Traditional religion has a been pretty rough ride. Some have felt saved by it. For others, it has been destructive and traumatizing. If you were going to build a new kind of spirituality from scratch, what would the ingredients be and how would you bake it? Sex worker, organizer, and memoirist Liara Roux joins us this week to talk about why Jesus was cool but evangelical rock music in restaurants, not so much. Also, how and why do images often communicate more deeply and powerfully than words? 

What does it mean to be deep? Is profundity something good or is it pretentious and boring? Are there different kinds of deepness? Is shallowness itself a kind of depth? Is it only shallow people who try to sound deep? Are profound utterances dark oceans or plastic mirrors? Join Eric and Taylor on this, their first video episode as they plum the depths of shallowness and skate the surface of the abyss. 

What are monsters? Do they lurk among us? Are some of us monsters? How would we know? What’s really frightening about monsters – that they’re inhuman or that they’re all too human? If a shark could speak, would you climb into its tank to talk to it? And what exactly is so creepy about the dad in The Shining? Tune in and get the lowdown about monsters, monstrosity, and human monstrousness. 

What is it to be? We be, and we be jammin’ but what about other things? Is a hole a thing? Or just a lack of dirt? Unicorns aren’t real, but are they in some other way? Perhaps unicorns are, but don’t exist. But if so, what about non-existent unicorns? What’s their deal? What is the “metaphysics of presence,” and why did it annoy Martin Heidegger? Do all why questions have answers? If so, why? If not, why not? Tune in and turn on and help Taylor and Eric grapple with the question (and the...

Was Jean-Paul Sartre right that hell is other people? Are all human relationships an attempt to beat the Other before the Other beats the Us? Is every person coming down the road a potential master of a potential slave? Is all love either masochism or sadism? Is love a war? Or is war love by other means? Will listening to this podcast mean a battle of interpretations between you and us? If it is, who will surrender first?     

Actor, comedian, writer, producer, and musician Fred Armisen joins Eric and Taylor this week to ponder the twin mysteries of morality and moral motivation. Do we do good only out of a fear of blame and punishment? Would most people do wrong, if they knew no one was looking? Tune in and learn what Plato said Gyges did with the invisibility ring he found in a ditch. Also find out what Fred thinks Stone Age comedy probably looked like. 

This week Eric and Taylor are joined by journalist and adult industry activist Laura Desirée as they wonder whether desire inevitably leads to suffering. Or maybe desiring just is suffering. Is desire therefore bad? Maybe some kinds of suffering are good because they keep us from becoming numb to pains and pleasures of all kinds. Join us and confront the terror. 

This week Eric and Taylor are joined by Michael Thaddeus, professor of mathematics at Columbia University, as they ponder the worrisome thought that technological progress might threaten something essential and/or precious about human existence. Are we sacrificing quality for efficiency? Are distraction and shallowness replacing focus and depth of thought and feeling? And why do phones sound so much worse now than they did in the 1970s?

Is lying unavoidable? Should you always tell the truth, no matter what? Even if an axe murderer asks you where your sister is hiding? What if a flounder asks you, “Does this place on the sea floor make me look flat?” This week Eric and Taylor are joined by TV writer and executive producer Tara Hernandez, creator of Mrs. Davis. Together they discuss honesty and deception in life, the universe, and Hollywood.

Can we try to become cool, or is trying to be cool by definition like totally uncool man? Is it like keeping yourself up trying to fall asleep? Maybe it’s impossible, like trying to look at the edge of your visual field. If you make a deliberate effort to be happy, or to be a loving person, are you doomed to fail? Join Eric and Taylor as they (try to) confront these unsettling questions head on. 

Am I a self? Am I myself? Am I yourself? And if there is no such thing as the self, do I not exist? The Buddha and David Hume thought so – were they right? Join Taylor and Eric as they explore the conceptual labyrinth that is ourselves.

Are we prisoners of the past or is radical revolution possible? Revolutionaries say we can get out. Conservatives say we shouldn’t even want to. But maybe both sides get it wrong! Do we need a past to have a future? Join Taylor, Eric, and special guest Professor Bryan Van Norden, an expert in traditional Chinese philosophy, as we take a hard look at tradition. What is it? And what, if anything, is it good for?

Philosopher Helen De Cruz joins Eric and Taylor this week to discuss the unsettling possibility that insight and understanding might not actually make us happier or more at peace with our existence. Maybe they just bum us out. Tune in and hear what the heretical Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza had to say about this three and a half centuries ago. 

Are we our bodies? Do we also have souls? Do we have minds? Do haircuts diminish our true selves? Can our selves be hit by a bus or uploaded onto The Cloud? The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s body couldn’t be with us for this episode, but he joins us in spirit to tell us why we only meet people in the flesh.

Is God Dead? If He is, did we kill Him?  If God is dead does that mean Humanity is dead too -- or at least that the category of being a human being is in need of some serious re-appraisal?  Taylor and Eric discuss these questions and both theism and atheism get re-evaluated.  Along the way, we discuss Nietzsche and the most famous sponge in the history of philosophy. 

This week Eric and Taylor wonder and worry about what it means to try hard and still feel like you’re falling short. Are there objective standards of excellence or does happiness require just staying in your comfort zone? 

Is free will an illusion?  Are we puppets?  When we think we are thinking or acting freely are we actually cogs in a heartless, meaningless, deterministic cosmic machine?

Are we utterly dependent on others or should we look inward and try to be true to ourselves? Can we do both? Or neither? This week Eric and Taylor look to Ralph Waldo Emerson for some help with this deeply unsettling question. 

This week Eric and Taylor talk with Cristen Conger, host of the podcast Unladylike, about whether we might all be better off without masculinity, or maybe femininity, or maybe gender altogether. Would this be possible? Would it be a step forward? Tune in and find out. 

In this episode Eric and Taylor grapple with the problem of moral luck. Are we in control of being good and doing the right thing or are we at the mercy of circumstance and maybe even our own character? Listen, feel unsettled, then feel okay. 

In this week’s episode, Taylor and Eric chat with Pete Mandik, who teaches philosophy and psychology at William Paterson University, about whether spiritual enlightenment is a thing – and if it is a thing, whether it’s a good thing. Are you worried or upset by this question? Don’t be. Just tune in and listen.

In this week’s episode, Eric and Taylor wonder whether truly meaningful conversation with another person is possible, or if everything is just a matter of objective fact or subjective opinion, so that there’s nothing really to talk about. Tune in and find out what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant had to say about this.

This week Eric and Taylor wonder if we might be living in a simulation. Are we brains in a vat? Are we dreaming? Could all of our beliefs be false? Take a deep breath, tune in, and find out.

This week Eric and Taylor wonder whether it’s dumb to fall in love. Or maybe only a fool would refuse to fall in love. Can cool reason triumph over blind passion? How is love different from lust -- if it is? Tune in and find out.

In this episode, Eric and Taylor worry about whether ChatGPT might be a harbinger of total computer domination of the world and the looming obsolescence and expendability of human beings. Is that possible? Tune in and find out what it is about artificial intelligence that should really frighten you.