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WHY? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life
Second Sunday of each month, at 5:00pm CT

Join us each month as we engage in philosophical discussions about the most common-place topics with host Jack Russell Weinstein, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Dakota. He is the director of The Institute for Philosophy in Public Life.

Latest Episodes
  • The University of North Dakota recently announce that it found Native American human remains in storage, and has begun the repatriation process. With that current headline in mind, we offer an encore episode with George “Tink” Tinker, the Clifford Baldridge Emeritus Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, where he was still teaching at the time of this 2014 conversation.
  • Political freedom lies at the core of any democracy. Yet some people claim that even countries like America and England aren’t free enough. What does a free society look like and how much liberty is necessary for the moral life? In this encore presentation from 2011, Jack visits with James Otteson. At the time, he was Professor of Philosophy and Economics at Yeshiva University, but has since moved to Notre Dame, where he is the John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics. He is also the Rex and Alice A. Martin faculty director of the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership, and the faculty director of the Business Honors Program in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. And if that’s not enough, he’s also Senior Scholar at The Fund for American Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute. His latest book is Seven Deadly Economic Sins, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.
  • Jack Russell Weinstein is here to preview this Sunday’s Why radio show as he visits with Firoze Manji. Manji is a Kenyan activist with more than 40 years’ experience in international development, health, human rights, teaching, publishing and political organizing. He is the recipient of the 2021 Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. (Wikipedia)
  • UND distinguished professor of philosophy, Jack Russell Weinstein, visits with Brian Huschle, Northland Community and Technical College.
  • Host Jack Russell Weinstein visits with Swami Sarvapriyananda.
  • In this special episode, Ashley Thornberg presents Jack with philosophical questions submitted by listeners.
  • Host Jack Russell Weinstein visits with Emily S. Lee, professor of philosophy at California State University at Fullerton, and the author of "Race as Phenomena: Between Phenomenology and Philosophy of Race."
  • This encore episode from April 2012 examines our relationship with animals. Why do some cultures eat dogs and others invite them into their bedrooms? Why do some people find spiders disgusting but others consider them a delicacy? Who enjoyed a better quality of life—the chicken on a dinner plate or the rooster who dies in a Saturday-night cockfight? What can we really learn from experiments on mice?On the next episode of WHY? we’ll talk with author Hal Herzog about human attitudes towards animals, examine how rational we are when it comes to pets, and ask what all this tell us about ourselves. Drawing on more than two decades of research in the emerging field of anthrozoology, the new science of human–animal relations, Hal offers surprising answers to these and other questions related to the moral conundrums we face when considering the creatures with whom we share our world.
  • On this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Main Street's Ashley Thornberg discusses various aspects of race and the importance of holidays with UND philosophy professor Jack Russell Weinstein.
  • This encore from 2011 is quite appropriate for today as host Jack Russell Weinstein visits with Lou Marinoff. Can philosophy make our lives better? Can it help us develop better senses of self? Can it ever be used as a therapy-like tool to heal us psychologically or inspire us to change our behavior? In this episode of WHY? we will look at the role of belief, worldview, and intellectual choices, to see how they contribute to a healthy, well-balanced personality. Lou Marinoff is Professor of Philosophy at City College of New York, and founding President of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA). He has authored two international bestsellers: Plato Not Prozac, translated into 25 languages; and Therapy for the Sane, translated into 12 languages. Both apply Asian and Western philosophy to the resolution of everyday problems. In 2004, The New York Times weekend magazine called him “the world’s most successful marketer of philosophical counseling.”