PODCAST · education
Philosophy Talk Starters
by Philosophy Talk Starters
Bite-size episodes from the program that questions everything... except your intelligence. Learn more and access complete episodes at www.philosophytalk.org.
Episodes
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The End of the Starters
Our entire archive is now to free to listen at philosophytalk.org, so this feed will no longer be updated. You can subscribe to receive full episodes at https://philosophytalk.org/get-the-podcast.
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Schopenhauer: Living Your Worst Life
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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Can Money Buy Well-being?
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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…
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Logic For Everyone
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…
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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
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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Civil Disobedience
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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…
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William James
More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/william-james. William James is a great figure, 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 John examine the life...
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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 Women: 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
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/gilbert-ryle. 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...
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Can A.I. Help Us Understand Babies?
More at https://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...
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Wise Women: Margaret Cavendish
More at https://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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Narrative and the Meaning of Life
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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Impossible Worlds
Impossible Worlds
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Wise Women: Mary Astell
More at https://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...
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In Awe of Wonder
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/awe-wonder. 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…
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Making and Breaking Habits
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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Wise Women: Elisabeth of Bohemia
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/elisabeth-bohemia. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia 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...
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Zhuangzi: Being One With Ten Thousand Things
More at https://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...
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Robert Musil and Life as Experiment
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/robert-musil. 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...
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Wise Women: Hildegard von Bingen
More at https://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 to…
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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 viewpoint? Why are...
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Henri Bergson and the Flow of Time
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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Are We Living in a Simulation?
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...
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Wise Women: Hypatia of Alexandria
More at https://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 that…
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The Value of Music
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/what-is-music. From classical concerts to commercial jingles, music fills our lives every day. But philosophers disagree about what exactly music is and why it’s valuable. Among the world’s diverse musical cultures and styles, are there any universals? If...
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James Baldwin and Social Justice
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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572: Weird Wants
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/weird-wants. Philosophers from Aquinas to 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…
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607: The 2025 Dionysus Awards
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/2025-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 the annual Dionysus Awards for the most thought-provoking movies of the last twelve...
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Schopenhauer—Living Your Worst Life
More at https://philosophytalk.org/shows/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...
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571: Making a Better World
More at https://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...
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613: Private Lives
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/private-lives. Cultural attitudes towards privacy seem to be in conflict. On the one hand, we are concerned about corporations getting their hands on or selling our personal data. On the other, many people like to broadcast every little bit of their...
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569: Mexican Philosophy
More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mexican-philosophy. From early feminist Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to existentialist Emilio Uranga, from Indigenous thought to theorists of aesthetic utopia, Mexican philosophy is full of fascinating figures with brilliant insights. What can we learn from them...
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612: 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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567: What Is Gender?
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...
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566: Can Art Save Us?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/can-art-save-us. The world is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis, and we urgently need good ways to address it. Courageous politicians would help, of course, as might scientific innovations. But how much of the problem is a failure of...
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565: True Contradictions
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/true-contradictions. If you want to tell the truth, you shouldn’t contradict yourself—that’s just common sense. A suspect who was home on the night of the crime can’t have been elsewhere, and whatever the weapon, we can rule out the hypothesis that it...
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611: 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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563: Derek Parfit and Your Future Self
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/derek-parfit-and-your-future-self. The works of Derek Parfit (1942-2017) have had a profound influence on how philosophers understand rational decision-making, ethics, and personal identity. At the heart of Parfit's thinking are questions about how you...
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610: Are Rules Meant to Be Broken?
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/are-rules-meant-be-broken. Rules exist for a reason: they tell us what to expect, they help us coordinate our actions, and they stop us from exploiting one another. But isn't it possible to be too much of a rule follower? Aren't some rules arbitrary,...
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609: 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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487: Changing Minds on Climate Change
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/changing-minds-climate-change. There is consensus among scientists that global warming is real and that it’s caused by human activity. Despite the overwhelming evidence and the urgency to act, there are still many who are skeptical of or flat-out deny...
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562: 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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556: In Search of Proust's Philosophy
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/search-prousts-philosophy. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time challenges us to think hard about what we can know, who we really are, why memory matters, and how we can find enchantment in a world without God. But some might wonder why we need a…
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557: Thinking Like a Conspiracy Theorist
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/thinking-conspiracy-theorist. The moon landing was faked! JFK Jr. is still alive! Finland doesn’t exist! Conspiracy theories of all sorts have been gaining traction, thanks partly to the ease with which they spread online. But what makes someone more...
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608: 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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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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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Philosophy Talk Starters
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Philosophy Talk Starters currently has 537 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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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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Philosophy Talk Starters releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 537 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
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