PhilosophyPodcasts.Org

Peter Singer Consider the turkey Why this holiday season is a great time to rethink the traditional turkey feast.

Maria Balaska Anxiety and wonder On being human Description At times, we find ourselves unexpectedly immersed in a mood that lacks any clear object or identifiable cause. These uncanny moments tend to be hastily dismissed as inconsequential, left without explanation. Maria Balaska examines two such cases: wonder and anxiety – what it means to prepare for them, what life may look like after experie...

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey Liberalism By revealed preference, Prof. McCloskey is our favorite scholar to talk with.  This is our third conversation with her. Today, we discuss two working papers on liberalism.

Sharon Patricia Holland an other   In an other, Sharon Patricia Holland offers a new theorization of the human animal/divide by shifting focus from distinction toward relation in ways that acknowledge that humans are also animals. Holland centers ethical commitments over ontological concerns to spotlight those moments when Black people ethically relate with animals. Drawing on writers and thinkers...

Stephanie Li Ugly White People: Writing Whiteness in Contemporary America White Americans are confronting their whiteness more than ever before, with political and social shifts ushering in a newfound racial awareness. And with white people increasingly seeing themselves as distinctly racialized (not simply as American or human), white writers are exposing a self-awareness of white racialized beha...

Gilligan, Carol In a Human Voice Carol Gilligan's landmark book  In a Different Voice  – the "little book that started a revolution" – brought women's voices to the fore in work on the self and moral development, enabling women to be heard in their own right, and with their own integrity, for the first time. Forty years later, Gilligan returns to the subject matter of her classic book, re-examinin...

Merav Roth A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature Reading the Reader (Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis Book Series) 1st Edition What are the unconscious processes involved in reading literature? How does literature influence our psychological development and existential challenges? A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature offers a unique glimpse into the unconscious psychi...

William Egginton Alejandro Jodorowsky Filmmaker and philosopher Alejandro Jodorowsky is a force of nature. At 95 years old he is still making films and is a cultural phenomenon who has influenced other artists as disparate as John Waters and Yoko Ono. Although his body of work has long been considered disjointed and random, William Egginton claims that Jodorowsky's writings, theatre work and mime,...

Peter Singer and Shih Chao-Hwei The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on effective altrusism, engaged Buddhism, and how to build a better world  ABOUT THE BUDDHIST AND THE ETHICIST Eastern spirituality and utilitarian philosophy meet in these unique dialogues between a Buddhist monastic and a moral philosopher on such issues as animal welfare, gender equality, the death penalty, and more An...

Peter Brooks Seduced by story: The use and abuse of narrative     Chosen by New York Magazine/Vulture as a Best Book of 2022 "There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can defeat it." So begins the scholar and literary critic Peter Brooks's reckoning with today's flourishing cult of story. Forty years after publishing his seminal work Reading for th...

Daniel C. Dennett I've been thinking Description "How unfair for one man to be blessed with such a torrent of stimulating thoughts. Stimulating is an understatement." —Richard Dawkins A memoir by one of the greatest minds of our age, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett. Daniel C. Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering...

Christopher Bollas Conversations Transcript erratum: The director of the film "Zone of Interest" is Jonathan Glazer.  Christopher Bollas presents us with a new literary form in his Conversations: twenty-three unique dialogues to captivate, amuse, and inspire. The psychoanalyst Paula Heimann asked: 'Who is speaking? To whom? About what? And why now?' We speak with the voice and position of many oth...

"Do you  know  my mom?"  The court-appointed monitor says that's off limits.   In this episode, Anna (pseudonym) tells her story.  Her son is 1yo, in diapers, when the police come to arrest her, while she attempts to contact her dealer for drugs before prison.  From there, she loses custody of her son, enters treatment, and tries to re-gain contact with her son.     Strong mom love, Anna shares he...

Howard Kirschenbaum The life and work of Carl Rogers Twenty years after his death, PCCS Books celebrates the life and work of Carl Rogers with the long-awaited second edition of the much-acclaimed biography by Howard Kirschenbaum, On Becoming Carl Rogers. This completely re-written and re-titled edition extends to over 700 pages and includes a more detailed personal and professional history, an ev...

Lauren Levine Risking Intimacy and Creative Transformation in Psychoanalysis Note: I had planned to interview Dr. Levine about her book.  Leading up to the date we had agreed on, I was struggling with what to talk to her about.  Timothy Williamson notes the gladitorial or adversarial nature of philosophical discussion.  I certainly had some critical commentary on Dr. Levine's book, but I also pref...

Thoughts on a degree-granting "program" at BU, called "Mental health counseling and behavioral medicine."  I took some classes there but eventually quit because it was so ridiculous.   What is "mental health counseling"?  U.S. states wanted to regulate who could become a psychotherapist, and, given the incredible demand, a variety of academic departments wanted to be able to offer degrees that wou...

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey Crossing: A Transgender Memoir   A  New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year   "I visited womanhood and stayed. It was not for the pleasures, though I discovered many I had not imagined, and many pains too. But calculating pleasures and pains was not the point. The point was who I am."   Once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s privilege,...

Alex Byrne Trouble with gender: Sex facts, gender fictions Sex used to rule. Now gender identity is on the throne. Sex survives as a cheap imitation of its former self: assigned at birth, on a spectrum, socially constructed, and definitely not binary. Apparently quite a few of us fall outside the categories 'male' and 'female'. But gender identity is said to be universal – we all have one. Humanit...

Slavoj Žižek  Freedom: A Disease Without Cure We are all afraid that new dangers pose a threat to our hard-won freedoms, so what deserves attention is precisely the notion of freedom. The concept of freedom is deceptively simple. We think we understand it, but the moment we try and define it we encounter contradictions. In this new philosophical exploration, Slavoj Žižek argues that the experience...

Bence Nanay Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience is about mental imagery and the important work it does in our mental life. It plays a crucial role in the vast majority of our perceptual episodes. It also helps us understand many of the most puzzling features of perception (like the way it is influenced in a top-down manner and t...

Clancy Martin  How not to kill yourself: A portrait of the suicidal mind. FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION  •  A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • An intimate, insightful, at times even humorous blend of memoir and philosophy that examines why the thought of death is so compulsive for some while demonstrating that there's always another solution—from the acclaimed writer and philosophy professor...

Lorraine Daston Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (The Lawrence Stone Lectures)  A panoramic history of rules in the Western world Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules...

Wendy Brown (Princeton) Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values) One of America's leading political theorists analyzes the nihilism degrading―and confounding―political and academic life today. Through readings of Max Weber's Vocation Lectures, she proposes ways to counter nihilism's devaluations of both knowledge and political responsibility. How has politics...

Timothy Williamson Philosophical method: A very short introduction From thought experiments, to deduction, to theories, this Very Short Introduction will cause you to totally rethink what philosophy is. Assuming no previous knowledge of philosophy, this is a highly accesible account of how modern philosophers think and work Presents a distinctive view of philosophy, arguing that it is far more sci...

Clara E. Mattei (New School) The capital order: How economists invented austerity and paved the way to Fascism A Financial Times Best Book of the Year "A must-read, with key lessons for the future."—Thomas Piketty A groundbreaking examination of austerity's dark intellectual origins.  For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity—c...