Meaningoflife.tv: Sophia (audio)

Journalism, from information scarcity to attention scarcity ... Is it harder to find “good” information these days? ... Oliver: Reliance on social media creates false controversies ... Has the mainstream media really drifted towards partisanship? ... How to dismantle the partisan divide ... Dan: Americans were more divided in 1968 than now ... Social injustice: Perception, reality, and urgency ...

Why Dan and Milton love Stranger Things ... How does the new season measure up? ... Is "the Upside Down" a coherent idea? ... Is Generation X about to have its moment in pop culture? ... Dan fears wokeness is ruining pop culture ... The risks of a fourth Stranger Things season ... Pop culture in an era of massive corporate control ... Speculating on HBO's mysterious Watchmen adaptation ...

Where have all the feminists gone? ... The feminist tradition in philosophy ... How does second-wave feminism distinguish sex from gender? ... Jane: Patriarchy hurts men, too ... On the present controversy around gender non-conformity and identity ... Was Prince genderqueer? ... Gender, feminism, and the classical liberal tradition ...

Nathan’s recent essay, "Is it Time for the Humanities to Strike?" ... The attack on the humanities goes international ... Are non-college graduates deficient voters? ... Why the educated elite aren’t the most ethical people ... Could a strike re-engage the public with the humanities? ... How to win over those who most thoroughly reject the humanities ...

Is the “Morality Everywhere Problem” really a problem? ... Why Robert finds the moral question difficult to dispel  ... Peter Singer’s “drowning child” thought experiment ... Is weakness of will keeping Robert from volunteering at the soup kitchen? ... Dan: “Embrace the normal” ... What do those living in dire poverty want first-worlders to do? ... Why Rob is repulsed by utilitarianism ... Dan: The end goal of charity is human flourishing ... Were people less sensitive in the past? ...

Robert: Is it permissible to remain a philosophy professor? ... Why Dan opposes the “morality everywhere” approach to life ... Can professors really leave a lasting impact on students? ... “First world problems” and moral obligation in the classroom ... What is the “White Paper” of philosophy, and does it have any authority? ... Rethinking the role of the academy in society ... Dan: Philosophy as a life guide is, well, misguided ...

Realism vs. anti-realism ... Is reality the sum of human senses? ... Why Crispin is allergic to idealism ... “Rabbity moments” and Quine’s radical translation scenario ... What does it mean to say someone lives “in another world”? ... Davidson’s closet analogy for conceptual schemes ... What makes a given statement true? ...

What explains the sharp divide between analytic and continental philosophy? ... Continental philosophy’s association with romanticism and fascism ... How Richard Rorty, Crispin’s dissertation advisor, bridged the gap between the two schools ... Heidegger’s skepticism of science ... Crispin articulates the divide in terms of substance and style ... How continental philosophy challenges the primacy of argument ...

Crispin’s book chapter on the nature of truth ... Do different uses of the word “truth” have a family resemblance? ... The challenge of connecting truth with reality ... Where does linguistics enter the picture? ... How Crispin bucks expectations of academic philosophical writing ... Dan: Analytic philosophy misses the forest for the trees ... What’s missing from Crispin’s exploration of truth? ...

Why Oliver quit law school ... Is it professionally risky to express heterodox views in philosophy? ... Philosophy as handmaiden to progressive politics ... Dan’s essay on philosophy’s abuse of the harm principle ... The chicken-or-egg question of students or faculty ... Is leftism corrupting scholarship? ... What politics can learn from the field of philosophy ... The irony of a leftist discipline that exploits labor ...

John’s personal history with punk rock ... Why was punk more political in the UK than in NYC? ... The far reach of capitalism into counterculture ... How the NYC punk scene fizzled out ... The early importance of record shops and FM radio stations ... Punk and suburban oppression ... Is punk dead or perennially youthful? ... John: Gender expression is the new embodiment of the punk ethos ...

What distinguishes “action” from simple motor movement? ... Can animals take deliberate action? ... Why narrative has a place in science and physics ... Biology, evolution, and the emergence of action ... Why does Massimo want a beer? ... Dan: The “free will problem” is ill-formed ... How the evolution of language brought meaning to human behavior ... Massimo and Dan's latest projects ...

What role should guns play in a liberal society? ... What American deference to police says about authority and force ... Why we leave justice in the government’s hands ... Defining modern conservatism: Is Matt Lewis a “liberal”? ... Do pro-gun arguments consider the social contract? ... David: Do open-carriers want to live in a Mad Max movie? ... Dan: Grover Norquist’s model citizen isn’t a citizen at all ...

Crispin’s essay on the politics of geography and representation ... Why did rural Americans feel that Trump’s victory was their victory? ... Is “one person, one vote” a wrong-headed view of political representation? ... Where political representation meets art and aesthetics ... Can Americans' interests be represented accurately? ... Is being from a rural area akin to being a racial minority? ... What does our current system of political representation get right or wrong? ...

Justin's website about the philosophy profession, Daily Nous ... What philosophers actually do when they do research ... Will we ever solve the big philosophical questions? ... What the American Philosophical Association does ... Is this a golden age for public philosophy? ... Are philosophy departments in danger? ... Dan wonders whether there should be a moratorium on new philosophy PhDs ...

To understand Marx, start with Hegel’s dialectics ... Why Marx emphasized economic production over Hegelian idealism ... Dan: Was Marx’s concept of labor too narrow? ... What will happen if technology eliminates most jobs? ... Marxism post-WWII: More than college activism and Jefferson Airplane? ... Brian: Marx’s predictions were right, but his predicted timeframe was all wrong ... Why “diversity blather” is a capitalist wolf in Marxist clothing ...

Dan and Massimo on ontology: What exists and what doesn’t? ... What, if anything, do Saturn’s rings have in common with virtue? ... Materialism as a product of scientism ... The immaterial features of human life and society ... The most important philosopher you’ve never heard of ... What does Daniel Dennett mean by “self,” anyway? ... Massimo: A single ontology isn’t enough to describe reality ...

Richard, a.k.a. miceelf88, joins Dan to talk gender politics ... The difference between sex and gender identity ... The ontological (and legal) issues with fluid gender identity ... Dan: Social identities like gender aren’t “self-made” ... What trans identity means for the civil rights coalition ... Jordan Peterson and gender as the essence of self ... Empathy vs. sympathy in coalition building ...

Is masculinity treated as a pathology? ... Why girls are outperforming boys in class ... Disentangling gender and sex, culture and biology ... “Girl power” was a success, but at what social cost? ... Crispin’s years as a teen revolutionary ... The modern school as a totalitarian institution ... What really explains high-security schools? ... How safe can we reasonably expect to be in society? ... Is the media distorting our narratives of crime and danger? ...

Crispin’s “Why They Suck” essay series ... Why in particular does Michelangelo suck? ... The contrasts in humanism represented in Italian and Northern Renaissance art ... The “ennobling quality” of human emotion in early Renaissance art ... Why Dan is a humanist and Crispin is not ... Identifying the internal incoherence of Michelangelo’s work ... Dan: Judaism’s approach to moral agency begins in the Garden of Eden ... Crispin questions emphasizing human endeavors over all others ...