88 Philosophy Podcasts to Help You Answer the Big Questions in Life

in Philosophy, Podcasts | December 1st, 2020

The big ques­tions of phi­los­o­phy, sim­mer­ing since antiq­ui­ty, still press upon us as they did the Athe­ni­ans of old (and all ancient peo­ple who have phi­los­o­phized): what oblig­a­tions do we real­ly owe to fam­i­ly, friends, or strangers? Do we live as free agents or beings con­trolled by fate or the gods (or genes or a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion)? What is a good life? How do we cre­ate soci­eties that max­i­mize free­dom and hap­pi­ness (or what­ev­er ulti­mate val­ues we hold dear)? What is lan­guage, what is art, and where did they come from?

These ques­tions may not be answered with a brute appeal to facts, though with­out sci­ence we are grop­ing in the dark. Reli­gion takes big ques­tions seri­ous­ly but tells con­verts to take its super­nat­ur­al answers on faith. “Between the­ol­o­gy and sci­ence there is a No Man’s Land,” writes Bertrand Rus­sell, “exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is phi­los­o­phy.” Phi­los­o­phy reach­es beyond cer­tain­ty, to “spec­u­la­tions on mat­ters as to which def­i­nite knowl­edge has, so far, been unascer­tain­able.” And yet, like sci­ence, “it appeals to human rea­son rather than author­i­ty.”

The con­cerns of phi­los­o­phy have nar­rowed since Russell’s time, not to men­tion the time of Socrates, put to death for lead­ing the youth astray. But pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy still raise the ire of the pub­lic, accused of seduc­ing stu­dents from the safe spaces of sacred dog­ma and sec­u­lar util­i­ty. “To study phi­los­o­phy,” wrote Cicero, “is noth­ing but to pre­pare one­self to die.” It is a poet­ic turn of phrase, and yes, we must con­front mor­tal­i­ty, but phi­los­o­phy also asks us to con­front the lim­its of human knowl­edge and pow­er in the face of the unknown. Dan­ger­ous indeed.

Should you decide to embark on this jour­ney your­self, you will meet with no small num­ber of fel­low trav­el­ers along the way. Bring some ear­phones, you can hear them in the trove of 88 phi­los­o­phy pod­casts com­piled on the phi­los­o­phy web­site Dai­ly Nous. “How many phi­los­o­phy pod­casts are there?” asks Dai­ly Nous, who brings us this list. “Over 80, and they take a vari­ety of forms.” See 15 below, with descrip­tions, see the rest at Dai­ly Nous, and enjoy your sojourn into “no man’s land.”

See the full list here. And explore our col­lec­tion of 200 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Learn Phi­los­o­phy with a Wealth of Free Cours­es, Pod­casts and YouTube Videos

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

Dis­cov­er the Cre­ative, New Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast Hi-Phi Nation: The First Sto­ry-Dri­ven Show About Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Famed New Orleans Music Producer Mark Bingham Discusses His Songs and Collaborations: A Nakedly Examined Music Conversation (#136)

in Music, Podcasts | November 27th, 2020

You’re most like­ly to know Mark’s work from the string intro­duc­tion to REM’s “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple,” but he’s been a sta­ple of the New Orleans record­ing scene since he moved there in 1982, pro­duc­ing groups like Flat Duo Jets, Glenn Bran­ca, John Scofield, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful, and the Rebirth Brass Band. He and his stu­dio were also fea­tured on the HBO show Treme. He had a whole life­time of musi­cal devel­op­ment before then, though, first get­ting signed as a teenag­er in Los Ange­les and record­ing a sin­gle as a solo artist. He then left to study music in Indi­ana where he was one of two gui­tarists and sev­er­al singers for the very adven­tur­ous, the­atri­cal Scream­ing Gyp­sy Ban­dits, who released their one album, In the Eye, in 1973. Fol­low­ing the times, he eschewed pro­gres­sive rock for a more min­i­mal­ist but still very arty style in New York City with a band called Social Climbers. He’s released two albums since then under his own name in between pro­duc­tion work: A jazz-rock inflect­ed singer-song­writer album called I Passed for Human in 1989, and then a more root­sy endeav­or called Psalms Of Vengeance in 2009. He is due for a sig­nif­i­cant archive release with­in the next year with some­thing like ten albums of addi­tion­al com­po­si­tions.

In this episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, we pick four of his songs to play in full and dis­cuss. After a short intro­duc­tion over the song “Flies R All Around Me” by Scream­ing Gyp­sy Ban­dits from Back to Dog­head (1970, but not released until 2009), the first full dis­cus­sion cov­ers “Pissoffgod.com” (fea­tured in the video link in this post) from Psalms of Vengeance (2009). We then turn to “Ash Wednes­day and Lent” by Ed Sanders (music by Mark Bing­ham) from Ed’s album Poems for New Orleans (2007). We then look back to “That’s Why” by Social Climbers from their self-titled album (1981). We con­clude with “Blood Moon,” a group impro­vi­sa­tion by Michot’s Melody Mak­ers from Cos­mic Cajuns from Sat­urn (2020). This is a band that plays most­ly tra­di­tion­al cajun music that Mark was pro­duc­ing and has now for two albums joined as their gui­tarist.

Want more? Lis­ten to “Flies” in full. Hear the whole Social Climbers album (1981). Mark’s first solo album fea­tured this Coltrane clas­sic. Lis­ten to Mark back­ing Aaron Neville and John­ny Adams on a Hal Will­ner album of Kurt Weil tunes. Expe­ri­ence one of the tunes he wrote for Allen Gins­berg to read poet­ry over. Watch him live with Michot’s Melody Mak­ers.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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Kevin Allison (The State, RISK!) Discusses Confessional Comedy on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #70

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 25th, 2020

Kevin was in the infa­mous, NYU-based sketch com­e­dy group The State which had a show for a sea­son on MTV and seemed like it was going to get picked up by CBS, but no. After sev­er­al years get­ting over this dis­ap­point­ment, Kevin dis­cov­ered a new out­let for his ener­gies: He deliv­ers, curates, and coach­es per­son­al sto­ries (bor­der­ing on too per­son­al, thus the “risk”) for his stage show and pod­cast RISK!

Kevin joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss this idio­syn­crat­ic form: Do the sto­ries have to be fun­ny? Can you change things? What’s the rela­tion to auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, humor­ous essays a la David Sedaris? What might be too per­son­al or actu­al­ly indi­cat­ing trau­ma to actu­al­ly share on RISK? This seems like some­thing any­one can do, so what’s the role of craft and sto­ry-telling his­to­ry?

Lis­ten to RISK at risk-show.com, and watch many sto­ries on the RISK! YouTube chan­nel. Also: kevinallison.net, thestorystudio.org, and @thekevinallison. Kev­in’s sto­ry about pros­ti­tut­ing him­self is about 14 min­utes into this episode. Hear Kevin on Marc Maron’s WTF! Lis­ten to that audio guide Kevin men­tions, “What Every RISK! Sto­ry­teller Should Know.” Read about the four lies of sto­ry­telling.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, the hosts tell (or at least out­line) their own RISK!-like sto­ries, and the result is pre­dictably too per­son­al for our pub­lic feed.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Pop Songs with Narrative: Pretty Much Pop (#69) Discusses Tunes Ranging from Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” to “The Pina Colada Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 18th, 2020

Plen­ty of songs pur­port to tell sto­ries, and the nar­ra­tive bal­lad of course has a long enough his­to­ry that the two forms cer­tain­ly aren’t alien. But how do our lis­ten­ing prac­tices con­di­tioned by pop music jibe with rec­og­niz­ing and under­stand­ing nar­ra­tive?

Singer/songwriter and short sto­ry author Rod Picott joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about clas­sics by writ­ers like Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash, for­ma­tive night­mares like “Leader of the Pack” and “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song), bor­der­line cas­es like “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and more. We also con­sid­er how this form relates to musi­cal the­ater, music videos, sound­tracks, and com­mer­cials.

We tried to stick to pop­u­lar songs, but most of us are pret­ty old. You can lis­ten and read the lyrics if you’re not fol­low­ing:

Why these songs? Well, we found a few lists online:

Hear Mark inter­view Rod on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Learn more at rodpicott.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, an update on Rod’s music plus polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion and more.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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The Biblical Sci-Fi of “Raised by Wolves”–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #68

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | November 16th, 2020

What hap­pens when a male android loves a female android VERY much, and they nurse human embryos togeth­er on a dis­tant plan­et after flee­ing from war-torn Earth? Why the female android flies and makes a bunch of peo­ple explode with her eyes, that’s what hap­pens! …In the first episode of this bonkers HBO Max series by Aaron Guzikows­ki (with notable assis­tance from Rid­ley Scott of Alien and Blade Run­ner fame).

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er reflect on how much we’re sup­posed to under­stand, what if any char­ac­ter we’re sup­posed to iden­ti­fy with, whether the imagery is just TOO heavy-hand­ed, and how this show com­pares with relat­ed sci-fi like West­world or post-apoc­a­lyp­tic shows like The Walk­ing Dead. Beware: Spoil­ers abound in this one, so you might want to watch the show, or just let us reveal its weird­ness to you.

Here are some arti­cles to feast on:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Peter Milton Walsh of The Apartments Rejects Assembly-Line Recording: A Nakedly Examined Music Conversation (#135)

in Music, Podcasts | November 13th, 2020

Aus­tralian singer-song­writer Peter Mil­ton Walsh start­ed The Apart­ments in the late ’70s, and our inter­view begins with a snip­pet of the open­ing track from, “Help” from his 1979 Return of the Hyp­no­tist EP. He also around this time played with the Go Betweens and oth­er groups, and released The Apart­ments’ first LP, The Evening Visits…and Stays for Years, in 1985, a heart-wrench­ing affair which made it onto the New Music Express “albums of the year” list. This led to some sin­gles, one of which–“The Shyest Time”–made it onto the sound­track of the 1987 John Hugh­es film Some Kind of Won­der­ful.

The band had all the moody jan­gling of ear­ly REM, the Smiths, and The Psy­che­del­ic Furs, with a unique front man, strong melodies, and the mood of the moment? So why (pre­sum­ably) have you not heard of this group? Their 1993 album drift (the first full album since their debut) was appar­ent­ly a big hit in France, but none of their work sold par­tic­u­lar­ly well in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. As Peter reveals on this episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, he did­n’t much like high-pres­sure stu­dio record­ing, result­ing in whole eras of his song­writ­ing left large­ly undoc­u­ment­ed.

Per­son­al tragedy also derailed his career from the late ’90s until the late ’00s when he returned to live per­form­ing and even­tu­al­ly released a cou­ple of real­ly dev­as­tat­ing albums, includ­ing 2015’s No Song, No Spell, No Madri­gal and the new­ly released In and Out of the Light.

On each episode of the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Pod­cast, host Mark Lin­sen­may­er plays four of an artist’s songs in full and dis­cuss­es them with the song­writer at length. Here Mark and Peter dis­cuss the struc­ture and record­ing of two songs off the new album: “What’s Beau­ty to Do?” and “Where You Used to Be.” They then look back to the mid­dle of The Apart­ments’ ’90s out­put with “Sun­set Hotel” from Fête Foraine (1996), a song cap­tur­ing his obser­va­tions of a group of hero­in addicts. Final­ly you’ll hear “Look­ing for Anoth­er Town” from that 2015 come-back album.

For more Apart­ments: The first come-back song was real­ly 2011’s “Black Rib­bon,” which you can watch him play solo. Per­haps my favorite song he’s done is the doom-epic “What’s Left of Your Nerve” from drift. You can watch a recent live ver­sion of “Sun­set Hotel” and catch the offi­cial video for “What’s Beau­ty to Do.” More at theapartmentsmusic.com.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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“Borat” on Politics and Embarrassment–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast Discussion #67

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 5th, 2020

Let’s stop obsess­ing about elec­tion mat­ters and con­sid­er instead a clown who brings out racism in rubes. Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, Bri­an Hirt, and our guest musician/actor Aaron David Glea­son con­sid­er the com­e­dy of Sacha Baron Cohen, in par­tic­u­lar the new Borat Sub­se­quent Moviefilm, which you should def­i­nite­ly go watch before lis­ten­ing, unless it’s the kind of thing that so repuls­es you that you’ll nev­er watch it, in which case this is the pod­cast to tell you what the fuss is about.

A few ques­tions we explore: Is it uneth­i­cal to use unwit­ting peo­ple who signed your release form as your sup­port­ing cast? Is it OK to use racism to expose racism? Are cam­eras now so ubiq­ui­tous that many peo­ple feel per­fect­ly com­fort­able let­ting their true col­ors show on film? How dehu­man­iz­ing is the nature of retail in Amer­i­ca that all these shop keep­ers would go along with Borat’s bizarre and/or racist requests? Cohen claims that this new film was about demon­strat­ing the human­i­ty of his sub­jects; how evi­dent was that pur­pose on screen? How does this film dif­fer from Cohen’s oth­er work? Was the film actu­al­ly fun­ny, or did it tran­scend (or fall short of) com­e­dy in its pol­i­tics and its king-size serv­ings of embar­rass­ment?

Watch Cohen and Maria Bakalo­va on Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca explain­ing the film. Look at the Wikipedia arti­cle for info on how and when sequences were shot. You can browse through the crit­i­cal reac­tions your­self.

After we record­ed this, Cohen pro­vid­ed finan­cial help to his very sym­pa­thet­ic vic­tim, Jeanise Jones (the babysit­ter). And to set­tle one issue that came up in our con­ver­sa­tion, Judith Dim Evans (the nice old lady in the tem­ple who sub­se­quent­ly passed away) did­n’t know the gag dur­ing film­ing, but Cohen revealed it right after­wards.

Hear Aaron’s music on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #71. Lis­ten to Aaron, Eri­ca, Mark, and oth­ers includ­ing Lucy Law­less and Emi­ly Perkins on the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Play­ers’ read­ing of Lysis­tra­ta. Learn more about Aaron at aarondavidgleason.com, and you can fol­low him on Insta­gram @aarondavidgleason.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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What Scares Us, and How Does this Manifest in Film? A Halloween Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (#66)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 30th, 2020

Why do peo­ple enjoy being scared by films? How does what counts as fright­en­ing in a film actu­al­ly con­nect with what scares us in real life, and how does this in turn relate to child­hood fears? What’s the deal with “hor­ror” movies that are good but not scary or that are ter­ri­ble yet still scary in some way? Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by actor/special effects-guy Nathan Shel­ton (who runs the Fright­mare The­atre Pod­cast) for a Hal­loween con­ver­sa­tion where no one gets a rock.

We present our picks for what scared us as kids: Tril­o­gy of Ter­ror, Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers (1978), Dark Night of the Scare­crow, and Copy­cat, and go on about Arachno­pho­bia, The Blair Witch Project, Hal­loween, Fri­day the 13th, The Thing, and Night­mare on Elm Street. We also dis­cus­sion hor­ror aimed at women, body hor­ror, tropopho­bia, hor­ror movie music, and Stephen King. Final­ly, we con­sid­er the revival in art hor­ror by the likes of Mike Flana­gan (Dr. Sleep, Haunt­ing of Bly Manor), Ari Aster (Mid­som­mar, Hered­i­tary), and Robert Eggers (The Witch).

We drew on a break-down on the var­i­ous ele­ments that make up the hor­ror genre from Matt Glas­by, in an arti­cle called “The Scari­est Films Ever Made and How They Fright­en Us.”

For a lengthy aca­d­e­m­ic look at the top­ic, try “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empir­i­cal Research on Psy­cho­log­i­cal Respons­es to Hor­ror Films” (2019) by G. Neil Mar­tin.

If you don’t mind a key scene from The Thing (1982) being spoiled, check out this land­mark grody spe­cial effect scene.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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