Is life worth living? Can believing in something help make it a reality? Do emotions generate actions, or is it the other way around? UMass Lowell professor John Kaag describes how William James, the nineteenth-century philosopher and psychologist, approached and answered these questions. (August 10, 2020)
University of South Florida professor Manu Samnotra discusses what Mohandas Gandhi thought about truth and how to attain it; self-discipline and how to practice it; and modern civilization and how to act in relation to it. (January 8, 2019)
What can we learn from Ralph Waldo Emerson about collectivity and about overcoming social divisions? University at Albany professor Eric Keenaghan takes on the conventional notion that Emerson pushed a kind of radical individualism. (August 27, 2012)
Andrew Pessin, Connecticut College philosophy professor, discusses his book “The God Question: What Famous Thinkers from Plato to Dawkins Have Said About the Divine.” (October 13, 2009)
Joseph Levine grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household and later became an atheist. The UMAss Amherst professor wrote about his journey in the volume “Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life.” (December 20, 2010)
An examination of the relationship between quantum theory and notions of identity and individuality with Peter Pesic, St. John’s College instructor and author of “Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature.” (March 16, 2004)
Meditation may appear to be an intensely private activity, but U.C. Santa Cruz professor Dean Mathiowetz believes it has significant political potential. (July 11, 2016)
Robert Barnes of the Victor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy discusses “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Frankl’s classic exploration of psychology, philosophy, and the meaning of life. (October 8, 2019)
Thriller writer Flynn Berry discusses her latest novel, “Northern Spy” with host Richard Wolinsky. Flynn Berry won the Edgar Award for best first novel for “Under the Harrows.” This novel is set in the near future in Northern Ireland as tensions increase between Catholics and Protestants.
Guest: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of the book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
