Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchHegel's Life and Ideas: Napoleon, the Master-Slave Dialectic, and History
Episode 11367
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's name is practically a synonym for dense, intimidating philosophy, yet the man loved local beer, neighborhood gossip, …
4 days, 18 hours ago
Bertrand Russell: Logic, Prison, and a Life of Intellectual Honesty
Episode 11366
In 1921, Bertrand Russell read his own obituary in Japan after a severe bout of pneumonia, and his partner Dora Black handed sarcastic flyers to jour…
4 days, 18 hours ago
The Simulation Hypothesis: Bostrom's Trilemma and the Physics Pushback
Episode 11365
Are you really here, or are you a string of code running on a supercomputer built by an advanced civilization? This deep dive traces the simulation h…
4 days, 18 hours ago
Ad Hominem Explained: When Attacking the Person Is Actually Logical
Episode 11364
We are all taught that attacking your opponent's character instead of their argument is the ultimate debate foul. But the term ad hominem has a far m…
4 days, 18 hours ago
Albert Camus: From the Slums of Algiers to the Nobel Prize
Episode 11363
On January 4, 1960, a Facel Vega sports car crashed into a plane tree in a small French town, killing Albert Camus instantly. In the mud investigator…
4 days, 18 hours ago
Democritus: The Laughing Philosopher Who Invented the Atom
Episode 11362
Plato reportedly wanted every book he wrote burned. Democritus of Abdera, born around 460 BC, deduced that reality is made of uncuttable particles mo…
4 days, 18 hours ago
Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Myth, and the Birth of 911
Episode 11361
For decades the 1964 murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was taught as proof of urban apathy: 38 neighbors supposedly watched and did nothing. This …
4 days, 18 hours ago
John Stuart Mill: The Engineered Prodigy Who Championed Liberty
Episode 11360
Forbidden to play with other children, reading Greek at three and Latin at eight, John Stuart Mill was raised by his father James Mill and Jeremy Ben…
4 days, 18 hours ago
Laozi: The Old Master Behind Taoism Who May Never Have Existed
Episode 11359
Chinese emperors claimed him as their biological ancestor, millions worship him as a god, and modern anarchists and libertarians both call him a foun…
4 days, 18 hours ago
Hume's Guillotine: Can You Ever Get an Ought From an Is?
Episode 11358
There is a sleight of hand that happens in news articles, political debates, and family arguments: a speaker lays out a list of facts and then, witho…
4 days, 18 hours ago