Six Podcast Episodes on Rilke's Letters To a Young Poet

In November, I resumed editing my video lectures into episodes in the Sadler's Lectures podcast.  After finishing up a series on Aristotle's Metaphysics book 1, I started work on the set that I shot earlier this year on the great Existentialist poet, novelist, and writer Rainer Maria Rilke, specifically on his short work, Letters To a Young Poet.

It's a great little book, a sort of crystallization of key themes of Rilke's own creative process, his own reflections, and his engagement with a young would-be writer.   It thus offers a window into Rilke's own ideas, commitments, and process. But generations of creative people in all sorts of fields have also found it useful for clarifying their own work and lives.

If there is one most central idea in the work, it is that of "solitude" (Einsamkeit, in German), and I devoted one entire lecture just to that notion.  But Rilke explores many other key concepts and realities as well - love, desire, criticism, development, time, just to name a few.  

All told, these podcast episodes amount to about an hour and a half of listening time.  Here are those six lectures:

• Criticism and Art
• Developing Solitude
• Time, Patience, and Growth
• Conventions & Superficiality
• Sex, Love, and Development
• Sadness and Transformation

Five New Guest Appearances

I'm long overdue for another roundup of my recent appearances on radio shows, podcasts, and video channels. I make these lists every so often, as the appearances accumulate.  I also have a more comprehensive list of most of my appearances in the last seven or eight years over at my company website, if you'd like to check any of those out.

I get fairly regular requests to talk about a variety of topics because of my philosophy-focused YouTube channel, my business ReasonIO, and my work as editor of Stoicism Today. If you'd like to invite me for a television, radio, video, or podcast appearance - or even for a live, in-person event, feel free to contact me.

With no further ado, here are those new appearances:

Guest Appearance on Riverwest Radio's Another Morning show - (starting at the 23:00 mark), hosted by Martin and Joe, discussing modern Stoicism, philosophies as ways of life, psychotherapy, happiness, and the Stoicon-X event - you can listen here

Guest Appearance on the Sunday Stoic podcast:  hosted by Steve Karafit, discussing my background in philosophy, expanding reading lists beyond the big three Stoics, and some of the odd Stoic paradoxes that we often ignore - you can listen here

Guest Appearance on the Enter The Void podcast: discussing public philosophy, the current state of academia, how practical philosophy can help us live through tough situations, and past and present science fiction - you can listen here

Guest Appearance on the Seize the Moment podcast: hosted by Leon Garber and Alen Ulman, discussing how practical philosophy can be used to help us overcome negative emotions - you can watch or listen here

Guest Appearance on the Death Hangout podcast:  hosted by Olivier Lavor and Keith Clarke, discussing what we know about philosophers' last wills and testaments, what the significance of wills are, and how we approach what happens after our own demises - you can watch or listen here

Six Podcast Lectures on Plato's Apology

After getting the Sadler's Lectures podcast up and running earlier this month - thanks to my supporters (want to become one on Patreon - click here!) - I have finished converting the first sequence of videos, and have started on the second.

The first philosopher fans, supporters, and subscribers wanted lectures on was Plato, so I've created six downloadable lectures in mp3 format on the text so many people begin with - Plato's Apology.  We're now working on converting lectures on the Crito, and will then do the Euthyphro and the Phaedo. (And when I say "we," it's not the royal usage - I'm including my son, Matthew, who is now assisting me with editing)

The videos these were drawn from were shot years back, before I started using a lapel mike and voice recorder, so we had to do a lot to boost the sound quality to the level you'll hear.  But of course, it's not perfect podcasting that people go to my Sadler's Lectures for - it's high quality content, faithful to the texts and thinkers, helping readers and listeners learn!

At any rate, here are those six episodes

• Socrates' Divine Mission - Plato's Apology
• Socrates' Older Accusers - Plato's Apology
• Socrates' Defense Against Charges of Corruption - Plato's Apology
• Socrates' Defense Against Charges Of Impiety - Plato's Apology
• The Gadfly Analogy - Plato's Apology
• Why Socrates Does Not Fear Death - Plato's Apology

As a reference, you might want to get The Last Days of Socrates, which includes the Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, and Phaedo. 

The six episodes come to just over 90 minutes total, so if you've got a long drive or commute, or want to listen to them at the gym, or while you're doing something else, you can easily download them from my channel and start learning!  If iTunes /Apple Podcasts or Google Play is more your speed, you can find my channel there as well.

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!

Farewell, Ursula K. Leguin. . .

One of the greats among science fiction and fantasy writers - Ursula K. Leguin - died yesterday, aged 88.  Her works of excellence are too numerous to enumerate in a short piece, and it would be extremely difficult even to decide which among her many novels or stories deserve to be ranked within a top five or ten - that's how consistently good her writing, and the thought poured into it, has been over half a century.

If you haven't read LeGuin, now would be an opportune time to do so.  If you are interested in her own reflections upon the craft of writing, you might start with her essay, "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie".  If you want a well-crafted moral dilemma, read "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" (which you can find in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters).  If you'd like to dive right into one of her novels, I would probably suggest The Lathe of Heaven, The Word for World Is Forest, or The Left Hand of Darkness.  Alternately, if you have an interest in Chinese philosophy or in anarchist ideas, you might check out her translation of the classic Tao Te Ching.

I first encountered her books early on in middle school. I was already into reading science fiction and fantasy literature (and devouring what works on mythology I could find).  Her Earthsea trilogy - A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore - were the first works I read, and I found them captivating.  A world of water, islands, magic, true names, and dragons - and the coming-of-age story of the young, lone mage Ged - those elements drew me along the threads of the story.  But there was more, a depth of feeling, emotion, affect depicted  - with a hand both light and weighty - in LeGuin's writings.  Ged becomes who he is - and comes to know the world and to find his own place in it not just through what he does or suffers, but through how he chooses, and what he feels and then learns, often through sacrifices, his own and others.

The next book I read - one I have not gone back to since I was young - was The Beginning Place.  That story - of two young people finding their way in a hostile world, to a threshold of another world, and ultimately into trust, tenderness, and love - made such an impression upon me that I still remember the place and the posture where I read it.  Recalling the story reawakens the same feelings that the story guided me through - loss, sadness, loneliness, eagerness, fear, and joy.  I would say that for me, that novel gave me a sense - a realistic one, by contrast to so much other fantasy - of what a growing love might look like between two partners.  I talked about that experience of reading and being affected by her work a bit in the Worlds of Speculative Fiction talk devoted to her books.

I suspect that millions of readers will in some manner or another remember and grieve for the late Ursula K. Leguin.  And that is particularly fitting, given how many times she depicted characters - each narrated in their own way - coming to terms with the loss of those they love or admire (as well as those who they are thrown together with, or find themselves rivals to, or even hate).  Death, loss, grieving.  These are matters she knew, and wrote into her worlds and characters in ways that - here I speak only for myself - communicate a sort of wisdom, helping the rest of us make sense out of these matters.  For that, towards this great writer I never met, I bear a deep debt of gratitude.  And I mourn her loss as I would any of my loved ones.

Reflections on the Passing of Clive Burr

Although last week was brightened -- and largely dominated  -- by news concerning the election of a new pontiff, something else occurred which saddened me, personally, deeply, for reasons I'm been struggling to make sense of through reflection -- a news item that was not unexpected but, like all obituaries of those whose actions or artistry made some tangible, positive differences, is always in some sense unwelcome to read, untimely at its occurrence. Clive Burr, perhaps best known for his work as a drummer, early on in his career, for Iron Maiden, died on March 12 in his sleep.

Multiple Sclerosis had long ago begun eroding his system, cutting off his livelihood, damming up his talents, and ending his long career.  He was fortunate in having developed many solid friendships over the years -- his former bandmates in Iron Maiden, for example, organized and played benefits to assist him in paying his reportedly quite high medical bills -- and by all reports he is going to be missed, and grieved over, by many who knew him personally.  For my part, I'm just a fan, and didn't know him personally.  I can't say that I wrote him fan mail, or that I even saw him play -- by the time I first got to an Iron Maiden concert, with my leather and longhair burnout friends, several years had passed since he'd left the band, engaging in a series of never-quite-making-it-as-big ventures with bands like Trust, Escape, and Gogmagog

Happy Birthday, Albert Camus

Very early on in my philosophical formation -- long before I had any idea that I might study, let alone go on to become a professor in that field -- I first encountered the work of Albert Camus, in the form of a paperback, The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays.  I had just started high school, and we were on one of our many visits from Wisconsin, where my mother and father had settled in the family's exodus out of Chicago, gone down I-65 into rural Indiana, where my grandparents and great-aunts and -uncles had built the complex of little pre-fab Wausau  houses, facing each other on a common driveway, two of them connected in their basements by a cinderblock garage -- a time and place of sand and sun, snow and wood-burning stoves, oaks and sandburrs, trails, freedom, work, card games and quiet affection that to me, in my childhood was perhaps an image of what paradise could be.  My uncle Aime lived there, in a room partitioned off from the rest of his parents' basement, and I would visit with him in that room where he slept, listened to and reflected on radio programs, and read the books stacked in neat piles, but at casual angles and locations. 

Camus' volume held the top place that day on one of the stacks.  I recognized the name Sisyphus from my readings in Greek mythology, so I picked it up to page through it.  Seeing my interest in it, Aime told me it was worth reading, and asked me if I wanted to take it, so I did, and tried to puzzle my way through the not-entirely-for-beginners prose in the main essay.  Trying to remember back to that time, I can't be sure I really understood much of what now, nearly thirty years later, seems clear enough that I've recently shot several video lectures (one, two, and three) discussing the work.  What I recall is being struck by the boldness of Camus' formulations, an enjoyment arising from turning over the paradoxical phrases, and the feeling that if I just dug at it tenaciously enough, I'd come away from reading equipped with something novel, exciting, something I could integrate within my own life and developing thought.  For me, its fitting that, in celebration of his birthday, I focus mainly on that early work in which I first encountered his intransigent thought, his resolve to live "without appeal."

Anger Arising in Plato's Dialogues

In this series -- started some time back, and now restarted -- of blog posts about philosophers and theologians discussing the topic of anger (whose latest installment addresses the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus), I've been eagerly looking forward to carving out the time needed to talk about the views and insights expressed by one critically important early philosopher, Plato -- poised right between his great teacher, the gadfly Socrates, and his greatest student, the systematic philosopher Aristotle.  There's one place in particular where Plato writes most about anger, or at least the part of our personalities by which we feel that emotion -- book 4 of his dialogue, the Republic, where Socrates analyses the human soul into three main parts, anger falling within the province of the intermediate, third, spirited part, which goes by the name of thumos, or the thumoeides part.

Anger does come up fairly frequently in Platonic dialogues, but not so much as a theme specifically focused on by the interlocutors, let alone subjected to the analysis of dialectic.  Instead, we see references made to different people getting or being angry in various situations, anger brought in as part of an explanation for human actions, anger being aroused (or sometimes significantly not) or at least feared as a threat within the interlocutors during the discussions.  What I've wanted to do for a long time is to assemble these instances, like pieces of a mosaic, and see if by shuffling and sifting, then selecting them, it might not be possible to assemble a composite picture of anger complementary to the tantalizingly short Platonic discussion of anger.

The Story of Yamantaka: Death by Infinite Reduplication

After driving down to New Jersey the day before -- to present a paper on St. Anselm's moral theory at the 6th Felician Ethics conference and then to say a few words, again about Anselm, at the 40th anniversary of St. Anselm's parish -- we made a slight detour to Staten Island, where we visited the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, a small, but very interesting collection not only of Tibetan, but also Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian Buddhist statuary, mandalas, tapestries, and artifacts.  Jacques Marchais was actually an actress (given a boy's name since her mother had wanted a son), working in the early 20th century, devoted to study of the world's religious traditions, but particularly attracted to Buddhism, and to Tibetan Buddhism specifically.

The museum -- originally a center established by Marchais in the 1940s -- is set out on grounds replicating the topography of a Tibetan monastery, ascending high up a hill, with as many stairways as plots of level ground.  As you'll see in some of the pictures below, rains had driven petals from the flowering trees like wet, soft confetti all across the slate stone grounds and outdoor furniture of the museum complex.  We were able to walk some of the grounds -- not down so far as the meditation cells -- but the main attraction for us was the collection.  And, for me, who years back had been afforded the chance to introduce prison students semester after semester in World Religions to a few of the distinctive practices and beliefs, and even to selected portions of the intricate, startling, expressive artwork of Tibetan Buddhism  -- the culmination of several weeks devoted to Buddhism -- the most gratifying parts of the entire collection was being afforded to examine, from  multiple angles, several different statues of one of the great protective beings of Tibetan Buddhism, Yamantaka, the protector who faced down, and literally scared to death, Death himself.