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Philosophy Talk — 657 episodes
Wise Woman: Emma Goldman
Summer Reading List 2026
Jean-Paul Sartre
What Is Gender?
Merleau-Ponty and Perception
What's So Special About Humans?
The Scandalous Truth about Memor
Dostoevsky and Doubting Faith
Wise Woman: Elizabeth Anscombe
Marx and Morality
Marcus Aurelius
Daniel Dennett Retrospective
The 2026 Dionysus Awards
Hobbes and the Ideal Citizen
How to Do Things With Your Mind
Wise Woman: Nísia Floresta
What Is Addiction?
Who Speaks For You?
Wise Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft
Schopenhauer: Living Your Worst Life
Can Money Buy Well-being?
Logic For Everyone
Wise Woman: Anna Julia Cooper
Diogenes and the Honest Life
Civil Disobedience
William James
Why Is the World So Weird?
The Examined Year: 2025
Mind Sharing
Shakespeare's Outsiders
Wise Woman: Im Yunjidang
Gilbert Ryle and the Map of the Mind
Narrative and the Meaning of Life
Robert Musil and Life as Experiment
Henri Bergson and the Flow of Time
Making and Breaking Habits
The Value of Music
Schopenhauer: Living Your Worst Life
Private Lives
Philippa Foot
Wise Woman: Mary Midgley
Are Rules Meant to Be Broken?
Wise Woman: Iris Murdoch
Wise Woman: Judith Jarvis Thomson
The 2025 Dionysus Awards
The Philosophical Worlds of Borges
Alan Turing and the Limits of Computation
How to Create Virtuous Leaders
Elizabeth Anscombe
The Examined Year: 2024
Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology
Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology
What’s So Special About Humans?
Wise Woman: Emma Goldman
Simone Weil
Anna Julia Cooper
Marx and Morality
How to Do Things With Your Mind
Hildegard von Bingen
Who Speaks For You?
Nísia Floresta
Daniel Dennett Retrospective
Summer Reading List 2024
(Late) Summer Reading List 2024
Logic For Everyone
Mary Wollstonecraft
Why Is the World So Weird?
Shakespeare’s Outsiders
Mind Sharing
Margaret Cavendish
The 2024 Dionysus Awards
Im Yunjidang
Can A.I. Help Us Understand Babies?
20th Anniversary Quiz Night
American Futures (Ken Taylor Memorial Episode)
Impossible Worlds
In Awe of Wonder
Mary Astell
Zhuangzi: Being One with Ten Thousand Things
Elisabeth of Bohemia
Can Architecture Be Political?
Are We Living in a Simulation?
Weird Wants
Making a Better World
Hypatia of Alexandria
Mexican Philosophy
Summer Reading List 2023
What Is Gender?
Can Art Save Us?
True Contradictions
The Power of Prediction
Derek Parfit and Your Future Self
The Philosophy of Smell
The 2023 Dionysus Awards
Cancel Culture
Why Trust Science?
The Examined Year: 2022
Thinking Like a Conspiracy Theorist
In Search of Proust’s Philosophy
Liberty and Justice for Who?
Climate Change and Collective Action
Who Owns Culture?
Effective Altruism
What Is Political Inequality?
Is Optimism Rational?
Summer Reading List: Banned Books Edition
The Changing Face of Antisemitism
The Scandalous Truth about Memoir
What Is Ideology?
What Would Kant Do?
Why Poetry Matters
The 2022 Dionysus Awards
#MeToo: Retribution, Accountability, and Justice
Righteous Rage
Marcus Aurelius
Could Robots Be Persons?
The Examined Year: 2021
What Can Virtual Reality (Actually) Do?
Should All Ages Be Equal?
The Social Lives of Robots
Frege and the Language of Reason
Akan Philosophy and Personhood
The Mysterious Timelessness of Math
The Ethics of Awesomeness
Microaggressions
Referring to the World: Ken’s Final Work
Your Brain on Literature
Summer Reading List 2021
Nonduality and the Oneness of Being
The Lives and Ideas of the Vienna Circle
Disinformation and the Future of Democracy
Montaigne and the Art of the Essay
The 2021 Dionysus Awards
What Is Masculinity?
What Has Replaced Freud?
The Rhetoric of Big Tech
Democracy By Numbers
The Examined Year: 2020
Minds and Matter
The Arts For All?
Are We All to Blame?
What’s In a Game?
Why We Hate
Science and Skepticism
Citizenship and Justice
The Merits of Meritocracy
Can Streets Discriminate?
The Ethical Jerk
Walter Benjamin and the Re-Enchanted World
Pet Ethics
Time for Summer Reading
Covid Conundrums and Moral Dilemmas
Comforting Conversations, pt.2
Comforting Conversations, pt.1
(Why) Money Matters
Philosophy and the Superhero
The 2020 Dionysus Awards
Is the Self an Illusion?
Death of the Sentence
Comedy and the Culture Wars
Ken Taylor Tribute
Sanctuary Cities
Hobbes and the Ideal Citizen
Conscious Machines
The Allure of Authoritarianism
Explanation At Its Best
Changing Minds on Climate Change
Reading the Troubled Past
The Doomsday Doctrine
Is Postmodernism Really to Blame for Post-Truth?
Summer Reading (and Misreading)
J.S. Mill and the Good Life
The Limits of Tolerance
What Is Religious Belief?
Is Philanthropy Bad for Democracy?
Authority and Resistance
Hacking the Brain: Beyond the Five Senses
Immigration and Multiculturalism
The 2019 Dionysus Awards
What Do We Owe Future Generations?
Envy: Vice or Virtue?
The Examined Year: 2018
Foreign Aid – or Injury?
Foucault and Power
The Creative Life
Does Reputation Matter?
Can Reason Save Us?
The New Golden Age of Television
The Psychology of Cruelty
The Athlete as Philosopher
The Ethics of Algorithms
Does Science Over-reach?
Radical Markets: Solutions for a Gilded Age?
Summer Reading List 2018
The Value of Care: Feminism and Ethics
Repugnant Markets: Should Everything Be For Sale?
Faith and Humility
Are We Alone?
Trolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars: Humility and Online Discourse
Monstrous Technologies?
Adorno and the Culture Industry
How to Humbly Disagree
Misogyny and Gender Inequality
The 5th (Mostly) Annual Dionysus Awards
James Baldwin and Social Justice
Frantz Fanon and the Violence of Colonialism
Fractured Identities
The Philosophy of Retirement
The Examined Year: 2017
Can Speech Kill?
Midlife and Meaning
Philosophy of Trash
Race Matters
The Internet of Things
A World Without Work
Post-Truth Politics
Polyamory
Could the Laws of Physics Ever Change?
Driverless Cars at the Moral Crossroads
Cognitive Bias
Summer Reading List 2017
Habermas and Democracy
Nonhuman Rights
Should Beliefs Aim at Truth?
The Limits of Medical Consent
The Phenomenology of Lived Experience
The Space-Time Continuum
Knowing What We Know (And What We Don’t)
Queerness
Freedom of Speech on Campus
Philosophy Behind Bars
Reparations
The Value of a College Education
The Examined Year: 2016
The Mystery of the Multiverse
Matter and Energy – The Dark Side
John Dewey and the Ideal of Democracy
Magical Thinking
Election Special
This Is Your Brain on Art
The Big Bang – Before and After
More Than Pun and Games
The Mystery of Music
Identity Politics
The Radical Democracy Movement
The Philanthropy Trap
Philosophy of Sleep
Altered States
Affirmative Action: Too Little or Too Much?
One Child Too Many
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
Extreme Altruism
Gun Control
The Science of Happiness
The Ancient Cosmos – When the Earth Stood Still
“Ethics of Whistleblowing” wins Bronze Award for Social Impact at the New York Festivals
The Ethics of Debt
White Privilege and Racial Injustice
Jean-Paul Sartre
Dignity Denied: Life and Death in Prison
The Examined Year – 2015
Taoism: Following the Way
Self and Self-Presentation
Your Lying Eyes – Perception, Memory, and Justice
Will Innovation Kill Us?
Spinoza
Living On Through Others
In Praise of Love: Plato’s Symposium Meets Bernstein’s Serenade
The Logic of Regret
The Technology of Immortality
The Changing Face of Feminism
The Ethics of Drone Warfare
Leibniz
The Power and Peril of Satire
Neuroscience and Free Will
Edward Snowden and the Ethics of Whistleblowing
Heidegger
Summer Reading List 2015
Science and Politics – Friends or Foes?
Why Propaganda Matters
How Words Work: From Noise to Meaning
Reincarnation – Past Lives, Future Selves
When Democracies Torture
The Art of Non-Violence
Morality in a Godless World
Democracy in Crisis
Diseases of the Mind: Philosophy of Psychiatry
Camus and the Absurd
Cyber-Activism
Food Justice
Anarchy: Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare?
What’s Next? Death and the Afterlife
The Examined Year – 2014
Humanity Violated
The Lure of Immortality
Transformative Experiences
The Fairness Fixation
Philosophy as Therapy
Racial Profiling and Implicit Bias
Second-Guessing Ourselves
Machiavelli
Babies and the Birth of Morality
Intuition a Guide to Truth?
Remixing Reality – Art and Literature for the 21st Century
Captivity
The New Surveillance Society – Big Brother Grows Up
Tainted by the Sins of Our Fathers?
Anatomy of a Terrorist
Art and Obscenity
Summer Reading List 2014
Am I Alone?
The Reality of Time
Seeing Red: The World in Color
Risky Business: The Business of Risk
Conspiracy Theories
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Acting Together
Simone de Beauvoir
Science and Gender
The Legacy of Freud
Memory and the Self
Moral Luck
The Examined Year – 2013
Trust and Mistrust
Do Religions Deserve Special Status?
Dangerous Demographics: The Challenges of an Aging Population
The Dark Side of Science
When Is It Wrong to Save a Life? Lessons from the Trolley Problem
An Eye for an Eye: The Morality of Revenge
The Limits of Self-Knowledge
Ancient Cynicism
The Moral Lives of Animals
Tenth Anniversary Special
Memes: Viruses of the Mind?
Life as a Work of Art
Finding Meaning in a Material World
Freedom and Free Enterprise
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times
Nations and Borders
Education and the Culture Wars
Physics, Philosophy, and Theology
Summer Reading List 2013
Faith, Reason, and the Art of Living
Good, Evil, and the Divine Plan
The Demands of Morality
Dance as a Way of Knowing
Truth and Other Fictions
God and the Fine-Tuned Universe
The Psychology of Partisan Politics
The Self
Bioethics: Myths and Realities
The Linguistics of Name-Calling
The Examined Year – 2012
Turbo-Charging the Mind
Has Science Replaced Philosophy?
Unconditional Love
Are Some People Better Than Others?
How Fiction Shapes Us
Economics – Science or Cult?
The Evolution of Storytelling
Forbidden Words
Prostitution and the Sex Trade
Regulating Bodies
Why Be Moral?
The Nature of Wilderness
The Moral Costs of Climate Change
Neuroscience and the Law
Gut Feelings and the Art of Decision-Making
Hypocrisy
Identities Lost & Found in a Global Age
Corporations and the Future of Democracy
What Might Have Been
Summer Reading List 2012
Freedom, Blame, and Resentment
What Is Love?
What Are Leaders Made of?
Poetry as a Way of Knowing
Epicurus and the Good Life
Pantheism
The 2012 Dionysus Awards
Black Solidarity
The Right to Privacy
Is Democracy a Universal Value?
The Examined Year: 2011
Forgive and Forget
The Military: What Is It Good For?
Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?
Miracles
Thinking Inside the Box
Cooperation and Conflict
Morality and the Self
Wisdom
Latin-American Philosophy
Deconstructing the College Admissions Rat Race
Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics
The State of Public Philosophy
Philosophy and Everyday Life
The Psychology of Evil
Atheism and the Well-Lived Life
Whodunit: The Language of Responsibility
Gay Pride & Prejudice
Summer Reading List 2011
Cities, Gentrification, and Inequality
Should Marriage Be Abolished?
The Extended Mind
What is an Adult?
Is It All Relative?
John Locke
The 2011 Dionysus Awards
Procrastination
Derrida and Deconstruction
Abortion
The Moral Costs of Free Markets
Philosophy for Children
The Power of Thought
Disagreement
Reading, Narrative, and the Self
The Occult Philosophy
Bargaining with the Devil
Philosophy and the Alma Mater
Meaning and the Revolution
Philosophy for the Young – Corrupting or Empowering?
Self-Deception
Humanism
Social Reality
Loyalty
Democracy and The Press
What are Human Rights?
The Corporation as a Person
Summer Reading List 2010
Philosophy Talk “Live” Highlights
Mental Illness and Culture
Faces, Feelings, and Lies
The Ethics of Torture
What Is a Wife?
Fear
What is ‘Normal’?
The 2010 Dionysus Awards
Mind Reading
Philosophy in Fiction
Paradoxes
Nihilism and Meaning
Kierkegaard
Is It Wrong to Wreck the Earth?
How Relevant Is Jesus?
The Philosophical Legacy of Darwin
From the Minds of Babies
200 and Counting
Health Care: Right or Privilege?
Schizophrenia and the Mind
War, Sacrifice, and the Media
What are Words Worth?
Philosophy Talk Highlights
The Postmodern Family
Pornography
Money and Morality
The Prison System
Social Networking
Summer Reading List 2009
The Mind and the World
Lincoln as a Philosopher
Worship
Beliefs Gone Wild
Desire
Too Much Information
The Root of All Evil?
The Copyright Wars
Challenges to Free Will
Biracial Identities
Different Cultures, Different Selves
The Movie Show
Creativity
Civil Disobedience
Philosophy of History
The Idea of the University
John Rawls
Bodies For Sale
Levels of Reality
Gandhi as a Philosopher
William James
Making Decisions
Digital Selves
Overcoming the Terror of Death
The Morality of Food
Utilitarianism
Global Justice and Human Rights
Dualism
Philosophy and Pop Culture
Giving and Keeping
The Luck of the Draw
Altruism
Hannah Arendt
The Problem of Evil
Summer Reading List 2008
Promises
Experimental Philosophy
Varieties of Love
Politics and Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Wine
Apologizing
Science vs. Pseudo-science
Infinity
Connectionism
Saint Augustine
Persons, Selves, Souls, and Loops
Why Music Matters
Work
Personal Identity
Concept of God
Political Correctness
Islamic Philosophy
Immigration and Citizenship
Philosophy and Literature
Predicting the Future
Faith, Reason, and Science
Love, Poetry and Philosophy
Math and the Mind
The Value of Art
Postmodernism
Flirting with Philosophy
Philosophy Through Humor
Capital Punishment
Where Does Morality Come From?
Summer Reading List 2007
Aging and the Well-Lived Life
Artificial Intelligence
Science, Ethics, and Censorship
Autonomy
Ethics in Journalism
Can Science Explain Consciousness?
A Philosophical Shout-Out
Skepticism
Immortality and the Afterlife
Animal Minds
Wittgenstein
The Judiciary in Democracy
Mental Imagery
If Truth is so valuable, why is there so much BS?
Legal Ethics
We’ve Been Framed: How Language Shapes Politics
The Promise and Perils of the New Genomics
Philosophy and Film
Philosophy and Neuroscience
American Pragmatism
What is a Child?
Dreaming
Separation of Powers
Believing in God
Language and Thought
Karl Popper
Jewish Philosophy
The Philosophy of Music
War Crimes
Liberty vs. Security
100th Episode
Language in Action
Athletic Beauty
Race, Class, and Inequality
The Future of Philosophy
Stoicism
Leadership
Hegel
The Nature of Imagination
A Philosophical Summer Reading List
Justice Across Boundaries
Existentialism
What Is Art?
Philosophy and the Law
The Value of Truth
The Philosophy of Hoops
Suicide
What Are Numbers?
The Science of Humor
Marriage and Monogamy
W.E.B. Du Bois
Legislating Values
Philosophy of Science
Intelligent Design
Progress and the Environment
The Existence of God
Kant
Freedom of Speech in Times of War
Friendship
Language of Fiction
George Berkeley
The Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Reconciliation
The Strange World of Quantum Reality
Ethics in War
Language of Politics
Saints, Heroes, and Well-Lived Lives
Descartes
The Indispensable Emotions
Moral Dilemmas and Moral Ambiguity
Zen
Global Poverty and International Aid
The Ethics of Identity
Intergenerational Obligations
Evolution of the Human Mind
Prostitution
Confucius
Forgiveness
Propaganda
Genetic Determinism
Schopenhauer
Is Free Will an Illusion?
Neurocosmetology
What is Beauty?
Religion and the Secular State
Hume
The Erotic vs. The Pornographic
Ethics in Sport
Evil
Aristotle
The Mystery of Mind
Gender
Nature vs. Nurture
Disability
Love
Truth and Relativism
Time
Is This Any Way to Run a Democracy?
Karl Marx
Feminism
The Environment and Global Justice
Corporations
Plato
Happiness
Gambling
Affirmative Action
Who Owns Ideas?
Paternalism and Health
Humans: The Irrational Animal
Virtue
Dignity and the End of Life
Terrorism
Meaning of Life
Animal Rights
Whose Language Is It?
Baseball
Taxation
Consciousness
Humor
Has Science Replaced Religion?
Nietzsche
Markets and Morality
Genetic Engineering and Cloning
Drug Legalization
The Insanity Defense
Patriotism versus Cosmopolitanism
Marriage and the State
What Is Race?
Would You Want to Live Forever?
The Bush Doctrine of Preemptive Self-Defense
Live Pilot: Is Lying Always Bad?
Demo #2: What Is Terrorism?
Demo #1: Can Machines Think?