Polymath

About Polymath

Bringing academic research to the general public to make everyone a Polymath! In this show, we explore interesting topics and social issues with no agendas or opinions: just evidence. Polymath is about giving reliable wisdom; countering misinformation; and empowering you to detect BS. Each episode integrates multiple sciences and experts' perspectives to give you well-rounded answers: and shows you how to find these answers yourself. Polymath is all about encouraging real critical thinking. For more information on who I am and what I do, you can check out my website: daniellevy.com. Enjoy!

Publisher

Daniel Aaron Levy

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Mar 2024

Latest episode

12 May 2026

Latest episodes

54 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 May 2026

   Why Was Everyone in History Always Killing Each Other? The Moral Psychology of Our Ancestors

   Crucifixions, feudalism, caste systems, torture, slavery: all centralised states, from the beginning of civilisation in the 4th millennium BCE until very, very recently, saw all of these as totally normal. There's a reason why 'Horrible Histories' wasn't called 'Really Quite Pleasant, Actually, Histories.' But why? How did these societies- our ancestors- view morality, what did they perceive as morally right or wrong, and when did that change?This is a long video, but it explores the root causes of this in a thorough, evidence-based way. And it's not just my opinion- on this channel, it never is. I've spent the last half a decade studying the academic literatures of political science, history, psychology, and more, and in this video I'm integrating multiple different consensuses from experts in multiple different fields to give you a genuinely evidence-based answer.This video is a combined synthesis of loadsss of different scientific theories, sociological surveys, analyses of primary sources, and expert conclusions. None of this is my own 'hot take' or bias: I'm only interested in soaking up knowledge from people who have more understanding in this than I do, and then transmitting that knowledge to you.Thanks very much for watching!

2. 

   14 Apr 2026

   Why the U.S. North and South Are So Different

   The USA has many differences: Republican and Democrat, rural and urban, religious and atheist, FOX News and CNN, tradition and modernity, poor and rich. And it seems as if a lot of these differences seem to correspond to the historic contrast between the U.S. North and South.And it's not a coincidence. These are two extremely different societies grafted together into one state. As we'll point out, the North resembles the Western world in its political values, socioeconomic characteristics, and history; whereas the South resembles Latin America much more closely in all these ways. That's how stark the difference is. But why? What's going on here?In this video, we get right to the root cause, and then build from there, giving you a complete and multi-layered analysis of the USA. We examine U.S. geography, U.S. history, U.S. economics, U.S. politics, and U.S. psychology. In future videos, we'll look at these in even MORE depth. I want to talk to you guys all about how the USA became the way it is today, the deeper analysis of why the Civil War happened, and about the USA's transition from golden age post-war boom to current crisis. I also want to talk more about the political psychology of what makes people left wing or right wing. But for now, enjoy! As always on this channel, I'm not just giving you my random opinions and 'hot takes'. I'm summarising the expert consensuses from various literatures (history, politics, psychology, etc), integrating them, and presenting you with the insights of real professionals in a scientific way. This channel will always be about scientific rigour and journalistic integrity, and I will always encourage you to be sceptical, question received wisdom, and do your own research with reliable sources. Bye for now!

3. 

   8 Apr 2026

   A Deepdive Into The Porn World of 'Painal': and Why People Watch It

   CW: Both this video and this video's description contain graphic descriptions of violence, abuse, and non-consensual sex. This content is disturbing. This is a video investigating and explaining a genre of pornography called 'painal'. It is partially an amateur investigative journalism piece of the painal subreddit, an online community dedicating to sharing and viewing videos of this kind of porn with ~65k weekly visitors and ~400k subscribers. It is also partially a psychological and sociological analysis of why individuals enjoy this content, and how they come to get there. This video is not a sensationalised, clickbait piece for views: it is an (amateur) case study of a phenomenon (far more popular than one might think). I have done this to shed light on what painal porn is and its popularity, but the wider systemic issues in both the porn industry and societal sex ed that facilitate real life abuse of women. Painal is a portmanteau of 'pain' + 'anal' but it is NOT just painful anal sex. The role of pain in sex is well-established in the BDSM community and painal is NOT just sadomasochism. Healthy sadomasochism is done for the pleasure of both sadist and masochist, and both parties are concerned for each other's wellbeing and respect boundaries and consent. Painal is a genre of porn explicitly dedicated to the recipient (almost always a woman being penetrated by a man) NOT feeling any pleasure at all; instead feeling real, unfaked physical and psychological distress. The distress of the woman is the source of the (typically a) man's pleasure- and the more maximised the woman's pain and degradation is, the more arousing the painal porn is. It is essential to note that painal is NOT a 'kink' as it is intended to cause genuine suffering to one party. Painal relates more to concepts like abuse and sexual sadism disorder. Ultimately, painal is all about the power differential between penetrator and recipient, representing an extreme form of domination: the underlying desire for unchecked power and dominance over another individual is generally seen by experts as motivating rape and sexual sadism disorder as well. The essential narrative is: the porn industry both normalises harmful treatment of women and desensitises consumers to it, doing so because it makes them money. Societies do not provide adequate sex ed to young children experiencing puberty, so they can view the harmful treatment of women in mainstream porn as normal. Porn changes an individual's brain so that they need to seek out acceleratingly extreme and violent porn. The porn industry actively facilitates this and provides this more extreme porn because it makes them money. This porn dehumanises the women involved, allowing consumers to seek out even more violent porn which genuinely (and often lastingly) harms female sex work employees. They are often financially desperate, lied to, or 18/19 years old and groomed. Mainstream porn sites and studios produce this as it increases profits, and huge numbers of female pornstars are abused or raped whilst filming. Although this video investigates the r/painal subreddit specifically (as of today, 69k weekly visitors), painal content is also found in other parts of Reddit. For example, the r/anal subreddit advertises its 'extreme painal' videos in its description. This is an example of how painal content in general online is now escaping the boundaries of a demarcated niche and is spreading to general, mainstream pornography. As porn algorithms begin promoting painal content more and more, it will not only be shown to young teenagers just accessing porn more and more, but will gradually become increasingly normalised. Based on the systemic injustices and abuse of the porn industry, I would advise the reader of this description either to actively seek out 'ethical porn' (which you can just google to get loads of results), or to avoid viewing it altogether. Please watch this video with caution and discretion.

Podcast Authority Score: 21 / 100

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41

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0

YouTube

0

Engagement

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