We are in a constitutional crisis. It is not a looming crisis. It has already arrived, with the president’s declaration that he has the absolute right to pardon himself and his potential partners in crime, and the absolute right to stop any investigation for whatever reason he chooses.
There are many things that just shouldn’t be for sale at any price—human beings chief among them. You can’t legitimately sell what you don’t own in the first place. But there are many things that we do own the buying and selling of which are considered in some way abhorrent or repugnant and are therefore banned.
For better or for worse, believers and non-believers are unlikely to fully agree about the relationship between faith and humility. Indeed, some non-believers may insist that there is an inherent conflict between the two.
Are we alone in the universe? Or is the cosmos teeming with life? And what difference would it make if we found the answer? Those are just some of the questions we address in this week’s show.
Once upon a time, your home was considered your castle, a sphere of absolute privacy, where you could reliably escape prying eyes. No one, except perhaps the constable, dared even enter one’s home without permission.
Should you cling to your beliefs even when others disagree? Or should you reconsider your beliefs whenever they’re challenged? Is it possible to disagree without being disagreeable?
Frantz Fanon was quite a provocative fellow. In his most influential work, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon says that “For the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonist.”
This week we’re asking about the Art of Non-violence. And it is an art — the trick is knowing when and where it will actually work. After all, it looks like it’s worked just about everywhere it’s been seriously tried: non-violence brought down apartheid in South Africa, Jim Crow in America, and British Colonialism in India. But of course it took violence to defeat the Nazis, to end slavery and to free the colonies from British tyranny. Does that mean non-violence has its limits? Not if you believe that violence just begets more violence. Only non-violence can break the cycle.
Can mere words be used to kill? Words can hurt and offend, but can they be lethal weapons? I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. We all can admit that words can hurt or offend. But I’m asking if they can literally kill?
Suppose we were to ask for each country on Earth how many people would willingly choose to live in it, given complete freedom of choice, but under a modified version of the veil of ignorance. Which country would you choose?
How much of today’s treasure is destined to be tomorrow’s trash? Are growing piles of trash the price we pay for progress? Or do our trashy habits amount to ecological terrorism? These are the questions we’re thinking about in this week’s show.
John Kelly, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, recently made some comments about the supposed unwillingness of the North and South to compromise over slavery as a leading cause of the Civil War. But Kelly actually has it completely backwards.
Do black lives really matter in America? Indeed, have they ever mattered, in our sordid racial history? And what, if anything, can we do to make sure that black lives matter today? These are just some of the questions we address on this week’s episode that we are calling “Race Matters.”
What will life be like when every road you travel, every device you own, every building you enter is connected to the internet? Will these developments transform our world in ways that enrich our lives? Or will they just create more opportunities for hackers, corporations, and governments to pry into every aspect of our lives?
It’s time to make it official. After well over 400 episodes, 13 and half years on the air, and two years before that trying to get on the air, John has decided to transition into a new role on Philosophy Talk.
What if gravity suddenly stopped working? Or what if e gradually came to equal mc3 rather than mc2? Could the fundamentals of physics really change? Or Is this just the stuff of science fiction?