18 January 2020
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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 21, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Gideon Rosen
- A brief primer on the free will vs. determinism debate
- Are moral responsibility and determinism compatible?
- Is punishment a tragic necessity or a moral good?
- Gideon tries to convince Bob that compatibilism is coherent
- Gideon’s distinctive take on compatibilism
- A thought experiment about the moral culpability of an ancient slaveholder
- Free will and the mind-body problem
- Buddhist ideas about punishment
Jun 19, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Rachel Vorona-Cote
- Rachel’s essay on her mother’s death, “The Fraught Culture of Online Mourning”
- Aryeh recalls mourning his father in the pre–social media era
- A moment when language fails
- Is it possible to talk about death with sincerity on Twitter?
- The many (often gendered) Victorian rituals of mourning
- Rachel’s forthcoming book, Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today
- Do you want to be memorialized for eternity on Facebook?
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
Jun 1, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Sarah Marshall
- Remembering the Satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s
- How the McMartin case launched the panic
- Sarah: Recovered memory therapy created the idea of Satanic ritual abuse
- Why hasn’t there been a large-scale reckoning with the panic?
- Contemporary resonances: witch hunts and moral panics
- Sarah visits Disney World and thinks about desire
- Why are there so many absent mothers in the Disney canon?
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
May 21, 2019 —
Robert Wright & David Sloan Wilson
- David’s new book, This View of Life
- In what sense, if any, could evolution be conscious?
- The need to complete the Darwinian revolution
- An evolutionary psychology discussion makes Bob tape his mouth shut
- How successful groups avert the tragedy of the commons
- Convergent cultural evolution
- David: Evolution shows that neither laissez faire nor centralized planning works
- A preview of the coming Bob vs. David showdown over group selection
May 14, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Leah Finnegan
- How Leah realized that she should not “be herself”
- The mental health benefits of getting a dog
- Leah: We must bring back Kierkegaardian irony
- Leah on the scourge of “urgent earnestness”
- Is it ethical to not read the news?
- Leah’s reflections on being “a year Twitter sober”
- Lessons from the great “horseface” controversy of 2018
Apr 26, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Paul Bloom
- How the new media landscape exacerbates tribalism
- Can science and reason help combat tribalism?
- Why tribal behavior comes naturally to humans
- Want to succeed on social media? Try ridicule and moral condemnation!
- Why virtual reality may not help you understand the plight of others
- Trump’s masterful exploitation of empathy
- If a magic therapy “cured” Harvey Weinstein, would punishment still be necessary?
- Why social science is, and will stay, liberal
Apr 23, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Richard Wrangham
- Richard’s new book, The Goodness Paradox
- Why Jane Goodall’s view of chimpanzees took a turn for the darker
- Proactive violence (a human specialty) vs. reactive violence
- Richard’s “execution hypothesis” for how early humans dealt with violent males
- Bob offers an alternative explanation for the domestication of our species
- How our cousins the bonobos became nicer than our cousins the chimps
- Richard’s explanation for the evolution of moral sense
- Is war a part of human nature?
Apr 19, 2019 —
Robert Wright & John Thatamanil
- Alfred North Whitehead and his “process philosophy”
- “Process theology,” which features a changing, non-omnipotent God
- A God of persuasion, not coercion
- Whitehead’s conception of divinity
- Whitehead’s God and Christian theology
- Waiting, or not waiting, for God
- Beauty and the divine
- How Whitehead’s God solves the problem of evil
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 12, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & B. D. McClay
- B. D.’s essay on mononucleosis and gnosticism
- What the ancient gnostics believed about body and spirit
- Fingernail clippings and other problems with bodily resurrection
- Pros and cons of living in a body
- Did George H.W. Bush get to walk out of his wheelchair at the gates of Heaven?
- B. D. explains the Children’s Crusade of 1212
- The Children’s Crusade’s contemporary resonances
- Queer Eye, the reality show that makes you feel good about humanity
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 8, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Douglas Rushkoff
- Douglas’s new book, Team Human
- Remembering when people behaved better online than IRL
- Douglas was optimistic about the Internet. Then came capitalism.
- Imagining a better Facebook
- Douglas: “Being human is a team sport”
- Tribalism and the Internet
- The false promise of “disruption”
- How capitalism complicates Douglas’s life
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 21, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Lindsay Doran
- Lindsay, a Golden Globe–winning movie producer, discusses the Academy Awards
- Lindsay’s experience working on This Is Spinal Tap
- The psychology of a great film ending
- Why there’s no sequel to When Harry Met Sally
- Art vs. craft in screenwriting
- Should movies be moral?
- Is a male conscience different from a female conscience?
- A film that sounds like it’s great vs. one that actually is
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 15, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Alice Robb
- 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
- 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 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
Jan 3, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Travis Smith
- 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
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