29 July 2025
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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
May 27, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Andrew Sullivan
- Remembering Andrew’s recently deceased dog Eddy
- Can we explain the bond between dogs and people?
- The many disgusting things that dogs love
- Andrew angers the cat lovers in the audience
- Are there actually “cat people” and “dog people”?
- Dogs’ use of affection as a tool
- What can we learn from dogs about how to be present?
- Andrew: “I do think that after death I will be with my dogs”
- Andrew wants the economy to open up—a little
May 24, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Jacqueline Novogratz
- Jacqueline’s new book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World
- Female saints as childhood role models
- How Jacqueline helped start Rwanda’s first microfinance bank
- Jacqueline’s “patient capital” investment nonprofit, Acumen
- The four steps toward building moral imagination
- Toilet entrepreneurship in Nairobi
- Changing the market for coffee and chocolate farmers
- Can identity connect as well as it divides?
- Jacqueline: A moral revolution must come from inside us
May 20, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- Dan’s in-progress book, Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics
- Avoiding the “crazy positions”
- A stereoscopic view of the “scientific” and “manifest” images
- Dan: A world with people in it is only explainable in fragmentary terms
- Crispin sees the leading edge of the new dualism
- On the ontological status of coming-of-age stories
- Previewing future fights
May 12, 2020 —
Robert Wright & John Horgan
- John fails the coronavirus antibody test; Bob consoles him
- Science fiction, free will, and robot sex
- The Devs interpretation of quantum mechanics
- The Wright-Horgan interpretation of Devs, part 1 (spoilers)
- The Wright-Horgan interpretation of Devs, part 2 (lots of spoilers)
- John: we need the concept of free will more than we need God
- Is the many worlds interpretation consoling or terrifying?
May 11, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Jesse Singal
- The continuing battle over gender in philosophy
- Harm avoidance vs. competing interests
- Jesse: There’s disagreement within the trans community over what it means to be trans
- Dan: “This is madness to everyone other than the people inside the tent”
- The social dynamics of philosophy
- Ordinary language and “they”
- Will the trans movement moderate?
- Dan: Philosophy is in trouble and the pandemic is making it worse
Apr 28, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Evan Thompson
- Evan’s new book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist
- Evan’s critique of “Buddhist modernism” and “Buddhist exceptionalism”
- Which of Buddhism’s major claims are naturalistic?
- Is Buddhism fundamentally different than other religions?
- Bob defends Buddhist insights into human psychology
- Evan’s case against “neural Buddhism”
- Does a clearer view of reality make you more equanimous?
- All about nirvana
- Debating evolutionary psychology
- Evan: This book is friendly criticism
Apr 23, 2020 —
Epidemiological Modeling, Policy, and Covid-19 (Daniel Kaufman, Eric Winsberg, & John Symons)
- How to model an epidemic
- The costs and benefits of cost-benefit analysis
- Turning coronavirus models into coronavirus policy
- Eric: Your intuitions about the virus’s spread are “useless”
- The use and abuse of epidemiological models
- Pandemic models and failures of political leadership
- Our scandalous lack of infection-rate data
- Why suppressing the virus “is a marathon, not a sprint”
Apr 20, 2020 —
John Horgan & Errol Morris
- Can we ever really know the world?
- Debating the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, famous philosopher of science
- Will we ever see the end of war?
- Errol’s book about Kuhn, The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)
- Errol: Science without truth cannot live
- John sticks up for Kuhn
- Errol’s vexed personal relationship with Kuhn
- Stephen Hawking’s sense of humor
- Errol: “We’re a dumbass species”
- The glass is half empty and filled with poison
Apr 9, 2020 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- Will the pandemic forever change college education?
- Laying out the “hard problem” of consciousness
- Why panpsychism is not a solution to the problem
- The battle between radicals and conservatives in physics
- Physicalism vs. idealism
- Massimo explains “scientific metaphysics”
- Why illusionism is not a solution to the problem
- Misrepresentations vs. useful representations
Apr 7, 2020 —
Robert Wright & Scott Barry Kaufman
- Scott’s new book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization
- Debunking myths about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- The origins of humanistic psychology
- Optimism for the thinking person
- Psychological security in an era of new threats and superficial social connections
- Psychological growth: exploration, love, and purpose
- Defining “peak experiences”
- Scott says Bob is a “transcender.” Bob is skeptical.
- Is this a kind of secular spirituality?
- Evaluating peak experiences achieved through psychedelics
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