This week, we’re thinking about J.S. Mill and the good life. While Mill valued individual choice and freedom, he was also a utilitarian who believed you should always do what produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Can these strands of Mill's thought be reconciled?

Mission Impossible: Fallout is an intensely escapist movie, but it's also a deeply philosophical one. It explores the question: should you be the kind of person who saves his friends and risks millions of lives, or the kind of person for whom saving the millions matters to the exclusion of all else?

Is every idea worth responding to, or are some ideas so harmful that we should not engage at all? Philosopher Elizabeth Barnes explores this question in a recent article, arguing that it is sometimes worth it to engage with harmful ideas.

In a recent interview, the controversial philosopher Peter Singer states that "Philosophy always causes offense—perhaps it should cause offense." But not everyone agrees that offensive philosophical views are necessarily a good thing, especially when reasonable critiques are ignored.

Since the next episode of Philosophy Talk is about the demands of morality, I wanted to share the following post that I wrote last year for my blog. The area of food selection is one where many philosophers, myself included, feel the demands of morality. But how strenuous can we make those demands on ordinary people? This essay is an attempt to find a middle ground and, in the end, may please no one. Nevertheless, I hope it will provide food for thought (sorry, couldn't help myself).