Ten Podcast Episodes on Martin Heidegger's What Is Metaphysics?

When I polled my viewers, listeners, subscribers, and supporters recently, about which thinker I should produce new podcast episodes on first, Martin Heidegger edged out Fyodor Dostoevsky, Aristotle, and Cicero.  So earlier this month, I created ten new Sadler's Lectures episodes on his seminal lecture, What Is Metaphysics?

Each of the Sadler's Lectures episodes are produced by taking one of my core concept videos, improving the sound quality, and editing out pauses, "ums" and "ahs," and any other distracting sounds, generating a downloadable podcast version that can be played anywhere.  I provide them as resources to students in my academic classes, but they get used by many more people all over the world.

Here are those ten Heidegger podcast episodes. They run just a bit over two hours altogether, so you can listen your way through these lectures in the space of an afternoon.

• The Nature Of Metaphysical Inquir
• The Nothing, Not, And Negation
• The Mood Of Anxiety
• The Nothing And Nihilation
• Modalities Of Nihilative Behavior
• Sciences, Logic, And The Nothing
• Mood and The Totality Of Beings
• Original Anxiety And Everydayness
• Previous Metaphysical Views On Nothing 
• The Nothing, Selfhood, And Freedom

If you'd like to make a contribution to helping me continue my work making classic philosophical texts, thinkers, and topics accessible for people worldwide, consider becoming a monthly supporter on Patreon. If you'd like to make a one-time donation, you can do so directly on Paypal, or on Buy Me A Coffee.

Wisdom for Life Radio Show Goes Weekly!

Earlier this year, my co-host Dan Hayes and I launched a new radio show.  It's called Wisdom for Life, and it focuses on taking ideas from practical philosophy and applying them to issues, challenges, and problems of everyday life.  We draw upon a number of different philosophical traditions - Stoicism, Aristotelianism, and Existentialism in particular - as well as insights from various psychological approaches.

Our latest show, episode 5 - devoted to the topic What Makes Relationships Good? - aired on Riverwest Radio (WXRW 104.1) last Saturday (you can listen to that show here).  We've been getting really positive feedback about the show itself, the topics we're focusing on, and the conversational approach that Dan and I are taking.  That's great for two reasons.

The first is that this is a rather unique radio show.  There aren't too many shows out there that discuss and apply practical philosophy with any depth or rigor and also in ways accessible to the ordinary, non-academic listener.  In fact, who are we kidding - there isn't much philosophy content out there in radio period!  So the fact that the show is getting some interest and appreciation is good for philosophy and also good for the people who listen.

The second is that Riverwest Radio is a local community radio station.  It's here to provide a diverse array of voices, interests, and programs for the Riverwest neighborhood, and also for the Greater Milwaukee community.  If that term "community radio" is unfamiliar to you, think NPR and PBS, and now imagine an even more community-centered focus.  Less for the elites, more for the person on the street.  Shows don't just have hosts.  The hosts are also the show producers.  A program like what we're doing would likely be a hard sell to NPR, but we have a home in community radio!

We started out as a bi-weekly show, but have decided during the COVID-19 crisis to step up show production to one episode a week, and we've managed to keep to that schedule now two weeks in a row!  You can listen live over the internet anywhere in the world, Saturdays, 4-5 PM Central Time.

If you'd like to hear any of the five episodes we've produced so far, here are the links.

• Wisdom For Life Episode 1 - Philosophy as a Way of Life
• Wisdom For Life Episode 2 - Dealing With Fear in a Crisis
• Wisdom For Life Episode 3 - Defining What's Good and What's Bad
• Wisdom For Life Episode 4 - Setting and Maintaining Boundaries
• Wisdom For Life Episode 5 - What Makes Relationships Good?

And if you'd like to support the work that Riverwest Radio does, offering a wide range of quality programming you won't hear anywhere else, consider making a donation to the station!

Eight Recent Appearances

Since posting back in September about "A Baker's Dozen of Interviews and Guest Appearances", I've continued to do a number of other appearances on podcasts and radio shows.  These might be of interest to some of my readers, subscribers, followers, and fans. 

So it's about time for another round-up of the more recent  podcast and show appearances since then - what I've been doing over the last five months.  So, here they are - the shows, a brief description of what topics we talked about, and where you can watch or listen to each of them:


The Death Hangout (hosted by Olivier Lavor and Keith Clarke) - what legacy means to us, death and the soul, Stoic views on legacy and life, Martin Heidegger and "being towards death", emotional attitudes towards death – listen here

Zero Books Podcast (hosted by Doug Lain) - my backstory, the Half Hour Hegel project, doing philosophy on YouTube, some Marx, some Nietzsche, modern Stoicism, and the notion of eclecticism – listen here

Image For Hire Radio Show (hosted by The Skrauss on Riverwest Radio) - my work as a “freelance philosopher”, Plato’s allegory of the cave, what philosophical counseling does, what virtue ethics and images have to do with each other, and even some H.P. Lovecraft – listen here

Paul Kovalski Podcast (hosted by Paul Kovalski) - transition from being a traditional academic to a practical philosopher and entrepreneur, lessons I’ve learned, fears and obstacles entrepreneurs encounter, and how Stoic philosophy and other virtue ethics can be useful – listen here

The Panpsycast (hosted by Jack Symes and Olly Marley) - Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, key themes of his works, the death of God and transvaluation of values, and his relevance for the present – listen to the first part here and the second part here

The Stoic Creative (hosted by Scott Perry) - a roundtable discussion on Stoicism and creativity, featuring myself, Chris Gill, Debbie Joffe-Ellis, and others – you can watch or listen here

The Stoic Body Podcast (hosted by Philip Ghezelbash) -  discussing Stoic philosophy as applied to health, veering off into discussion of food, animal rights, and fasting – watch or listen here

Stoic Mettle Podcast: hosted by Scott Hebert, discussing Stoicon and Stoic Week, the growth of modern Stoicism, prospects for Stoic philosophy in the present – you can listen here

If you've got a podcast, video channel, show or site and you'd like to bring me on, reach out to me, and we'll get a conversation going!

Ten Videos on Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?"

In June, just after I created my Patreon page to crowdfund my work in public philosophy, I ran a poll, asking my viewers, subscribers, and supporters which philosophical figures they were most interested in seeing me tackle next.

Surprisingly, Martin Heidegger came out on top, with Friedrich and Immanuel Kant in the number 2 and 3 spots!  So, later on on June, after wrapping up the last of the core concept videos on Aristotle's Categories, I started preparing to shoot videos on Heidegger.  I decided to go with his short and relatively accessible essay, "What Is Metaphysics?" (which you can find here, if you'd like to have the translation I prefer).

Before I actually do the work of producing videos, I never know exactly how many of them will be required to adequately cover a given text.  Sometimes - as was the case this time - my initial guess is a bit off, and I realize that I need to create some additional ones in order to get through all of the core concepts.  The total count ended up being ten this time around.  And here they are:

• The Nature of Metaphysical Inquiry
• The Sciences, Logic, and the Nothing
• The Nothing, Not, and Negation
• The Totality of Beings and Attunement or Mood
• The Mood of Anxiety
• Original Anxiety and Everydayness
• The Nothing and Nihilation - Philosophy
• Modalities of Nihilative Behavior
• The Nothing, Selfhood, and Freedom
• Previous Metaphysical Interpretations of the Nothing

Why did I pick this particular essay - actually an inaugural lecture Heidegger gave in 1929 at the University of Freiburg - as the first work of Heidegger's I would tackle? (It's actually not technically the first, since I'd previously created a number of hour-long lectures in the Existentialism sequence years back - but it is the first that I've done through core concept videos)  It's a good piece, in my view, for introducing some of the key ideas of Heidegger's thought, without getting too deep in the details.

This work contains a discussion of what Metaphysics is and extends to, the contrast between intellectual and affective ways of grasping being, the revelatory importance of moods, anxiety as a mood that discloses beings and the nothing, the priority of the nothing and nihilation over negation,  the scope of logic, human freedom and action, and even some discussion of previous metaphysical interpretations.  So not every major theme of Heidegger's works, by any measure, but quite a few of them. . .