Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Ethics, rights (abortion, markets, poverty) •Women philosophers and feminist thought •Politics, liberalism, exclusion, antisemitism •Mind, cognition, bias, humility, discourse •Science, physics, cosmology •Technology, AI, robots, VR •Art, architecture, myth
This podcast offers accessible, wide-ranging conversations that use philosophical questioning to illuminate contemporary life, historical ideas, and enduring puzzles about reality and value. Across the episodes, the hosts engage scholars and public intellectuals to examine how we should live and govern together, how we know what we know, and how scientific and technological developments reshape long-standing debates.
A recurring focus is moral and political philosophy applied to real institutions and conflicts: economic policy and well-being beyond GDP, global poverty and foreign aid, market limits and “repugnant” exchanges, liberalism’s entanglement with empire, threats to democratic stability, and the changing forms of antisemitism. Another prominent theme is ethics under modern conditions, including intellectual humility amid disagreement and online discourse, cognitive bias and rationality, and responsibility in the face of autonomous systems like driverless cars, social robots, and artificial agents that might claim legal or moral standing. The show also explores how art, architecture, literature, and myth can carry political meaning, shape imagination, and help societies interpret crisis.
Many episodes foreground the history of philosophy through the lives and arguments of influential thinkers—especially women across periods and cultures—linking their work to current questions about education, freedom, virtue, mind and body, spirituality, and social justice. Complementing this is a strong interest in philosophy of science and cosmology, probing the status of scientific explanation and speculation through topics like the laws of physics, space-time, the multiverse, dark matter and energy, the Big Bang, and the classic metaphysical question of why anything exists at all.
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Episodes:
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"Select Episodes" is ending
2026-Mar-01
less than a minute
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Can Money Buy Well-being?
2026-Feb-14
51 minutes
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Anna Julia Cooper
2026-Jan-30
52 minutes
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This Week: Mind Sharing
2025-Dec-21
51 minutes
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Shakespeare's Outsiders
2025-Dec-13
51 minutes
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Im Yunjidang
2025-Dec-06
51 minutes
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Margaret Cavendish
2025-Nov-15
51 minutes
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Mary Astell
2025-Oct-25
51 minutes
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Elisabeth of Bohemia
2025-Oct-04
51 minutes
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Hildegard von Bingen
2025-Sep-13
51 minutes
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Hypatia of Alexandria
2025-Aug-16
51 minutes
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Philippa Foot
2025-Jun-05
51 minutes
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Mary Midgley
2025-May-08
51 minutes
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Iris Murdoch
2025-Apr-11
51 minutes
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Judith Jarvis Thomson
2025-Mar-08
51 minutes
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Elizabeth Anscombe
2024-Dec-19
51 minutes
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Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology
2024-Dec-14
51 minutes
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Emma Goldman
2024-Nov-13
52 minutes
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American Futures (Ken Taylor Memorial Episode)
2024-Nov-02
56 minutes
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Simone Weil
2024-Oct-20
51 minutes
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Nísia Floresta
2024-Jun-11
51 minutes
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Mary Wollstonecraft
2024-May-06
52 minutes
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Could Robot Be Persons?
2024-Apr-11
54 minutes
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20th Anniversary Quiz Show
2024-Jan-20
60 minutes
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Can Architecture Be Political?
2023-Oct-12
51 minutes
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Can Art Save Us?
2023-Jun-09
51 minutes
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The Philosophy of Smell
2023-Mar-20
51 minutes
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Liberty and Justice For Who?
2022-Oct-21
51 minutes
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The Changing Face of Antisemitism
2022-Jun-18
51 minutes
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What Can Virtual Reality (Actually) Do?
2021-Dec-12
51 minutes
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The Social Lives of Robots
2021-Nov-13
51 minutes
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Time for Summer Reading
2020-Jun-14
51 minutes
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Ken Taylor Tribute
2019-Dec-29
52 minutes
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Foreign Aid – or Injury?
2018-Dec-16
50 minutes
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Does Science Over-reach?
2018-Jul-17
50 minutes
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Radical Markets: Solutions for a Gilded Age?
2018-Jul-15
50 minutes
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Repugnant Markets: Should Everything Be For Sale?
2018-Jun-03
50 minutes
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Faith and Humility
2018-Apr-23
50 minutes
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Are We Alone?
2018-Apr-20
50 minutes
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Trolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars: Humility and Online Discourse
2018-Apr-12
50 minutes
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How To Humbly Disagree
2018-Mar-04
50 minutes
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Could the Laws of Physics Ever Change?
2017-Aug-08
50 minutes
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Driverless Cars at the Moral Crossroads
2017-Jul-30
50 minutes
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Cognitive Bias
2017-Jul-09
51 minutes
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Knowing What We Know (And What We Don't)
2017-Mar-07
51 minutes
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The Space-Time Continuum
2017-Feb-21
51 minutes
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The Mystery of the Multiverse
2016-Sep-29
51 minutes
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Matter and Energy: The Dark Side
2016-Sep-27
50 minutes
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The Big Bang: Before and After
2016-Jul-26
52 minutes
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Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
2016-Mar-21
51 minutes
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The Ancient Cosmos: When the Earth Stood Still
2016-Mar-04
51 minutes
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Living On Through Others
2015-Oct-28
50 minutes
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The Technology of Immortality
2015-Sep-15
51 minutes
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Reincarnation: Past Lives, Future Selves
2015-Apr-27
49 minutes
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What's Next? Death and the Afterlife
2015-Jan-09
50 minutes
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The Lure of Immortality
2014-Dec-05
49 minutes
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Life as a Work of Art
2013-Aug-18
50 minutes
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Finding Meaning in a Material World
2013-Aug-04
51 minutes
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Freedom and Free Enterprise
2013-Jul-20
50 minutes
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Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times
2013-Jul-07
51 minutes
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Physics, Philosophy, and Theology
2013-Jun-08
50 minutes
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Faith, Reason, and the Art of Living
2013-May-19
50 minutes
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Good, Evil, and the Divine Plan
2013-May-04
50 minutes
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The Demands of Morality
2013-Apr-28
49 minutes
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God and the Fine-Tuned Universe
2013-Mar-16
50 minutes
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The Self
2013-Feb-23
49 minutes
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Unconditional Love
2012-Dec-06
50 minutes
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Freedom, Blame, and Resentment
2012-May-12
49 minutes
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Pantheism
2012-Feb-25
50 minutes
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Forgive and Forget
2011-Dec-10
50 minutes
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Miracles
2011-Nov-05
50 minutes
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Wisdom
2011-Sep-24
48 minutes
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Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics
2011-Aug-13
50 minutes
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The Mind and the World
2009-Jun-07
50 minutes
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Worship
2009-May-09
49 minutes
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Challenges To Free Will
2009-Mar-07
49 minutes
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Creativity
2009-Jan-24
49 minutes
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Dualism
2008-Aug-08
50 minutes
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Altruism
2008-Jun-29
49 minutes
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The Problem of Evil
2008-Jun-06
49 minutes
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Saint Augustine
2008-Jan-27
49 minutes
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The Concept of God
2007-Dec-09
50 minutes
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Faith, Reason, and Science
2007-Oct-13
49 minutes
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