Alice Dreger is an historian of medicine and science, a sex researcher, a mainstream writer, and an (im)patient advocate. Her most recent book is Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science. She also made headlines in 2015 when she resigned from her position at Northwestern University for what she said was a lack of academic independence. In October 2015, Dreger sat down with Lance Knobel, curator of the Uncharted Berkeley Festival of Ideas, for a spell-binding conversation.