All seating for this performance is first-come, first-served. 

This show is 13+.

Please do not bring infants to the show.

90 minutes per show

Philosophy Talk is excited to announce eight new shows to be recorded live at The Marsh Theater in San Francisco and Berkeley!  The recordings are all scheduled for Sundays on four different dates (two shows each date): April 29th, 2012, July 15th, 2012.

Sunday, April 29th, 2012– Berkeley
Identity and Place in a Global Age 
with Bharati Mukherjee 12:00 pm

Sunday, April 29th, 2012– Berkeley
Hypocrisy
with Lawrence Quill 3:00 pm

Sunday, July 15th, 2012– San Francisco
Forbidden Words
with Chris Hom 12:00 pm

Sunday, July 15th, 2012 – San Francisco
Turbo-charging the Mind
with Michael Vassar 3:00 pm



"Philosophy Talk' is as accessible as it is thoughtful…" Los Angeles Times

"An American radio show, 'Philosophy Talk,' could teach British broadcasting a thing or two about quality intellectual debate…one of the great joys of American radio. It's radio that knows how to talk." The Guardian UK


PHILOSOPHY TALK is a weekly, one-hour public radio series that originates from San Francisco's KALW 91.7fm, Sunday mornings at 10am. With a down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, the program brings the richness of philosophic thought to everyday subjects. Topics are lofty (Truth, Beauty, Justice), arresting (Terrorism, Intelligent Design, Suicide), and engaging (Baseball, Love, Happiness). Not a lecture or a college course, its philosophy in action! Philosophy Talk gives its audience the opportunity to explore issues of importance in a thoughtful, friendly fashion, where thinking is encouraged.

Sunday, January 22nd – Berkeley

1. 12:00pm - Poetry as a Way of Knowing with Jane Hirshfield
   What is poetry? Mere word play? A pretty, or at any rate striking, way of expressing thought and emotion? Or does great poetry involve an approach to the world that provides insight and information not available in other ways? Ken and John explore how poetry can illuminate what we know with award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield, author of Come, Thief and other poetic works of philosophical richness.
2. 3:00pm - What Are Leaders Made of? with Deborah Rhode
   There seems to be a paradox in leadership: the qualities of ruthlessness and opportunism necessary to attain power and become a leader are not necessarily the qualities of morality and a sense of justice that make for a good leader. Do the traits that make it likely that someone will become a leader correlate positively or negatively with the traits that make a good and effective leader? Do our democratic institutions lead to better leaders than, say, a lottery like the Athenians used? Ken and John ask what leaders are – and should be – made of with Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode, co-author of Moral Leadership: The Theory and Practice of Power, Judgment, and Policy.
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Sunday, April 29th – Berkeley

1. 12:00pm - Identity and Place in a Global Age with Bharati Mukherjee
   Throughout human history, people have tended to live and die in the same place, or at least the same region, in which they¹re born. Place is an important part of one's identity. But what happens when people are deprived of this sense of place? What psychological effects do emigrants, exiles, and expatriates endure? What happens to the importance of place when community membership can be based on common interests among people linked by email and facebook? Do we risk losing an important part of human life? Or do we gain freedom from the lottery of birth? John and Ken situate themselves with UC Berkeley English Professor Bharati Mukherjee, author of Miss New India and other novels exploring migration, alienation, and identity.  
2. 3:00pm - Hypocrisy with Lawrence Quill
   Hypocrites believe one thing, but do another. Jefferson opposed slavery, but owned slaves. Jesus professed universal love, but cursed an innocent fig tree. Jerry Brown opposes the death penalty, but as governor of California will be responsible for executions. Hypocrites all ­ but vile hypocrites? Surely it was better that Jefferson was a hypocrite, and articulated the case against slavery, than not opposing it at all. Does it take courage to defend a view that you, yourself, don't have the courage or the character to follow through on? John and Ken try to practice what they preach with Lawrence Quill from San Jose State University, author of Civil Disobedience: (Un)Common Sense in Mass Democracies.
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Sunday, July 15th – San Francisco

1. 12:00pm - Forbidden Words with Chris Hom
   Some words are forbidden ­ so forbidden that we won't even spell them out here, like n****r, and ch*nk, and k*k*, and c*nt. Decent people don't use these words to refer to others. They are intrinsically disrespectful. But aren't words just strings of sounds or letters? Words have life because they express ideas. But in a free society, how can we prohibit the expression of ideas? How can we forbid words? Where does the strange power of curses, epithets, and scatological terms come from? The Philosophers keep the conversation clean with their guest, Chris Hom from Texas Tech University.
2. 3:00pm - Turbo-charging the Mind with Michael Vassar
   The human mind is one of the most amazing products of evolution. But nature's built-in limits have held our minds back for thousands of years. In more recent decades, the rapid advance of computer technology has produced a vast array of intelligent machines that far outstrip us in speed and capacity, but that know far less than we do about almost everything. Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Can we use new technologies to merge the creator and the created, to break down the barrier between man and machine, and create a hybrid intelligence that seamlessly integrates the vast knowledge and skills embedded in our biological brains with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations? John and Ken examine the prospects for transcending our biological limits and turbo-charging the human mind with Michael Vassar, President of Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.  
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