17 December 2018
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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?
Sep 21, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Christopher White
Culturally Determined
- The new sex abuse crisis enveloping the Catholic Church
- An explosive letter claims Pope Francis helped a known abuser
- The allegations against the powerful Archbishop McCarrick
- What does #MeToo reveal about the Church?
- Assessing Archbishop Viganò’s accusations against Francis
- Can Francis implement real reforms?
Sep 20, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
Mind-Body Problems
- John’s new book, Mind-Body Problems, is free online
- “What are we really, what can we be, and what should we be?”
- Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist with an affinity for violence
- Douglas Hofstadter, a playful writer, but a melancholic person
- Why ex-materialist Christof Koch embraced panpsychism
- How losing a daughter made Stuart Kaufman study the paranormal
- Story time! Nikita and John exchange psychedelic tales
Sep 10, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Gregg Caruso
The Wright Show
- What is neuroexistentialism?
- Neuroscience, free will, and existentialism
- The “compatibilist” claim that free will and determinism can co-exist
- To define “free will,” first redefine “agency”
- Why the importance of luck should make us doubt intuitions about free will
- Moral responsibility and the Nazi war criminal thought experiment
- Does Gregg’s personality predispose him to reject retribution?
Sep 4, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Lauren Shields
Culturally Determined
- Lauren’s new book on her experiment with dressing modestly, The Beauty Suit
- Lauren’s unusual path to the seminary
- Alternative readings of Quranic verses on female modesty
- Christianity, conspicuous consumption, and the Amish
- Jewish women who cover their hair with wigs that look just like their hair
- Makeup trends that only look good on social media
- Why cultural appropriation is often rooted in misogyny
- Lauren’s advice for men
Aug 31, 2018 —
Robert Wright & K. Anthony Appiah
The Wright Show
- Anthony’s new book, The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity
- Anthony’s own unusual identity
- Cosmopolitanism and its discontents
- Patriotism, nationalism, and “legitimate forms of partiality”
- Against essentialism in religion
- The invention of the idea of a national spirit
- Who owns the culture?
- How class conflict has changed in the US and UK
Aug 24, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Bhikkhu Bodhi
The Wright Show
- How Bhikkhu Bodhi first encountered Buddhism…
- …and how he became a Buddhist monk
- Can “secular” Buddhists have spiritual experiences?
- Traditional Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and immanent Buddhism
- Diving into nirvana: “conditioned arising” and “the unconditioned”
- Does Buddhism make you a better person?
Aug 23, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
Emotions and the Brain
- What is pleasure, and what isn’t?
- How human will fits into philosophies of pleasure
- Addiction, brain chemistry, and the lies we tell ourselves
- Why are some people more prone to addiction than others?
- Addiction as a disease of deprivation
- Antonio Demasio’s new book that rethinks culture and the roots of consciousness
Aug 15, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Philip Christman
Culturally Determined
- Phil’s essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Man?”
- Modern male stereotypes: Homer Simpson vs. Harvey Weinstein
- Proud Boys, Jordan Peterson, and the crisis of masculinity
- The trans challenge to gender norms
- Phil explains why his Christian faith doesn’t provide him with certainty
- Contrasting certainty in Judaism and Christianity
Aug 14, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & Justin Weinberg
Sophia
- Justin’s website about the philosophy profession, Daily Nous
- What philosophers actually do when they do research
- Will we ever solve the big philosophical questions?
- What the American Philosophical Association does
- Is this a golden age for public philosophy?
- Are philosophy departments in danger?
- Dan wonders whether there should be a moratorium on new philosophy PhDs
Aug 9, 2018 —
Josh Summers & Stephen Asma
- Stephen’s new book, Why We Need Religion
- Who is Stephen’s intended audience?
- How religion shaped our emotional lives for millennia
- Can you benefit from religion without sincere belief?
- “False consolation”? No such thing, Stephen says
- Stephen learns to appreciate the “smells and bells” of Buddhism in Bhutan
- How will religion evolve in America?
Aug 6, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & Gary Lachman
- The rise of “occult politics” in the Trump era
- Pepe the Frog and “willing Trump into office”
- Trickle-down metaphysics from Nietzsche to Trump
- Steve Bannon’s connection to European far-right esoteric philosophy
- “Putin’s Rasputin,” Alexander Dugin
- Gary’s new project on the return of “Holy Russia”
- Gary’s thoughts on Jordan Peterson
Aug 3, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Ben Blum
The Wright Show
- Ben’s essay challenging Philip Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment
- How a study about prisoners became a study about guards
- Evidence that Zimbardo improperly influenced the study
- The unexpected political effects of the experiment
- What explains the experiment’s durability?
- When Zimbardo tried to get Bob to dance
- Is Zimbardo himself a victim of circumstance?
Jul 31, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & Brian Leiter
Sophia
- To understand Marx, start with Hegel’s dialectics
- Why Marx emphasized economic production over Hegelian idealism
- Dan: Was Marx’s concept of labor too narrow?
- What will happen if technology eliminates most jobs?
- Marxism post-WWII: More than college activism and Jefferson Airplane?
- Brian: Marx’s predictions were right, but his predicted timeframe was all wrong
- Why “diversity blather” is a capitalist wolf in Marxist clothing
Jul 29, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Katie Herzog
Culturally Determined
- What Katie saw at the Jordan Peterson roadshow
- Is Peterson peddling bunkum?
- Katie defends Peterson against charges of racism
- Peterson’s views on gender: traditionalist, sexist, or misogynist?
- Peterson as a holy fool
- Jesse Singal’s controversial Atlantic cover story on detransitioning
- Is the media telling the wrong stories about trans people?
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