The Dissenter
Ricardo Lopes
My name is Ricardo Lopes, and I’m from Portugal. Thank you for visiting my podcast.
Over the past few years, I have conducted and released more than 900 interviews and talks with experts and academics from a variety of areas and disciplines, ranging from the Arts and Philosophy to the Social Sciences and Biology. You will certainly find a subject of your interest covered here.
New interviews are released on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
Over the past few years, I have conducted and released more than 900 interviews and talks with experts and academics from a variety of areas and disciplines, ranging from the Arts and Philosophy to the Social Sciences and Biology. You will certainly find a subject of your interest covered here.
New interviews are released on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Feb 16, 2026 • 1h 4min
#1216 Laura Carroll: Childfree Choices, and How Pronatalism Promotes Disinformation and Misogyny
Laura Carroll, nonfiction author and reproductive rights advocate who wrote The Baby Matrix. She defines childfree choices, how pronatalism moralizes and misinforms, and why online visibility matters. They tackle myths about happiness, biology, population collapse, aging demographics, and how pronatalism links to policy, immigration, and threats to reproductive autonomy.
Feb 13, 2026 • 53min
#1215 Mauricio Suárez - Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science
Mauricio Suárez, a professor of logic and philosophy of science, discusses modeling and scientific representation. He explains how models act as surrogate scenarios to draw inferences about real systems. He critiques reductive similarity accounts and outlines an inferential, practice-focused view of representation. He also connects scientific representation to debates in art.
Feb 12, 2026 • 1h 7min
#1214 Paul Eastwick: The Science of Love and Connection
Paul Eastwick, a UC Davis psychology professor who studies attraction and close relationships, discusses the science behind bonding. He explores compatibility, why humans evolved to form attachments, limits of dating apps and market metaphors, misconceptions from evolutionary stories, and the harms of manosphere thinking. He highlights proximity, vulnerability, and real interactions as drivers of lasting connection.
Feb 9, 2026 • 58min
#1213 Nathan Lents - The Sexual Evolution: Sex, Gender, and Mating
Nathan H. Lents, a biology professor and popular science author, explores how 500 million years of sexual evolution shape sex, gender, and mating. He discusses biological definitions of sex, gender behaviors in animals, nonreproductive functions of sex, same-sex behavior across species, monogamy and mating systems, transgender variation, and why societies stigmatize diversity.
Feb 6, 2026 • 44min
#1212 Marina Dubova: The Cognitive Foundations of Science
Marina Dubova, an Omidyar postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute studying cognitive mechanisms of discovery. She discusses discovery as cognitive processes like observation, analogy and modeling. They explore randomized vs theory-driven experimentation, concept-laden evidence, the role of cognitive and cultural diversity, and when complexity or parsimony best helps scientific progress.
Feb 5, 2026 • 54min
#1211 Coleen Murphy - How We Age: The Science of Longevity
Coleen Murphy, a Princeton molecular biologist and author of How We Age, discusses aging research and longevity science. She covers model organisms like the killifish, longevity pathways and interventions such as rapamycin and metformin. She talks about diet and fasting evidence, exercise and body composition, DNA repair and stem cells, the gut microbiome, transgenerational effects, and the current longevity biotech landscape.
Feb 2, 2026 • 47min
#1210 Cristina Bicchieri: What Are Social Norms, and How do They Change?
Cristina Bicchieri, a University of Pennsylvania scholar of social norms and decision making, breaks down how expectations shape cooperation and behavior. She explains what makes norms stick or change. Conversation covers measuring norms, child marriage studies, group identity, the power of normative language, and norm-nudging strategies for social and climate action.
Jan 30, 2026 • 50min
#1209 Patrick Foote - Immigrant Tongues: Exploring How Languages Moved, Evolved, and Defined Us
Patrick Foote, YouTuber and author who explores name and language origins, discusses how languages move and transform. He traces Latin into Romance tongues, the Bantu and Arabic spreads, and English’s colonial role. They touch on creoles, sign languages, Mandarin’s global rise, and playful ideas like emoji as a shared tongue.
Jan 29, 2026 • 1h 3min
#1208 Eleanor Scerri: Homo sapiens in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Malta
Eleanor Scerri, Professor at the Max Planck Institute studying human palaeosystems and pan-African Homo sapiens origins. She discusses early Homo sapiens in Saudi Arabia and green corridors that enabled dispersals. She explores human presence in African rainforests and evidence from Anyama. She reveals unexpected Mesolithic seafaring to Malta and a major expansion of the human ecological niche around 70–50k years ago.
Jan 26, 2026 • 1h 37min
#1207 Alberto Acerbi: Digital Media, Between Reasonable Caution and Unjustified Fears
Alberto Acerbi, Associate Professor of Sociology and author of Tecnopanico, explores alarmist narratives about digital media. He discusses moral panics, why people are not as gullible online as claimed, misinformation’s limited reach, conspiracy theory dynamics, echo chamber myths, algorithms versus user choice, and the contested links between social media and youth mental health.
