Francey Russell from Barnard College at Columbia University helps Josh and Jeremy decide whether "Saint Omer" or "May December" wins the 2024 Dionysus Award for Most Disturbing Exploration of a Female Criminal Who Thinks She May Be Innocent.

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/2024-dionysus-awards.

Francey Russell (2024) extended

Does the film "Past Lives" or the TV miniseries "The Last of Us" deserve the Dionysus Award for Most Moving Film (or TV Show!) about Difficult Choices? More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/2024-dionysus-awards.

Ray Briggs (2024) extended

More at www.philosophytalk.org/shakespeares-outsiders.

Shakespeare's Outsiders

More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mind-sharing.

Mind reading might sound like the stuff of science fiction. But in philosophy and psychology, mind reading is something that human beings do whenever we try to guess what another person is thinking. Could it be that people are also natural born mind sharers, unconsciously shaping our behavior to be understood by others? How do we change or exaggerate our actions when others are present? And how can we use these insights to communicate better with our loved ones? Josh and Ray share their mind(s) with Julian Jara-Ettinger, Director of the Computational Social Cognition Lab at Yale University.

Mind Sharing

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/shakespeares-outsiders.

Over 400 years after his death, Shakespeare is still widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time. His many plays tackle questions about power, influence, identity, and moral and social status. His characters—be they villains or heroes—are often disdained because of their race, religion, class, disability, or gender. So what do Shakespeare’s plays reveal about identity and status in his time? How might they shed light on who we include and who we exclude today? Could Shakespearian dramas have more in common with modern day soap operas than we think? Ray and guest-host Adrian Daub go inside with David Sterling Brown from Trinity College in Hartford, author of "Shakespeare's White Others."

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/why-world-so-weird.

Quantum mechanics, mathematics, human consciousness.... whichever way you slice it, the universe is weird. How can our conscious minds be made from unconscious atoms? What should we make of quantum entanglement, or the fact that light can be both a particle and a wave? Why is it that there are exactly as many fractions as there are whole numbers? Josh and Ray boggle at the strangeness of it all with Eric Schwitzgebel from UC Riverside, author of "The Weirdness of the World."

Why Is the World So Weird?

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/why-world-so-weird.

More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-wollstonecraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/mary-wollstonecraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft is often labeled as a “liberal feminist” because of her concern for women’s rights and conceptions of freedom. But that label narrows her work, which was broadly critical of all social inequalities that distort human relations. So why did Wollstonecraft think that virtue is not truly possible unless we are all free? What did she think was key to the liberation of women? And what were her criticisms of the powerful institutions of her day, like the monarchy? Josh and Ray explore the life and thought of Mary Wollstonecraft with Sylvana Tomaselli from the University of Cambridge, author of "Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics."

Part of the "Wise Women" series, generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/logic-everyone.

Logic may seem like a dry, abstract discipline that only the nerdiest of philosophers study. After all, logic textbooks are full of weird symbols and proofs about abstruse entities, like "the set of all sets." On the other hand, don’t we all try to think logically, at least in some contexts? Why do we believe, for example, it’s bad to contradict yourself and good to be coherent? And what’s the connection between the abstract rules of logic and the everyday practice of poking holes in each other's arguments? Josh and Ray entail their guest, Patrick Girard from the University of Auckland, author of "Logic in the Wild."

Logic For Everyone

This episode was recorded at The Cultures of Unbelief Conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in May 2019. The conference marked the end of the major Understanding Unbelief research programme run by the University of Kent and partners over three years involving 22 projects globally. The conference also marked fifty years since another conference convened by the Vatican, called The Culture of Unbelief which was the first academic conference on atheism. 

The guests are Will Gervais and Penny Edgell. Will Gervais is an evolutionary and cultural psychologist, who is interested in why people believe what they believe about the world, and what this means for them psychologically. Penny Edgell is a cultural sociologist with an interest in the growth of the non-religious in America.

#47 Will Gervais and Penny Edgell

A podcast about the things we hold sacred ,and how to talk to people different from ourselves.

#47 Will Gervais and Penny Edgell

The Sacred Podcast

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