20 September 2019
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Sep 20, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Agnes Callard
- Why Agnes once lay down on the yellow line in the middle of the road
- What explains “akrasia,” or weakness of will?
- Agnes’s book, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming
- How Agnes views free will and self-creation
- How do you become the “you” that you want to be?
- Aspiration and the divine
- Agnes’s forthcoming book on how Socrates changed the rules
Sep 16, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger
- The fight, and meta-fight, in philosophy over trans issues
- David’s essay on philosophy and activism
- The admonition to “go read the literature”
- Dan: The profession needs to push back against the mob
- Should philosophers avoid signing petitions?
- David regrets the “neglect of the ordinary virtues” in this battle
- How professors should teach controversial subjects
Sep 11, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Nina Strohminger
- Nina’s research on how we understand the self
- The traits that make your self yourself
- Buddhism and the continuity of self through time
- The link between egocentrism and an equanimous attitude toward death
- Bob: Not-self is hard to experience and very hard to understand
- Asian Buddhists vs. “white boy Buddhists”
- Does a happy life require virtuous behavior?
Sep 3, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & E. John Winner
- A brief history of 20th-century literary criticism
- John’s battles against radical feminists as a grad student at SUNY Albany
- Post-structuralism and “how modernity failed itself”
- English department politics
- John: “Postmodernity is all around us”
- Postmodernity in the world vs. in the academy
- Post-postmodernism and cultural stagnancy
Sep 1, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Alexander Wendt
- Why Alex shifted from international relations to quantum physics
- Alex: “We are walking wave functions”
- Do the origins of consciousness and free will lie in the wave collapse?
- Quantum decision theory and human irrationality
- The advantage of viewing humanity as quantum rather than classical
- How a nation-state is like a quantum state
- Alex: Language is best understood quantumly
- The possibility of collective consciousness
Aug 26, 2019 —
John Horgan & Frederick Crews
- How Frederick became a Freudian and then an anti-Freudian
- Frederick: Psychoanalysis is the Metamucil of the intellectuals
- The politics of anti-Freudianism
- Why has Freud persisted in the public imagination?
- Frederick psychoanalyzes John
- Repressed memories as a Freudian legacy
- Frederick’s new book, Freud: The Making of an Illusion
Aug 8, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- Crispin’s recent essay, “Western Philosophy as White Supremacism”
- Dan accuses Crispin of ahistorical revisionism
- Descartes as a product of his age
- Privileging the intellectual over the physical
- Is “the conquest of nature” a good or bad thing?
- Crispin: Metaphysics and racism feed each other
- Is self-mastery a key to freedom, or antithetical to it?
- The worst political philosophy, except for all the others?
Aug 7, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Ronald Purser
- Ron’s new book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
- A brief history of mindfulness in America
- Ron’s critique of the corporate teaching of mindfulness
- A tool vs. a path
- Ron: The mindfulness industry individualizes social problems
- A call for civic mindfulness
- Can capitalism and spirituality be reconciled?
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 23, 2019 —
Josh Summers & Jenny Odell
- Jenny’s new book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
- Learning from “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (part 1)
- Cultivating attention through art and mindfulness
- Josh’s critique of contemporary mindfulness
- How social media destroys context
- Jenny: “Aliveness is change”
- Learning from “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (part 2)
Jul 17, 2019 —
Daniel Kaufman & Milton Lawson
- Why Dan and Milton love Stranger Things
- How does the new season measure up?
- Is “the Upside Down” a coherent idea?
- Is Generation X about to have its moment in pop culture?
- Dan fears wokeness is ruining pop culture
- The risks of a fourth Stranger Things season
- Pop culture in an era of massive corporate control
- Speculating on HBO’s mysterious Watchmen adaptation
Jul 16, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Jamie Lauren Keiles
- Jamie’s NYT Magazine piece, “How ASMR Became a Sensation”
- Searching for the science behind ASMR
- Why are ASMR creators disproprotionately female?
- The strange life of Gibi, one of the top “ASMRtists”
- A temporary salve for Internet-era loneliness
- Will ASMR go corporate?
- Jamie researches the history of the Jewish American Princess
- Daddy’s money, girl power, and Juicy Couture
- Are there Jewish American Princes?
Jul 15, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Josh Summers
- Common misconceptions about meditation retreats
- Hitting the bliss button
- Scheduled vs. unscheduled retreats
- How austere does it have to be to be effective?
- Process vs. outcomes
- Bob’s mini-epiphany about his dripping sink
- Is meditation “for” something?
- Pitfalls after leaving a retreat
- Tips for first-timers
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
Jul 3, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Lee McIntyre
- Lee’s new book The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience
- Why scientific theories are never “proved”
- Karl Popper’s principle of falsification explained
- Why the philosophy of science hasn’t been useful to scientists
- Why philosophers of science need a new way to talk about evidence
- Can philosophy of science help refute science deniers?
- Flat Earthers, science denial, and the scientific attitude
- Cognitive bias, ideology, and the social sciences
- Lee: There is no consensus about the epistemological status of science
- The hubris of “naive realism”
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 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
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