Elucidations
149 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 months ago - ★★★★★ - 161 ratingsElucidations is an unexpected philosophy podcast produced in association with the University of Chicago. Each month, Matt Teichman sits down with a person of philosophical interest to discuss their view on a topic. Now and again, he is joined by an awesome co-host. Some of the guests are philosophy professors, some of the guests are other kinds of professors, and some of the guests are not professors. Either way, the goal is to develop a feel for how the guest’s perspective hangs together interactively.
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Episodes
Episode 148: Christos Lazaridis discusses brain death
October 20, 2023 15:32 - 37 minutes - 52.1 MBIn this episode, Matt sits down with Christos Lazaridis (University of Chicago Medicine) to chat about what brain death is and whether brain death should count as, like, death death. Modern life support technology really hits its stride in the 1960s, allowing doctors to buy themselves more time to save their patients by connecting them to machines that can assist with breathing, blood oxygenation and/or heart pumping. But the flipside to that incredible technological breakthrough was that t...
Episode 147: Gabriella Gonzalez discusses the intersection of algebra and programming
July 15, 2023 17:05 - 40 minutes - 55 MBIn this episode, Matt talks to Gabriella Gonzalez about how basic concepts from the branch of math known as abstract algebra can help us simplify our computer programs and organize our thoughts. Algebra. That thing they make us do in school. What was that again? Oh yeah, that’s right; it’s where you get to manipulate equations containing variables. Like, if I have an equation that looks like this: 2⋅x = 16 Then I can divide both sides by two and get a new version where x stands alone, i...
Episode 146: Gaurav Venkataraman discusses memory in DNA and RNA
March 30, 2023 13:58 - 39 minutes - 54.8 MBIn this episode, Matt sits down with Gaurav Vankataraman (Trisk Bio) to talk about how human memory is physically realized. Where do your memories live? In the brain, right? They’re, like, imprinted there somehow? We often think of memories as analogous with recordings, like when you do an audio recording and the air vibrations get translated into an electrical signal which reorients the magnetic particles on some tape. But is that really how it works? Is the brain some tape waiting to get ...
Episode 145: Andrew Sepielli discusses quietism and metaethics
January 21, 2023 15:40 - 39 minutes - 54.6 MBThis episode, Matt and Joseph sit down with Andrew Sepielli (University of Toronto) to talk about metaethical quietism. His new book on the topic, Pragmatist Quietism, is out now from Oxford University Press. Click here to listen to episode 145 of Elucidations. Metaethical quietism is the view that ethical statements—or anyway, a large portion of the ethical statements we’re usually interested in—can’t be justified or disproved by statements from outside of ethics. There’s something autonom...
Episode 144: Christopher Beem discusses democratic virtues
November 20, 2022 20:30 - 37 minutes - 51.7 MBThis episode, Matt talks to Christopher Beem (Penn State University) about how we can cultivate those skills that conduce to having a functioning democracy. His book on the topic, The Seven Democratic Virtues, is out now from Penn State University Press. The storming of the US Capitol Building in 2021 was an eyebrow-raising event, to say the least. It prompted historians, political scientists, and political philosophers to ask whether deep down, everything was going okay with our democratic...
Episode 143: Mark Linsenmayer discusses alternative models of education
October 05, 2022 12:31 - 44 minutes - 61 MBThis episode, Matt Teichman talks to Mark Linsenmayer about alternative models of education. Mark is creator and host of the Partially Examined Life, Nakedly Examined Music, Pretty Much Pop, and Philosophy vs. Improv podcasts. He is also the author of the recent book, Philosophy For Teens. There’s going to college and there’s listening to podcasts. Both can give you a way to learn new things, so in that general sense, both can count as forms of education. Going to college has advantages ove...
Episode 142: Emily Dupree discusses the rationality of revenge
August 02, 2022 22:24 - 36 minutes - 49.6 MBIn this episode of Elucidations, Matt sits down with Emily Dupree to learn about whether it’s rational or irrational to try to seek revenge. As a culture, we kind can’t decide what we think about revenge. Out of one side of our mouths, we talk a big game about letting bygones be bygones, about how revenge and retaliation lead to cycles of violence, and about how nothing good can really come of getting back at people. But acts of revenge, where clearly warranted, also have a visceral moral a...
Episode 141: Rob Goodman discusses eloquence
June 13, 2022 21:48 - 35 minutes - 48.6 MBThis time around, Matt sits down with Rob Goodman to talk about political eloquence. Goodman is the author of a new book on this topic called Words on Fire, which you can pick up a copy of wherever you like to get books. Can you think of the last time you saw someone give a rousing speech? They step up to the podium with throngs of onlookers staring at them. Somehow, rather than nervously scampering offstage or melting into a puddle, they speak off the cuff in a way that transfixes everyon...
Episode 140: Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko discuss the good life
April 10, 2022 13:22 - 43 minutes - 60.1 MBIntro philosophy classes often get stuck in a rut. Some philosophy classes go through a list of old dead people and try to understand excerpts from some of their most influential writings, over the course of a semester. Could be something like: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche. Other types of intro classes go through a list of topics that contemporary philosophers feel are canonical and have students read papers on those topics. Could be something like: the proble...
Episode 139: Jessica Tizzard discusses the philosophy of pregnancy
February 13, 2022 16:44 - 31 minutes - 43.9 MBThis month, Jessica Tizzard (University of Tuebingen) makes her second appearance on Elucidations to talk to Matt about pregnancy. Human pregnancy is weird. Try talking to a reproductive endochrinologist about it, and you’ll soon find that there’s a lot we don’t really understand about it even at the scientific level. But even when it comes to thinking about pregnancy at the commonsense reasoning level, puzzles begin popping up the second you start trying to think about it systematically. L...
Episode 138: Toby Buckle discusses Mill's liberty principle
January 23, 2022 01:49 - 43 minutes - 59.2 MBThis month, Toby Buckle, host of the Political Philosophy Podcast, returns to talk about John Stuart Mill’s liberty principle! (Also sometimes called the ‘harm principle’.) The occasion for the episode is the recent release of Toby’s cool new book, What is Freedom?, which is out now from Oxford University Press. Get it while it’s hot! John Stuart Mill is probably one of the most influential intellectuals of the 19th century, having penned treatises on markets, logic, feminism, utilitar...
Episode 137: Bryan Caplan discusses open borders
January 02, 2022 20:55 - 1 hour - 101 MBThis month, I talk to Bryan Caplan (George Mason University) about what a world without immigration restrictions could look like. The work discussed in this episode comes out of Bryan’s incredible non-fiction graphic novel, Open Borders, which I highly recommend checking out. Don’t let the comic-book-iness of it fool you; it is 100% accessible and entertaining, but it is also written at the level of detail you’d normally expect to see in a peer-reviewed research paper. One basic fact abou...
Episode 136: Christian Miller discusses virtue and character
October 25, 2021 18:13 - 42 minutes - 58.1 MBThis month, Yuezhen Li and I sit down with Christian Miller (Wake Forest University) to talk about how to be virtuous. Also known as how to be good. ‘Virtue’ is sort of an old-timey word. But the concept is still alive and well today, even though we tend to use different words for it. The idea behind a virtue is: there’s such a thing as being a good person and doing good things, and that there are different ways of being a good person and doing good things. For example, you can be good in t...
Episode 135: Sara Protasi discusses the philosophy of envy
July 15, 2021 14:20 - 38 minutes - 52.2 MBThis month, Charlie Wiland and I sit down with Sara Protasi to talk about envy. Which she just came out with a whole book about! Awesome. Click here to download episode 135 of Elucidations. You might think that it’s pretty clear what envy is. Isn’t envy just when someone else has something you want, you don’t have it, and that makes you feel annoyed? Well, kind of—but there’s a little more to it. For example, you have to view yourself as similar to the other person in the relevant respect; ...
Episode 134: Claire Kirwin discusses value realism
May 29, 2021 15:03 - 40 minutes - 56 MBThis month, Josh Kaufman and I talk to Claire Kirwin about whether things are objectively good or bad, or whether it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Professor Kirwin is a fan of peanut butter cup ice cream, and Josh and I are fans of mint chocolate chip. Is there an objective fact of the matter about whether either is good, or whether one is better than the other? Or are we all just expressing our preferences, i.e. doing nothing more than providing information about ourselves? Can goodne...
Episode 133: Aristotle discusses his philosophy
April 04, 2021 15:30 - 45 minutes - 62.3 MBThis month, Agnes Callard and I talk to Aristotle about his philosophy, including his work on physics, biology, and ethics. Featuring an introduction by our awesome intern, Noadia Steinmetz-Silber! Click here to download Episode 133 of Elucidations. Not everyone is familiar with Aristotle’s work today, but the case could be made that science, political theory, logic, ethics, and philosophy exist in their current form largely due to the precedent he set. That said, in this episode, Aristotle...
Episode 132: Rebecca Valentine discusses queer hackerspaces
March 02, 2021 01:22 - 46 minutes - 52.7 MBThis month, we sit down with Rebecca Valentine (co-founder of Queerious Labs) to talk about anarchism, feminism, tech culture, and creative hacking. Hack this, hack that. What is a hacker, anyway? In pop culture, it’s common to use the term ‘hacker’ as a synonym for ‘cybercriminal’—that is, a person who engages in illegal activity over a computer network, usually involving gaining access to something they shouldn’t. But if you’ve ever spent any time in the tech community, you’ll know that ...
Episode 131: Greg Salmieri discusses egoism and altruism
January 03, 2021 00:30 - 49 minutes - 56.9 MBThis month, Greg Salmieri (University of Texas at Austin) returns for his third appearance on Elucidations, this time to talk about doing right by yourself. What was the last thing you did? The last thing I did was pull a shot of espresso. I wouldn’t say I made coffee as an end in itself, even though I love the taste of the roast I just used. If I had to tell you the main reason I made a coffee, it was in order to speed along my transformation from groggy podcast host to awake podcast host....
Episode 130: Jessica Tizzard discusses weakness of the will
November 22, 2020 22:15 - 36 minutes - 41.2 MBThis month, Long Dang and I sit down to talk to Jessica Tizzard (University of Connecticut, Storrs) about weakness of the will. You’re at a party hosted by a close friend. It’s been three hours since you got there, and the evening thus far has been chock full of scintillating conversation, a fun round of Charades followed by Assassins, first rate cocktails, and a dessert to die for. You’ve just now been invited to play one of your favorite games, which usually takes about 90 minutes to comp...
Episode 129: Nethanel Lipshitz discusses discrimination
September 27, 2020 13:14 - 51 minutes - 58.6 MBThis month, Ben Andrew and I are joined by Nethanel Lipshitz (Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University) to talk about discrimination. If someone treats me unequally--that is, if they give other people a relative advantage but not me--am I the victim of discrimination? Our guest says yes. That is enough for me to count as having been discriminated against, and that is enough for it to be morally wrong. All fine and dandy. But then what's the big deal? The big deal is that the standard view...
Episode 128: Melissa Fusco discusses free choice permission
August 16, 2020 15:44 - 41 minutes - 47.4 MBOne of the foundational ideas behind philosophical logic is that when you say something, that has further implications beyond the single thing you said. Like, if I think ‘every single frog is green’ and ‘Fran is a frog’, then I am committed to thinking that Fran is green. I don't have to have actually thought to myself or said out loud that Fran is green—I'm just required to believe that Fran is green, given that I thought the first two things, and if I fail to believe that, I've made some k...
Episode 127 - Nic Koziolek discusses self-knowledge
July 15, 2020 02:55 - 40 minutes - 46.7 MBIn this episode, Nic Koziolek (Washington University in St. Louis) returns to talk to me and Nora Bradford about self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, as philosophers use the term, is a word for when you know something about one of your own mental states. Like when I really enjoy some pizza and note that I'm enjoying it. Someone else might ask me: ‘Hey Matt, do you like that pizza?’ And I'm typically the best person to ask about that, which is a sign that I typically know whether I like t...
Episode 126 - Listener Q&A with Agnes Callard and Ben Callard
June 11, 2020 14:40 - 47 minutes - 20.4 MBThree philosophers. Eight head-scratchers. 50 minutes. In this episode, Agnes Callard, Ben Callard and I respond to the world's most awesome listener-recorded questions. A lot of people have the impression that philosophy is, first and foremost, an enterprise in which college professor types read books that no one can understand, then issue a response in the form of more books that no one can understand. It's not. Don't get me wrong—I love books. I'm constantly trying to talk friends and ac...
Episode 125: James Koppel discusses counterfactual inference and automated explanation
April 17, 2020 12:47 - 38 minutes - 35.6 MBEpisode link here. In this episode, James Koppel (MIT, James Koppel Coaching) joins me and Dominick Reo to talk about how we can write software to help identify the causes of disasters. These days, there's often a tendency to think of software primarily as a venue for frivolous pleasures. Maybe there's a new app that's really good at hooking me up with videos of alpacas on skateboards, or making my mom look like a hot dog when she's video chatting with me, or helping me decide what flavor ...
Elucidations Episode 124: Graham Priest discusses Buddhist political philosophy
March 21, 2020 15:00 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBEpisode link here: https://elucidations.now.sh/posts/episode-124/ In this episode, Graham Priest returns to discuss Buddhist political philosophy with me and Henry Curtis. (Last month, we talked with him about Buddhist metaphysics.) Last month, we discussed the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: that suffering happens, that this suffering is (partially) caused by emotional attachment, that you can deal with it by changing your headspace, and that you can change your headspace by understandin...
Episode 123: Graham Priest discusses Buddhist metaphysics
February 15, 2020 16:16 - 48 minutes - 44 MBIn this episode, Matt Teichman and Henry Curtis talk to Graham Priest (CUNY Graduate Center) about the philosophical foundations of Buddhism. Buddhism isn't just a religion--it's an entire family of philosophical traditions that took root all over the Asian continent for thousands of years. The historical Buddha articulated views in what we consider to be many different areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. For this episode, we're focusing on the meta...
Episode 122: Frithjof Bergmann and David Helmbold discuss new work, new culture
January 17, 2020 13:02 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBIn this episode, Frithjof Bergmann and David Helmbold make the case for a different approach to working in the modern world. A lot of us experience our day to day work as a 'mild disease'--not terrible, not excruciating, but also not our #1 choice about how to spend weekdays. Instead, they argue, a person's work should be the best part of their life. But making that a possibility for everyone requires not just our social structures to transform--it requires a kind of personal psychological t...
Episode 121: Aaron Ben Ze'ev discusses the arc of love
December 05, 2019 13:34 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBIn this episode, Matt Teichman and Julia Liu talk to Aaron Ben Ze'ev (University of Haifa) about lifelong romantic love. What is love? Is it just a private feeling that each individual person experiences, or is it something that crucially involves multiple people? Our guest argues that although it is primarily a feeling, it is also something that emerges out of the interaction between two people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 120: Robin Dembroff on going beyond the gender binary
November 10, 2019 17:50 - 32 minutes - 29.8 MBEver wonder what 'gender non-binary' means? Don't worry--Robin Dembroff (Yale University) is here to walk us through the relevant terminology, along with the everyday moral issues that are tied up with the gender concepts we use. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 119: Stephanie Kapusta discusses misgendering
October 15, 2019 03:55 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBIn this episode, our guest argues that in addition to ordinary individual cases of misgendering, in which one person gets another person's gender wrong when they address them, there's a broader sense of the term. In the broader sense, a philosophical account of what gender is can also misgender people. How? The idea is that in signing yourself up for an incorrect philosophical account of gender, you could be committing yourself to the view that certain people are not the gender they (correctl...
Episode 118: Tyler Cowen discusses Stubborn Attachments
September 12, 2019 17:50 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBIn this episode, Tyler Cowen lays out an interesting normative ethical theory according to which we should be utilitarians, but with a twist: we should be utilitarians who care just as much about the humans of the future as we care about people now. Re-emphasizing our commitment to future people, he argues, has the effect of allowing us to embrace utilitarianism wholeheartedly without having to feel like we aren't doing enough. Why? The best way to make life better for future generations is t...
Episode 117: Brian L. Frye says to plagiarize this podcast
August 30, 2019 20:50 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBIn this episode, Brian L. Frye (University of Kentucky) argues that we should think more carefully about our moral reaction to instances of plagiarism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 116: Tommy Curry discusses black male studies
August 05, 2019 23:56 - 59 minutes - 54.4 MBIn this episode, Tommy Curry argues that if we really want to understand gender-based oppression, we have to look at how black men have been targeted for it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 115: Katherine Ritchie discusses social groups
July 01, 2019 00:50 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBIn this episode, Katherine Ritchie (CUNY Graduate Center, City College) lays out what it means to belong to a social group, and what kind of thing a social group is. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 114: Sally Haslanger discusses ideology
May 14, 2019 14:08 - 40 minutes - 37.4 MBWhat is the nature of a person's political outlook? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 113: Tom Pashby discusses quantum mechanics
April 08, 2019 12:45 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBIn this episode, Tom Pashby explains how quantum physics is different from theories that came before, and runs through some of the ways that philosophers and physicists have tried to make intuitive sense of this challenging framework. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 112: Myisha Cherry discusses the skill of conversation
March 07, 2019 12:21 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBIn this episode, Myisha Cherry argues that having a productive conversation with someone often involves explicitly laying out each person's background experiences and expectations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 111: Greg Kobele discusses mathematical linguistics
January 27, 2019 23:10 - 41 minutes - 37.7 MBIn this episode, Greg Kobele discusses how abstract mathematics can be useful for arriving at a unified theory of what patterns a person has mastery over when they can speak a language. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 110: Chike Jeffers discusses the social and political philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois
December 15, 2018 14:00 - 37 minutes - 34 MBWhat is the best way forward for a group of people fairly recently freed from slavery? Booker T. Washington emphasized economic enfranchisement, whereas W.E.B. Du Bois thought it was necessary to achieve political enfranchisement alongside economic enfranchisement. Join us as our guest discusses how threads from this 100-year-old debate persist in today's discussions about racial justice in America. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 109: Bonus Episode with Matt Teichman and Toby Buckle
October 13, 2018 19:56 - 47 minutes - 43.6 MBBonus episode! In this joint edition of Elucidations and the Political Philosophy Podcast, Matt Teichman and Toby Buckle sit down and have a freeform conversation about why we do podcasts, the nature of moral disagreement, and the existence of political divides. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 108: Mariam Thalos discusses freedom
September 15, 2018 22:43 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBWhat do you think of yourself as? A musician? A mother? A political organizer? In this episode, our guest argues that your ability to act and reason freely is premised on your ability to shape and sometimes even invent the labels you apply to yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 107: Linda Martín Alcoff discusses identity and history
August 03, 2018 18:14 - 50 minutes - 45.9 MBIn this episode, Linda Martín Alcoff discusses the subtle ways that things like your race, gender, sexual orientation, and class can influence your life. She argues that the best way to understand that kind of influence is by looking to the history of the relevant social group. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 106: R. A. Briggs discusses gender
June 22, 2018 22:15 - 37 minutes - 34.3 MBIn this episode, R. A. Briggs discusses some complexities underlying our use of the terms 'man' and 'woman.' Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 105: R. A. Briggs discusses epistemic decision theory
April 20, 2018 22:46 - 37 minutes - 33.9 MBHow do we tell what the best strategies for changing our beliefs on the basis of new evidence might be? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 104: Seth Yalcin discusses the question-sensitivity of belief
March 04, 2018 16:13 - 38 minutes - 35.6 MBIn this episode, Seth Yalcin argues that every belief we have is implicitly framed as the answer to a question, and that at different times we're considering different questions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 103: Brian Leiter explains why we should think about Marx
January 09, 2018 13:30 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBIn this episode, we talk to Brian Leiter about why the writings of Karl Marx are helpful for understanding the current situation of the working and middle class in America, the 2016 Presidential election, and related topics! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 102: Josh Knobe discusses the true self
December 01, 2017 13:50 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBIn this episode, Josh Knobe discusses a series of experiments that try to tease out what we implicitly assume about who a person really is, deep down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 101: Miranda Fricker discusses blame and forgiveness
October 21, 2017 19:05 - 49 minutes - 45.4 MBIn this episode, Miranda Fricker argues that the purpose of blaming someone is to communicate to them your sense of why what they did was wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 100: Agnes Callard discusses aspiration
September 22, 2017 00:30 - 49 minutes - 44.9 MBIn this episode, Agnes Callard explains why she thinks aspiration is the process of moving from one set of values to a new set of values in the way you live your life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 99: Steven Nadler discusses Spinoza on freedom
August 13, 2017 13:05 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MBIn this episode, Steven Nadler discusses Benedict de Spinoza's unique reason-centric conception of what it is to live a good life and be free. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.