节目以约翰想知道什么是人权开始。肯在《独立宣言》中找到了一个令人信服的答案。John quotes the famousall men are created equal. This is a revolutionary document routed in the Enlightenment-era idea that all human beings enjoy some fundamental rights, although some like Jefferson thought that these rights were God given. But, John asks, if these rights are not God given they where do they come from? Perhaps they are just natural, intrinsic to what it is to be a human being, independent of culture, answers Ken. John brings up that the UN said there is a right to rest and leisure, so periodical paid holidays must be a universal human right. Ken is astonished: John surely doesn’t believe that employers can have workers work to the bone until they drop dead! John denies that he does. But, he says, it seems that we need an understanding of intrinsic rights that differ from politically or socially created rights. Ken says it is hard to draw the line between these types of rights. John suggests that created rights depend entirely on law, on convention. John and Ken further discuss other types of rights that might be considered essential human rights, the governments that permit certain rights to be upheld and others to not be controlled, and they also consider societal variations.

John and Ken welcome guest Helen Stacy, Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford Law School, and author ofHuman Rights for the 21^stCentury: Sovereignty, Civil Society, Culture. John first asks Helen how she got interested in studying issues of rights and culture as intertwined. Helen explains that she went to work in Indonesia in the 90s convinced she was bringing human rights enlightenment to the people with the intention of educating families on not sending their children to work. It suddenly became clear to her that if the families did not send their children to work, they would starve. This made her pause and reflect. She started noticing other issues of rights come up, such as how the right to healthcare in Australia went unsaid, whereas in Indonesia this was not at all considered a right. So what exactly is a right, asks John? Helen says that in the United States, what is meant by human rights is something drawing on the American Bill of Rights, a term with a certain Jeffersonian influence. For Helen, rights are just a claim, a form of words, and the claimants believe they have the high moral ground. A human right is a right that is directed to a government, and the expectation is that government will supply the content of the right.

肯问海伦:说某物是我的是什么意思?海伦解释了“正确”这个词是如何因为过度使用而完全贬值的。肯想知道是否存在独立于任何特定政府的人权问题，如果存在，我们该如何决定这些问题是什么?海伦讲的是人体的完整性，但这方面的权利并没有得到解决。她举了一个与切割女性生殖器有关的例子:一位父亲在外国对女儿实施这种行为并无恶意;对他来说，这种做法是一种文化启蒙，在他的祖国一点也不奇怪。但在许多国家，这是一种不被赞同和禁止的做法，原因有很多。那么，海伦提出，对于一个不遵循我们认为所有国家都应该遵循的人权标准的国家，我们有权做些什么呢?我们应该入侵那个国家吗?对那个国家施加经济限制? Helen explains her personal belief that she should not enforce her beliefs on others, and that we lose out on the human rights discourse when we frame it as right versus wrong. Helen, John, and Ken welcome questions from the audience, and they continue the discussion by tackling topics such as increased globalization, Uganda’s new laws, and constitutional human rights.

• Roving Philosophical Reporter (Seek to 5:18):中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播哲学讲座的记者莫莉·塞缪尔探讨了旧金山Haight-Ashbury社区的一些基本权利如何与其他基本权利发生冲突。她采访了贾斯汀·布尔(Justin Buel)，他在一个地区生活了多年。