Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
In this informal bite-sized podcast, we'll talk about a range of ideas found in Indian philosophy, along with their connections to the modern day. Your host is a philosopher who reads Sanskrit texts and thinks about how the modern and premodern are intertwined.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Indian philosophy through Sanskrit texts • Nyāya logic, debate, inference, expertise • Buddhist ethics, mind, compassion, metaphysics • Karma, mantra, loanwords in modern culture • Medicine, contagion, COVID-19 reasoning • Cross-cultural links: Chinese, European, ancient world • Aesthetics, figurative language, ritual injunctionsThis podcast offers short, informal explorations of Indian philosophy grounded in Sanskrit sources, with regular attention to how premodern debates connect to contemporary life. Across episodes, the host explains key concepts and practices—such as karma and mantra—by tracing what these terms meant in their original philosophical and religious settings and how they are used in modern English and popular culture. The discussions often highlight disagreements among Indian traditions, including Buddhist, Jain, and Nyāya perspectives, and use those contrasts to clarify what is at stake in topics like moral causation, ritual language, and the nature of meaning.
A recurring focus is philosophical reasoning: how knowledge is acquired, how inference works, why arguments fail, and what counts as trustworthy expertise. Nyāya logic and epistemology appear frequently as tools for thinking about present-day concerns, including public health communication and debates surrounding disease. The show also draws on Indian theorizing about language and aesthetics to examine figurative speech, poetry, and contemporary media habits, treating topics like metaphor, interpretation, and “bingeing” through the lens of Sanskrit literary theory.
Alongside solo explanations, the podcast features interviews with academic philosophers and historians. These conversations connect Indian materials to wider philosophical conversations, including analytic metaphysics, feminist epistemology, bioethics, cognitive science, and comparative work involving Chinese, Greek, Egyptian, and early modern European thought. Overall, the podcast presents Indian philosophy as a diverse set of argumentative traditions that can be studied historically while also serving as conceptual resources for thinking about modern questions.
| Episodes: |
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S3 E4: Christine Tan 2026-Apr-11 16 minutes |
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S4 E3: Mantra 2023-Dec-11 29 minutes |
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Announcement - Season 4 Episode 3 2023-Mar-03 1 minute |
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S4 E1: Karma 2023-Jan-06 34 minutes |
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S4 Teaser 2022-Dec-16 1 minute |
S3 E10: Tom Davies2022-Jun-16 14 minutes |
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S3 E9: Robin Zheng 2022-Jun-01 15 minutes |
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S3 E8: Cathay Liu 2022-May-15 15 minutes |
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S3 E7: Neil Mehta 2022-May-01 16 minutes |
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S3 E6: Matt Walker 2022-Apr-14 15 minutes |
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S3 E5: Jay Garfield 2022-Apr-01 14 minutes |
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S3 E3: Kathryn Muyskens 2022-Mar-01 11 minutes |
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S3 E2: Andrew Bailey 2022-Feb-14 16 minutes |
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S3 E1: Bryan Van Norden 2022-Jan-30 15 minutes |
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Much Ado about Religion: Part 2 2021-Jan-31 16 minutes |
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Episode 9: Much Ado about Religion, Part 1 2021-Jan-15 12 minutes |
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Episode 8: Equivocating and other ways to lose 2021-Jan-01 10 minutes |
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Season 2 Announcement 2020-Dec-30 1 minute |
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Announcement about Episode 4 2020-Oct-16 3 minutes |
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Knowing 2020-Sep-18 14 minutes |
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Announcement: Season One Ending 2020-Jun-04 1 minute |
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Episode 8: Binging 2020-May-29 14 minutes |
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Episode 7: Craving 2020-May-15 17 minutes |
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Episode 6: Expertise 2020-May-01 16 minutes |
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Teaser: Episode 6 2020-Apr-24 less than a minute |
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Episode 5: Contagion (part two) 2020-Apr-17 15 minutes |
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Episode 4: Contagion (part one) 2020-Apr-03 16 minutes |
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Announcement: Opening up the "phone lines" 2020-Mar-28 1 minute |
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Episode 3: Reclining 2020-Mar-27 16 minutes |
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Episode 2.1: Disease and debate 2020-Mar-20 13 minutes |
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Episode 2: The Man 2020-Mar-13 15 minutes |