19 January 2019
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Jan 15, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Alice Robb
Culturally Determined
- Alice’s new book, Why We Dream
- All the wrong ways we used to think about dreams
- The unusual discovery of REM sleep
- When scientists thought dreams were a paranormal gateway
- Alice describes participating in a “dream group”
- What do events in dreams really mean?
- Why do we have nightmares?
- How to get started with lucid dreaming
Jan 11, 2019 —
Robert Wright & John D. Caputo
The Wright Show
- John, a theologian and philosopher, explains postmodern Christianity
- Why postmodernism is not “linguistic idealism”
- Religion’s tendency to literalize
- What Paul Tillich and Jacques Derrida thought about “the unconditional”
- John: The Scriptures present a poetic, topsy-turvy vision of life
- Where do our aspirations come from (if anywhere)?
- Have art, literature, and social activism replaced religion?
- Is there a link between the unconditional and Buddhism’s “unconditioned”?
Jan 8, 2019 —
John Horgan & Deirdre McCloskey
Mind-Body Problems
Jan 4, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Massimo Pigliucci
The Wright Show
- Could evolution be conscious?
- Teleology vs. teleonomy
- A purposeful universe is possible, sure—but is it likely?
- The trouble with Stephen Jay Gould’s views on the evolution of complexity
- It’s “like something” to be an individual human. Could it be like something to be a society?
- The news from epigenetics: Heredity works in weirder ways than we knew
Jan 3, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Travis Smith
Culturally Determined
- Travis’s new book, Superhero Ethics
- The Incredible Hulk and the dangers of individualism
- Why Wolverine embodies honor and integrity
- Batman vs. Spider-Man, dueling reactions to our tragic universe
- Family tragedies in the lives of Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker
- Why adults should take comic books seriously
Jan 1, 2019 —
What's an opinion you used to hold but don't anymore?
MeaningofLife.tv Asks...
Dec 31, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & E. John Winner
Sophia
- John’s personal history with punk rock
- Why was punk more political in the UK than in NYC?
- The far reach of capitalism into counterculture
- How the NYC punk scene fizzled out
- The early importance of record shops and FM radio stations
- Punk and suburban oppression
- Is punk dead or perennially youthful?
- John: Gender expression is the new embodiment of the punk ethos
Dec 30, 2018 —
John Horgan & Stuart Kauffman
Mind-Body Problems
- Stuart’s early interest in the deepest questions in philosophy and science
- How a premonition of his daughter’s tragic death shaped Stuart’s ideas about consciousness
- Telepathy, nonlocality, and decoherence: making sense of inexplicable experiences
- “Enablement,” Stuart’s concept of a creative, unpredictable causality
- John on the connection between emotional experiences and intellectual views
- John and Stuart look to the future with cautious optimism
- A brief addendum on spoon bending
Dec 30, 2018 —
What's the biggest difficulty you have in communicating with other people?
MeaningofLife.tv Asks...
Dec 29, 2018 —
What do prayer and meditation mean to you?
MeaningofLife.tv Asks...
Dec 25, 2018 —
Is adulthood different from your expectations as a child?
MeaningofLife.tv Asks...
Dec 24, 2018 —
Have you ever experienced the divine?
MeaningofLife.tv Asks...
Dec 24, 2018 —
John Horgan & Christof Koch
Mind-Body Problems
Dec 22, 2018 —
Do you like your job?
MeaningofLife.tv Asks...
Dec 21, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Scott Barry Kaufman
The Wright Show
- What is the “G” factor in human intelligence?
- Fortunately for Scott and Bob, intelligence is about more than mentally rotating 3D objects
- What Psych 101 classes get wrong about Abraham Maslow’s “self-actualization”
- Is there a right way to self-actualize?
- What is personality?
- How self-actualized is Bob? He took Scott’s test to find out.
- The “Dark Triad” (and why we need a little darkness)
- Gender differences in narcissism
Dec 7, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Michael Holleran
The Wright Show
- Father Michael’s 22 years as a Carthusian Monk
- The contemplative tradition in Christianity
- How Zen captivated Father Michael
- Do Buddhist and Hindu mystics experience the same thing?
- Zen’s influence on Father Michael’s theology
- God, creation, and evolution
- What insights does Christianity add to Buddhism?
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s influence on Father Michael
Dec 5, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
Sophia
- What distinguishes “action” from simple motor movement?
- Can animals take deliberate action?
- Why narrative has a place in science and physics
- Biology, evolution, and the emergence of action
- Why does Massimo want a beer?
- Dan: The “free will problem” is ill-formed
- How the evolution of language brought meaning to human behavior
- Massimo and Dan’s latest projects
Nov 30, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Sabine Hossenfelder
The Wright Show
- Sabine’s new book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
- Sabine: There’s no reason to think the four fundamental forces can be unified
- What “beauty” means to a physicist
- The weirdness of the Higgs Boson
- Must there be an explanation for the fundamental forces?
- Sabine: Multiverse theory isn’t science
- What Sabine wants physicists to be doing instead of chasing beauty
Nov 28, 2018 —
John Horgan & Robert Trivers
Mind-Body Problems
Nov 23, 2018 —
Robert Wright & John Haught
The Wright Show
- The prescience of theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Teilhard’s synthesizing of the “above” and the “ahead”
- John: The creation of humans is not the universe’s climax
- John: God is “not yet”
- Science and faith as different layers of explanation
- Searching for God in a scientific age
- Why John rejects perennialism
- Questions from the live audience
Nov 16, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Eddy Nahmias
The Wright Show
- Explaining “compatibilism,” the view that there’s no conflict between free will and determinism
- Without free will, what happens to moral responsibility?
- Eddy tells Bob he errs in saying determinism means events are “inevitable”
- Free will is hard to imagine, but not nonsensical
- Why most philosophers today are compatibilists
- Bob: Compatibilists are just playing word games
- Were prisoners destined from birth to wind up in prison?
- Waiting for the “Einstein of consciousness”
Nov 14, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Rebecca Lohnes
Culturally Determined
- Rebecca’s path from the Ivy League to an animal shelter
- The science of animal training
- The many reasons why you shouldn’t try to be your dog’s “alpha”
- What we know about animal personality
- What goes on inside an animal shelter?
- Is there such a thing as a “bad dog”?
- What’s actually happening when your pet looks ashamed
- Aryeh and Rebecca debate whether their dog loves them
Nov 13, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & Tanya Luhrmann
- Tanya’s “local theory of mind”
- Harry Potter, prayer, and other “cultural invitations”
- Psychotherapy in the US and witchcraft in Ghana
- American individualism and Asian interdependence
- The differences between hearing God in Ghana and the US
- The Internet as externalized imagination: Pepe and Kek
- A “hyper-real God”: having coffee with Jesus
- Thoughts, perceptions, the world, and the self
Nov 11, 2018 —
John Horgan & Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Mind-Body Problems
- Rebecca’s childhood: poor, religious, and patriarchal
- How Bertrand Russell helped Rebecca lose her faith
- The problem of beauty
- When Rebecca shared a transcendent moment with a troop of baboons
- From physics to philosophy
- From philosophy to fiction
- Does art better address the mind-body problem than philosophy does?
- Reasons to feel optimistic about the world
Nov 9, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger
Sophia
- What role should guns play in a liberal society?
- What American deference to police says about authority and force
- Why we leave justice in the government’s hands
- Defining modern conservatism: Is Matt Lewis a “liberal”?
- Do pro-gun arguments consider the social contract?
- David: Do open-carriers want to live in a Mad Max movie?
- Dan: Grover Norquist’s model citizen isn’t a citizen at all
Nov 4, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Brandy Jensen
Culturally Determined
- How Brandy came to write an advice column called “Ask a F*ck-Up”
- Young people’s problems: depression, alienation, loneliness
- Brandy’s central theme: the responsibilities we bear to each other
- Can “bad men” change?
- The different questions men and women ask
- Brandy: A “sex strike” would never work
- In defense of being in your own Twitter bubble
- Why are there so many depressed people on Twitter?
Nov 3, 2018 —
John Horgan & Owen Flanagan
Mind-Body Problems
- Owen’s transition from Catholicism to “quiet skepticism”
- The problem of evil
- The hubris of modern philosophers
- Can we live with the scientific image of man?
- The origin of the universe, life, and consciousness
- Owen: Doubt yourself
- Does philosophy lead to practical wisdom?
- Mind-altering chemicals and free will
Nov 2, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Eric Kandel
The Wright Show
- The research on memory that won Eric the Nobel Prize
- The difference between normal memory loss and Alzheimer’s
- Eric’s new book, The Disordered Mind
- Eric’s breakthrough study of marine snails with giant nerve cells
- What it’s like to win the Nobel Prize
- Eric’s childhood escape from Nazi-ruled Vienna to America
- Why Vienna was a center of intellectual ferment in the early 20th century
Oct 28, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- Minding Emotions: music edition
- The emotional shift between minor and major chords
- Examining tonal dissonance in Western music
- When melodies become “pregnant with meaning”
- Why we find beauty in disharmony
- Rami: Social class and culture imbue music with meaning, too
- Is music hardwired in humans?
- How practicing art and music hones the eye and the ear
Oct 24, 2018 —
John Horgan & Deepak Chopra
Mind-Body Problems
Oct 23, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Max Read
Culturally Determined
- Viewing the Trump-Kanye meeting through the lens of mental illness
- The shared traits that make Trump and Kanye irresistible to the media
- How online news and social media created the “attention economy”
- Did reality TV remake reality?
- Jake and Logan Paul: brothers, YouTube superstars, and possible sociopaths
- How social media helps people with mental illness
Oct 14, 2018 —
Colin Pugh & Alex Guerrero
- Alex explains “lottocracy,” a system using random selection to choose politicians
- Does democracy have to mean voting?
- Democratic systems as forms of technologies
- Imagining many legislatures, each devoted to a single issue
- Capture and accountability in elections
- How would randomly selected politicians learn about policy?
- Leveraging collective knowledge for political decisions
- Alex: Elections encourage short-term focus and tribalism
Oct 12, 2018 —
Robert Wright & John Bargh
The Wright Show
- John’s book on unconscious motivations, Before You Know It
- Why thinking about the flu makes you more opposed to immigration
- Are ethnic and gender stereotypes self-fulfilling prophecies?
- The Protestant work ethic as a core part of American psychology
- Don’t resist temptations. Avoid them!
- How to use an “implementation intention” to get things done
- How have John’s famous lever-pulling experiments held up over time?
- Is the “replication crisis” really a crisis?
Oct 10, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Lauren Oyler
Culturally Determined
- What is it about social media that’s so depressing?
- Twitter, the unpopular website that elites love
- Is what happens on social media real or fake?
- Is @laurenoyler the same as Lauren Oyler?
- How everything in life became “toxic”
- Do all online communities eventually become toxic?
- The moral challenge of social media
Oct 5, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Lama Surya Das
The Wright Show
- Is Buddhism a philosophy or a religion?
- Surya Das: “I’m enlightened enough for now”
- Attachment, aversion, and “original goodness”
- Is an enlightened person by definition a moral person?
- Not-self and Emerson’s “transparent eyeball”
- The Dzogchen approach to enlightenment
- Surya Das: Trump has the spark of Buddha nature (and so do you)
Sep 30, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Kaitlyn Tiffany
Culturally Determined
- The hot new trend of being a homebody
- Social, economic, and technological reasons young people are staying in
- The surprisingly controversial topic of skincare
- Millennials using apps to order food delivered by Millennials
- Netflix and chill and take Instagram selfies wearing sheet masks
- Is being a homebody the modern way to go to Walden Pond?
Sep 26, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
Sophia
- Crispin’s essay on the politics of geography and representation
- Why did rural Americans feel that Trump’s victory was their victory?
- Is “one person, one vote” a wrong-headed view of political representation?
- Where political representation meets art and aesthetics
- Can Americans’ interests be represented accurately?
- Is being from a rural area akin to being a racial minority?
- What does our current system of political representation get right or wrong?
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