Jed's Philosophy Corner

"God is dead."  

In this Talkin' About episode I'm joined by my world traveling friend Alexis to discuss freedom.

(Video of talk available on YouTube)

Video available on YouTube.

In this Talkin' About episode I'm joined by my friend Litman to discuss video games. What they meant to us growing up, what we've learned from them, what philosophy might we take away, and what issues video games are facing today.

In this episode, I ask the question: has the internet benefited democracy? To try and answer this, I look at the political philosophical idea of the "public sphere," a term coined by German Philosopher Habermas. This "public sphere," according to Habermas, is an essential entity for a democracy, as it serves as the intermediatary between the people and the state. Without it, the people are unable to generate a genuine public opinion to guide the government. I look at two sides of the original question through the lens of this public sphere, one for yes, and one for no. Given the past few years and the impact the internet has played in politics, it is a neccesary question to ask and answer ourselves, individually and collectively.

In this Talkin' About episode I'm joined by my friend, Maiki, to talk about sexual identity. What it is, and what benefits and drawbacks a person has when labeling themselves. We talk about our own experiences with sexual identites, asexuality and bisexuality, to highlight the difficulties in understanding these types of identites, both for ourselves and others. To give something a name can be at times liberating and limiting. We also talk about media representation of such, and how while there is an increase of portrayal of these identites, there is also a risk of limitation and sterotyping that we ought to be aware of.

There are differing views as to what "normal" sex is. This talk will explain two popular perceptions, as well as introducing a challenge to a normalization of sex in general.

In this Talkin' About I'm joined by my friend Nada as we discuss the idea of trust. What is trust? What is distrust? How do you go about trusting others? What does it feel like when this trust is broken? We both share our thoughts on these questions.

In this talk my friend and I discuss Masculinity, what it is, how our different cultures approach the concept, and how our lives were influenced by it. For better or for worse. We share our stories of how this traditional narrative has impacted us as men.

In this podcast I'm joined by a fellow student to discuss individualism and collectivism. These two philosophies are at times the core perspectives of different cultures. Since I am from the USA and my guest is from China, we share how our respective countries think in accordance with one of these, and all the ups and downs that occur from such, using COVID as a prime example. We also discuss how we might make systematic changes to this, and how given a certain situation or context, a society may need to shift its focus in one of these two directions.