Podcasts by Hi-Phi Nation
Hi-Phi Nation is philosophy in story-form, integrating narrative journalism with big ideas. We look at stories from everyday life, law, science, popular culture, and strange corners of human experiences that raise thought-provoking questions about things like justice, knowledge, the self, morality, and existence. We then seek answers with the help of academics and philosophers. The show is produced and hosted by Barry Lam of UC Riverside.
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Podcast on the topic Philosophie
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Rise of the Music Machines from 2023-05-16T04:00
On this show we explore three different AI and machine-generated music technologies; vocal emulators that allow you to deep fake a singer or rapper’s voice, AI-generated compositions and text-to-mu...
ListenEffective Altruism and its Critics from 2023-05-09T04:00
Curtis is setting aside a large chunk of money to donate to charity, and it is up to us to persuade him where he should donate it. Luckily, philosophers, economists, and the nonprofit world have be...
ListenThe Problem with Gig Work from 2023-05-02T04:00
Willy and Heidi were both gig workers for Shipt, the fast-delivery app for groceries or same-day shopping. In 2020, they both realised: the pay algorithm had changed. Now, they couldn’t tell what a...
ListenLove in the Time of Replika from 2023-04-25T04:00
We explore the lives of people who are in love with their AI chatbots. Replika is a chatbot designed to adapt to the emotional needs of its users. It is a good enough surrogate for human interactio...
ListenLiving in a Zoopolis from 2023-04-18T04:00
A zoopolis is a future society that philosophers envision where wild, domesticated, and denizen animals have full political and legal rights. What would that look like? In this episode, we look at ...
ListenThe Digital Future of Grief from 2023-04-11T04:00
When Justin’s mom was diagnosed with cancer, he knew he wanted to keep talking to her after she died. So together they made an AI version of her, training it on her speech patterns and memories. No...
ListenLife, Edited from 2021-12-04T06:00
The first two gene-edited species meant to be introduced into the wild are currently in their final stages of approval, with trials already underway for the Oxitec mosquito, and the ESF American Ch...
ListenHi-Phi Nation Presents: Decoder Ring, The Alberta Rat War from 2021-11-27T06:00
Barry invites Willa Paskin of Slate's Decoder Ring podcast to talk about their recent episode, The Alberta Rat War, as a set up to next week's Hi-Phi Nation episode on genetic engineering. We then ...
ListenThe Selfless Kidney Donor from 2021-11-20T06:00
Penny Lane gave up months of wages and weeks of her life to have her kidney cut out and given to someone she never knew, and who may never thank her. She is one of about 200 people in the US a year...
ListenThe Man of Many Worlds IV from 2021-11-06T05:00
David Lewis steps off a plane from Australia in 2000 and falls seriously ill. In the final year of his life, he decides to take on Christianity, but does not live long enough to write a paper, leav...
ListenThe Man of Many Worlds III from 2021-10-30T05:00
In 1968, David Lewis decides that one truth can unify every theory he's had about the nature of the universe. It is the truth that every possible world is equally real. Lewis not only argues for th...
ListenThe Man of Many Worlds II from 2021-10-23T14:36:52
What was David Lewis like as a person? The consensus is that he did not know how to converse. At Swarthmore, David Lewis discovers he has a knack for philosophy and none at all with women, leading ...
ListenThe Man of Many Worlds I from 2021-10-16T05:00
David Lewis was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, who few outside of academia know much about. By the time of his death in 2001, he was the greatest systematic thinker in metaphysics s...
ListenSponsored: Delivering Extraordinary Experiences with Customer Experience Expert Liliana Petrova from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When it comes to closing a deal, generating client referrals, or getting repeat business, understanding how to elevate the customer’s experience can make all the difference, and can often be a phil...
ListenSeason 4: Crime and Punishment (Trailer) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From writing criminal laws to rights denied to the formerly incarcerated, every single stage of the criminal justice system runs on unquestioned assumptions about right and wrong, responsibility an...
ListenYOLO Apologetics from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Drake coined “YOLO,” short for “you only live once” in 2011, and then later apologized for all the douchiness it subsequently engendered. But the spirit is ancient, and cross-cultural, speaking de...
ListenThe Illusionist from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pyotr Tchaikovsky composed and conducted his final symphony in 1893. He died 9 days later, after having knowingly drunk an unboiled glass of water during a cholera epidemic. Deep into the symphony,...
ListenUncivil Disobedience from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Australia, vegan and animal liberation activism has recently become intense and disruptive, invading farms, restaurants, and city centers. They’re doing everything from rescuing animals to block...
ListenFor Women Only (pt. 2) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the 40 years since the events at Olivia Records, gender categorization seems to pop up sporadically in the mainstream press, leading to what sociologists Laurel Westbrook and Kristen Schilt call...
ListenFor Women Only (pt. 1) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is currently very difficult to get your gender legally changed in the U.K, That might change. In recent months, philosophers have been drafted into making complicated and contentious arguments a...
ListenDemons of Democracy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Preschool kids get their first taste of democratic participation when they vote on their class name, and democratic private schools try to display the value of democracy by making kids vote on ever...
ListenName of God (2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A few days after the New Zealand Mosque massacre, Dr. Thaya Ashman heard about a woman who was too afraid to come out in public in her hijab for fear of being targeted. So Dr. Ashman had an idea to...
ListenThe Forever War from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This year will mark the 18th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, the forever war characterized by regime change, a surge, drawdowns, and then re-engagement across three Presidential administrati...
ListenNo Offense from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What if you could sue someone for calling you a racial slur? In the 90s, one country that always looked very similar to America decided to allow it, rolling back the rights to free speech in the in...
ListenRisky Business from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How many innocent people should we be allowed to arrest and jail in order to prevent a single dangerous person from being free? The Supreme Court has refused to answer this question, but algorithms...
Listen(Bonus) The Battle over CSOCs from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this bonus episode, I go into some of the history between the LAPD police commission and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and feature some of the tape from the Central station CSOC protest that d...
ListenThe Precrime Unit from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Predictive policing technology is spreading across the country, and Los Angeles is the epicenter. A small group of LA activists are in a lopsided campaign against billions of dollars in city, feder...
ListenSeason 3 Preview from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After two successful seasons, philosophy in story form comes to Slate on January 31st, 2019. On Season 3, we look at stories of risk, experiments in democracy, the reality of social categories, il...
ListenChamber of Facts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Do people of opposing political parties believe in different facts? The mantra at the moment is that they do, because of media echo chambers, motivated reasoning, and ideological blindspots. But a ...
ListenA Night of Philosophy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hi-Phi Nation stays overnight at the Brooklyn Public Library during the 2018 Night of Philosophy. From 7pm to 7am on a Saturday night, thousands of New Yorkers swarmed the central library for acrob...
ListenWillful Acts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Army veteran Jim McKelvey applied for his VA benefits and was denied for willful misconduct. Thirty years later, Julie Eldred was sent to prison for a willful violation of probation. Both challenge...
ListenCreed and Credences from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dave has been hunting for the one decisive piece of scientific evidence that will settle one of Christianity's most challenging questions. On this episode we look at two stories of people trying to...
ListenThe Self and Survival from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In ordinary life, it is usually not hard to know who you are and who you used to be. For a small group of children around the world, their knowledge seems to conflict with what modern science belie...
ListenCover Me Softly from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Lori Lieberman was 19 years old, she went to a concert of a singer she didn't know, and ended up writing a poem that would become one of the greatest cover songs of all time. This week we are ...
ListenFreedom and Hostile Design from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some acts of expression are awesome, while others suck, and one philosopher has a new theory about the difference. Using this theory as a guide, we look at some of the suckiest things that ever suc...
ListenDrowned at Sea from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the process of preparing to testify in a divorce case, Brian had to study one of the strangest books he had ever come across, where religion, mathematics, and the apocalypse intersect. This week...
ListenThe Ethics Bowl from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
High school students from around the country converge on the University of North Carolina for a weekend of moral dilemmas. We follow twenty-four of the nation's top ethics teams competing in the 20...
ListenThe Bottom of the Curve from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the beginning of their adult lives, millennials are trying to find out what it means to be happy in their 20s, not knowing that they have no where to go but down. Meanwhile, three highly success...
ListenThe Ashes of Truth from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Documentary film and science do not appear to have much in common, except that, philosophically, they have everything in common. Two men met in 1971 and had a disagreement, which turned into an ass...
ListenHackademics II: The Hackers from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One scientist decided to put the entire field of psychology to test to see how many of its findings hold up to scrutiny. At the same time, he had scientists bet on the success-rate of their own fie...
ListenHackademics I: The Control from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After years of unusual episodes dating back to her childhood, Anita went to the doctor and was told there was nothing medically wrong with her. "She had a gift," she was told, and she was sent down...
ListenThe Cops of Pop from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two records from 1983 achieved minor novelty fame, and then faded away, only to emerge 20 years later as the originators of a curious genre of pop music in the age of social media. This peculiar ge...
ListenThe Name of God from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With a small gesture of good will toward Syrian refugees, one woman incurred the wrath of evangelical Christians on social media. The resulting chaos helped write the next chapter in a thousand yea...
ListenSoldier Philosophers Part 2: The Morality of War from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For some reason, when people kill others in wars, we do not judge them morally and legally in the same way as we judge them when they kill in civilian life. Is there a justification for this differ...
ListenSoldier Philosophers Part 1: Moral Exploitation from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When one Army soldier discovered the propagation of torture tactics during the Iraq war, he engaged in a one-man mission inside the organization to learn about their origins, and the effect they ha...
ListenThe Wishes of the Dead from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Our lives are controlled by the invisible hand from the grave. Trillions of dollars of the economy are devoted to executing the wishes of people who died long ago, rather than satisfying the desire...
ListenSeason One Trailer #1 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A brand new show bringing storytelling together with philosophy, Hi-Phi Nation aims to do for philosophy what Freakonomics did for economics, what Invisibilia does for cognitive psychology, and wha...
ListenJustice and Retribution from 2020-06-27T05:00
A woman spends 40 years in and out of prison for shoplifting and finally gets a break from a judge in her late 50s. She uses the opportunity to abolish a jail and transform her city. This week we l...
ListenThe Loophole from 2020-06-13T05:00
Two men committed a double murder in rural Maine in 1990. Only one pulled the trigger. The state prosecutor decided to try them separately, but that was a mistake, and both were acquitted. Then the...
ListenPunishment without End from 2020-06-06T05:00
A teen-aged girl gets caught with a suitcase stuffed with powdered cocaine, and she comes before a federal judge. That judge learns that a felony conviction carries punishments for life for her. He...
ListenRedemption in Solitary from 2020-05-30T05:00
Erick Williams tells the story of how one bad night in the chow hall got him into solitary confinement at Walpole. The path out of solitary, and eventually out of prison, took another decade. On th...
ListenGender Justice from 2020-05-23T05:00
On this episode, we look at feminist and progressive prosecution; how does a prosecutor balance the aims of prosecuting more gender-based crimes while also being sensitive to the problems of mass i...
ListenThe Informant from 2020-05-16T05:00
This week we go inside investigative operations in NYPD internal affairs and in the war and drugs to look at the police use of discretion to selectively break laws in order to pursue the bad guys. ...
ListenPolice Discretion from 2020-05-09T05:00
Is a mobile home a home or a car? Is a car parked inside a home part of the home? The answer to these stoner philosophical questions determine the scope of police power. Over the last 100 years, th...
ListenCriminal Minds from 2020-05-02T05:00
One place where law and morality are supposed to agree is that there should be no crime without a criminal mind, what is called “mens rea” in criminal law. But there have been a proliferation of cr...
ListenCriminal Minds from 2020-05-02T05:00
One place where law and morality are supposed to agree is that there should be no crime without a criminal mind, what is called “mens rea” in criminal law. But there have been a proliferation of cr...
ListenSeason One Trailer #1 from 2016-12-24T07:47:37
A brand new show bringing storytelling together with philosophy, Hi-Phi Nation aims to do for philosophy what Freakonomics did for economics, what Invisibilia does for cognitive psychology, and wha...
ListenSeason One Trailer #1 from 2016-12-24T07:47:37
A brand new show bringing storytelling together with philosophy, Hi-Phi Nation aims to do for philosophy what Freakonomics did for economics, what Invisibilia does for cognitive psychology, and wha...
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