My student co-hosts sign off, bringing Season 6 to an official close. Never fear, I'll be back throughout 2026 with exciting bonus episodes.

My guest today is Diane Tober, an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology and Institute for Social Science Research. She is a medical anthropologist with a focus on biocultural aspects of health, gender and sexuality, the commodification of the body, science and technology studies, bioethics, and social and reproductive justice. She has been conducting research exploring egg donors’ decisions and experiences within the global market for human eggs since 201...

My guest today is Prabha Kotiswaran, a Professor of Law & Social Justice at King’s College London. Professor Kotiswaran’s main areas of research include criminal law, transnational criminal law, feminist legal studies and sociology of law. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India, published by Princeton University Press (2011), which won the SLSA-Hart Book Prize for Early Career Academics. She joins us t...

My guest today is Emily Stolzenberg, an Associate Professor of Law and Reuschlein Emerging Scholar at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law. Her research focuses on conflicts between individual autonomy and legal obligation in the fields of family law and property. She joins us today to discuss her forthcoming article, Toward a Private Law of Intimates’ Obligations, which will be published in the Iowa Law Review. This episode is co-hosted by UVA Law students Catherine Hu and Rei...

My guest today is Jeff Skopek, a Professor of Law and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine, and Life Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. His research explores the normative and conceptual foundations of health law, focusing in particular on the health care system, biomedical research, and controversies about what ...

My guest today is Jonathan Adler, Cabell Research Professor and Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave, 2023), Marijuana Federalism: Uncle Sam and Mary Jane (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New...

My guest today is Bailey Sanders, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Duke University. Her work examines how market competition can advance gender equality and the critical role of women’s representation in law and politics. Her research bridges antitrust, constitutional law, and gender equity, and has appeared or is forthcoming in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. She is also co-author of The Fundamental Voter: American Electoral Democracy, 1952–2020 (Oxford Univ...

My guest today is Sadie Blanchard, a Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. She teaches and writes about contracts, corporations, and international business law. Her research examines how legal institutions interact with social forces to shape behavior, especially in markets. She’s here today to discuss her recent article, Contract or Prison, in the University of Chicago Law Review. The paper discusses the expansion and privatization of “Incarceration Alternative” ar...

My guest today is Elaine Perlman, an altruistic kidney donor, President of the Coalition to Modify NOTA, and Executive Director of Waitlist Zero. She is leading campaigns to pass the End Kidney Deaths Act (which is the subject of our discussion today) and the Honor Our Living Donors Act. As a bit of background, the End Kidney Deaths Act (H.R. 2687/ EKDA) is a ten year pilot program that would provide a refundable tax credit of $10,000 each year for five years ($50,000 total) to living kidney ...

Hello listeners and welcome to a new season of the Taboo Trades podcast! I’m back again with a great group of UVA Law students who will guide us through the latest research and current events in a variety of taboo settings. We’ll discuss compensating living kidney donors, commercial surrogacy in India, plea bargaining, animal welfare, fish and wildlife conservation, and much, much more. Some of our guests argue that currently taboo trades shouldn’t be. And some will argue that currently accep...

I’m joined today by two special guests to discuss an unusual and ethically complex type of organ donation – imminent death donation, or IDD. As you’ll hear Thao Galvan explain in the episode, organ donation currently has three standard types: living donation, donation after brain death (a type of deceased donation in which the patient is declared brain dead, and thus legally dead), and donation after circulatory death, or DCD. In DCD, a patient who is not brain dead is removed from life suppo...

Welcome to a very special bonus episode of the Taboo Trades podcast! Today I have a record number of guests – five in total—continuing a discussion that we began at Yale’s Newman Colloquium earlier this summer. We discuss exploitation and trafficking in international human rights law, especially in the context of reproductive and sexual labor. You’ll hear more about that colloquium and that conversation during the podcast. Each guest introduces themselves at the start of the podcast, but you ...

In this sign off episode, I say good bye to this year's student cohosts from UVA Law: Anthony Freyre, Kimberly Garcia, Laura Habib, Olivia King, Alyssa Lawrence, Alyssa Marshall, Alexa Rothborth, Nia Saunders, Tanner Stewart, Cyrus Tafti, John Henry Vansant, Lauren White But never fear, loyal listeners. I'll be back in 2025 with bonus episodes featuring interesting authors discussing their scholarship.

My guest today is Aziza Ahmed, a Professor of Law and N. Neal Pike Scholar at the Boston University School of Law. She is also a Co-Director of BU Law’s Program on Reproductive Justice. She joins me and UVA Law 3L, Nia Saunders, to discuss her new book Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2025. Prior to teaching, Professor Ahmed was a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health Prog...

My guest today is the always interesting and funny Steve Clowney, a professor of law at the University of Arkansas. He has also worked as a legal consultant in Hawaii, a college admissions officer, and a gravedigger. His main areas of research include zoning regulations, monuments, the history of cities, handwritten wills, and the presence of violence in informal property systems. He joins us today to discuss a paper that I’ve long admired, Does Commodification Corrupt: Lessons From Paintings...

I’m thrilled today to welcome new friend, Albertina Antognini and old (by which I mean long-time) friend, Susan Appleton. Albertina Antognini is the James E. Rogers Professor of Law at the University of Arizona where she teaches Family Law, Property, Trusts & Estates, and a seminar surveying different legal regimes that shape the contemporary American family. Professor Antognini’s work examines the ways that legal rules actively regulate, and in the process define, families. Her rese...

My guest today is Courtney Cahill, a Chancellor's Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law. Professor Cahill is a scholar of constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, sex equality, and LGBTQ equality. Her work examines the role of disgust in lawmaking and the synergies between sex equality and LGBTQ equality. She joins us today to discuss her latest project, Busted: Policing Women on Top, forthcoming in 2026 from Oxford University Press. Cahill attended Yale Law School after graduatin...

My guest today is Jill Lens, who serves as the Dorothy M. Willie Professor in Excellence at the University of Iowa school of law. Professor Lens is a leading legal expert in reproductive justice and rights, with a particular focus on the legal treatment of stillbirth and pregnancy more generally. Her research is inspired by her son Caleb’s stillbirth in 2017, when she was 37 weeks pregnant. She joins us today to discuss her recent paper, “Valuing Reproductive Loss," published in 2023 b...

I’m thrilled today to welcome the brilliant and creative Hajin Kim, an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Hajin uses principles from social psychology and economics to study how moral and social influence can shape environmental regulation and firm behavior. She joins us today to discuss her new working paper, Does Paying to Pollute Make Pollution Seem Less Bad? UVA Law 3L, Cyrus Tafti, joins me as co-host on this episode. Hajin received her BA in economics, summa c...

My guest today is Brian Bix, the Frederick W. Thomas Professor of Law And Philosophy at the University of Minnesota School of Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of family law, contract law, and jurisprudence. He joins us today to discuss his 2023 book, Families by Agreement: Navigating Choice, Tradition, and Law, published by Cambridge University Press. I really enjoyed this episode – it was both educational and entertaining. Brian is not only a productive scholar, but a gener...