
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

Aug 11, 2023 • 53min
The Psychedelic Psychologist - Harriet De Wit
Harriet De Wit is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, her research investigates the effects of psychoactive drugs on healthy people, examining what they can tell us about normal brain function.Support the show

Jul 28, 2023 • 40min
The Self-Help Skeptic - Oliver Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman is a British author and journalist, formerly writing the weekly column This Column Will Change Your Life for the newspaper The Guardian. In 2021, he published Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, a self-help book on the philosophy and psychology of time management and happiness. For more information please visit https://www.oliverburkeman.com/Support the show

Jul 8, 2023 • 2min
Season Two - Intro
Join us as we get to know a whole new round of amazing guests for, what is to be, an exciting Season Two of Nine Questions with Eric Oliver. Support the show

Jul 7, 2023 • 45min
The Primatologist - Dr. Richard Wrangham
Richard Wrangham is Ruth B. Moore Research Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and founded the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in 1987. He has conducted extensive research on primate ecology, nutrition, and social behavior. He is best known for his work on the evolution of human warfare, described in the book Demonic Males, and on the role of cooking in human evolution, described in the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Together with Elizabeth Ross, he co-founded the Kasiisi Project in 1997, and serves as a patron of the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP).Support the show

Jun 22, 2023 • 52min
The Historian of Ecstasy - Rachel Nuwer
Rachel Nuwer is an award-winning freelance journalist who reports about science, travel, food and adventure for the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American and more. Her multi-award winning first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking, was published in 2018 with Da Capo Press. Her second book, I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, has just been published with Bloomsbury. The book recounts the unlikely story of how the psychedelic drug MDMA emerged from the shadows to the forefront of a medical revolution—and the potential it may hold to help us thrive. To learn more about her writing please visit her website here. Support the show

Feb 10, 2023 • 33min
The Season Finale
Andrea and Eric recap season one’s highlights and what season two might have in store.Support the show

Jan 13, 2023 • 36min
The Skeptical Provocateur - Chris Kavanagh
Chris Kavanagh is a post-doctoral researcher at Oxford in the Centre for Social Cohesion at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and an Associate Professor at the College of Contemporary Psychology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behavior, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria. He is also co-host the podcast Decoding the Gurus.Support the show

Dec 26, 2022 • 53min
The Theologian - Carl Trueman
Carl Trueman is a Christian theologian and ecclesiastical historian. He was Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he held the Paul Woolley Chair of Church History. In 2018 he became a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. He has published several books including The Creedal Imperative, Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative, and, most recently in 2020, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.Support the show

Dec 16, 2022 • 42min
The Cosmologist - Dan Hooper
Dan Hooper is an American cosmologist and particle physicist specializing in the areas of dark matter, cosmic rays, and neutrino astrophysics. He is a Senior Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.Dan is the author of several books, including Dark Cosmos: In Search of our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy, Nature’s Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force, and At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe's First Seconds. He is also the co-host of Why this Universe? On the Chicago Podcast Network.Support the show

Nov 24, 2022 • 34min
The Audiovoyant - Therese Rowley
Therese Rowley is an educator, business consultant, and spiritual medium. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern and a PhD in organizational leadership. She is the author of Mapping a New Reality, Discovering Intuitive Intelligence. She also describes herself as an audiovoyant, which means she’s able to access spiritual forces through sounds and voices that come to her but that are not normally heard. She regularly gives readings to a wide client base and conducts seminars on helping people tap into their own intuitive powers. Support the show