Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ philosophical interviews • women philosophers • ethics, virtue, rights • feminism, race, class, colonialism • politics, liberalism, markets, inequality • well-being economics • technology ethics: AI, robots, VR, autonomous cars • mind, cognition, bias, humility • art, architecture, myth • philosophy of science, physics, cosmology, time
This podcast presents wide-ranging, conversation-driven explorations of philosophical questions, often linking classic ideas to contemporary social, political, scientific, and cultural issues. Across the episodes, the hosts use accessible thought experiments and careful distinctions to examine what it means to live well, how we should treat one another, and how societies ought to be organized. Ethical and political themes recur frequently, including debates about markets and inequality, the limits and promises of liberal democracy, the moral evaluation of foreign aid, and the ways prejudice and exclusion operate through race, gender, religion, class, disability, and colonial history.
A major strand is intellectual history, with sustained attention to influential thinkers—especially women philosophers and public intellectuals from late antiquity through the modern era. These discussions connect philosophical arguments to the conditions under which people wrote and acted, such as slavery, political upheaval, religious authority, and struggles over education and civic participation, while highlighting contributions to moral theory, action theory, philosophy of mind, and feminist thought.
The show also engages philosophy of mind and psychology, considering how people understand each other’s thoughts, how cognitive biases shape judgment, and what humility and disagreement mean in public and online discourse. Another recurring focus is philosophy of science and technology, including questions about scientism, shifting scientific laws, artificial intelligence, robot sociality and personhood, virtual reality, and the ethics of autonomous vehicles. Episodes also draw on literature, art, architecture, mythology, and cosmology to probe meaning, perception, and humanity’s place in the universe.
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Episodes:
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"Select Episodes" is ending
2026-Mar-01
less than a minute
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Can Money Buy Well-being?
2026-Feb-14
51 minutes
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Anna Julia Cooper
2026-Jan-30
52 minutes
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This Week: Mind Sharing
2025-Dec-21
51 minutes
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Shakespeare's Outsiders
2025-Dec-13
51 minutes
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Im Yunjidang
2025-Dec-06
51 minutes
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Margaret Cavendish
2025-Nov-15
51 minutes
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Mary Astell
2025-Oct-25
51 minutes
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Elisabeth of Bohemia
2025-Oct-04
51 minutes
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Hildegard von Bingen
2025-Sep-13
51 minutes
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Hypatia of Alexandria
2025-Aug-16
51 minutes
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Philippa Foot
2025-Jun-05
51 minutes
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Mary Midgley
2025-May-08
51 minutes
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Iris Murdoch
2025-Apr-11
51 minutes
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Judith Jarvis Thomson
2025-Mar-08
51 minutes
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Elizabeth Anscombe
2024-Dec-19
51 minutes
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Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology
2024-Dec-14
51 minutes
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Emma Goldman
2024-Nov-13
52 minutes
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American Futures (Ken Taylor Memorial Episode)
2024-Nov-02
56 minutes
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Simone Weil
2024-Oct-20
51 minutes
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Nísia Floresta
2024-Jun-11
51 minutes
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Mary Wollstonecraft
2024-May-06
52 minutes
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Could Robot Be Persons?
2024-Apr-11
54 minutes
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20th Anniversary Quiz Show
2024-Jan-20
60 minutes
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Can Architecture Be Political?
2023-Oct-12
51 minutes
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Can Art Save Us?
2023-Jun-09
51 minutes
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The Philosophy of Smell
2023-Mar-20
51 minutes
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Liberty and Justice For Who?
2022-Oct-21
51 minutes
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The Changing Face of Antisemitism
2022-Jun-18
51 minutes
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What Can Virtual Reality (Actually) Do?
2021-Dec-12
51 minutes
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The Social Lives of Robots
2021-Nov-13
51 minutes
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Time for Summer Reading
2020-Jun-14
51 minutes
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Ken Taylor Tribute
2019-Dec-29
52 minutes
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Foreign Aid – or Injury?
2018-Dec-16
50 minutes
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Does Science Over-reach?
2018-Jul-17
50 minutes
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Radical Markets: Solutions for a Gilded Age?
2018-Jul-15
50 minutes
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Repugnant Markets: Should Everything Be For Sale?
2018-Jun-03
50 minutes
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Faith and Humility
2018-Apr-23
50 minutes
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Are We Alone?
2018-Apr-20
50 minutes
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Trolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars: Humility and Online Discourse
2018-Apr-12
50 minutes
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How To Humbly Disagree
2018-Mar-04
50 minutes
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Could the Laws of Physics Ever Change?
2017-Aug-08
50 minutes
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Driverless Cars at the Moral Crossroads
2017-Jul-30
50 minutes
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Cognitive Bias
2017-Jul-09
51 minutes
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Knowing What We Know (And What We Don't)
2017-Mar-07
51 minutes
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The Space-Time Continuum
2017-Feb-21
51 minutes
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The Mystery of the Multiverse
2016-Sep-29
51 minutes
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Matter and Energy: The Dark Side
2016-Sep-27
50 minutes
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The Big Bang: Before and After
2016-Jul-26
52 minutes
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Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
2016-Mar-21
51 minutes
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The Ancient Cosmos: When the Earth Stood Still
2016-Mar-04
51 minutes
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Living On Through Others
2015-Oct-28
50 minutes
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The Technology of Immortality
2015-Sep-15
51 minutes
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Reincarnation: Past Lives, Future Selves
2015-Apr-27
49 minutes
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What's Next? Death and the Afterlife
2015-Jan-09
50 minutes
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The Lure of Immortality
2014-Dec-05
49 minutes
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Life as a Work of Art
2013-Aug-18
50 minutes
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Finding Meaning in a Material World
2013-Aug-04
51 minutes
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Freedom and Free Enterprise
2013-Jul-20
50 minutes
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Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times
2013-Jul-07
51 minutes
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Physics, Philosophy, and Theology
2013-Jun-08
50 minutes
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Faith, Reason, and the Art of Living
2013-May-19
50 minutes
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Good, Evil, and the Divine Plan
2013-May-04
50 minutes
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The Demands of Morality
2013-Apr-28
49 minutes
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God and the Fine-Tuned Universe
2013-Mar-16
50 minutes
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The Self
2013-Feb-23
49 minutes
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Unconditional Love
2012-Dec-06
50 minutes
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Freedom, Blame, and Resentment
2012-May-12
49 minutes
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Pantheism
2012-Feb-25
50 minutes
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Forgive and Forget
2011-Dec-10
50 minutes
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Miracles
2011-Nov-05
50 minutes
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Wisdom
2011-Sep-24
48 minutes
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Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics
2011-Aug-13
50 minutes
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The Mind and the World
2009-Jun-07
50 minutes
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Worship
2009-May-09
49 minutes
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Challenges To Free Will
2009-Mar-07
49 minutes
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Creativity
2009-Jan-24
49 minutes
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Dualism
2008-Aug-08
50 minutes
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Altruism
2008-Jun-29
49 minutes
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The Problem of Evil
2008-Jun-06
49 minutes
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Saint Augustine
2008-Jan-27
49 minutes
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The Concept of God
2007-Dec-09
50 minutes
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Faith, Reason, and Science
2007-Oct-13
49 minutes
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