PODCAST · education
Philosophy Talk
by Philosophy Talk
"The program that questions everything—except your intelligence." Philosophy Talk began as a weekly one-hour radio series and has been on the air for more than two decades. The host-professors bring clarity, depth, and humor to everyday topics that are lofty (Truth, Beauty, Justice), arresting (Terrorism, Intelligent Design, Suicide), and engaging (Baseball, Love, Happiness). This is not a lecture or a college course; it's philosophy in action! From timeless philosophical questions about the ultimate nature of things to contemporary social and political issues, as well as our most fundamental beliefs about science, morality, and the human condition, Philosophy Talk invites you to challenge your assumptions and think about things in new ways.
Episodes
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Liberty and Justice for Who?
Many democracies are founded on the ideals of 18th- and 19th-Century British Liberalism: the idea that human beings deserve the right to self-government because we are born free, equal, and capable of rationality. Yet Liberalism was used to justify colonialism, which deprived people around the...
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Wise Woman: 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 another person’s body to survive. So, what exactly is a right to life...
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Islamic Philosophy
Some of the many topics discussed in Islamic philosophy are the Qur’an, knowledge, dreams, justice, poetry, reality, prophethood, peace, and the State. How has Islamic philosophy interacted historically with other philosophical traditions? How has philosophy influenced the popular practice and...
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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 to be “just a woman”. Was her humility justified in the face of…
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Maimonides and the Goodness of the World
Moses Maimonides (also known as the Rambam) was a 12th century rabbi and scholar, most famous as the author of The Guide for the Perplexed. He thought that understanding the world through science and logic would lead you to knowledge, and that this in turn would lead you to love God. But is the...
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(End of) Summer Readig List
The Philosophers talk to the authors of recent and forthcoming books that speak to our dangerous times: Christopher Star from Middlebury College, editor of How to Face the End of the World: An Ancient Guide for Apocalyptic Times Christian Miller from Wake Forest University, author of The Honesty...
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Why Be Reasonable?
“You’re being unreasonable.” “Reasonable doubt.” The “reasonable person” standard. Talk of reasonableness is everywhere we turn, but what does it actually come to? What makes something reasonable, as opposed to unreasonable? And why does it matter? Could we hope for a society full of reasonable...
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The Philosophical Worlds of Borges
Argentinian writer Jorge Luís Borges wrote some of the world’s most brilliant, mind-bending, and philosophical stories. Drawing on sources from Europe, India, China, and Persia, these stories tackled topics like time, reality, selfhood, and art. Yet Borges also said “I don’t think ideas are...
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What Is Game Theory?
Game theory is a set of mathematical techniques for thinking about how people should choose when their choices interact. But real people aren’t exactly rational actors. Can a mathematical model explain real-world decisions? How can game theorists account for the fact that we don’t always know…
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Wise Woman: 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 achieve peace and justice? Is it enough to pay the right kind of...
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James Baldwin and Social Justice
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 our...
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The 2026 Dionysus Awards
What movies of the past year challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways? Josh and guest co-host Jorah Danenberg present our annual Dionysus Awards for the most thought-provoking recent movies: Best Future-Facing Fantasy That Asks What Makes Us Human (and Whether That’s...
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How Do We Learn?
We’re all learning about the world all the time—not just as small children but all the way into old age. But how do we learn how to learn? How much depends on the circumstances of our birth, our upbringing, and our formal education? How can we get better at learning and teaching? And how do we...
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Crisis and Creativity in 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 population and destroyed much of their cultural knowledge. How do stories help a...
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Wise Woman: 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 so unimportant? What did she think was required to achieve...
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Summer Reading List 2026
The Philosophers talk to the authors of recent and forthcoming books that speak to our dangerous times: Christopher Star from Middlebury College, editor of How to Face the End of the World: An Ancient Guide for Apocalyptic Times Christian Miller from Wake Forest University, author of The Honesty...
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Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the first global public intellectuals, famous for his popular existentialist philosophy, his works of fiction, and his rivalry with Albert Camus. His existentialism was also adopted by Simone de Beauvoir, who used it as a foundation for modern theoretical feminism. So...
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What Is 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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Merleau-Ponty and Perception
For French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, everything we perceive takes the form of a shape. You don’t just see green and splotches: you see a tree. Even before your rational brain gets its motor running, your body has a sense of what’s out there, and indeed what’s useful—or dangerous—for your...
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What's So Special About Humans?
Human beings share the planet with many different organisms with vastly diverse ways of life. We like to think we’re a higher form of intelligence. But are we really that unique? How different are we as a species when it comes to language, thought, and culture? Where does our specifically human...
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The Scandalous Truth about Memor
A memoir is a personal narrative written about a pivotal time in the author’s life. While the story is told from a particular perspective, the events recounted are supposed to be fact, not fiction. But what exactly counts as truth in memoir? Is the distinction between “literal truth” and…
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Dostoevsky and Doubting Faith
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was a practicing Christian, and his writings often feature characters who have or find faith. But many of the most fascinating and charismatic characters are flamboyant atheists, and Dostoevsky has these characters make powerful arguments against religious…
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Wise Woman: 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 degree at Oxford. Josh and Ray explore her life and thought with...
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Marx and Morality
Karl Marx famously attempted to explain our social, political, and economic systems in terms of class conflict. While he never explicitly states that capitalism is unjust, some scholars suggest that there is an implicit moral critique of it in his work. So, does Marx reject capitalism for its…
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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? What’s...
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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 responsibility. In this...
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The 2026 Dionysus Awards
With the Oscars dust settled, it’s time to think about what movies of the past year challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways. Josh and guest co-host Jorah Danenberg present our annual Dionysus Awards for the most thought-provoking movies of the last twelve months,...
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Hobbes and the Ideal Citizen
Seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that without government to control our worst impulses, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Consequently, he thought that absolute monarchy is the best form of government. So is Hobbes’ ideal citizen simply someone who…
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How to Do Things With Your Mind
We all engage in mental actions of various kinds, whether it’s planning the coming week, trying to remember the lyrics of a song, or imagining what we’d look like with a different haircut. These thought processes have significance for us and help us direct our other actions. But are we really in...
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Wise Woman: Nísia 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 rights…
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What Is Addiction?
People who are addicted to substances display a puzzling behavior: they keep using even when it causes harm and distress to them and the people in their lives. Why would someone do this? Is it the result of a brain disease? Can we explain it in psychological terms without victim-blaming? What if...
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Who Speaks For You?
More at https://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...
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Wise Woman: 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 virtue is…
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Schopenhauer: Living Your Worst Life
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) is considered one of the great European philosophers of the nineteenth century. His most famous work, The World as Will and Representation, presents a pessimistic view of a world filled with endless strife and suffering, where happiness can only be but fleeting.…
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Can Money Buy Well-being?
Governments and central banks set economic policies that affect us all. But how do those policies influence our quality of life? And how can that quality even be measured? Gross Domestic Product (GDP) includes many factors that have little to do with the regular person’s happiness. What do people...
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Logic For 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 contexts? Why…
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Wise Woman: 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, offered one of the first articulations of how Black women are…
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Diogenes and the Honest Life
Diogenes of Sinope was a famous—or infamous—4th-century BCE Greek philosopher. Reportedly, he lived in a jar, performed many bodily functions in public, and wandered public spaces with a lit lantern in broad daylight. But what was the broader social critique advanced by Diogenes and his…
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King all engaged in civil disobedience, and are widely admired for doing so. But how can democratic society function if each person’s conscience has to be satisfied for a law to be obeyed? When is civil disobedience justified? When is it required? How does the...
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William James
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/william-james. William James is one of the great American philosophers, historically important as a philosopher (pragmatism and radical empiricism), a student of religion (author of the monumental Varieties of Religious Experience), and psychology. Ken and...
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Why Is the World So Weird?
More at https://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...
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The Examined Year: 2025
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/the-examined-year-2025. What happened over the past year that challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways? Josh and Ray talk to philosophers and others about the events and ideas that shaped the last twelve months. The Year in...
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Mind Sharing
More at https://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…
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Shakespeare's Outsiders
More at https://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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Wise Woman: Im Yunjidang
More at https://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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Gilbert Ryle and the Map of the Mind
Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) was a British philosopher of mind and language best known for his book The Concept of Mind. He developed a novel argument against Cartesian dualism, which he called “the doctrine of the ghost in the machine”—the idea that our minds and bodies are separate substances. Ryle...
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Narrative and the Meaning of Life
Humans are uniquely storytelling creatures who can narrate the events of their own lives. Some argue that our lives derive meaning from our ability to see them as an ongoing story. So is telling our own life story the key to a meaningful life? Is it the events that matter, or how we describe…
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Robert Musil and Life as Experiment
Robert Musil (1880-1942) was an Austrian novelist, famous for The Man Without Qualities. Set in Austria just before the start of World War I, it features a character who tries to live without fixed principles. But is it a good idea to conduct your life in this way? Is it even possible? Could…
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Henri Bergson and the Flow of Time
Many people think of time as a series of events, like successive frames in a movie. But French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) argued that this widespread picture was wrong: everything is in constant motion, and can’t be captured by a series of static descriptions. So why does Bergson think...
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Making and Breaking Habits
We often hear that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” The idea seems to be that long-standing habits are too entrenched to change. But are habits always so rigid and inflexible? Why does it seem that it’s hard to break bad habits and form virtuous ones? And do habits help or hinder our...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
"The program that questions everything—except your intelligence." Philosophy Talk began as a weekly one-hour radio series and has been on the air for more than two decades. The host-professors bring clarity, depth, and humor to everyday topics that are lofty (Truth, Beauty, Justice), arresting (Terrorism, Intelligent Design, Suicide), and engaging (Baseball, Love, Happiness). This is not a lecture or a college course; it's philosophy in action! From timeless philosophical questions about the ultimate nature of things to contemporary social and political issues, as well as our most fundamental beliefs about science, morality, and the human condition, Philosophy Talk invites you to challenge your assumptions and think about things in new ways.
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How many episodes does Philosophy Talk have?
Philosophy Talk currently has 669 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Philosophy Talk about?
"The program that questions everything—except your intelligence." Philosophy Talk began as a weekly one-hour radio series and has been on the air for more than two decades. The host-professors bring clarity, depth, and humor to everyday topics that are lofty (Truth, Beauty, Justice), arresting...
How often does Philosophy Talk release new episodes?
Philosophy Talk releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 669 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
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Philosophy Talk is created and hosted by Philosophy Talk.
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