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 via Sanskrit texts • Nyāya reasoning, debate, inference, skepticism, materialism • Buddhist ethics, self, compassion, craving • karma/mantra loanwords • language and figurative speech • medicine, disease, expertise • cross-cultural links with Chinese/Western thoughtThis podcast offers short, informal explorations of Indian philosophy grounded in Sanskrit sources and framed through questions that connect premodern debates to contemporary life. Across the episodes, the host introduces major philosophical traditions and figures—especially Buddhists, Jains, and Naiyāyikas (Nyāya philosophers)—and uses them to think through topics in epistemology (how we know), metaphysics (what exists), ethics, and the philosophy of language. A recurring interest is reasoning and argument: what counts as good inference, how debates can go wrong through fallacies like equivocation, and how standards for trustworthy testimony might apply to modern concerns about expertise and public discourse.
Another thread focuses on how Sanskrit terms that have entered English are understood in their original contexts and what is at stake in their modern reuse. Concepts such as karma and mantra are treated not just as popular slogans but as philosophically contested ideas, raising questions about moral causation, meaning, and the power (or non-power) of words and sounds. The show also draws connections across intellectual traditions, bringing Indian philosophy into dialogue with Chinese philosophy and with early modern and contemporary Western philosophy, including analytic metaphysics and feminist epistemology.
Interviews with academics broaden the scope to themes like compassion and bioethics, cognitive science and Buddhist accounts of mind, ancient medicine and disease, aesthetics and “bingeing,” and the relationship between philosophy, religion, and political power. Throughout, the emphasis is on close attention to arguments and interpretive methods while showing how classical debates can illuminate present-day problems.
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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 |