A weekly show about philosophy, science and the history of ideas from the Allen Brothers and Mark Sanders (best known to listeners as “America’s Sweetheart”). If you can imagine what would happen if Plato and Carl Sagan were guests on The Daily Show, then you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on here. Each week the trio provides an overview of a philosophical topic, a history of the problem and insights into contemporary thinking. They also take a behind-the-scenes look at the philosophers who came up with these ideas: usually they are kind of nuts (the guy who pioneered Utilitarian ethics had his body mummified and put on display at his college). If you wish your Philosophy 101 course had been more informative, less boring and taught by a professor who drank during class, then this podcast is for you.
All handsome people enjoy a good paradox, so we decided to open up our paradox box again and pick out a few new ones for this episode. A lot of parado...
Are zombies real? Could we all be zombies? On this special Halloween episode, we raise topics from the dead—specifically we’re reanimating our discuss...
In this episode we sort through some listener mail and attempt to answer your most pressing questions. A number of fans wanted to know why we didn’t m...
In this episode we jump around in time. From a conversation last year at a bagel shop, to Paco’s college years and all the way back to the middle age...
Are moral statements objectively true? When we say “stealing for fun is wrong,” are we making a factual claim about the world, or are we just voicing ...
Do we learn everything we know from the world around us, or are there some things we learn independently of our sensory experiences? Rationalists argu...
This is our second show about how proper names work (check out episode 10 for part one). It’s an important topic because much of philosophy is built a...
You might say it’s possible that Tom Selleck could have played Indiana Jones. But what does that actually mean? Can you prove that this statement is t...
Paradoxes have confounded philosophers and handsome people for ages, perhaps since the dawn of language. The oldest ones we have on record come from t...
One of the great debates in philosophy is whether or not moral rules are created by humans or exist independently from us as absolute truths. The Ge...