Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophy profiles of influential women thinkers • ethics and moral psychology • feminism, race, oppression, rights • politics, liberalism, markets, democracy • technology: AI, robots, VR • science, cosmology, metaphysics • knowledge, bias, humility, communication • art, architecture, mythology
This podcast presents philosophy as a public conversation, using interviews with scholars and other experts to examine big questions about human life, society, and the world. Across these episodes, a recurring approach is to take familiar ideas—knowledge, morality, freedom, faith, art, science, technology, identity—and ask what assumptions they rest on, what tensions they contain, and how they shape practical decisions.
A major theme is the recovery and exploration of influential thinkers, especially women philosophers and intellectuals from varied times and places. The discussions connect biographical context with core ideas in ethics, political thought, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind, often emphasizing how barriers of gender, race, class, and colonial power shaped who was heard and how arguments were received. Questions about education, virtue, rights, oppression, and moral agency appear frequently, alongside attention to how philosophical concepts develop through dialogue, correspondence, activism, and public life.
The podcast also regularly links philosophy to contemporary dilemmas. Several conversations focus on emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, robots, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles—probing responsibility, personhood, empathy, social interaction, and the ethics of design and regulation. Other episodes address politics and social conflict, including liberalism’s relationship to empire, the prospects for democracy, antisemitism and its historical transformations, markets and moral limits, and global poverty and foreign aid.
Science and the cosmos provide another cluster of topics: the reach and limits of scientific explanation, cognitive bias and rationality, and foundational questions in physics and cosmology such as space-time, multiverses, dark matter, the Big Bang, and why anything exists at all. Throughout, the show treats philosophical inquiry as a tool for clarifying concepts, evaluating arguments, and understanding how ideas matter in both personal life and public affairs.
|
Episodes:
|
This Week: Anna Julia Cooper
2026-Jan-31
52 minutes
|
This Week: Mind Sharing
2025-Dec-21
51 minutes
|
Shakespeare's Outsiders
2025-Dec-13
51 minutes
|
Im Yunjidang
2025-Dec-06
51 minutes
|
Margaret Cavendish
2025-Nov-15
51 minutes
|
Mary Astell
2025-Oct-25
51 minutes
|
Elisabeth of Bohemia
2025-Oct-04
51 minutes
|
Hildegard von Bingen
2025-Sep-13
51 minutes
|
Hypatia of Alexandria
2025-Aug-16
51 minutes
|
Philippa Foot
2025-Jun-05
51 minutes
|
Mary Midgley
2025-May-08
51 minutes
|
Iris Murdoch
2025-Apr-11
51 minutes
|
Judith Jarvis Thomson
2025-Mar-08
51 minutes
|
Elizabeth Anscombe
2024-Dec-19
51 minutes
|
Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology
2024-Dec-14
51 minutes
|
Emma Goldman
2024-Nov-13
52 minutes
|
American Futures (Ken Taylor Memorial Episode)
2024-Nov-02
56 minutes
|
Simone Weil
2024-Oct-20
51 minutes
|
Nísia Floresta
2024-Jun-11
51 minutes
|
Mary Wollstonecraft
2024-May-06
52 minutes
|
Could Robot Be Persons?
2024-Apr-11
54 minutes
|
20th Anniversary Quiz Show
2024-Jan-20
60 minutes
|
Can Architecture Be Political?
2023-Oct-12
51 minutes
|
Can Art Save Us?
2023-Jun-09
51 minutes
|
The Philosophy of Smell
2023-Mar-20
51 minutes
|
Liberty and Justice For Who?
2022-Oct-21
51 minutes
|
The Changing Face of Antisemitism
2022-Jun-18
51 minutes
|
What Can Virtual Reality (Actually) Do?
2021-Dec-12
51 minutes
|
The Social Lives of Robots
2021-Nov-13
51 minutes
|
Time for Summer Reading
2020-Jun-14
51 minutes
|
Ken Taylor Tribute
2019-Dec-29
52 minutes
|
Foreign Aid – or Injury?
2018-Dec-16
50 minutes
|
Does Science Over-reach?
2018-Jul-17
50 minutes
|
Radical Markets: Solutions for a Gilded Age?
2018-Jul-15
50 minutes
|
Repugnant Markets: Should Everything Be For Sale?
2018-Jun-03
50 minutes
|
Faith and Humility
2018-Apr-23
50 minutes
|
Are We Alone?
2018-Apr-20
50 minutes
|
Trolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars: Humility and Online Discourse
2018-Apr-12
50 minutes
|
How To Humbly Disagree
2018-Mar-04
50 minutes
|
Could the Laws of Physics Ever Change?
2017-Aug-08
50 minutes
|
Driverless Cars at the Moral Crossroads
2017-Jul-30
50 minutes
|
Cognitive Bias
2017-Jul-09
51 minutes
|
Knowing What We Know (And What We Don't)
2017-Mar-07
51 minutes
|
The Space-Time Continuum
2017-Feb-21
51 minutes
|
The Mystery of the Multiverse
2016-Sep-29
51 minutes
|
Matter and Energy: The Dark Side
2016-Sep-27
50 minutes
|
The Big Bang: Before and After
2016-Jul-26
52 minutes
|
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
2016-Mar-21
51 minutes
|
The Ancient Cosmos: When the Earth Stood Still
2016-Mar-04
51 minutes
|
Living On Through Others
2015-Oct-28
50 minutes
|
The Technology of Immortality
2015-Sep-15
51 minutes
|
Reincarnation: Past Lives, Future Selves
2015-Apr-27
49 minutes
|
What's Next? Death and the Afterlife
2015-Jan-09
50 minutes
|
The Lure of Immortality
2014-Dec-05
49 minutes
|
Life as a Work of Art
2013-Aug-18
50 minutes
|
Finding Meaning in a Material World
2013-Aug-04
51 minutes
|
Freedom and Free Enterprise
2013-Jul-20
50 minutes
|
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times
2013-Jul-07
51 minutes
|
Physics, Philosophy, and Theology
2013-Jun-08
50 minutes
|
Faith, Reason, and the Art of Living
2013-May-19
50 minutes
|
Good, Evil, and the Divine Plan
2013-May-04
50 minutes
|
The Demands of Morality
2013-Apr-28
49 minutes
|
God and the Fine-Tuned Universe
2013-Mar-16
50 minutes
|
The Self
2013-Feb-23
49 minutes
|
Unconditional Love
2012-Dec-06
50 minutes
|
Freedom, Blame, and Resentment
2012-May-12
49 minutes
|
Pantheism
2012-Feb-25
50 minutes
|
Forgive and Forget
2011-Dec-10
50 minutes
|
Miracles
2011-Nov-05
50 minutes
|
Wisdom
2011-Sep-24
48 minutes
|
Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics
2011-Aug-13
50 minutes
|
The Mind and the World
2009-Jun-07
50 minutes
|
Worship
2009-May-09
49 minutes
|
Challenges To Free Will
2009-Mar-07
49 minutes
|
Creativity
2009-Jan-24
49 minutes
|
Dualism
2008-Aug-08
50 minutes
|
Altruism
2008-Jun-29
49 minutes
|
The Problem of Evil
2008-Jun-06
49 minutes
|
Saint Augustine
2008-Jan-27
49 minutes
|
The Concept of God
2007-Dec-09
50 minutes
|
Faith, Reason, and Science
2007-Oct-13
49 minutes
|
