Podcasts
Briefs of philosophy podcast episodes: the arguments made, with timestamps, and the primary texts behind them.
Shows
-
Elucidations
University of Chicago philosophers interview a guest about one topic from their current research.
-
Hi-Phi Nation
Barry Lam combines narrative journalism with philosophy, starting from a story and ending in an argument.
-
History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
Peter Adamson works through the history of philosophy in order, one short episode at a time.
-
Making Sense with Sam Harris
Sam Harris interviews guests about the mind, ethics, society and current events.
-
Philosophize This!
Stephen West explains philosophers and their ideas in chronological order for a general audience.
-
Philosophy Bites
Short interviews with leading philosophers, each on a single question or idea.
-
Stoa Conversations
Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay discuss Stoic theory and how to apply it.
-
The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday interviews authors, historians and practitioners about Stoicism and how to live.
-
The Partially Examined Life
A reading group of former philosophy graduate students discusses one philosophical text per episode.
-
Very Bad Wizards
A philosopher and a psychologist talk about moral psychology, ethics, literature and film.
Recent briefs 70
-
St. Paul's Letters and Their Debt to Stoic Philosophy
Troels Engberg-Pedersen talks with Peter Adamson about how deeply Stoic philosophy shaped St. Paul's theology and language.
-
Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Roots of Political Thought
Peter Adamson and Melissa Lane discuss how the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides shaped early political philosophy and set the stage for Plato.
-
C.S. Lewis on the Conquest of Nature and the Abolition of Man
Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay close their series on C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man by examining what it means to conquer human nature.
-
Place and Smart on Whether Consciousness Is a Brain Process
A philosophy podcast's hosts and guest work through two founding papers in mind-brain identity theory and debate whether identity claims about consciousness can be established at all.
-
Sappho on Eros, Beauty, and the Socratic Connection
Peter Adamson talks with Marguerite Johnson about Sappho's fragmentary poetry and its ties to early Greek philosophy.
-
Marcus Aurelius's Final Years and Meditations
Ryan Holiday and Professor William O. Stephens discuss the illness, loss, and isolation behind Marcus Aurelius's final years and the writing of Meditations.
-
Kate Bowler and Ryan Holiday on Joy Versus Happiness
Kate Bowler and Ryan Holiday discuss how Stoic joy differs from happiness and pleasure, and why modern self-optimization culture makes both harder to find.
-
Miranda Fricker on the Nature and Function of Blame
Miranda Fricker talks with David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton about what blame is for and why communicative blame beats revenge.
-
The Two Reasons to Meditate
The host explains why people meditate for two different reasons, easing suffering and understanding the mind, and argues the two ultimately converge.
-
Colin Kaepernick and Ryan Holiday on Justice and Success
Colin Kaepernick and Ryan Holiday discuss what wealth and success obligate a person to do, and whether moral standing requires personal experience of injustice.
-
Stoic Lessons on Power and Complicity from Roman History
Two hosts tour Roman political history to argue that Stoic virtue demanded active participation in public life, not withdrawal from it.
-
Michael Trombley and Caleb on Emily Wilson's Critique of Epictetus
Michael Trombley and Caleb examine classicist Emily Wilson's three criticisms of Epictetus and test whether they hold up against the Discourses and Handbook.
-
Stoic Premeditation and the Predictable Frustrations of Parenting
Ryan Holiday and psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy connect the Stoic practice of premeditatio malorum to why parents are so often blindsided by ordinary child behavior.
-
Why Constraints, Not Freedom, Make Us Better
Ryan Holiday and David Epstein discuss why limits, not unchecked freedom, are what keep power and success from corrupting people.
-
Dennett's Rejection of Qualia and the Self
Four speakers work through the closing chapters of Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained, on qualia, the self, and Nagel's bat.
-
Ryan Holiday Runs Rome's Stoic Sites
Ryan Holiday narrates a solo 50-kilometer run past Rome's Stoic landmarks to draw out lessons about voluntary hardship and endurance.
-
Dharmakirti's Buddhist Case Against Caste as Natural
Nilanjan Das explains how the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti challenged the Brahmanical defense of caste as a natural distinction among people.
-
Theodicy and Deception in Homer's Odyssey, Books 13-14
Two hosts read Books 13 and 14 of the Odyssey to ask whether the gods reward virtue and why Odysseus lies even to those who could help him.
-
Sam Harris on 9/11, Belief, and the Islamophobia Debate
Sam Harris marks the 25th anniversary of September 11th by arguing that sincere religious belief, not poverty or madness, drove the attacks and still drives jihadism today.
-
Malinowski on Magic, Science, and Religion
Tamler Summers and Dave Pizarro discuss Bronisław Malinowski's essay on magic and religion and George Gmelch's study of baseball superstition.
-
Davidson on Why We Trust Our Own Minds More Than Others'
Wes Alwyn and Mark Linsenmeyer close-read Donald Davidson's "First Person Authority" and its rival explanations for why we trust our own self-reports more than anyone else's.
-
The Stoics vs. Plato: Blank Slate or Innate Ideas
Michael Tremblay and Caleb Ontiveros compare the Stoic view of the mind as a blank slate with Plato's theory of innate knowledge, and what each means for self-knowledge.
-
Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model vs. the Cartesian Theater
Hosts and guest Chris Heath work through Dennett's Consciousness Explained, testing his case against a single inner viewer of experience.
-
Bernard Williams on Why People Hate and Despise Philosophy
Tamler Summers and Dave discuss Bernard Williams's essay on philosophy's critics and debate whether professionalization and its plain writing style have hollowed out the discipline.
-
Davidson on Anomalous Monism and Reasons as Causes
Mark, Wes, and Chris work through Donald Davidson's arguments that mental and physical vocabularies cannot yield strict laws, and that reasons genuinely cause actions.
-
Lani Watson on What Makes Something a Question
Lani Watson talks with Nigel Warburton about defining questions by function rather than form, and what happens when a culture stops asking them.
-
C.S. Lewis Against Moral Subjectivism and the Tao
Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay examine C.S. Lewis's case against moral subjectivism and his idea of a shared moral core called the Tao.
-
Kahneman on Intuition, Framing, and Moral Judgment
Sam Harris and psychologist Daniel Kahneman discuss when intuition can be trusted and how framing shapes our moral judgments.
-
Sloterdijk on Environments, Immunity, and Changing Your Life
The host explains how Peter Sloterdijk builds on Heidegger to argue that our environments form us, and that changing a life or a civilization means building better collective immunity.
-
Could Large Language Models Already Be Conscious?
Sam Harris and Cameron Berg examine whether today's AI systems might already have some form of consciousness or sentience, and what follows morally if they do.
-
Peter Singer on Moral Status, Abortion, and Euthanasia
Peter Singer talks with David Edmonds about what gives a being moral status and where that leaves abortion and euthanasia.
-
Tarkovsky's Solaris: Copies, Guilt, and Real Contact
Tamler Sommers and David Pizarro discuss how Tarkovsky's Solaris turns Lem's novel about an alien ocean into a meditation on guilt, memory, and whether love for a copy can be real.
-
Songzi on Why Insults Should Not Move You
Jing Hu talks with Nigel Warburton about the Warring States philosopher Songzi, who argued that insults, like praise, are external and should not touch a person's inner moral core.
-
Is Christopher Nolan's Odyssey More Stoic Than Homer's?
Caleb Ontiveros reads Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of the Odyssey against Stoic ideas about the gods, agency, duty, and perseverance.
-
Sloterdijk: Why Humans Are the Animal That Trains
The host walks through the first half of Peter Sloterdijk's You Must Change Your Life, arguing that people are shaped by practice and training rather than by belief alone.
-
Quietism: Guyon, Fénelon, and the Debate over Pure Love
Peter Adamson traces the 17th century French Quietist movement through Jeanne Guyon and François Fénelon and the controversy their idea of disinterested love for God provoked.
-
C.S. Lewis on Objective Value and Men Without Chests
Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay discuss C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man and its case for objective value against emotivism.
-
Racine's Tragedies and the Failure of Stoic Self-Mastery
Peter Adamson explores how Jean Racine's tragedies stage the defeat of reason by passion, against the backdrop of Jansenism and a critique of Stoic and Cartesian optimism.
-
Sloterdijk on Modern Cynicism, Diogenes and the Weimar Warning
Steven West explains Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and contrasts modern cynicism with the lived defiance of Diogenes.
-
Cicero, Carneades, and Skeptical Probability
Massimo Pigliucci joins Caleb Ontiveros to trace ancient skepticism from Pyrrho through Carneades to Cicero and its bearing on certainty and polarization today.
-
Molière's Comedies and the Philosophy of Hypocrisy
Peter Adamson explores how Molière's comedies, especially Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, dramatize the French moralists' concerns with hypocrisy and sincerity.
-
Oliver Traldi on What Makes Someone a Political Expert
Oliver Traldi talks with Matt Teichman and Joseph Diller about what political expertise is and why it is so hard to identify.
-
Rebecca Goldstein on Why We Need to Matter
Rebecca Goldstein talks with David Edmonds about mattering, the human need to be deserving of attention, and the different projects people use to secure it.
-
What Philosophers Argue About Lying
Steven West surveys what Nietzsche, Augustine, Kant, Arendt, Plato, Stirner, and Mandeville say about the nature and ethics of lying.
-
Buddhist No-Self and Moral Responsibility
Monima Chadha talks with Nigel Warburton about how the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu explains agency and responsibility without an enduring self.
-
Descartes, Plants, and the Meaning of the French Garden
Peter Adamson traces how mechanist philosophy reshaped early modern botany and how it shows up in the geometry and politics of gardens like Versailles.
-
Carissa Veliz on the Ethics of Prediction
Carissa Veliz discusses with her interviewer how social predictions function as commands and threaten justice, drawing on J.L. Austin's speech act theory.
-
MacIntyre on Why Philosophy Is Not Optional
The host explains Alasdair MacIntyre's argument that everyone already lives by philosophical answers, and that modern universities fail to teach the judgment needed to examine them.
-
Caleb Ontiveros on Why Stoic Happiness Must Be Up to Us
Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay lay out and stress-test the Stoic case that happiness must depend on us, not on the world.
-
French Scholasticism's Long Encounter with Descartes
Peter Adamson traces how French scholastic philosophers debated, absorbed, and resisted Cartesianism and the new science from the 16th through 18th centuries.
-
Rebecca Lowe on the Three Ways Speech Can Be Unfree
Rebecca Lowe talks with the host about a framework for identifying the different ways someone can fail to speak freely.
-
MacIntyre on Dependence, Virtue, and the Self-Made Myth
Steven West lays out Alasdair MacIntyre's case that human beings are dependent rational animals, not self-sufficient individuals, and what that means for virtue and society.
-
Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois on Freedom and Race
Chike Jeffers discusses the ideas of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois on slavery, rhetoric, education, and Black identity.
-
Arnauld vs Malebranche on Ideas and Vision in God
Peter Adamson examines the dispute between Malebranche and Arnauld over whether ideas are representations seen in God or direct acts of the mind.
-
MacIntyre's Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry
The host walks through Alasdair MacIntyre's argument that all moral reasoning, including claims of neutrality, comes from within a tradition.
-
Occasionalism: Why Only God Truly Causes Anything
Stephen Nadler talks with Peter Adamson about occasionalism, the 17th century view that God alone is a true cause, and its roots in Cartesian metaphysics rather than the mind-body problem.
-
Malebranche's Occasionalism: God as the Only True Cause
Peter Adamson explains Nicolas Malebranche's argument that God alone truly causes anything, with bodies and minds serving only as occasions for divine action.
-
Salmieri on Free Speech, Rights, and Cancel Culture
Greg Salmieri, drawing on Ayn Rand's objectivism, argues that free speech is a narrow political right against force, not a right to a platform or to escape social consequences.
-
Tarun Khaitan on Decolonizing the Indian Constitution
Tarun Khaitan examines and challenges the argument that India's and South Africa's post-colonial constitutions are illegitimate colonial artifacts.
-
Chike Jeffers on Africana Philosophy
Chike Jeffers talks with David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton about what Africana philosophy is and how it includes African, African American and Afro-Caribbean thought.