Many of us love reading memoirs, but how many of us could write one? It might be fun for everybody to know the truth about our sordid lives—assuming those lives were interesting enough. Chances are many of us would have to make half of it up.
Is ideology just a system of false beliefs, like Fascism or Scientology, that’s opposed to reason? Or do belief systems like liberal democracy—the belief that everybody deserves the same freedoms, a say in their government, and the protection of the law, also count as ideology?
Can you reason your way into being a good person? Or are your feelings a better guide for doing the right thing? This week we’re thinking about German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant and his view of a universal morality based on reason.
I was delighted when Louise Glück, one of the great poets of our age, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I wrote about one of my all-time favorite poems, “Ithaca,” for this week’s episode, “Why Poetry Matters,” with Louise as guest!
When we are grieving, is it a good idea or a bad idea to engage with art that takes grief to be its subject? Does this help us to cope, or does it rip out whatever stitches we have managed to sew in while we try to bear an unbearable loss?
How do we achieve justice for victims of sexual assault? Can we change the legal system to make it more effective? Or should we turn to social media instead? This week, we’re thinking about the #MeToo movement and the criminal justice system.
Shouldn’t we get angry at injustice? Don’t some things deserve our rage? Or will rage just beget more rage? These are some of the questions we’re thinking about on this week’s show, “Righteous Rage.”
What can we learn from the Stoics about living a good life? Should we all try to become indifferent to pain, suffering, and death? This week we’re thinking about the Stoic philosophy of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Could robots ever have feelings that we could hurt? Should we hold them responsible for their actions? Or would that just be a way to let humans off the hook? This week, we’re asking “Could Robots Be Persons?”
Every once in a while I like to step out from behind the mixing board to give a behind-the-scenes look at some aspect of the program. For our annual end-of-year special, we tried something a bit different, though not unprecedented.
Can virtual reality make people more empathetic, train students in the scientific method, and help people overcome their fears? This week’s episode asks whether VR is a force for good, a force for ill, or not much of a force at all.
Is age discrimination always wrong? Or it is fair to treat different ages differently? How do we take people’s age into account without being ageist? These are the questions we’re asking this week, in an episode called “Should All Ages Be Equal?”
Would you like a robot to assist you with tasks around the home? What kinds of jobs would you be comfortable leaving a robot to do? Would you trust one to take care of your child or an elderly parent? This week’s show is “The Social Lives of Robots.”
Frege believed that math is analytic, meaning that the definitions of mathematical terms like “2” and “4” guarantee the truth of sentences like “2+2=4”. Frege’s theory explains how we know about math; as long as we can understand what we mean by mathematical terms, and can reason logically, our mathematical knowledge is guaranteed. But in order to work, the theory has to rely on Frege’s definition of a number.
Is your inner life what makes you, you? Or is your identity about connecting to your community? How can West African philosophy help us think about the self? This week, we’ll be thinking about Akan Philosophy, specifically its conception of personhood.
Math is obviously good for many things: we use it for everything from building bridges to designing lasers to predicting the motions of planets to explaining why snowflakes have that odd six-pointed shape. But why is it good for so many things?