Global Humanist Shoptalk

by M L Clark

A podcast dedicated to "thinking slow" about how different topics relate to being more humanist in our approach to a complexly hurting world. Join us as we look at how everyday objects and seemingly straightforward topics can all reveal deeper questions about how to advance better policy and move among one another with greater compassion and curiosity.

Podcast episodes

  • Season 2

  • The Right to Mobility in a Rich/Poor World

    The Right to Mobility in a Rich/Poor World

    In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. Over this series, we've looked at deep time and more recent histories of migration, the excessive role of technology in enforcing current borders, and the biggest moral crises that borders impede our ability to address. But does a person really need a dire, life-threatening reason to want to leave? To start over somewhere new? Or are there also more nebulous notions of seeking a better life that merit mobility rights, too?

  • Genocide and Civil War

    Genocide and Civil War

    In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. One other problem with borders is how ill-prepared they make us, as a species, to address extreme human rights violations. Genocide and civil war are routinely difficult phenomena to mediate because of our prioritization of notions of sovereignty and the integrity of a nation's borders. But does this serve a more global humanist perspective?

  • Technology and Migration

    Technology and Migration

    In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. In this episode, we reflect on how much technology has had to be developed - and often at further cost to human well-being - just to maintain our notions of rigid borders. Is this really the best use of our creative capacities? Does our fixation on upholding rigid borders come at other costs to human thriving?

  • Regional Histories of Fluid Mobility

    Regional Histories of Fluid Mobility

    In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. War has routinely been a transformer of human geography, and changing borders have consistently created significant amounts of human suffering. Recognizing these facts, why then do we still place such high moral priority on their maintenance?

  • Human Migration in Deep Time

    Human Migration in Deep Time

    In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. In this episode, we're going back to those deeper histories of migration, to remind ourselves how fragile and recent so many of our ideas about human group structures really are. Yes, we've had eras of more recent recorded time where mobility was restricted, but are these necessarily the examples we want to emulate today? REFERENCES Dowty, Alan. Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on the Freedom of Movement. Yale University Press, 1987. ---. "The Right of Personal Self-Determination", Public Affairs Quarterly. 1989. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40435699 Graeber, David and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. 2021. Gugliotta, Guy. "The Great Human Migration", Smithsonian Magazine. July 2008. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-human-migration-13561/#:~:text=The%20moderns%20entered%20Europe%20around,most%20of%20the%20Old%20World.