country, in ever…

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AI, the 'Aint I Christ?' 22:25

4M ago22:25

22:25

The Antichrist is a part of Christian lore from the book of Revelation. In this episode I tease apart the similarities between the Beast of Revelation and AI or Technology as a whole. I show videos from investment-guru Ral Paoul, Evolutionary Biologist Brett Weinstein, Ezra Klein and more. This is one of my favorite topics to cover because I feel t…

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The Power of Silence vs. Misdirection 21:52

5M ago21:52

21:52

🔍 Have you ever pondered the profound difference between the power of silence and the art of misdirection? In this thought-provoking episode, we delve into the delicate balance between sociopathy and the mastery of restraint and composure. 📚 Drawing insights from renowned figures like Jordan Peterson and key concepts from the *48 Laws of Power*, we…

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John Lee Hooker Jr., "From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) 54:12

5M ago54:12

54:12

From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) is powerful memoir of redemption from the son of blues legend John Lee Hooker. Born in Detroit and exposed to the music world from an early age, John Lee Hooker Jr. began singing as a featured attraction in his father's shows as a teenager. His f…

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Lessons from Pain 12:52

5M ago12:52

12:52

If you've ever felt betrayed by the world, only to discover what a self-help book could have taught you? Some wounds bring you to your knees and sometimes no one help can help. You have to pick yourself back up. While I've had many rites-of-passage moments in my life, they were simply practice for the latest. And there is no bad guy in this story. …

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The Origin of Lying: Masculine and Feminine Neurology 18:06

5M ago18:06

18:06

In this episode I explore Curt Doolittle's views on masculine vs feminine neurology and where lies and undermining communication originates. He does a fantastic job modeling the way masculine and feminine neurology operates by spoke or unspoken contract. It's mathematical as well. The structure of the way we communicate is steeped in two evolutiona…

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Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025) 56:01

5M ago56:01

56:01

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion…

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Neurocinema: Mind Control or Perfect Entertainment? 24:09

6M ago24:09

24:09

Neurocinema is a new field of research that looks at exactly how TV programs, commercials and films effect the neurology of the viewer. The more accurately the producer can predict the audience reaction, the more successful the film typically is at achieving its intended goal: Your attention, your money and Your time. In this episode I explore this…

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Walls, Warnings, and the War on Fentanyl: Peter Andreas on Trump’s Border Politics 34:01

6M ago34:01

34:01

In this episode of International Horizons, Peter Andreas, John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University and author of Border Games: The Politics of Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide, 3rd edition (Cornell UP, 2022) and The Illicit Global Economy (Oxford UP, 2025), joins RBI Director John Torpey to unpack the myths and realities of bo…

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Internet of Bodies in 2025 31:47

7M ago31:47

31:47

Technology is fusing human with the internet in ways you may not expect. Dive deep into the Internet of Bodies, its aims and how it can be seen as something useful rather than having the knee jerk reaction of thinking all tech leads to technofeudalism. You are the most powerful technology. Don't ever forget that.…

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Alcohol 20:00

7M ago20:00

20:00

In this episode of High Theory, Nina Studer tells us about alcohol. The restrictions and prohibitions, medical and moral discourses surrounding alcohol reveal a great deal about a given society in a particular historical moment. Nina uses alcohol as a lens to analyze the history of French colonization in North Africa. Who consumed alcohol, in what …

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The Unrivaled Power of Story 7:55

7M ago7:55

7:55

Have you ever wondered how powerful Story must be to be the oldest social technology and the way all modern governments and corporations recruit massive support for agenda's that aren't even beautiful? In this episode I break down the power of story and its application in every day life to show you that you're not in need of some external solution …

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Emine Ö Evered, "Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity" (U Texas Press, 2024) 54:25

7M ago54:25

54:25

Historian Emine Ö. Evered’s Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity (University of Texas Press, 2024) investigates the history of alcohol, its consumption, and its proscription as a means to better understand events and agendas of the late Ottoman and early Turkish republican eras. Through a comprehensive examination of archival…

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Crypto for Land Swap? Bitcoin Bailout 11:17

7M ago11:17

11:17

Catherine Austin Fitts breaks down how Bitcoin may be purchased by the federal and state governments in Trump's proposed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. I link a few threads from Catherine to highlight a part of Agenda 21 that I've been seeing since my first film Esoteric Agenda. Catherine proposed the possibility of crypto whales liquidating their bitc…

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Philip Howell, "Pub" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 38:59

7M ago38:59

38:59

The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In Pub (Bloomsbury, 2025) a new addition to the Object Lessons series, Dr. Philip Howell takes the public house as an object, or rather as a series of objects: he takes the pub apart and examines its constituent elements, from pub signs to the bar staff to t…

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Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024) 1:13:12

8M ago1:13:12

1:13:12

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death. Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction (Rutgers UP, 2024) tells h…

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Michael Ray Richardson, "Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption" (Sports Publishing, 2024) 57:04

8M ago57:04

57:04

Michael Ray Richardson was a star in the making. After a stellar collegiate career at the University of Montana, where he was voted first team All-Big Sky Conference as a sophomore, junior, and senior, the future seemed bright. Taken fourth overall in the 1978 NBA Draft by the New York Knicks, Richardson was billed as “the next Walt Frazier.” In ju…

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Dayne C. Riley, "Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751" (Bucknell UP, 2024) 43:29

8M ago43:29

43:29

Writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—a period of vast economic change—recognized that the global trade in alcohol and tobacco promised a brighter financial future for England, even as overindulgence at home posed serious moral pitfalls. Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751 (Bucknell…

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Benjamin T. Smith, "The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade" (W. W. Norton, 2021) 44:39

9M ago44:39

44:39

For over a century Mexico has been embroiled in a drug war dictated by the demands of their neighbor to the north. In The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade (W. W. Norton, 2021), Benjamin T. Smith offers a history of the trade and its effects upon the people of Mexico. As he reveals, at the start of the 20th century drugs such as mari…

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Lisa Sheryl Jacobson. "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey After Prohibition" (U California Press, 2024) 1:29:04

9M ago1:29:04

1:29:04

In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Dr. Lisa Jacobson reveals in Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition (University of California Press, 2024), alcohol’s respectability and mass market success were neither sudde…

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Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024) 44:28

9M ago44:28

44:28

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a supposed rise in drug use reached a fevered pitch, the emergence of the nation’s first “narcotic farms” in Fort Worth, Texas, and Lexington, Kentucky, marked a watershed moment in the treatment of addi…

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Aisha M Beliso-de Jesús, "Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease" (Duke UP, 2024) 54:09

10M ago54:09

54:09

In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called “excited delirium syndrome.” Soon, medical examiners began using the syndrome regularly to describe the deaths of Black men and women during interactions with police. Police and medical examiners claimed …

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Jeffrey M. Pilcher, "Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity" (Oxford UP, 2024) 52:27

10M ago52:27

52:27

Today I’m speaking with Jeffrey Pilcher, Professor of Food History at the University of Toronto. We are discussing his new book, Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity (Oxford University Press, 2024). While beer, or even alcohol for that matter, is not consumed in many parts of the world, its near universality is still…

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Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023) 1:15:52

10M ago1:15:52

1:15:52

The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by racial hierarchy, and justified through white supremacist logics. Now, in the twenty-first century, the biotech industry is the new capitalist whose race-based exploitation engages not only labor but raci…

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Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah, "Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States" (NYU Press, 2024) 52:07

10M ago52:07

52:07

Political Scientists Dan Mallinson and Lee Hannah, both experts on state-level politics and the policy making process, have a new book that focuses on the state-level process of legalization of medical cannabis across the United States. Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States (NYU Press, 2024) is a book that needed to be writ…

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Russian War or Deception Campaign? 4:08

10M ago4:08

4:08

After the United States helped deploy missiles from Ukraine into Russia, the threat of World War III is all people want to talk about. In this episode, I expose the Boogey-Man Story that all nations feed their people in what's called the "Multi-Polar Trap. This is a gaming dilemma in which competing nation states must keep growing in military might…

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American Land is Being Stolen RIGHT NOW! 16:02

10M ago16:02

16:02

There's no easier way to say this and have it land. There is legislation in motion under the 30x30 American the Beautiful Act that states it will put thirty (30) percent of US land under federal jurisdiction to preserve nature against human influence. In this episode, I break down Kamala Harris's involvement in pushing this agenda through in 2021. …

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How to Heal American Corruption and Polarity - Marriane Williamson's Special 16:02

11M ago16:02

16:02

Marriane Williamson shares her sincere thoughts on how and why the Democrats lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump. We highlight her entire address to the world as I give my thoughts on exactly why this kind of voice is needed to remind the people: The left and right are humans and fellow countrymen and women. The system will not heal this divide …

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Stuart Anderson, "Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024) 1:02:37

11M ago1:02:37

1:02:37

The word "pharmacopoeia" has come to have many meanings, although it is commonly understood to be a book describing approved compositions and standards for drugs. In 1813 the Royal College of Physicians of London considered a proposal to develop an imperial British pharmacopoeia - at a time when separate official pharmacopoeias existed for England,…

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Sanaullah Khan, "Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self" (Lexington Books, 2023) 52:26

11M ago52:26

52:26

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditions and substance use by considering the intersections between drug markets, sidewalks, households, and prisons in Baltimore. Sanaullah Khan argues that while housing, medicalization, and incarceration…

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How Political Theory Shapes Our Super Organism 36:15

11M ago36:15

36:15

In this enlightening episode, we explore the essence of politics as a discovery of fundamental principles woven into the fabric of humanity. By stripping away the vitriol and hyperbole often found in political debates, we reveal the core theories that shape major institutions globally, with a particular focus on American politics. Join me as I diss…