Converging Dialogues

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Ken Feder about Native America and First Peoples. They talk about the various labels for Native Americans, land acknowledgements and Columbus Day. They discuss the earliest origin date for First Peoples coming to America, White Sands, human adaptations, diverse nation groups, infighting among nations, genocide and schools, and many more topics.
Kenneth Feder is professor emeritus of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University. His books include Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, The Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory, Native American Archaeology in the Parks: A Guide to Native Heritage Sites in Our National Parks and Monuments, and the most recent, Native America: The Story of the First Peoples.


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In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Christof Koch on the nature of consciousness. They talk about why consciousness is important to study, differences with subjective experiences and phenomenology, selfhood, thinking beyond interoceptive perceptions, and Cartesian dualism. They discuss panpsychism, neural correlates of consciousness, vision, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), psychedelics, the future of consciousness research, and many more topics.
Christof Koch is a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute, chief scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, the former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and a former professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books, including his latest book, Then I Am Myself the World.


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In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Hugo Drochon about elites and democracy. They discuss how elites always rule in democracies, why we need elites, dynamic democracy, social movements, distrust of elites, Nietzsche’s eternal return and circulation of elites, elites in non-democratic societies, and many more topics.
Hugo Drochon is a political theorist and historian. He has his PhD from Cambridge and completed his postdoctoral fellowship there as well. He has also had fellowships at Yale, Princeton, and Royal Historical Society. His main interests are in Nietzsche’s politics, democratic theory, and liberalism. He is the author of, Nietzsche’s Great Politics and the latest book, Elites and Democracy.


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In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Shadi Hamid about why American power is still needed. They discuss American power, American success globally, American idealism, democracy in the world, benevolent authoritarianism, future of American power, and many more topics.
Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post and a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. From 2023 to 2024, he served on the Post’s edi­torial board. Hamid is the author of several books, including The Problem of Democracy and Islamic Exceptionalism, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for the best nonfiction book on foreign affairs. In 2019, he was named one of the world’s top fifty thinkers by Prospect magazine. He is also the co-host of the podcast, Wisdom of Crowds. He is the author of the latest book, The Case for American Power.


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In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Peter Dear about the history of modern science from natural philosophy. They discuss natural philosophy and modern science, Newton and theology, different ways of doing science, pure and mixed mathematics, Linnaeus and taxonomy, German pedagogy for modern science, physics research, Lapace and the bell curve, Faraday, Darwin, Einstein, and many more topics.
Peter Dear is professor emeritus of history at Cornell University. His books include Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500–1700 (Princeton), The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution and his latest book, The World As We Know It.


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