Bite-size episodes from the program that questions everything... except your intelligence. Learn more and access complete episodes at www.philosophytalk.org.
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As a once over 200kg obese man, I share with you the truths behind the Weight-loss Industry and what it truly takes to breakthrough years of insanity! Everyday I share with you strategies, tactics and tips that will empower you to dominate your mind, which will dominate your body. My philosophy is simple: 100% Mindset, 20% Strategy.
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541: #MeToo: Retribution, Accountability, and Justice
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/metoo-retribution-accountability-and-justice.The #MeToo movement exposed how pervasive sexual harassment and abuse are, and how rare it is for perpetrators to be held accountable. Although some recent high profile cases have resulted in convictions, more often punishment is meted out by public shaming. S…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/2024-dionysus-awards.What movies of the past year challenged your assumptions and made you think about things in new ways? Josh and guest co-host Jeremy Sabol present our annual Dionysus Awards for the most thought-provoking movies of 2023, including:• Best Film about Social Justice that Wonders What Mak…
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More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/james-baldwin.Sometimes, we struggle to tell the truth -- especially when it's the truth about ourselves. Why did James Baldwin, a prominent Civil Rights-era intellectual and novelist, believe that telling the truth about ourselves is not only difficult but can also be dangerous? How can truth deeply unsettle ou…
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More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/karl-popper.Karl Popper is a landmark figure in the philosophy of science. His notion of "falsifiability" endures to this day and even appears in arguments about creation versus evolution. But what does it mean for a theory to be falsifiable? And where does the idea stand in contemporary philosophy of science…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/who-speaks-you.People often speak on behalf of others, like the concerned citizen who stands up for their neighbors at a city council meeting, or the activist who defends the rights of an oppressed group. Some of these spokespeople are elected, and some volunteer, but others simply get drafted into the r…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/20th-anniversary-quiz-night.Philosophy Talk made its radio debut on August 20, 2003 with a live pilot on KALW San Francisco and weekly broadcasts beginning in January 2004. To celebrate two decades on the air, in November 2023 we held our first-ever Quiz Night. Longtime listeners and first-time fans fill…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/nisia-floresta.Nísia Floresta was a 19th-century writer and translator known as “the Brazilian Mary Wollstonecraft.” She published the first book on women’s rights in South America, when Brazil was gaining independence from Portugal and a new post-colonial nation was being built. She also argued for the …
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/daniel-dennett-retrospective.In April 2024, we lost one of the greatest American philosophers of our time—Daniel Dennett. Known for his brilliant mind and controversial views, his contributions to philosophy include topics like consciousness, AI, evolution, atheism, intentions, free will and moral respon…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-gender.Gender is a controversial topic these days, but people can't seem to agree about what gender is. Is it an inner identity, a biological fact, or an oppressive system? Should we respect it or resist it? Should it even be a thing? Josh and guest-host Blakey Vermeule question gender with regular …
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/righteous-rage.Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote that anger is a form of madness. Other philosophers share this suspicion, viewing anger as a destructive emotion that leads to cruel and vengeful acts. But don't certain kinds of injustice, like the murders of black and brown people in the US, deserve our rag…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/summer-reading-list-2024.Looking for some deep dives into pop culture this summer? Josh and Ray talk to Sandra Laugier from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, author of "TV-Philosophy in Action: The Ethics and Politics of TV Series," and Nathaniel Goldberg from Washington & Lee University, co-a…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/marcus-aurelius.Marcus Aurelius was a 2nd century Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher. He is most famous for his Meditations, which was written as a private guide to himself on how to live a life where virtue is the only good and vice the only evil. So how do we figure out how to live a truly Stoic life?…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/logic-everyone.Logic may seem like a dry, abstract discipline that only the nerdiest of philosophers study. After all, logic textbooks are full of weird symbols and proofs about abstruse entities, like "the set of all sets." On the other hand, don’t we all try to think logically, at least in some context…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/akan-philosophy.The Akan people of West Africa have developed a system of metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy with a special focus on personhood. For the Akan, their conception of a person is not just a matter of theoretical interest—it has far reaching practical implications for their social…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-wollstonecraft.Mary Wollstonecraft is often labeled as a “liberal feminist” because of her concern for women’s rights and conceptions of freedom. But that label narrows her work, which was broadly critical of all social inequalities that distort human relations. So why did Wollstonecraft think that …
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More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/legacy-freud.Did you really want to eat that last piece of cake, or were you secretly thinking about your mother? Sigmund Freud, who might have suggested the latter, established the unconscious mind as a legitimate domain for scientific research. He was the first to seriously study dreams and slips of the ton…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/why-world-so-weird.Quantum mechanics, mathematics, human consciousness.... whichever way you slice it, the universe is weird. How can our conscious minds be made from unconscious atoms? What should we make of quantum entanglement, or the fact that light can be both a particle and a wave? Why is it that t…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-would-kant-do.German idealist and moral philosopher Immanuel Kant is probably best known for his "Categorical Imperative," which says that you should act following moral rules you could rationally support as universal law. In other words, do only what you would have everyone else do. But are Kant's …
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/shakespeares-outsiders.Over 400 years after his death, Shakespeare is still widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time. His many plays tackle questions about power, influence, identity, and moral and social status. His characters—be they villains or heroes—are often disdained because of their …
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/could-robots-be-persons.As we approach the advent of autonomous robots, we must decide how we will determine culpability for their actions. Some propose creating a new legal category of “electronic personhood” for any sufficiently advanced robot that can learn and make decisions by itself. But do we real…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mind-sharing.Mind reading might sound like the stuff of science fiction. But in philosophy and psychology, mind reading is something that human beings do whenever we try to guess what another person is thinking. Could it be that people are also natural born mind sharers, unconsciously shaping our behavio…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/margaret-cavendish.Margaret Cavendish was a writer of poetry, philosophy, polemics, histories, plays, and utopian fiction. She employed many different genres as a way to overcome access barriers for women and build an audience for her subversive philosophical ideas. So, what was so radical about Cavendis…
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536: What Can Virtual Reality (Actually) Do?
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-can-virtual-reality-actually-do.VR transports users into all kinds of different realities, some modeled on the real world, others completely invented. Though still in its infancy, the technology has become so sophisticated, it can trick the brain into treating the virtual experience as real and unme…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/should-all-ages-be-equal.Age determines a lot about your position in society—what activities you can do, what benefits you can access, and what rights and responsibilities you have. While it seems appropriate to treat people at different stages of life differently, we also consider certain kinds of unequ…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/im-yunjidang.8th-century Korean philosopher Im Yunjidang was the first Confucian to argue for women’s equality in matters of morality and to claim that women, just like men, can be sages. She also argued that it isn't just what you do that matters morally—it's also how you decide. So what does it mean to…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/social-lives-robots.Machines might surpass humans in terms of computational intelligence, but when it comes to social intelligence, they’re not very sophisticated. They have difficulty reading subtle cues—like body language, eye gaze, or facial expression—that we pick up on automatically. As robots integ…
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More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/lincoln.More than any other President, Abraham Lincoln is known for his words, from the Lincoln-Douglass debates to the second inaugural address, as well as his deeds. What was Lincoln's basic philosophy, and did it change over the course of his Presidency? Ken and John welcome back Chicago Public Radio's Res…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/can-ai-help-us-understand-babies.Artificial intelligence is everywhere in our day-to-day lives and our interactions with the world. And it's made impressive progress at a variety of visual, linguistic, and reasoning tasks. Does this improved performance indicate that computers are thinking, or is it just…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mysterious-timelessness-math.Math is a really useful subject—at least, that's what your parents and teachers told you. But math also leads to scenarios, like Zeno's paradoxes, that seem to inspire skepticism. So why do we believe in math and rely on it to build bridges and spaceships? How can anyone disc…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/frege-and-language-reason.At the end of the 19th Century, the German philosopher Gottlob Frege invented a new language, based on mathematics, designed to help people reason more logically. His ideas have had a lasting impact on philosophy, math, computer science, and the study of artificial intelligence.…
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More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/simone-de-beauvoir. Simone de Beauvoir is often cast as only a novelist or a mere echo of Jean-Paul Sartre. But she authored many philosophical texts beyond The Second Sex, and the letters between her and Sartre reveal that both were equally concerned with existentialist questions of radical ontological freed…
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580: American Futures (Ken Taylor Memorial Episode)
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/american-futures.When Philosophy Talk co-founder Ken Taylor passed away in 2019, he was working on a manuscript titled Farewell to the Republic We Once Dreamed of. Was Ken right to think the American experiment is on the verge of collapse? Are we heading for authoritarian rule, a national divorce, or eve…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/impossible-worlds.Philosophers often speculate about possible worlds: ways that things could be. Some of them also believe in impossible worlds: ways that things couldn't be. Are impossible worlds places where strange things happen, or descriptions, or abstract objects, or something else entirely? How ca…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/nonduality-and-oneness-being.Some branches of Hindu philosophy propose that reality is nondual in nature. Such schools of thought—called advaita schools, from a Sanskrit word meaning “not two”—see the material world either as an aspect of ultimate reality (“Brahman”) or as a mere illusion. So how do we m…
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More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/awe-wonder.René Descartes said that the purpose of wonderment is “to enable us to learn and retain in our memory things of which we were formerly unaware.” He also said that those who are not inclined to wonder are “ordinarily very ignorant.” So what exactly is wonder, and how is it different from awe? Is wonder…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/microaggressions.Microaggressions are small comments or questions that may be insulting or hurtful to another person because of their race, gender, sexuality, and so on. Some people consider microaggressions to be a phantom symptom of political correctness and a further sign that society has become “soft…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-astell.Mary Astell (1666–1731) was an English philosopher and writer who advocated for equal rights for women. While she described marriage as a type of “slavery,” she was also a staunch conservative who claimed that women who did marry should accept subordination to their husbands. So what was Aste…
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576: Zhuangzi—Being One with Ten Thousand Things
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More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/zhuangzi.Zhuangzi, the 4th-century-BCE Chinese philosopher, was arguably the most important figure in Taoism. He believed that a person’s ideal relationship to the world was to "be one with ten thousand things." So how is someone supposed to achieve this ideal? What is at the core of Zhuangzi's conception of the…
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528: Referring to the World – Ken's Final Work
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/referring-world.On December 2, 2019, Ken Taylor announced that he finally had “an almost complete draft” of a book he had been writing for years. “I think I'll pour a glass of wine to mark the occasion, before plunging back into the work that is still to be done,” he wrote. Tragically and unexpectedly, h…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/elisabeth-bohemia.Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680) is best known for her correspondence with René Descartes. In her letters, she articulated a devastating critique of his dualist theory of mind, in particular on the impossibility of mind-body interaction. So what was Elisabeth's own position on …
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524: The Lives and Ideas of the Vienna Circle
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/vienna-circle.The Vienna Circle was a group of early twentieth-century philosophers, mathematicians, logicians, and scientists, best known for developing the theory of scientific knowledge called logical positivism. Although positivism as a project has been largely abandoned, the group's ideas continue t…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/can-architecture-be-political.It’s common to judge a piece of architecture based on its functional and aesthetic values, and how the two might complement or compete with one other. It’s less common to judge architecture based on its political values. But can’t a building’s design also express a political…
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523: Disinformation and the Future of Democracy
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/disinformation-and-future-democracy.The 2020 election and startling events that followed show that the US is as polarized as ever. Not only is there fundamental disagreement over values and goals, but people can’t seem to agree on the most basic, easily verifiable facts, like who actually won. With so ma…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-masculinity.Strong, in control, and stoic—these are traits of the ideal masculine man. Men who fail to conform to this ideal are often penalized, particularly if they are men of color, queer men, working-class men, or men with disabilities. So how do we create different visions of masculinity that m…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/are-we-living-simulation.With rapid advances in Virtual Reality technology and the like, it’s now possible for us to become absorbed in completely made-up worlds. We might wonder how soon it will be till we reach a point where VR is so good, we can’t tell it apart from the real world. But what if we’ve a…
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More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/culture-industry.What's your favorite movie? Did you watch that season finale last night? No spoilers! Popular cultures pervades modern life. But what if pop culture was actually more pernicious than we ordinarily think? Could it be systematically deceiving us—eroding our ability to think for ourselves and fight…
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What books should thoughtful people read this summer? Josh and Ray talk to the authors and editors of new and recent books as they compile their annual Summer Reading List:• Michael Schur, creator of TV's "The Good Place" and author of "How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question"• Lori Gruen, Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan U…
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More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/hegel.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is without doubt one of the most influential philosophers of all time. He has, however, been largely ignored by American "analytic" philosophers of the twentieth century. John in particular, and Ken to a lesser extent, don't know nearly as much about Hegel and his philosoph…
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/weird-wants.Philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to Elizabeth Anscombe have claimed that wanting something means seeing the good in it. Even if what you want is bad overall, like procrastinating on important work, you can still desire it for its positive qualities. But don't we sometimes want things because …
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More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/making-better-world.Some philosophers think that morality boils down to one idea: we should make the world better for everyone. But who counts in "everyone"—babies, animals, future people? How can we tell what makes the world better for others? And in an uncertain world, how can anyone gauge the effects …
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