Batya Ungar-Sargon joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about the historical relationship between Jews and the American left, and why that relationship has become increasingly strained in recent years.

The discussion begins with the reaction to October 7 and the political language that quickly emerged around Israel, Palestine, power, oppression, and resistance. From there, Ungar-Sargon traces a longer history: Jewish life in early America, Jewish involvement in the labor movement, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the civil rights movement, and the role many Jews played in shaping progressive politics in the 20th century.

Batya Ungar-Sargon is a columnist for The Free Press and the host of Batya! on NewsNation, where she is a weekend anchor. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Her new book is The Jews and the Left.

Jon Mills, a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist, joins Michael Shermer to discuss how social justice ideology has moved from a concern with fairness and equal treatment into a rigid moral framework built around oppressors and victims, privilege and disadvantage, good and evil.

Their conversation focuses on the tension between compassion and truth: how to take injustice seriously without reducing people to identity categories, what happens when clinicians bring activism into the therapy room, why biological reality has become politically charged, and whether “wokeness” is beginning to lose its hold on public life.

Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Honorary Professor, Department of Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK, on faculty in the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, USA, and on faculty and a Supervising Analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, USA. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship including 5 Gradiva Awards, he is the author and/or editor of over 35 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies including most recently End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate. In 2015 he was given the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Psychological Association.

America’s criminal justice debate usually gets reduced to two options: abolish the system or lock everyone up forever. Economist Jennifer Doleac thinks the data point somewhere else entirely.

In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with Doleac about what rigorous research can tell us about crime, punishment, deterrence, prison reform, and public safety.

Doleac argues that America has built much of its criminal justice system backwards: too little certainty of being caught, too much faith in long prison sentences, and not enough testing of what actually works.

Jennifer Doleac is the Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy focused on evidence-based policy. Before that, she spent over a decade as an economics professor, conducting academic research. She is a leading expert on the economics of crime and discrimination, and a vocal proponent of using rigorous research to inform policy. She frequently writes for outlets including The Washington Post, TIME, and Bloomberg Opinion, and she hosts the Probable Causation podcast on law, economics, and crime. Doleac holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University. Her new book is The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.