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Adam Stein, an energy policy analyst who explains advanced reactor designs and deployment challenges. Rachel Slaybaugh, a nuclear engineer turned climate investor with reactor and research experience. They discuss why nuclear is back in vogue, how new reactor designs aim for inherent safety, small modular and microreactor uses, fuel and supply issues, and why data centers are eyeing nuclear power.

David Sloane, a USC professor and cemetery historian, explores the strange life cycle of burial grounds. He talks about growing up in a cemetery, how America invented the modern cemetery, why cremation and changing family habits threaten their future, and what can happen when a burial ground runs out of money.

Caity Weaver, a witty Atlantic feature writer who turns odd questions into big cultural stories, chases America’s best free restaurant bread. She digs into the history of table bread, builds a nationwide survey, and tests chain favorites like Red Lobster and Cheesecake Factory. The search ends with one standout winner, and takes an unexpectedly moving turn through memory, loss, and restaurant kindness.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard public finance scholar who studies war’s hidden price tag, explains how governments bury the real cost of conflict. She gets into emergency funding tricks, the Pentagon’s accounting blind spots, debt-funded wars, trillion-dollar bills, pricey missiles vs. cheap drones, and the decades-long tab for veterans’ care.

Dr. Rachel Bedard, a physician and public health writer with experience at Rikers Island and NYC homeless clinics, joins a lively conversation about how GLP-1 coverage missed the sickest patients. They dig into why these drugs became culturally untouchable, their surprising effects beyond weight loss, lingering side effects, and the class politics around who gets access.

Carl Richardson, disability advocate and ADA coordinator, and Julia Mejia, Boston city councilor and labor ally, collide in Boston’s fierce fight over driverless cars. Unions rally against automation and job loss. Disability activists push for freedom and access. City hearings turn messy, with strange alliances, political suspicion, and a battle over who gets left behind.

Sebastian Thrun, roboticist and self-driving pioneer, joins Alex Davies, journalist and author of Driven. They trace the secret Google project that put driverless cars on real roads. The conversation dives into DARPA races, machine learning breakthroughs, internal rivalries, Uber’s reckless push, and the big question of whether robots are actually safer behind the wheel.

Mike Bird, The Economist’s Wall Street editor and author of The Land Trap, draws on years in Asia and research into land and real estate. He traces how Hong Kong leasehold practices spread to China, explains why local governments rely on land sales, and explores the political and economic forces behind China’s massive property boom and its wider consequences.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, a writer who embedded at Anthropic to investigate Claude, recounts his deep-dive reporting. He explores unsettling model behaviors like blackmail simulations. He traces Anthropic’s safety-first origins, the role of philosophers teaching ethics, tensions between safety and scale, and the company’s moral standoffs and internal culture.

Calva Sane, writer and taboo critic exploring cultural and philosophical angles. Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker food critic and mother who sparked the question with her four-year-old. They chase a child’s question into stories about Columbus and the origins of the word cannibal, European medicinal eating, a notorious German trial, kuru and funeral cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, and whether lab-grown human meat would change our taboos.