ICONOCLAST

IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED
THE CULTURE WARS

Iconoclast (noun)

A person who attacks settled beliefs or institutions
A person who destroys religious images or opposes their veneration

FEATURED INTERVIEWS

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, founder of the AHA Foundation, and host of The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. She served as a Member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006. While in Parliament, she focused on furthering the integration of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society, and on defending the rights of Muslim women.

She has written several books including Infidel (2007), Nomad: from Islam to America, a Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015) and The Challenge of Dawa (2017). Her new book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights, was published by Harper Collins in 2021.

Prior to joining the Hoover Institution, she was a Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University, and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

She received her Master’s degree in Political Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Prof. Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT.

He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He was Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for the New York Times, the Guardian, and other publications. His twelfth book, to be published in September 2021, is called Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.

Prof. Gad Saad

Dr. Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), and former holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption (2008-2018). He is the co-recipient of the 2015 President’s Media Outreach Award: Research Communicator of the Year (International), which goes to the Concordia University professor whose research receives the greatest amount of global media coverage.

Professor Saad has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. His works include The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature; The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption; Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences, along with 75+ scientific papers. His Psychology Today blog (Homo Consumericus) and YouTube channel (THE SAAD TRUTH) have garnered 6.9+ million and 24+ million views respectively. His podcast The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad is available on all leading podcast platforms.