Converging Dialogues

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Walter Scheidel about ancient history. They ask what is ancient history, why Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are heavily emphasized, globalism, and classicism. They discuss some of the evolutionary history of humans, nomadic to stationary, human writing, The West, future of the classics, and many more topics. Walter Scheidel is a historian and author and is the Dickason Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Stanford University. He has his MPhil and PhD in Ancient History from the University of Vienna. He is one of the most cited Roman historians in an active faculty position. He has written over 270 articles, chapters, and reviews and is the author of over 22 books, including the most recent, What Is Ancient History? Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Moudhy Al-Rashid about ancient Mesopotamia. They discuss the uniqueness of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, importance of cuneiform, Sumerian to Akkadian writing, importance of clay for writing, ancient astronomy, and many more topics. Moudhy Al-Rashid is an Assyriologist and Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. She has a Bachelors in Philosophy from Columbia University’s Columbia College, an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies, and a DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College), where she now researches the use of metaphor in descriptions of mental distress in cuneiform medical texts. She teaches Akkadian text classes and modules in the history of science in Mesopotamia at the Oriental Institute.Research interests include the history of science, medicine, and technology; science and medicine in the ancient Middle East; Iraq; cuneiform; Akkadian language; ancient North Arabian languages and scripts; archaeology; Assyriology; and historiography of Assyriology.She is the author of the latest book, Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Laurence Hurst about the imperfection of evolution. They discuss mutation, selection, and adaptation, DNA and waste, larger and smaller populations, sickle cell anemia, embryology, gene editing and CRISPR, and many more topics. Laurence Hurst is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in The Milner Centre for Evolution, at the University of Bath, UK. He has his DPhil in Zoology from Oxford University. His research interests cover a broad span of evolution, genetics and genomics, predominantly using computational and mathematical techniques to understand the way genes and genomes evolve. He is the author of the latest book, The Imperfection of Evolution: The science of why we aren’t and can’t be perfect. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Michael P. Lynch about truth and politics. They discuss local and national politics, defining truth, “Twitbookians,” liberal pluralism, role of institutions, Rawls and morals, truth in politics, and many more topics. Michael P. Lynch is Provost Professor of the Humanities and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He has his PhD in philosophy from Syracuse University. His work mostly centers around truth, ethics, democracy, and epistemology of technology. He is the author of numerous books, including the most recent, On Truth In Politics: Why Democracy Demands It. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Georgios Varouxakis about “the West.” They define the west, discuss different meanings and ideas about the west, and how western ideas came from the east. They also talk about “L’Occident,” impact of Christendom, separating Russia from the West, and Comte. They talk about whether Western values can exist without Christianity, WWI and WWII, the cold war, decline of the West, future of the West, and many other topics. Georgios Varouxakis is Professor of the History of Political Thought and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at Queen Mary-University of London. He has a Masters in Legal and Political Theory at University College London (UCL) and a PhD in History at UCL. His work has concentrated on the nineteenth and twentieth-century history of political thought and intellectual history with a particular emphasis on international political thought, political thought on nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism, empire, and the intellectual history of ideas of “Europe” and “the West”, as well as of attitudes towards the EEC/EU. He is the author of numerous books including the most recent, The West: The History of An Idea. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli on inflation. They define inflation, provide positive and negative of inflation, and how prices are measured. They talk about housing interest rates, Federal Reserve, inflation in the 70s, Biden stimulus, Hyperinflation in Turkey and Argentina, Trump’s tariffs, and many more topics. Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics and the Director of the Rhodes Centre for International Economics and Finance at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He holds a joint appointment in the department of political science. He studies the politics of growth, distribution and decarbonization and why people continue to believe dubious economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. He is the author of many award-winning books including his most recent (co-authored with Nicolò Fraccaroli), Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. Nicolò Fraccaroli is an Economist at the World Bank and Visiting Scholar at Brown University. He has an MSc in Political Economy of Europe from the London School of Economics and PhD in Economics from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Before joining the World Bank, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Adjunct Professor at Brown University. He has also worked at the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Inter-American Development Bank. His work focuses on political economy with data-driven applications to the topics of central banking, populism, and finance. His work has featured on the Financial Times, the Guardian, and other outlets, and in the speeches of various policymakers including Mario Draghi and Christine Lagarde. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Henry Abbott on the Peak Performance Project (P3) within sports medicine. They discuss the landscape of injuries in the U.S., P3, chronic injuries, healthy movement and hip rotation, landing and ACL injuries, prevention and recovery, mental endurance, and many more topics. Henry Abbott is an award-winning journalist and founder of TrueHoop. He led ESPN’s 60-person NBA digital and print team, which published several groundbreaking articles and won a National Magazine Award. He is the author of the book, Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Judith Scheele about the human history of the Sahara. They discuss the perceptions of the Sahara, landscape of the Sahara, sand and freshwater, multiple uses of camels, peoples of the Sahara, Slavery and race in the Sahara, Islam, contemporary Sahara, and many more topics. Judith Scheele is professor of social anthropology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS). She has spent almost two decades living in and researching Saharan societies. She is the author of three previous books and is the author of the recent book, Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Karen Hao about OpenAI and the current landscape about AI. They discuss the origins of OpenAI, Sam Altman and his motivations, his relationships with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, using cheap labor in Venezuela and Kenya for AI, supercomputers and mega campuses for data centers, and many more topics. Karen Hao is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter covering artificial intelligence. She was an application engineer at the first startup to spin out of Google[x]. She received a B.S. in mechanical engineering and minor in energy studies from MIT. She has written for many publications such as The Atlantic and others. Previously, she was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal focused on AI & China, and a senior editor at MIT Technology Review, where she wrote about the latest AI research & its social impacts. She has been a fellow with the Harvard Technology and Public Purpose program, the MIT Knight Science Journalism program, and the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network. She was the first journalist to profile OpenAI and author of the book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Katherine Stewart about democracy and American authoritarianism. They discuss the evolution of conservatives to the Far Right, critiques of the Far Right, reactionary nihilism and the anti-woke. They discuss issues such as abortion, conservative conventions, religion, and many more topics. Katherine Stewart is a journalist and author who has been covering the rise of the anti-democratic movement for over 16 years. Her writing appears in The New York Times op ed, New Republic, Religion News Service and others. Her 2012 book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, focused on the religious right’s efforts to undermine public education. Her previous book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury 2020), won First Place in the Nonfiction Books category from the Religion News Association, as well as a Morris B. Forkosch Best Book award. The Power Worshippers formed the basis of the documentary feature God & Country, produced by Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner; Stewart served as executive producer. Her latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (Bloomsbury 2025), is an instant New York Times bestseller. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe