Episodes
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Anna Julia Cooper
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/anna-julia-cooper. Born into slavery in the nineteenth century, Anna Julia Cooper received a classical education, attended the Sorbonne, and became the fourth African American in history to be awarded a PhD. Her first book, A Voice from the South,...
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This Week: Mind Sharing
More at 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...
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Shakespeare's Outsiders
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...
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Im Yunjidang
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/im-yunjidang. 18th-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...
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Margaret Cavendish
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...
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Mary Astell
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...
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Elisabeth of Bohemia
More at 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...
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Hildegard von Bingen
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/hildegard-of-bingen. Hildegard von Bingen was a 12th century mystic, polymath, and composer whose work spanned visionary theology, philosophy, cosmology, medicine, botany, and music. Her extraordinary intellectual accomplishments belie her humble claim...
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Hypatia of Alexandria
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/hypatia-alexandria. Hypatia of Alexandria, late antiquity public figure and scholar, made significant contributions to mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. Her embrace of Neoplatonism was seen as such a threat to the political elite in Alexandria…
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Philippa Foot
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/philippa-foot. Philippa Foot invented the thought experiment that famously became known as the Trolley Problem. Despite the vast industry of “trolleyology” it inspired, Foot’s goal to illuminate debates on abortion and euthanasia often gets lost in the...
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Mary Midgley
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-midgley. Mary Midgley became one of the best known public intellectuals in the UK, and was one of the first philosophers to talk about climate change. Though she didn’t publish her first book—Beast and Man—till she was 59, she wrote many…
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Iris Murdoch
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/iris-murdoch. Iris Murdoch may be best known for her works of fiction, but her philosophical contributions were equally significant. A moral realist influenced by Plato and Simone Weil, she developed theories in virtue ethics and care ethics. So what…
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Judith Jarvis Thomson
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/judith-jarvis-thomson. Judith Jarvis Thomson is best known for arguing that abortion is morally permissible, even granting the fetus the status of person. Her colorful thought experiments illustrate that a right to life does not mean the right to use...
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Elizabeth Anscombe
More at thttps://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/elizabeth-anscombe. Elizabeth Anscombe made hugely influential contributions to contemporary action theory, moral theory, and philosophy of mind. She also famously protested Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb when he was awarded an honorary...
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Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/crisis-and-creativity-mayan-mythology. The Popol Vuh, written in 1702, was based on a Mayan oral tradition encompassing creation myths, history, and cosmology. These stories were written in a time of crisis: European colonialism had decimated the Mayan...
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Emma Goldman
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/emma-goldman. Activist and anarchist philosopher Emma Goldman fought for human liberation in every realm of life. While she opposed the women's suffrage movement, she was a staunch advocate for women’s rights. So why did she think the right to vote was...
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American Futures (Ken Taylor Memorial Episode)
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/american-futures. When Ken Taylor passed away suddenly 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...
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Simone Weil
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/simone-weil. French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil was also an activist whose goal was to elevate the lower classes. But she was opposed to the kind of revolution where the oppressed overthrow their oppressors. So, how did she think we could…
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Nísia Floresta
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...
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Mary Wollstonecraft
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...
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Could Robot Be Persons?
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...
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20th Anniversary Quiz Show
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...
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Can Architecture Be Political?
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....
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The Philosophy of Smell
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/philosophy-smell. When philosophers think about human perception, they tend to focus on vision and turn their noses up at olfaction, the sense of smell. So what insights can we gain about perception, thought, and language by focusing on olfaction? How...
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What Can Virtual Reality (Actually) Do?
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...
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The Social Lives of Robots
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...
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Time for Summer Reading
More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/time-summer-reading. When John and Ken began shopping around their idea for a philosophy-on-the-radio show nearly 20 years ago, many believed it would never work, let alone stay on the air. Nearly two decades later, the program that questions everything…
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Ken Taylor Tribute
More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/ken-taylor-tribute. The Philosophy Talk team is deeply saddened by Ken Taylor's untimely passing this month. Ken was the show's co-founder, longtime co-host, chief cheerleader, and guiding light. In this special episode, co-hosts Josh Landy and Debra Satz…
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Foreign Aid – or Injury?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/foreign-aid-or-injury. Many of us might think that developed nations should lead the effort to end global poverty. But decades of foreign aid—from governments and non-governmental organizations—has failed to produce sustainable growth in the developing...
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Does Science Over-reach?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-reach. We've all heard the phrase, "You can't argue with science." Appealing to scientific fact as a way to settle a question makes sense given the amazing advancements science has brought us in understanding how the world works. But...
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Radical Markets: Solutions for a Gilded Age?
https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/radical-markets. Many people think that growing inequality, the rise of populism and nativism, and the decay of democratic institutions all have the same cause—the overreach of markets. The solution, they believe, is to limit the market through regulation. But...
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Repugnant Markets: Should Everything Be For Sale?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/repugnant-markets. We might ban buying or selling horse meat in the US not for the protection of horses, but because we find it morally repugnant. Yet this moral repugnance is clearly not universal, and on some level may even be arbitrary, given…
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Faith and Humility
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/faith-and-humility. Some would argue that faith requires that one blindly—rather than rationally— believe. Faith in one ‘true’ religion often entails rejection of all others. Given this, can there ever be humility when it comes to religious faith? How...
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Are We Alone?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/are-we-alone. News that life might exist or have existed on Mars or somewhere else in our universe excites many. But should we really be happy to hear that news? What are the philosophical implications of the possibility of extraterrestrial life? If…
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Trolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars: Humility and Online Discourse
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/trolling-bullying-and-flame-wars. Open up any online comments section and you’ll find them: internet trolls, from the mildly inflammatory to the viciously bullying. It seems that the ease of posting online leads many to abandon any semblance of...
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How To Humbly Disagree
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/how-humbly-disagree. People like to argue, especially Philosophy Talk listeners! But no matter how hard we try to resolve disputes through rational discourse, sometimes we may still disagree about important issues. One response to this predicament is...
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Could the Laws of Physics Ever Change?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/could-laws-physics-change. From airplanes flying overhead to the cellular activity inside us, all events that take place in the world obey the laws of physics. Physicists seem to be getting closer and closer to understanding the physical laws that…
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Cognitive Bias
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/cognitive-bias. Aristotle thought that rationality was the faculty that distinguished humans from other animals. However, psychological research shows that our judgments are plagued by systematic, irrational, unconscious errors known as ‘cognitive...
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Knowing What We Know (And What We Don't)
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/knowing-what-we-know. It seems like we know many facts about ourselves and the world around us, even if there vastly many others we know that we don’t know. But how do we know if what we believe to be true is really knowledge? Can our beliefs be both...
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The Space-Time Continuum
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/space-time-continuum. Strange things are said about time: that it's illusory, that it has no direction. But what about space, or the space-time continuum? What exactly is space-time? Are space and time fundamental features of the world? How do Einstein’s...
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The Mystery of the Multiverse
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/mystery-multiverse. At the foundation of modern theoretical physics lie the equations that define our universe, telling us of its beginnings, evolution, and future. Make even minor adjustments to the fundamental laws of the universe, and life as we know it...
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Matter and Energy: The Dark Side
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/dark-matter. All the matter we have ever observed accounts for less than 5% of the universe. The rest? Dark energy and dark matter: mysterious entities that we only know about from their interactions with other matter. We infer their existence to satisfy…
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The Big Bang: Before and After
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/big-bang-before-and-after. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing theory about the “birth” of the universe. It posits a singularity, or super high density state from which the entire universe expanded and continues to expand. But what exactly is the Big…
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Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/why-something. The old metaphysical question – why anything exists at all – has perplexed and intrigued humankind for ages. It has long been a question reserved for philosophers, but now some physicists claim to have answered it. Yet these attempts have...
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The Ancient Cosmos: When the Earth Stood Still
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/ancient-cosmos. Even in ancient Greek society, philosopher-scientists engaged in heated debate about the origin, composition, and structure of our universe. Tracking our understanding of cosmology from then until now shows monumental shifts in thinking. So...
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Living On Through Others
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/living-through-others Imagine that the world will end in thirty days. Would your life have meaning anymore? Would anyone’s? It seems that there would no longer be any point to making technological or medical advances, developing new forms of art, or even...
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The Technology of Immortality
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/technology-immortality Some futurists believe we are not far from a time when technology and medicine will be so advanced that humans need no longer die of old age or other natural causes. Eventually, not only will we be able to replace our natural body...
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Reincarnation: Past Lives, Future Selves
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/reincarnation-past-lives-future-selves. According to Buddhist tradition, all people must suffer illness, aging, and death. Yet the universe is seen as a vast living entity, in which cycles of individual life and death are repeated without cease. Therefore...
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What's Next? Death and the Afterlife
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/whats-next-death-and-afterlife. The question of what happens to us after we die remains as mysterious now as it always was. Some think that death amounts to total annihilation of the self; others adhere to certain religious traditions, which teach that the...
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The Lure of Immortality
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/lure-immortality. Would you like to live forever? It is a tempting notion that has been explored and imagined for centuries. Perhaps immortality is desirable, but it might also be that death is a significant part of what gives meaning to life. So what would…
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