In this episode, Abigail Favale talks with author, teacher, and philosopher Peter Boghossian about the culture wars. In a time of cancelling and defunding, critical theories and political extremism, tolerance and moral orthodoxy, how do we navigate the turbulent social and political scene we find ourselves in? Does the standard of reality depend upon individual experience or on hard data? What role are academic institutions playing in the rapidly occurring cultural shift?

Dr. Peter Boghossian's main focus is bringing the tools of professional philosophers to people in a wide variety of contexts. Peter has a teaching pedigree spanning more than 25 years and 30 thousand students - in prisons, hospitals, public and private schools, seminaries, universities, Fortune 100 companies, and small businesses. His fundamental objective is to teach people how to think through what often seem to be intractable problems. Peter's primary research areas are critical thinking and moral reasoning. His doctoral research studies, funded by the State of Oregon and supported by the Oregon Department of Corrections, consisted of using the Socratic method to help prison inmates to increase their critical thinking and moral reasoning abilities and to increase their desistance to criminal behavior. Peter’s writing has appeared in a large selection of publications, including The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, among many others.

Dr. Abigail Favale completed her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she was a recipient of the competitive Overseas Research Award. In 2011, her dissertation was granted the Samuel Rutherford Prize for the most distinguished thesis in English literature.

To connect with Dr. Favale's work, visit her website.

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