On February 5, John and Ken will talk to Michael Dawson from the University of Chicago about Reparations. February is, of course, Black History Month, and we often try to schedule programs in that month that question our assumptions about African-American history, politics, and culture.
This essay is a lot more personal than any of my previous postings on this blog—or, indeed, any my writing anywhere else. It’s personal because it concerns a topic that is so important to me that I cannot bear to shroud it in a pretense of academic detachment and so overwhelmingly significant that the thought of writing about anything else seems grotesque.
Francis Lee’s “God’s Own Country” is one of this year’s gems at Sundance. It’s power lies in its utter authenticity. But what makes a film authentic?
Most of us recognize that, due to the circumstances we were born into, we are given certain advantages or disadvantages in life that others do not have. However, the further question of whether those with privilege have special obligations to the disadvantaged remains controversial.
Manifesto, starring Cate Blanchett and directed by German filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt, transforms a visual installation into film. Blanchett plays roles from an elderly vagrant in an abandoned factory in Berlin reflecting situationist artists such as Lucio Fontana to a new anchor and reporter question and answer about minimalism.
Is it a film that records (i.e. “documents”) events? Re-tells them? Or shapes them? Sundance is a film festival renowned for its documentaries and this year is no exception.
In this article, Mark Greif, the essayist and founding editor of n+1, an intellecutal publication, wrote a tribute to his former mentor, the philosopher Stanley Cavell. Using Cavell as a model, and Cavell’s own intellectual inspirations, Emerson and Thoreau, Greif asks, what makes a good public philosopher?
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power brings Al Gore’s message of the urgency of addressing climate change to film audiences. People interested in philosophy should see this film not only for what it says about the environment and politics but also for what it says about truth and how to present it.
What role did race play in his presidency and his path to it? Was Obama a black president, or a president who happened to be black?
Today is Barack Obama’s last full day in office as the 44th President of the United States. As Producer I’ll leave the philosophical implications of that to John an Ken, and instead offer a sample of one of my favorites parts of working on Philosophy Talk, the one-minute billboard that opens each program.
In between honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and inaugurating Donald Trump, we remember one of our greatest civil rights leaders and anticipate the presidency of an unabashed exploiter of racism, arguably a racist himself. But what is the right emotional reaction to racism? Empathy? Outrage? Or pity?
When most people think of the value of college, these days, they tend to think in terms of dollars and cents. How much will it cost me? How much will I have to take out in loans to pay for it? Will my future earnings make college worth the cost? But is this the right way to think about it?
One person says the medical establishment pushes autism-causing vaccines on the public. Another claims the tobacco industry colluded to distort the evidence that smoking causes cancer. But is there some principled way for us to distinguish wacko conspiracy theories from those that are true and reasonable?
In our annual year-in-review show, John and Ken were joined by political theorist Margaret Levi…
Leslie Francis reviews the best, the worst, and the most controversial films of 2016. What films are on your list?
Last fall, we took the show just up the road to De Anza High School in…