18 April 2025
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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
Mar 2, 2020 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
- Nikita’s new project, Psychopolitica.com
- A collection of DMT stories
- The drama and the silliness of life as experienced by children
- The ontological status of DMT entities
- Three big pretenses: “I exist,” “I know what’s going on,” “Everything is ok”
- Between a zombie and a madman
- The paradoxical writings of Jorge Luis Borges
- John’s new book, Pay Attention
- Podcasting is the new rock’n’roll
Jul 25, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Oliver Burkeman
- Journalism, from information scarcity to attention scarcity
- Is it harder to find “good” information these days?
- Oliver: Reliance on social media creates false controversies
- Has the mainstream media really drifted towards partisanship?
- How to dismantle the partisan divide
- Dan: Americans were more divided in 1968 than now
- Social injustice: Perception, reality, and urgency
Jul 11, 2019 —
John Horgan & Bernardo Kastrup
- Why Bernardo thinks the mind-body problem is not as hard as it seems
- Bernardo’s spiritual, intellectual, and psychedelic history
- God, metacognition, and the Universe
- The consolations of Bernardo’s philosophy
- Bernardo: The Universe has multiple personality disorder
- The narcissism of a human-centered Universe
- Why John thinks we’ll never solve the mind-body problem
Jul 10, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Serene Jones
- Serene’s new book, Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World
- Serene’s theological upbringing and early encounters with Calvin’s writings
- What a romantic tragedy early in life taught Serene about God’s grace
- A revelatory brush with death in rural India
- Timothy McVeigh and the challenge of forgiveness
- How Serene’s father met an epic challenge to his faith and his charity
Jul 8, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Jane Clare Jones
- Where have all the feminists gone?
- The feminist tradition in philosophy
- How does second-wave feminism distinguish sex from gender?
- Jane: Patriarchy hurts men, too
- On the present controversy around gender non-conformity and identity
- Was Prince genderqueer?
- Gender, feminism, and the classical liberal tradition
Jun 29, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Nathan Eckstrand
- Nathan’s recent essay, “Is it Time for the Humanities to Strike?”
- The attack on the humanities goes international
- Are non-college graduates deficient voters?
- Why the educated elite aren’t the most ethical people
- Could a strike re-engage the public with the humanities?
- How to win over those who most thoroughly reject the humanities
Jun 22, 2019 —
John Horgan & Jeffrey Kripal
- Jeff’s new book, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
- How John and Jeff make sense of Freud
- Jeff redefines the “paranormal”
- What belief in levitation or clairvoyance reveals about human nature
- Are hardcore atheists/materialists doing religious fundamentalism a favor?
- The death and rebirth of good old human narcissism
- Jeff on humanity’s future and the nature of optimism
Jun 18, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Robert Gressis
- Is the “Morality Everywhere Problem” really a problem?
- Why Robert finds the moral question difficult to dispel
- Peter Singer’s “drowning child” thought experiment
- Is weakness of will keeping Robert from volunteering at the soup kitchen?
- Dan: “Embrace the normal”
- What do those living in dire poverty want first-worlders to do?
- Why Rob is repulsed by utilitarianism
- Dan: The end goal of charity is human flourishing
- Were people less sensitive in the past?
Jun 11, 2019 —
Josh Summers & Matthew Remski
- Matthew’s new book, Practice and All Is Coming
- Justifications for sexual abuse in the early Ashtanga yoga community
- Matthew: “Sacred” leaders like Pattabhi Jois have been absolved of personal responsibility
- Just how ancient are modern yoga practices?
- Matthew responds to accusations from the Ashtanga community
- How much agency do victims of sexual abuse really have?
- Reforming yoga communities with histories of abuse
May 30, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Robert Gressis
- Robert: Is it permissible to remain a philosophy professor?
- Why Dan opposes the “morality everywhere” approach to life
- Can professors really leave a lasting impact on students?
- “First world problems” and moral obligation in the classroom
- What is the “White Paper” of philosophy, and does it have any authority?
- Rethinking the role of the academy in society
- Dan: Philosophy as a life guide is, well, misguided
Apr 16, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Geoffrey Miller
- What is polyamory?
- The evolutionary origins of romantic jealousy
- How polyamorous couples manage jealousy, insecurity, and time
- Bob extols the benefits of long-term monogamy
- Geoffrey’s advice for young men who can’t find romantic partners
- Do smaller polyamorous communities get a little, well, incestuous?
- Why are fewer young men having sex regularly?
- Geoffrey: The ethics of polyamory set it apart from casual dating
Apr 10, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- What explains the sharp divide between analytic and continental philosophy?
- Continental philosophy’s association with romanticism and fascism
- How Richard Rorty, Crispin’s dissertation advisor, bridged the gap between the two schools
- Heidegger’s skepticism of science
- Crispin articulates the divide in terms of substance and style
- How continental philosophy challenges the primacy of argument
Apr 8, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Paul Shapiro
- Paul Shapiro’s new book, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World
- Why conventional meat production is inefficient and unsustainable (not to mention cruel)
- Recent innovations in lab-cultured protein, fat, and even leather
- Will cultured meat ever become affordable?
- How plant-based “meat” and “dairy” have gained market share in the past decade
- Paul: History won’t look kindly on our treatment of animals
- How Paul’s company is working to reduce meat consumption
Mar 15, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Tripp Fuller
- What does Christianity have in common with Pabst Blue Ribbon?
- Young Bob and young Tripp’s critical readings of the Bible
- Tripp: Human dignity doesn’t fit into a reductive materialist worldview
- Do all Christians believe in divine intervention?
- Could a deistic God have created Jesus?
- Spiritual practices for the overly judgmental (pretty much everyone)
- Tripp’s culture shock upon returning to North Carolina
- Paul Tillich and the dialogue between culture and faith
- Tripp: Oprah is the spiritual leader of the one percent
Mar 1, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Jason Pontin
- Jason’s tenure as editor of MIT’s Technology Review
- Jason says he never, ever feels offended
- Why Jason’s investment firm didn’t back a new gene editing technology
- Is current gene-editing technology a “moral and therapeutic dead end”?
- How to regulate a future designer baby business
- What makes CRISPR gene-editing technology revolutionary?
- 3D-printing and the future of gun control
- Will mind-reading technology kill romantic love?
- The theoretical limits of “thought identification” technology
Feb 12, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- Crispin’s book chapter on the nature of truth
- Do different uses of the word “truth” have a family resemblance?
- The challenge of connecting truth with reality
- Where does linguistics enter the picture?
- How Crispin bucks expectations of academic philosophical writing
- Dan: Analytic philosophy misses the forest for the trees
- What’s missing from Crispin’s exploration of truth?
Feb 5, 2019 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- What is metaphysics, and did it get derailed?
- The desire to live in a universe that “makes sense”
- How the human lifespan limits our scope of understanding
- Why we’re drawn to metaphysical questions
- Why younger generations are choosing the supernatural and spiritual over traditional religion
- Metaphysics as a means of organizing the sublime
- Is the feeling of awe older than humanity itself?
- The uncertain future of metaphysics
Jan 27, 2019 —
Josh Summers & Dan Keown
- Dan’s new book, The Unchartered Body: A New Textbook of Medicine
- How Dan’s intrepid grandmother brought him to Eastern medicine
- Explaining Eastern medicine to a skeptic
- Embryology and the importance of “connectedness” within a body
- What is “chi,” exactly?
- Where Western medicine falls short
- What placebo research proves (and doesn’t prove) about acupuncture
- What does the acupuncture needle do?
- Dan’s recommended lifestyle changes for systemic health
Jan 19, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Oliver Traldi
- Why Oliver quit law school
- Is it professionally risky to express heterodox views in philosophy?
- Philosophy as handmaiden to progressive politics
- Dan’s essay on philosophy’s abuse of the harm principle
- The chicken-or-egg question of students or faculty
- Is leftism corrupting scholarship?
- What politics can learn from the field of philosophy
- The irony of a leftist discipline that exploits labor
Jan 4, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Massimo Pigliucci
- 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
Dec 31, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & E. John Winner
- 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
- 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 21, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Scott Barry Kaufman
- 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
- 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
- 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 9, 2018 —
Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger
- 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
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 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
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