18 January 2021
subscribe
Archived Programs
Popular Tags
MeaningofLife.tv videos
Subscribe to MeaningofLife.tv videos via podcast or email
Jan 4, 2021 —
Daniel Kaufman & Kevin Currie-Knight
- Kevin’s book, Education in the Marketplace
- Dan and Kevin’s concern for Coleman Hughes’ intellectual freedom
- How young is too young for movement conservatism?
- What was the Intellectual Dark Web?
- The IDW’s central contradiction
- How Dan got involved with the conservative movement …
- … and why he left it
- Dan’s advice to Hughes: don’t trust the movement
Dec 28, 2020 —
John Horgan & Amanda Gefter
A conversation about nothing inspires a career in science writing. Physicist John Wheeler’s participatory cosmos. A new interpretation of quantum mechanics. Amanda’s second-person solution to the mind-body problem.
Dec 23, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Megan Fritts
- Megan: philosophy of religion shouldn’t focus on “proofs for God”
- Determining rational grounds for supernaturalism
- Why Dan rejects epistemic foundationalism
- Megan’s Christian agnosticism, Dan’s Jewish atheism
- Wittgenstein’s engagement with philosophy of religion
- What kind of authority would it be good for us to submit to?
- Dan has a revelation
- Has philosophy forgotten that it’s a humanistic discipline?
Dec 21, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Robert Gressis
- Robert’s essay, “The Philosophy Rapture”
- What counts as “relevant” philosophy?
- Philosophy’s “dirty insider game”
- Why are great philosophers overrepresented at elite universities?
- Generational decline, intellectual and attitudinal
- Do intellectual celebrity cultures produce shrinking intellectual gene pools?
- Dan: Our present-day celebrity philosophers will destroy the discipline
Dec 16, 2020 —
John Horgan & Michael Brooks
How Richard Dawkins helped Michael lose his faith. Michael’s infatuation with a 16th-century “quantum astrologer.” Are dreams of a final theory delusional? John’s new stream-of-consciousness memoir “Pay Attention.”
Dec 14, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Milton Lawson
- The new issue of Milton’s comic book, Thompson Heller: Detective Interstellar
- Christopher Hitchens’ influence on Milton’s comic
- The anxieties of robot personhood
- The economic determinants of comic book production
- How a new comic writer finds an artist
- The comic book art division of labor
- Thompson Heller’s future
Dec 8, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Massimo Pigliucci
- Could evolution have a higher purpose?
- The value of (some) untestable hypotheses
- What zombies can (and can’t) teach us about consciousness
- Evolutionary teleology vs. evolutionary teleonomy
- Why does evolution produce increasingly complex forms of life?
- Distinguishing between physical laws and natural processes
- Could the hypothesis that evolution is serving a larger purpose be tested?
Nov 30, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Josh Summers
- Continuing the exploration of “the Dharma of Bob”
- Bob: There is no good alternative to global community
- Defining non-zero-sumness
- How genetic “selfishness” led to altruism
- The psychology of tribalism
- Can we bridge the polarization divide?
- Sadly, self-transcendence isn’t genetically inheritable
- Does Bob see cause for optimism?
Nov 5, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- The origins of “standpoint theory”
- Are Dan and Crispin white?
- Defining standpoint theory
- Dan: Standpoint theory presents an irrefutable hypothesis
- Crispin: “All knowledge is from some standpoint”
- Dan: There is no single black perspective on race
- Why don’t people trust experts?
- Is this argument good for society right now?
Nov 3, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Josh Summers
- Philo of Alexandria, seminal Logos theorist
- Bob: Teleology is perfectly compatible with a scientific worldview
- A logic shaping the unfolding of life
- How Jordan Peterson understands the Logos
- Does order flow from consciousness?
- Moral progress and human interdependence
- Teleology without theology
- The Logos and the “simulation hypothesis”
Oct 13, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
- Guthrie’s new book, Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity
- Guthrie’s personal faith journey
- The tradition of liberal Protestantism
- Human sexuality and evangelicalism
- Guthrie sees a liberatory counternarrative in Scripture
- What drives militant atheism?
- What happened to Christian antiwar activism?
- Do young progressives privilege identity over class?
- Why Guthrie prays for President Trump
Oct 7, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Robert Gressis
- A review of Kate Manne’s book Entitled sparks an online philosophy feud
- Is America systematically misogynistic?
- How Twitter incentivizes bad behavior
- The professional norms around book reviewing
- Dan sees “no honor all the way down” on the other side
- Self-immolating philosophers
- Is there a case for keeping some topics off limits?
Oct 1, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Josh Summers
- Applying cognitive empathy to the Supreme Court vacancy fight
- The danger of runaway retaliation
- Reviewing The Social Dilemma, a new documentary critical of social media
- Enhance your online stature by vilifying the other tribe!
- How will historians view the social media era?
- Can Democrats oppose Barrett mindfully?
- The links between yoga and mindfulness
Sep 8, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Sharon Salzberg
- How Sharon became one of the first Americans to study Buddhism in India
- Sharon’s new book, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World
- Does meditation seal you off from the world?
- Mindfully coping with anger on social media
- There’s more political diversity among meditators than you might think
- Sharon explains lovingkindness meditation
- The difficult work of finding compassion for your enemies
- Planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
Sep 3, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Milton Lawson
- The incredible achievement of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- The choices that led to the MCU’s greatness…
- …and the choices that didn’t quite work out
- Critiquing Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Dr. Strange
- Milton foresees future “Has Marvel Lost Its Way?” thinkpieces
- Blatant speculation on upcoming films
- Dan fears wokeness ruining Marvel movies
Aug 25, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Ingrid Newkirk
- Ingrid’s new book, Animalkind
- Animal rights vs. animal welfare
- Amazing facts about animals (and the many things we still don’t know)
- Is it bad to call your dog a “pet” (or for that matter “yours”)?
- Contemplating animal consciousness
- How unethical is Bob’s pescatarian diet?
- The rise of artificial meat
- Ingrid asks, “Do you think that animal was a volunteer?”
- Ingrid’s extremely unusual last will and testament
Aug 18, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- Explaining Crispin’s position on explanatory unity
- Dan: Meaning is part of social reality, it’s not all in our heads
- What is the substance of our ontological commitments?
- Why Dan thinks philosopher W.V.O. Quine is almost right
- The conspicuous absence of philosophers from the public discourse about values
- Metaphysics is not as complicated and important as people think it is
Jul 28, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Bruce Feiler
- Bruce’s new book, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age
- Debunking the idea of the “predictable crises of adult life”
- Two kinds of life changes: “disruptors” and “lifequakes”
- Does Bob need a lifequake?
- Bruce: “The linear model of life transitions is just wrong”
- Millennials zigging and zagging
- The ABCs of meaning: agency, belonging, cause
- How to write your own life story
- Are the stories we tell about ourselves just BS? And is that okay?
- How to change the meaning of your life
Jul 26, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Russell Blackford
- Russell’s book, The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the Future of Liberalism
- Preserving the liberal tradition
- Can the genie of stakes-inflation be put back in the bottle?
- Dan: Woke illiberalism is a kind of luxury
- Russell’s recommendations for keeping the liberal tradition alive
- The role of legislation and institutions in tamping down illiberalism
Jul 21, 2020 —
Robert Wright & David Livingstone Smith
- David’s new book, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It
- The tension at the heart of dehumanization
- David: Genocides are moralistic
- The essential role of psychological essentialism
- Dehumanization in American politics
- When David received death threats after critiquing Jordan Peterson
- The “Great Chain of Being” and our complex conception of monsters
- Why David doesn’t like the term “the banality of evil”
- How to resist dehumanization
Jul 19, 2020 —
John Horgan & Philip Goff
- Philip’s 2019 book, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness
- What’s the difference between panpsychism and philosophical idealism?
- John: Solipsism is “an absolute impediment to a truly scientific theory of consciousness”
- Does panpsychism “cheat” when it comes to philosophy’s fundamental problems?
- The moral dimension of panpsychism
- Hallucinogens and mystical experience
Jul 14, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Bhikkhu Bodhi
- Buddhism and the military atrocities in Myanmar and Sri Lanka
- The early political history of Buddhism
- Varieties of Buddhist rationales for nonviolence
- The history of war between Southeast Asian nations
- Is warfare antithetical to attaining enlightenment?
- Justifications for non-pacifism
- Meditation and the antiwar mindset
- Foreign policy, anti-China sentiment, and BLM protests
Jul 7, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Rutger Bregman
- Rutger’s new book, Humankind: A Hopeful History
- Debunking the “veneer theory” of human nature
- Are violence and war intrinsic to human nature?
- The human self-domestication thesis
- Why Bob doesn’t like the idea of people “deserving punishment”
- Is it bad to emphasize the dark side of human nature?
- What the debunking of the Stanford Prison Experiment can teach us
- Giving money to rich people: Why the U in UBI?
- Would UBI turn us all into couch potatoes (or worse)?
Jul 6, 2020 —
Robert Gressis & Douglas Edwards
- Doug’s new book, Philosophy Smackdown
- Plato’s Cave and the three layers of wrestling reality
- What it means when wrestlers break the fourth wall
- Real life can be “just as scripted as wrestling, if not more so”
- How and why moral virtue changed in wrestling
- The only performance where people say “you know it’s fake, right?”
- What philosophers could learn from professional wrestling
Jun 22, 2020 —
Nikita Petrov & Tony Ortega
- A Scientology ship commander calls the pandemic “suppressive and anti-social”
- Turning to L. Ron Hubbard during the pandemic: radiation as a state of mind
- The appeal of groups like Scientology in a crisis
- The pandemic is the rare mainstream event that got Scientologists’ attention
- Hubbard and Trump, Scientology and post-truth
- Nikita’s experience with an exercise similar to “past lives auditing”
- We thought the Internet was a threat to Scientology. Were we wrong?
Jun 14, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- Are we really as social as the Stoics believed?
- Distinguishing between the “objective” and the “real”…
- …and between the “real” and representations of the “real”
- Dan: It makes no difference whether or not values are objective
- Massimo’s solution to the omnivore’s dilemma
- Massimo: “Values are never separate from facts”
Jun 5, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Milton Lawson
- Spoiler alert! Critiquing Star Trek: Discovery and Picard
- Serial vs. episodic storytelling
- Why Dan hated Discovery‘s main character
- Is the show too woke?
- Debating the big twist in Picard
- Dan: Two things screw up Picard as a Star Trek show
- Throwing science out the window
- Milton: Audiences don’t know what they want
- Have younger viewers turned away from science fiction?
Jun 2, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Paul Bloom
- Paul describes the view from Toronto
- Zero- and non-zero-sum aspects of the pandemic
- Paul: Canada’s multiparty system helps defuse polarization
- A disaster without solidarity
- How our emotions caused us to underreact to the pandemic
- Masks and mobs
- Trump’s fragile feelings
- Why has the external threat of the disease not united humanity?
- A deep dive into the meaning of statistical significance
Archives
- January 2021(2)
- October 2020(3)
- August 2020(5)
- July 2020(8)
- June 2020(6)
- May 2020(5)
- April 2020(5)
- March 2020(7)
- January 2020(3)
- October 2019(6)
- August 2019(3)
- July 2019(9)
- June 2019(13)
- May 2019(5)
- April 2019(9)
- March 2019(3)
- January 2019(9)
- December 2018(11)
- November 2018(12)
- October 2018(9)
- August 2018(9)
- July 2018(7)
- June 2018(12)
- May 2018(10)
- April 2018(6)
- March 2018(9)
- January 2018(11)
- October 2017(7)
- August 2017(8)
- July 2017(5)
- June 2017(8)
- May 2017(3)
- April 2017(6)
- March 2017(5)
- January 2017(27)
- December 2016(33)
- November 2016(12)
- October 2016(18)
- September 2016(13)
- August 2016(12)
- July 2016(8)
- June 2016(14)
- May 2016(15)
- April 2016(8)
- March 2016(10)
- February 2016(16)
- January 2016(8)
- December 2015(11)
- November 2015(11)
- October 2015(14)
- September 2015(11)
- August 2015(11)
- July 2015(10)
- August 2014(2)
- July 2014(1)
- May 2014(1)
- January 2014(3)
- October 2013(2)
- July 2013(1)
- May 2013(1)
- January 2013(1)
- June 2010(1)
- August 2003(12)
- July 2003(8)