Are we prisoners of the past or is radical revolution possible? Revolutionaries say we can get out. Conservatives say we shouldn’t even want to. But maybe both sides get it wrong! Do we need a past to have a future? Join Taylor, Eric, and special guest Professor Bryan Van Norden, an expert in traditional Chinese philosophy, as we take a hard look at tradition. What is it? And what, if anything, is it good for?

Philosopher Helen De Cruz joins Eric and Taylor this week to discuss the unsettling possibility that insight and understanding might not actually make us happier or more at peace with our existence. Maybe they just bum us out. Tune in and hear what the heretical Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza had to say about this three and a half centuries ago. 

Are we our bodies? Do we also have souls? Do we have minds? Do haircuts diminish our true selves? Can our selves be hit by a bus or uploaded onto The Cloud? The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s body couldn’t be with us for this episode, but he joins us in spirit to tell us why we only meet people in the flesh.

Is God Dead? If He is, did we kill Him?  If God is dead does that mean Humanity is dead too -- or at least that the category of being a human being is in need of some serious re-appraisal?  Taylor and Eric discuss these questions and both theism and atheism get re-evaluated.  Along the way, we discuss Nietzsche and the most famous sponge in the history of philosophy. 

This week Eric and Taylor wonder and worry about what it means to try hard and still feel like you’re falling short. Are there objective standards of excellence or does happiness require just staying in your comfort zone? 

Is free will an illusion? Are we puppets? When we think we are thinking (or acting) freely, are we actually just cogs in a heartless, meaningless, deterministic cosmic machine?

Are we utterly dependent on others or should we look inward and try to be true to ourselves? Can we do both? Or neither? This week Eric and Taylor look to Ralph Waldo Emerson for some help with this deeply unsettling question. 

This week Eric and Taylor talk with Cristen Conger, host of the podcast Unladylike, about whether we might all be better off without masculinity, or maybe femininity, or maybe gender altogether. Would this be possible? Would it be a step forward? Tune in and find out. 

In this episode Eric and Taylor grapple with the problem of moral luck. Are we in control of being decent human beings and doing the right thing or are we at the mercy of circumstance and maybe even of our own character? Listen, feel unsettled, then feel okay.