Three Maastricht academics, one open question at a time. It started over coffee in a staff lounge in late 2024 and kept going. Now we record it, the minutes are becoming a book, and every question leads back to the first one we asked: is perception everything?
Philosophy Talks began as an informal conversation between three colleagues: a question raised over coffee in the staff lounge, then another one the next time. Each talk drew on our work, whatever we happened to be reading, and our own experience, including a strong thread from the Balkans and Bulgaria.
After every talk, one of us wrote the minutes. A year later there were enough of them to see a pattern, and enough to start a book. The podcast is where we now have those conversations in the open. They raise more questions than they answer, and that's deliberate.
“Questions open the mind. Conclusions close it.”From the minutes of our first talk, “Is perception everything?”
“Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.”Gustave Flaubert, the line our second talk picked up
Every episode is getting its own deep-dive page, so the conversation continues after you finish listening. Each one has the 60-second answer, the positions we argued, the key ideas and thinkers, an exercise for your week, and the questions we couldn't close, which you can answer. The first two are open.
Why our idea of success carries more weight than we think, and why people stay in success that is making them unhappy.
Listen → #05 Time
Time is the resource that converts into everything else. A listener's question: work faster, or choose better?
Listen → #04 Heart & mind
Deep diveThe heart feels and knows; the mind asks for proof. Are you a heart person or a mind person?
Open the deep dive → #03 Character
Not necessarily the dominant one. Is a strong character more like a rock, or like air?
Listen → #02 Perception
Deep diveThe question that started it all. "You just need the right perception." Is that really true?
Open the deep dive → #01 Finance
Time value, expectation, risk and return: what happens when you apply the laws of finance to daily life?
Listen →Already discussed and being recorded now. Each trailer shows the questions we'll argue about, a short exercise to do before you listen, and a form to send us your question before we record.
TrailerMoney works like salt: it strengthens the taste of things, but nobody makes a meal of it. And would you count a WhatsApp contact as a friend?
See what's coming → #08 · 20 Oct Power
TrailerPower is the ability to change things. Does it change the people who hold it, or show who they already were?
See what's coming → #09 · 27 Oct Tolerance
TrailerTolerance as an art, not passive acceptance. Where does it end and complicity begin?
See what's coming → Part 2 · soon Success IITrailerWe weren't done. Daily wins, shared success, luck, and why burnout is never success.
See what's coming →Our topics don't stay in their own episodes. Character leads to power, wealth leads to time, and everything traces back to perception. Choose a topic to see where it connects and which new question each connection raises.
Perception · the source
We don't always agree, and the disagreements are where the episodes come alive. Each of us brings a different discipline, a different reading list and a different way of asking.
The storyteller
Brings the Balkan perspective and the stories that turn an abstract question into something you can feel: proverbs from Bulgarian teachers, friendships tested over decades.
“Who wants to be smart? The stupid person.”The sceptic
Asks how we actually know what we think we know. His interests run from free will and neuroscience to how beliefs get fixed and when opinions harden into facts.
“When does an opinion become a fact in the mind of the believer?”
The synthesiser
A finance lecturer who reads philosophy through time value, risk and return. He keeps the minutes, draws the threads together, and is turning them into the book.
“Time is the resource that can be converted into everything.”
After each episode: the edited minutes, the quotes we argued about, the reading list and the question we couldn't close. Short, free, and the first draft of the book.
One e-mail per episode. Unsubscribe any time. See the privacy notice.Your e-mail app should now open with your request ready to send. If nothing happens, write to philosophytalks@proton.me.
Since 2024 the minutes have been collected into one document that is becoming a book about perception, character, success, wealth, power and tolerance. Listeners whose questions shape an episode can be credited in it, with their consent.
Join the book waitlist →“Are you a heart person or a mind person?”
Each week we ask one question on Instagram and read some of your answers in the next episode. Our fifth episode started as a listener's question. Yours could be the next.
