Serious arguments for unsettled questions.
Quillette Podcast brings scholars, writers, and commentators into long-form conversations about subjects where public debate has hardened. Its recent episodes move from truth and common knowledge to Israel, Iran, gay rights politics, Jane Austen, and New Netherland.
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Quillette Podcast is a conversation series built around argument, scholarship, and the pressure points of public life. It favors guests with books, bodies of work, and strong claims. The episodes are talky in the best sense: introductions set a position, identify the stakes, and then move into sustained discussion. Recent subjects range widely. Michael Shermer appears for a conversation about truth, epistemology, skepticism, and why rational people can believe irrational things. Steven Pinker is brought in through language, cognition, common knowledge, money, power, and everyday social coordination. Roya Hakakian’s episode turns toward Iran, revolutionary Tehran, dissidents, Berlin, and the ability of a regime to act abroad with impunity. Another episode takes up Israel through history, evidence, law, and the limits of persuasion in a debate where many people arrive already convinced. The show also courts cultural and political friction. It has covered gay rights politics, radical activism, sexuality, and the fragility of hard-won civil liberties. It has addressed a Canadian mass killing through mental health, online subcultures, gender identity, and institutional care. The range is broader than politics alone. A Jane Austen episode brings literary criticism, English literature, and close attention to novels into the same editorial universe as geopolitics and social psychology. A New Netherland episode looks back to 1664, when Dutch-controlled New York sat inside a multicultural trade world of settlers, Jews, immigrants, emancipated black yeomen, and enslaved people. Across these conversations, the podcast prizes clarity over comfort. It does not hide its argumentative instincts. It also gives guests room to build a case instead of reducing them to a headline. The best fit is a listener who wants rigorous, sometimes provocative intellectual talk anchored in books, history, and public controversy.
Made for: For listeners drawn to bookish, evidence-centered conversations about politics, history, science, literature, and contested social questions. It especially suits people comfortable with direct disagreement and intellectually charged subject matter.
What sets it apart: Quillette Podcast combines editorial framing with guests who arrive carrying books, research, reporting, or long public arguments. Its range is unusually elastic, moving from Dutch colonial New York to modern identity politics without abandoning a debate-first sensibility.
The Quillette Podcast is a platform for rigorous, academic discussions rooted in common sense and free inquiry. Non-dogmatic and grounded in liberal values, the podcast serves as a beacon for thoughtful conversation on science, politics, philosophy, and culture. Quillette prides itself on intellectual honesty, avoiding ideological extremism in favor of evidence-based reasoning and progress. Hosted by leading voices in academia and journalism, past guests include evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and journalist Douglas Murray, among others. Expect candid conversations that promote common sense and challenge anti-science and conspiratorial narratives f…
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured conversation on how language narrows reality while helping create the social world.
Language comes through here as the shared tool that lets people live together, while also narrowing the world to what can be said. In conversation with Nick Enfield, Iona Italia brings out the difference between brute reality, which words can only partly catch, and social…
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
This episode explores the history of New Netherland before it became New York in 1664, focusing on its multicultural trade hub status and geopolitical significance.
Linguistic anthropologist Nick Enfield discusses his book 'Language Versus Reality' on the Quillette Podcast, exploring language as a tool for social coordination rather than mere information transfer.
Gary Marcus, interviewed by Quillette's host, separates himself from "doomers" who believe in literal human extinction, calling that outcome "very, very unlikely" while still warning about concrete AI harms.
Iona Italia interviews Michael Shermer about his latest book 'Truth' and his work in skepticism and critical thinking.
Jonathan Kaye discusses his reluctance to engage in debates about Israel and introduces a new book that examines the historical and legal case for the country.
Iona Italia interviews Roya Hakakian about Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, her account of the 1992 Mykonos restaurant killings of Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Berlin.
Iona Italia interviews Steven Pinker about his book on common knowledge and its role in money, power, and everyday life.
Jonathan Kay interviews University College London law professor Ronan McRae about his book The End of the Gay Rights Revolution and the possibility that recent legal gains could weaken.
The Quillette Podcast examines the Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, school shooting involving 18-year-old Jesse Strang and the media’s treatment of his transgender identification.
Iona Italia interviews Lionel Shriver about A Better Life, a novel built around a Honduran asylum seeker entering an American household during 2023–2024.
Jonathan Kaye interviews British Columbia politician Dallas Brody about the province’s leftward political shift, including drug decriminalization, SOGI education, Indigenous-rights policy, and the 2024 election.
Historian Tiffany Jenkins tells Iona Italia that 17th-century English "bum courts" prosecuted couples on neighbors' testimony, because privacy was then regarded as dangerous rather than as a right.
An interview with Jane Austen scholar John Mullen about his work and book 'What Matters in Jane Austen' to celebrate her 250th anniversary.
This episode explores the history of New Netherland before it became New York in 1664, focusing on its multicultural trade hub status and geopolitical significance.
Jonathan Kaye interviews a scholar about challenging stereotypes in social work and the pressures on academic freedom from both left and right.
Jonathan Kaye interviews Steven Pinker about the Trump administration's authoritarian approach to forcing Harvard to become less progressive.