13 September 2025
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Mar 6, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Daniel Ingram
- What is it like to be an arhat?
- Perspectives on the self: It’s nothing, it’s everything
- What enlightenment is, and what’s so great about it
- Dwelling in enlightenment is easy, but getting there can be hard
- Does enlightenment entail moral improvement?
- Can meditation save—or impede salvation of—the world?
Mar 1, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Mark Smith
- Considering the thesis of Mark’s new book Secular Faith
- Creative uses of the Scriptures by pro-choice and pro-life advocates
- What shapes attitudes towards abortion?
- Reinterpreting biblical condemnations of homosexuality
- How cultural change affects religious thought
- How cultural change affects religious institutions
Feb 28, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & Daniele Bolelli
- Daniele’s new book Not Afraid and the practice of cage fighting
- In martial arts, you want to play it safe—but not too safe
- Raising a baby girl: the greater battle
- Other practices: meditation, psychedelics, and life in general
- The changing face and functions of online media
- Daniele’s mix-and-match approach to philosophy and religion
Feb 20, 2016 —
Robert Wright & William MacAskill
- Will’s new book Doing Good Better and its topic, effective altruism
- A shockingly cheap and easy way to help schools in Africa
- The perils of pursuing only the quantifiably good
- The case against buying fair trade products and donating to disaster relief
- Long-term do-good planning
- Why it makes sense to invest in apocalypse prevention even though we’ll probably be fine
Feb 13, 2016 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- What constitutes an explanation in the natural sciences?
- Looking for a categorical difference between natural and social sciences
- Biological and social explanations of human behavior
- The difference between the narratives of social and physical sciences
- Does social science explain events or their interpretations?
- Must a science have “laws”? Are there social scientific laws?
Feb 7, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Paul Froese
- What do we mean by a meaningful life?
- Finding purpose in being a part of something bigger
- How social context determines our understanding of meaning
- Fantasies about uniting humanity: one cause, one God, one reality
- Are we making moral progress?
- Is it empowering or terrifying to think we create our own meaning?
Jan 25, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Jeremy England
- Jeremy’s new theory and the origins of life
- Wrestling with the second law of thermodynamics
- Self-organizing systems and self-replicating ones
- Natural selection as a special case of more general physical laws
- The role of ritual in Jeremy’s Jewish faith
- The laws of physics were written by people, not God
Jan 24, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Maria Popova
- Brainpickings.org: How an unsettled 22-year-old’s office newsletter evolved into a meaning-of-life resource
- Honorable relationships in the age of transactional networking
- Fruitful monotony versus compulsive consumption of media
- Choosing understanding over judgment
- Maria’s spiritual routine: reading, writing and meditation
- Success as freedom from contentification and commercialization
Jan 10, 2016 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Jason Eberl
- Star Wars Philosophy 101
- St. Augustine on why people join the Dark Side
- What makes Jedi better than terrorists, and the Empire worse than the U.S.
- Midi-chlorians and the mind-body problem
- The Lucas Empire v. the Fan Alliance: battle for the imaginary universe
- The Force Awakens: spoilers and speculations
Dec 13, 2015 —
Robert Wright & Donald Hoffman
- Natural selection doesn’t build brains to see the truth
- How perception is like a graphical computer interface
- Don’s theory: It’s consciousness all the way down
- Is there a chicken-and-egg problem with this theory?
- Don describes his consciousness formula, sans math (phew)
- With this theory, life is more interesting—and painful
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