A Million Little Gods – Details, episodes & analysis

It’s my favorite holiday again, and even though I’m hunkered down trying to produce the most complex, intricate, creative season of the podcast yet, there’s no way I’m going to skip a chance to celebrate. This time our guest is Bryon White, CEO of Yaupon Brothers, an organic producer of Yaupon Holly, a climate-change resistant plant once revered as a drink by all indigenous people of the Southeastern United States, beloved for its salubrious properties for body and soul. He and his colleagues are trying to return Yaupon to the place of dignity and value that, from a long-term perspective, it’s always had in North America.

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Today we begin part two—or, as we're calling it, the B Side—of season two, "Race: Is That a Thing?" To kick things off we're re-releasing the last episode of part one, Episode 8: "The Holy Family in a Pane of Frosted Glass" together with Episode 9: "Ballpark Figures Part I."

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To set the stage for part two of our series, “Race: Is That a Thing?", we take a deep look at a recurring metaphor that has permeated our entire series.

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Once again, this is a set of material that we couldn’t fit into Episode Seven: “Categorical Declarative” proper. Consider the contents of the appendix the audio footnote podcasts—or “footcasts”—to that episode. We will be releasing Episode Eight: “The Holy Family in a Pane of Frosted Glass” on Monday, March 18.

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According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he “is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields.”

But did Immanuel Kant create the spurious concept of scientific race? We ask Boston College Professor of Philosophy Susan Shell, author of Kant and the Limits of Autonomy and The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation and Community.

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When people talk about things as social constructs, should we understand that as derision or dismissal? Do socially constructed human kinds, like races, get realer over time, the more those who supposedly fit a construct begin to behave as if they naturally fit it?

We ask Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Ron Mallon of Washington University in St. Louis these questions and more.

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Can there be a plurality of concepts of race floating in the social air? If so, are we okay with that? Are there pragmatic uses for one or more of those concepts in the areas of medicine or public policy? In this episode we speak with Robin O. Andreasen, philosopher and Associate Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware.

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If race has no essence, then is it an irrational social contrivance? Or is it somewhere in-between? We speak with Michael Hardimon, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Rethinking Race: The Case for Deflationary Realism, who argues we must come to terms with the limited ways in which race really does exist.

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As our guest this episode, philosopher Stewart Umphrey, writes, “Our everyday understanding of natural things presupposes that their reality does not depend on how we regard them, and that the way we ordinarily regard them is heuristically if not cognitively valuable.” Join us as we explore natural kinds in our continued attempt to determine whether “race” is really a thing, and what makes things things in the first place.

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Our season is called "Race: Is That a Thing?" What does it mean for a thing to be a thing? What is a thing? We consult Oxford English Dictionary editor and authorized OED historian Peter Gilliver, who updated the entry on "Thing."

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