Philosophy Talk Starters
Bite-size episodes from the program that questions everything... except your intelligence. Learn more and access complete episodes at www.philosophytalk.org.
Episodes
June 25, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/private-lives.
Cultural attitudes towards privacy seem to be in conflict. On the one hand, we are concerned about corporations getting their hands on or selling our personal data. On the other, many people like to broadcast every little bit of their daily lives. But what exactly is privacy, and is it something we should care about? Is there a difference between having a private...
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June 21, 2025 • 9 mins
More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mexican-philosophy.
From early feminist Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to existentialist Emilio Uranga, from Indigenous thought to theorists of aesthetic utopia, Mexican philosophy is full of fascinating figures with brilliant insights. What can we learn from them today about belief, desire, freedom, morality, and education? And do Mexican philosophers speak with one voice or in a complicat...
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June 12, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/philippa-foot.
Philippa Foot invented the thought experiment that famously became known as the Trolley Problem. Despite the vast industry of “trolleyology” it inspired, Foot’s goal to illuminate debates on abortion and euthanasia often gets lost in the mix. So, how did Foot use this thought experiment to distinguish between doing versus allowing? What did she mean by the "Doctr...
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June 7, 2025 • 9 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-gender.
Gender is a controversial topic these days, but people can't seem to agree about what gender is. Is it an inner identity, a biological fact, or an oppressive system? Should we respect it or resist it? Should it even be a thing? Josh and guest-host Blakey Vermeule question gender with regular co-host Ray Briggs, co-author of "What Even Is Gender?"
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May 31, 2025 • 12 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/can-art-save-us.
The world is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis, and we urgently need good ways to address it. Courageous politicians would help, of course, as might scientific innovations. But how much of the problem is a failure of imagination? Could the arts help us see our way out of the problem? How can literature, painting, and movies redraw the landscape in ou...
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May 24, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/true-contradictions.
If you want to tell the truth, you shouldn’t contradict yourself—that’s just common sense. A suspect who was home on the night of the crime can’t have been elsewhere, and whatever the weapon, we can rule out the hypothesis that it was both a candlestick and not a candlestick. But there are philosophers who claim we shouldn’t overgeneralize based on murder m...
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May 19, 2025 • 11 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-midgley.
Mary Midgley became one of the best known public intellectuals in the UK, and was one of the first philosophers to talk about climate change. Though she didn’t publish her first book—Beast and Man—till she was 59, she wrote many influential works on science, ethics, and animal rights. So, why did Midgley argue that the climate crisis was ultimately a conceptual pr...
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May 3, 2025 • 9 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/derek-parfit-and-your-future-self.
The works of Derek Parfit (1942-2017) have had a profound influence on how philosophers understand rational decision-making, ethics, and personal identity. At the heart of Parfit's thinking are questions about how you should relate to your future self, and whether you should treat your future self any differently than other future people. So w...
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April 23, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/are-rules-meant-be-broken.
Rules exist for a reason: they tell us what to expect, they help us coordinate our actions, and they stop us from exploiting one another. But isn't it possible to be too much of a rule follower? Aren't some rules arbitrary, unjust, or just plain inefficient? When should we exercise our judgment to reinterpret the rules, and when should we ignore them ...
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April 21, 2025 • 11 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/iris-murdoch.
Iris Murdoch may be best known for her works of fiction, but her philosophical contributions were equally significant. A moral realist influenced by Plato and Simone Weil, she developed theories in virtue ethics and care ethics. So what is the relationship between Murdoch's works of fiction and her philosophical writings? Why did she believe that "nothing in life ...
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April 19, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/changing-minds-climate-change.
There is consensus among scientists that global warming is real and that it’s caused by human activity. Despite the overwhelming evidence and the urgency to act, there are still many who are skeptical of or flat-out deny climate change. Are these climate deniers simply impervious to scientific evidence? Or have they just not been exposed to the ri...
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April 5, 2025 • 11 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/philosophy-smell.
When philosophers think about human perception, they tend to focus on vision and turn their noses up at olfaction, the sense of smell. So what insights can we gain about perception, thought, and language by focusing on olfaction? How culturally variable is the ability to distinguish one scent from another? Do we need to learn certain concepts before we can det...
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March 29, 2025 • 9 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/search-prousts-philosophy.
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time challenges us to think hard about what we can know, who we really are, why memory matters, and how we can find enchantment in a world without God. But some might wonder why we need a 3,000 page novel to do that. Are there things a novel can do that a philosophy book can’t? Does it take a great person to produce g...
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March 22, 2025 • 11 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/thinking-conspiracy-theorist.
The moon landing was faked! JFK Jr. is still alive! Finland doesn’t exist! Conspiracy theories of all sorts have been gaining traction, thanks partly to the ease with which they spread online. But what makes someone more inclined to believe in vast conspiracies? Are marginalized groups who have been lied to by authorities more likely to be distrust...
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March 11, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/judith-jarvis-thomson.
Judith Jarvis Thomson is best known for arguing that abortion is morally permissible, even granting the fetus the status of person. Her colorful thought experiments illustrate that a right to life does not mean the right to use another person's body to survive. So, what exactly is a right to life and what does it permit or prohibit? Does pregnancy come wi...
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March 8, 2025 • 9 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/why-trust-science.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans who trust in science is steadily declining. While politicization is partly to blame, another reason may be that the “truths” of science seem to shift endlessly. So why should we trust science? Is it still reliable, even if it doesn’t seem to settle on a single truth? An...
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February 25, 2025 • 13 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/2025-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 the last twelve months, including:
• Best Movie About Religious People Who Aren't Entirely What They Seem
• Most Moving Meditation on Fierce Fe...
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February 22, 2025 • 8 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/web-du-bois.
Sociologist, historian, philosopher, editor, writer, and activist, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. The first African-American Ph.D. from Harvard University, Du Bois died in Ghana after having renounced his American citizenship. In between he co-founded the NAACP and wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as well ...
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February 11, 2025 • 10 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/philosophical-worlds-borges.
Argentinian writer Jorge Luís Borges wrote some of the world’s most brilliant, mind-bending, and philosophical stories. Drawing on sources from Europe, India, China, and Persia, these stories tackled topics like time, reality, selfhood, and art. Yet Borges also said "I don’t think ideas are important." So what can we get out of philosophical stories...
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February 6, 2025 • 9 mins
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/alan-turing-and-limits-computation.
Alan Turing was a 20th-Century English mathematician and cryptologist who is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science. In 1950, he published a definition of a computer that is both universal, general enough to apply to any specific computing architecture, and mathematically rigorous, so that it lets us prove claims a...
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