More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/shakespeares-outsiders. Over 400 years after his death, Shakespeare is still widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time. His many plays tackle questions about power, influence, identity, and moral and social status. His characters—be they villains or heroes—are often disdained because of their race, religion, class, disability, or gender. So what do Shakespeare’s plays reveal about identity and status in his time? How might they shed...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/could-robots-be-persons. As we approach the advent of autonomous robots, we must decide how we will determine culpability for their actions. Some propose creating a new legal category of “electronic personhood” for any sufficiently advanced robot that can learn and make decisions by itself. But do we really want to assign artificial intelligence legal—or moral—rights and responsibilities? Would it be ethical to produce and sell something with the...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mind-sharing. Mind reading might sound like the stuff of science fiction. But in philosophy and psychology, mind reading is something that human beings do whenever we try to guess what another person is thinking. Could it be that people are also natural born mind sharers, unconsciously shaping our behavior to be understood by others? How do we change or exaggerate our actions when others are present? And how can we use these insights to...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/margaret-cavendish. Margaret Cavendish was a writer of poetry, philosophy, polemics, histories, plays, and utopian fiction. She employed many different genres as a way to overcome access barriers for women and build an audience for her subversive philosophical ideas. So, what was so radical about Cavendish's views? Why did she think all matter, even rocks, was at least partially rational? And how did she anticipate the term "epistemic injustice"...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-can-virtual-reality-actually-do. VR transports users into all kinds of different realities, some modeled on the real world, others completely invented. Though still in its infancy, the technology has become so sophisticated, it can trick the brain into treating the virtual experience as real and unmediated. So what is the most prudent way to employ this cutting edge technology going forward? Could VR help solve real world problems, like...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/2024-dionysus-awards. What movies of the past year challenged your assumptions and made you think about things in new ways? Josh and guest co-host Jeremy Sabol present our annual Dionysus Awards for the most thought-provoking movies of 2023, including: • Best Film about Social Justice that Wonders What Makes a Good Film about Social Justice • Most Disturbing Exploration of a Female Criminal Who Thinks She May Be Innocent • Most Moving Film (or TV...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/should-all-ages-be-equal. Age determines a lot about your position in society—what activities you can do, what benefits you can access, and what rights and responsibilities you have. While it seems appropriate to treat people at different stages of life differently, we also consider certain kinds of unequal treatment unjust. So when should we treat people of different ages differently? And when does it become ageism or age discrimination? When...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/im-yunjidang. 8th-century Korean philosopher Im Yunjidang was the first Confucian to argue for women’s equality in matters of morality and to claim that women, just like men, can be sages. She also argued that it isn't just what you do that matters morally—it's also how you decide. So what does it mean to be a sage and how does someone become one? How did Im Yunjidang use traditional Confucian texts to argue for women's spiritual equality? And...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/social-lives-robots. Machines might surpass humans in terms of computational intelligence, but when it comes to social intelligence, they’re not very sophisticated. They have difficulty reading subtle cues—like body language, eye gaze, or facial expression—that we pick up on automatically. As robots integrate more and more into human life, how will they figure out the codes for appropriate behavior in different contexts? Can social intelligence be...

More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/lincoln. More than any other President, Abraham Lincoln is known for his words, from the Lincoln-Douglass debates to the second inaugural address, as well as his deeds. What was Lincoln's basic philosophy, and did it change over the course of his Presidency? Ken and John welcome back Chicago Public Radio's Resident Philosopher, Al Gini, to celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln, the man and his ideas.

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/can-ai-help-us-understand-babies. Artificial intelligence is everywhere in our day-to-day lives and our interactions with the world. And it's made impressive progress at a variety of visual, linguistic, and reasoning tasks. Does this improved performance indicate that computers are thinking, or is it just an engineering artifact? Can it help us understand how children acquire knowledge and develop language skills? Or are humans fundamentally...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/20th-anniversary-quiz-night. Philosophy Talk made its radio debut on August 20, 2003 with a live pilot on KALW San Francisco and weekly broadcasts beginning in January 2004. To celebrate two decades on the air, in November 2023 we held our first-ever Quiz Night. Longtime listeners and first-time fans filled KALW's popup space in downtown San Francisco as Director of Research Laura Maguire ran eight teams through the gauntlet of a philosophical pub...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mysterious-timelessness-math. Math is a really useful subject—at least, that's what your parents and teachers told you. But math also leads to scenarios, like Zeno's paradoxes, that seem to inspire skepticism. So why do we believe in math and rely on it to build bridges and spaceships? How can anyone discover the secrets of the universe by simply scribbling numbers on a piece of paper? Is math some kind of magic, or does it have a more ordinary...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/frege-and-language-reason. At the end of the 19th Century, the German philosopher Gottlob Frege invented a new language, based on mathematics, designed to help people reason more logically. His ideas have had a lasting impact on philosophy, math, computer science, and the study of artificial intelligence. And many of the questions that influenced his thinking are still hotly debated today: How much does language influence the thoughts you can...

More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/simone-de-beauvoir. Simone de Beauvoir is often cast as only a novelist or a mere echo of Jean-Paul Sartre. But she authored many philosophical texts beyond The Second Sex, and the letters between her and Sartre reveal that both were equally concerned with existentialist questions of radical ontological freedom, the issue of self-deception, and the dynamics of desire. This episode explores the evolution of de Beauvoir's existential-ethical thinking....

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/american-futures. When Philosophy Talk co-founder Ken Taylor passed away in 2019, he was working on a manuscript titled Farewell to the Republic We Once Dreamed of. Was Ken right to think the American experiment is on the verge of collapse? Are we heading for authoritarian rule, a national divorce, or even a civil war? Or could better days be on the horizon? In Ken’s honor, Josh and Ray devote their end-of-year special to probing the future of the...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/impossible-worlds. Philosophers often speculate about possible worlds: ways that things could be. Some of them also believe in impossible worlds: ways that things couldn't be. Are impossible worlds places where strange things happen, or descriptions, or abstract objects, or something else entirely? How can you describe an impossibility without contradicting yourself? Could we imagine worlds where even the laws of logic are different? Josh and Ray...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/nonduality-and-oneness-being. Some branches of Hindu philosophy propose that reality is nondual in nature. Such schools of thought—called advaita schools, from a Sanskrit word meaning “not two”—see the material world either as an aspect of ultimate reality (“Brahman”) or as a mere illusion. So how do we make sense of the appearance of variety in a metaphysics of oneness? Is there room for individual selves within advaita philosophy? What can be...

More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/awe-wonder. René Descartes said that the purpose of wonderment is “to enable us to learn and retain in our memory things of which we were formerly unaware.” He also said that those who are not inclined to wonder are “ordinarily very ignorant.” So what exactly is wonder, and how is it different from awe? Is wonder at the core of what drives us to search for novel insights? And can we suffer from an excess of wonderment? Josh and Ray stand in awe of Helen...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/microaggressions. Microaggressions are small comments or questions that may be insulting or hurtful to another person because of their race, gender, sexuality, and so on. Some people consider microaggressions to be a phantom symptom of political correctness and a further sign that society has become “soft,” while others see them as a problematic way of normalizing bigotry. So how do microagressions compare to other types of moral harms? Do they...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-astell. Mary Astell (1666–1731) was an English philosopher and writer who advocated for equal rights for women. While she described marriage as a type of “slavery,” she was also a staunch conservative who claimed that women who did marry should accept subordination to their husbands. So what was Astell's vision for the education of women? How did she reconcile her seemingly conflicting views on marriage? And why did philosopher John Locke...

More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/zhuangzi. Zhuangzi, the 4th-century-BCE Chinese philosopher, was arguably the most important figure in Taoism. He believed that a person’s ideal relationship to the world was to "be one with ten thousand things." So how is someone supposed to achieve this ideal? What is at the core of Zhuangzi's conception of the good life? And how could contemporary western readers benefit from his way of thinking? Josh and Ray welcome back Paul Kjellberg from Whittier...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/referring-world. On December 2, 2019, Ken Taylor announced that he finally had “an almost complete draft” of a book he had been writing for years. “I think I'll pour a glass of wine to mark the occasion, before plunging back into the work that is still to be done,” he wrote. Tragically and unexpectedly, he died later that same day. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of some colleagues, his book, "Referring to the World: An Opinionated...

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/elisabeth-bohemia. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680) is best known for her correspondence with René Descartes. In her letters, she articulated a devastating critique of his dualist theory of mind, in particular on the impossibility of mind-body interaction. So what was Elisabeth's own position on the nature of mind? What can we ascertain about her moral and political concerns based on her various correspondences? And how are her ideas...