
Nine Questions with Eric Oliver
Twenty years ago, Dr. Eric Oliver started teaching a course on how to know your self at the University of Chicago. In the class, Eric would ask his students nine questions that were essential for crafting “a well-examined life.” For this podcast, he poses these same nine questions to some of our wisest and most interesting fellow humans. We hope these conversations will shed some light on your own lived experience and tell you something you didn’t know about this mysterious process we call a self.
Latest episodes

Oct 21, 2024 • 40min
The Problem with Parties - Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman
Daniel Schlozman is the Joseph and Bertha Bernstein Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the book When Movements Anchor Parties. Sam Rosenfeld is an associate professor of political science at Colgate University and the author of The Polarizers, Post War Architects of Our Partisan Era. Both are coauthors of the new book: The Hollow Parties. Support the show

Oct 7, 2024 • 37min
Divided America - Jamie Druckman
James N. Druckman is the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. Druckman has published more than 180 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited seven books. His most recent book is Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divides.Support the show

Sep 23, 2024 • 49min
The Election - John Sides
John Sides is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of many books on campaigns and cofounder of the Good Authority blog which brings political science research to a wider audience.Support the show

Sep 16, 2024 • 49min
The Extinction of Experience - Christine Rosen
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, technology and culture, and feminism. Concurrently she is a columnist for Commentary magazine and one of the cohosts of The Commentary Magazine Podcast. She is also a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a senior editor in an advisory position at the New Atlantis. Check out her new book The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World.Support the show

Jul 22, 2024 • 46min
God and Money - Tom Levinson
Tom Levinson is one of the most multifaceted people we know. A former lawyer and divinity student, he is the author of ALL THAT’S HOLY: A Young Guy, an Old Car, and the search for God in America. Tom is co-founder of LK Advisors, LLC, which provides families with help navigating the complexities of life with money. He is also cohost of Money, Meet Meaning – a podcast exploring the surprising, practical relevance of the world’s spiritual traditions on our life with money.Support the show

72 snips
Jul 8, 2024 • 53min
Secular Spirituality - Brittney Hartley
Brittney Hartley, an author and secular spiritual counselor, shares her unique journey from a strong Mormon upbringing to embracing secular spirituality. She discusses the emotional challenges of deconstructing faith while seeking meaning and community. Brittney explores the fluid nature of self through Jungian psychology, personal narratives of meditation, and psychedelics. She advocates for an inclusive spirituality, emphasizing the importance of personal values and community support in navigating modern spiritual practices.

Jun 14, 2024 • 40min
The Living Dying Project - Dale Borglum
Dale Borglum is the founder and Executive Director of A Living/Dying Project. He is a pioneer in the conscious dying movement and has worked directly with thousands of people with life-threatening illness and their families for over 30 years. In 1981, Dale founded the first residential facility for people who wished to die consciously in the United States, The Dying Center. He has taught and lectured extensively on the topics of spiritual support for those with life-threatening illness, on caregiving as a spiritual practice, and on healing at the edge, the edge of illness, of death, of loss, of crisis.Support the show

Jun 7, 2024 • 52min
The Foreign Agent - Sam Patten
Sam Patten is a political consultant who spent the first half of his career promoting democracy and advising political campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. He gained notoriety in 2018 when he became the target of the Muller Investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, due largely to his connection with Konstantine Kilimink who the government said was a Russian spy. Sam pled guilty to minor charges of being an unregistered foreign agent, cooperated with the investigation and was only one of two people not pardoned by Donald Trump afterwards. He now works as a cook, chauffeur, and party host in his home state of Maine and the author of a new book describing his life called DANGEROUS COMPANY.Support the show

May 24, 2024 • 55min
The Neuroscience of Well Being - Camilla Nord
Camilla Nord is fellow and director of Studies in Psychological and Behavioral Sciences at Cambridge University. Her research tries to bridge the gap between neuroscience and treatments for mental health disorders, She is also the author of a new book called The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health.Support the show

Apr 24, 2024 • 49min
Emotions, Negotiation, and Comedy - Dr. Hillary Elfenbein
Hillary Anger Elfenbein has been a business school professor at the Olin School of Washington University in St. Louis since 2008. She holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, a Master’s degree in Statistics, and undergraduate degrees in Physics and Sanskrit, all from Harvard University.Dr. Elfenbein served for five years on faculty at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, two years as a Senior Researcher at the Harvard Business School, and two years as a management consultant with the Monitor Group in Cambridge, MA.Her research focuses on emotion in the workplace, with particular emphasis on emotional intelligence, emotion in negotiations, and the cultural differences in emotion that can create challenges to working in global environments.Her work has appeared in the Academy of Management Annals, the Academy of Management Journal, the Annual Review of Psychology, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nature Human Behavior, Organization Science, Psychological Bulletin, and Psychological Science. She served as an Associate Editor of Management Science.Support the show