Fourteen New Podcast Interviews and Guest Appearances

It's been quite some time since I did a roundup of my recent podcast appearances, so a new curated listing is long overdue!

Since the last post here setting out some recent guest appearances and interviews on a variety of podcasts and shows, I've done quite a few new ones. Something new for me that I've added has been doing guest hosting (both on my own and with other co-hosts) on the Sunday Stoic podcast.

Here are all my new appearances. Give the ones that interest you a listen.  I hope you enjoy them! 

Interview on The Side View podcast – hosted by Adam Robbert, discussing Pierre Hadot, the idea of philosophy as way of life, academic philosophy, and public philosophy – you can listen here

Interview of the Ta Će On podcast – hosted by Feđa Malinović, discussing how philosophy can be made practical, personal development, what philosophy offers to younger people, and many other topics – you can watch or listen here

Guest Host on the Sunday Stoic Podcast – with Andi Sciacca, discussing Stoicism and its applications within the sphere of romance, relationships, dating, and marriage – you can listen here

Guest Host on the Sunday Stoic Podcast – with Dan Hayes, discussing the importance of dialogue in Stoic philosophy – you can listen here

Interview on the Mastering Midlife podcast – hosted by Mark Silverman, discussing how I got into academic philosophy and then applied it to life issues, philosophical eclecticism, Plutarch as a model philosopher, why brilliance is overrated – you can listen here

Guest Host on the Sunday Stoic Podcast – discussing why reading Stoic texts, in particular classical primary sources, is an important practice for anyone who wants to really understand and progress in Stoicism – you can listen here

Interview on the Modern Stoicism podcast – hosted by Adam Piercey, discussing Modern Stoicism, the Stoicism Today Blog, and grassroots activities in the modern Stoicism movement – you can listen here

Interview on the David Storey podcast – hosted by David Storey, discussing leaving academia, struggles building a new professional identity, becoming the YouTube Philosopher, the simple power of making distinctions in business , and advice for young philosophers considering leaving academia.- you can listen to part 1 here and part 2 here

Interview on the Jason Damico Show – hosted by Jason Damico, discussing a wide range of topics from practical and academic philosophy, teaching in prisons, learning to play bass guitar, all sorts of topics in heavy metal, and how I got started with YouTube – you can watch or listen here

Interview on The Practical Stoic podcast – hosted by Simon Drew, discussing how Stoic philosophy and practices can help us understand, deal with, and reduce anger – you can watch or listen here

Interview on the Stoic Advantage Podcast – hosted by Ryan Racine, discussing how and why Stoicism has undergone a revival of interest over the last several decades, what my favorite Stoic practice is, how Stoicism can be helpful for younger people, and debunking a few myths about Stoicism – you can listen here

Interview on the Stoic Psychologist podcast – hosted by Alex MacLellan, discussing what modern Stoicism is, how people can use Stoic philosophy and practices to improve their lives, how to translate ideas and terms from ancient philosophy into contemporary life, and more – you can listen to part 1 here and to part 2 here

Interview on The Practical Stoic podcast – hosted by Simon Drew, discussing what the core principles of Stoicism are, how we can reinterpret and apply those principles in a modern age, and a number of other Stoicism-related topics – you can listen here

Interview on the Hidden Why podcast – hosted by Leigh Martinuzzi, discussing what practical philosophy is, how philosophy can be used to understand and improve our lives – you can listen here

Twelve Podcast Episodes on Cicero's On Friendship

One of the texts I started teaching in my classes years ago is On Friendship by the great Roman philosopher and statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero.  I find ways to work reading and discussion of this short but rich book into my Ethics, Introduction to Philosophy, and Philosophy of Love and Friendship classes.  I've been surprised by how much students in the 21st century respond to the work - they find a lot of value in its treatment of the topics.

Cicero of course draws upon some ideas and insights derived from Aristotle's own treatment of the topics involved in friendships and relationships, found in his Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics.  But On Friendship isn't just adding to Aristotle a few centuries afterwards.  It is a thoughtful, incisive examination of a number of important issues arising out of friendships.

A while back, I shot a sequence of lecture videos on this work, and more recently, I edited them into a set of episodes in the Sadler's Lectures podcast.  There are twelve of them, covering all of the key ideas of the work in depth and detail.  Here's links to each of these podcast episodes

• Defining Genuine Friendship
• The Advantages Of Friendship
• Friendship Arising From Nature
• Three Mistaken Views On Friendship
• Avoiding Friendship To Be Free
• Limits On Loyalty To Friends
• Old Friends And New Friends
• Loving Things Vs. Loving Persons
• Friendship, Superiority, And Inferiority
• Criticizing Friends
• Slowly Ending Friendships
• Choosing Friends Carefully

I hope you find these episodes useful and interesting. As always, 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.

Twelve Videos on Cicero's On Friendship

Marcus Tullius Cicero's short work On Friendship is one that I occasionally teach in my Intro to Philosophy and my Ethics classes, usually counterposed to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics books 8 and 9, which also focus on the topic of friendship.  When I teach classes focused specifically on Love, Friendship, and Relationships, On Friendship is one of the central works for the class.

I like to have core concept videos available as supplemental resources for students in my face-to-face classes.  For online classes, they're even more important.  This semester I was teaching two online ethics classes - an Ethics class in the Second Chance Pell program for Milwaukee Area Technical College, and an Ethics for Artists and Designers class for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.  So I thought it was about time that I created a sequence of videos going through all of On Friendship.

As it turns out, that required twelve videos, all of which are linked to here

• Defining Genuine Friendship 
• Friendship Arising From Nature 
• The Advantages of Friendship 
• Three Mistaken Limits on Friendship
• Avoiding Friendship to be Free 
• Loving Things vs. Loving Persons
• Choosing Friends Carefully 
• New Friends and Old Friends
• Superiority, Inferiority, and Friendship 
• Limits on Loyalty to Friends 
• Criticizing Friends
• Slowly Ending Friendships

I'm planning on creating an affordable and engaging online class on this work over the summer, which will incorporate these videos, but also provide a number of downloadable handouts, lesson pages, reflection prompts, and a number of other resources designed to help learners understand and apply the key ideas of On Friendship.  Stay tuned to our Study With Sadler online academy for more on that and other classes coming out this summer!

Wisdom For Life Show - Episode 8 - Balancing Autonomy and Connection

My co-host, Dan Hayes, and I have now produced eight episodes of our philosophy-focused radio show, Wisdom for Life.  The latest episode focuses on a common struggle in relationships: how to balance one's own need for autonomy, and that of one's partner, with the need for connection. 

If you'd like to listen to that episode, here it is!


You can also check out all of the previous episodes as well. Each is about an hour of dialogue and discussion focused on making useful concepts drawn from philosophy accessible for a general audience, and applicable to the challenges and issues we face in daily life.

Episode 1 - Philosophy as a Way of Life
Episode 2 - Dealing With Fear in a Crisis
Episode 3 - Defining What's Good and What's Bad
Episode 4 - Setting and Maintaining Boundaries
Episode 5 - What Makes Relationships Good?
Episode 6- What Is Resiliency?
Episode 7 -The Stockdale Paradox

Riverwest Radio is a community radio station. 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!

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!

My Students' Interest in Aristotle's Social Virtues

This semester I am teaching two sections of Foundations in Philosophy at Marquette University.  We are running through a number of texts and thinkers (you can read the list of them here), and among those are Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.  Because I added more Plato, we can't do quite so much from Aristotle, so we are giving the Ethics just three days.  

The first was devoted to books 1 and 2 - so teleology, happiness, and the nature of virtue.  Next class session, we're doing the first part of book 3, a bit of book 6, and parts of book 7 - so matters of moral responsibility, choice and deliberation, and the issue of weakness of will (akrasia).  Our most recent class session last week was devoted to books 3 and 4 - where Aristotle goes into depth in examining each of the virtues (except justice and practical wisdom) and their associated vices.

I created a poll for each class section in which the students could choose the three virtues they most wanted me to go over in class.  About 40% of my students participated, and the numbers weren't exactly the same from section to section.  But there was one interesting area of overlap.  Students were definitely interested in - and wanted to know more about - the "social virtues".

The three that Aristotle discusses that particularly have to do with our social existence and nature are found at the end of book 4.  They often get short shrift when people are presenting Aristotle's moral theory - if you run out of time, they tend to get skipped - but his focus upon them as distinctive virtues, irreducible to other moral dispositions, worthy of examination, discussion, and development - that's actually an important innovation on Aristotle's part.

What are these three virtues?  One of them is Truthfulness.  Not truthfulness or honesty in all matters - a good bit of that falls under the virtue of justice - but rather truthfulness about oneself, about who one is, what kind of person one is, one's value and achievements.

Another of these is Friendliness.  Not the same thing as friendship - that's discussed at considerable length in books 8 - but rather a broader disposition that one might show to more than just one's friends.  This one, it turns out, has to do with giving pain or pleasure to others, and participating in common activities.  It involves being able to set limits, but also join in to what one ought to.

And then there's Good Humor.  It's very interesting that Aristotle would single this out as a virtuous disposition.  But it makes good sense - as I pointed out to my class, one old (and not too bad) definition of human being is animal ridens, the animal that laughs.  Humor, comedy, and joking are an important dimension to human existence.

My students wanted to think through what Aristotle had to teach us about all three of these (and about Courage, Right Ambition, Generosity, and Good Temper).  Both classes gave the highest preference to Good Humor.  Quite interesting. . . 

Ten Videos on Augustine's City of God

Last semester, I started shooting a set of short lecture videos on the early Christian philosopher, Augustine of Hippo's City of God as resources for my students in two of my classes.  That late work of Augustine is a pretty massive tome, so we were just covering a selection of topics in books 5, 11, and 19 of the text.

The topics that we examined - human free will and divine foreknowledge, the role of Christian revelation in philosophy, created time and space, what human happiness requires, the virtues in their struggles with vices, and the extent of community - are all important in Augustine's thought as a whole.

The semester got away from me - I ended up taking on five classes (more than full time for academic teaching) - so I wasn't able to get to all of them until later on in December, after classes ended.  Here is the full set on the City of God - to which I will perhaps add additional videos down the line.

• Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will (book 5)
• Knowledge of God and the Mediator (book 11)
• Creation, Time, and Space (book 11)
• Goodness of Creation and Natural Evil (book 11)
• Existence, Knowledge, and Love (book 11)
• Philosophical Sects and the Supreme Good (book 19)
• The Supreme Good and the Present Life (book 19)
• Why Virtues are Not The Supreme Good (book 19)
• The Four Circles of Relationships (book 19)
• Peace as Universally Desired (book 19)

This semester, I'll only be teaching some of this material from book 11 of City of God in my classes.  But I will be covering a different Augustine text, his earlier work On Free Choice of the Will.  I'll be creating new core concept videos on that book later on in the semester.

Eight Short Videos on Epicurus' Thought

Some time back, I created a set of eight core concept videos focused specifically on several key ideas from the few texts we still possess authored by the great Hellenistic hedonist philosopher, Epicurus (which you can find assembled together here)

Although I'm far from being an Epicurean myself, I frequently teach his ideas in my Ethics and Introduction to Philosophy classes, so developing these short lecture videos has been very useful for me and my students.

I'll be discussing the Epicurean tradition again this semester in at least three of the five classes I'm slated to teach, and I'll likely be adding a few new Core Concept videos to supplement the stock of those I already have available.  Most likely, those won't be focused specifically on the founder of that school, though, but on the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius' main work, On The Nature of Things - and on book 1 of Cicero's On The Ends, in which his character, Torquatus, presents Epicurean perspectives on a variety of topics.

Here are the eight core concept videos focused specifically on Epicurus' thought.  Altogether, they comprise a bit under two hours of lectures, covering most of his main ideas, arguments, and distinctions in ethics.

• Practical Reasoning about Pain and Pleasure
• Pleasure, Prudence, and Justice
• The Nature and Usefulness of Justice
• Two Sources of Groundless Fears 
• Mental and Bodily Pleasures
• Moving and Static Pleasures 
• Three Types of Desires
• The Value of Friendship 

As a parting thought, although Epicurus was reportedly one of the most prolific philosophers of ancient times, we currently possess just the smallest portion of his works.  And we're very fortunate to have that, because nearly all of what we do have derives from Diogenes Laertes' work Lives of the Philosophers.  Because he liked Epicurus, Diogenes copied by hand three of Epicurus' letters and the Principal Doctrines verbatim into the last book of that work. Lucky for us he did!

A Reminder About Relationships From Aristotle

Aristotle's famous discussion about friendship occurs in Nicomachean Ethics books 8 and 9. What presenters typically draw from his inquiry tends to be restricted to a few topics: the nature of friendship itself, the three main types of friendship, and the three values associated with those types (virtue, pleasure, and usefulness).  His treatment of "friendship" - or really, better expressed, relationships - has much more to offer, however, and one particularly important topic is how relationships break down.

Why do people stop feeling mutual affection?  Why do they cease to desire good for the other person for their own sake?  Why do they begin to complain, feel resentful, or cut back their own involvement in the relationship?  Aristotle doesn't examine every possible reason - how could he? - but he does set out some generally applicable guidelines that remain relevant to relationships in the present.

Among these is the need to pay proper attention to imbalances within relationships.  Does one person bring more to the table than the other?  Do the partners change in themselves, or in what they provide to the other person, over the course of time?  Do desires and expectations change as well - and are these changes noticed, communicated, and dealt with effectively? If not - and particularly when the relationship is on shakier grounds than the partners would like to believe - then it is reasonable, though sometimes lamentable, that the relationship breaks down.

One red flag, which Aristotle touches upon, but doesn't explore as much as one might like, is when the "friends" have markedly different understandings of what their relationship is about.  They might also differ over what goods the friends are providing or producing for each other, what needs ought to be met, and where the limits or boundaries are.  This can be particularly problematic when these differences of basic viewpoint remain unarticulated, or even unsuspected.  But even when they are right out in the open, these differences can gradually erode the relationship, if one of the partners - rightly or wrongly - is unwilling to accept the other person's version of the relationship.

A closely connected problem is highlighted by the passage quoted above.  Getting something "different" or "other" than what one actually desires in some respects feels worse than simply getting nothing. And when that comes from a person partnered to you in a relationship - whether romantic, familial, friendship, business, or even just social - it sends a message:  that person doesn't really desire you to enjoy the good you do desire. 

It ends up producing even more disappointment, sadness, anger - even anxiety - when the person doing the giving insists, for example, that what he or she gives is really what you deserve or ought to have.  Or that what you desire and perhaps even explicitly ask for isn't as good as what they decide to give.  All of us can recall times this has happened to us.  Now with that in mind, consider whether we haven't also engaged in this sort of substitution with others in our relationships.

Philosophy Pop-Up Coming Up Today - Stoicism and Relationships

Each month, I hold two live online Philosophy Pop-Up sessions - one on Facebook Live and the other on YouTube Live.  Today from 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM Central Time, we'll be having the YouTube Live session.

The topic this month that I'll start the session with is Stoicism and relationships.  Since it's Valentine's Day coming up this month, and since I've just authored a piece over at Stoicism Today on that very topic, we'll be focusing particularly on what Stoics would make of romantic or erotic relationships.  But as usual, related topics are fair game.

If you're just finding out about this session today, and you'd like to have more lead time for future ones, then you'll want to become a Patreon supporter.  Each month, one of the perks for all the people who underwrite my work doing public philosophy - from the $1 per month level on up - is that they get to find out the days and times for these Philosophy Pop-Ups ahead of time.

Here's the video link for the session:


If you'd like to watch any of the Philosophy Pop-Up sessions from previous months, here's links to all of them:

• Philosophy Pop-Up - August 2017 - Topic: Martin Heidegger
• Philosophy Pop-Up - September 2017 -  Topic: Stoicism and "In Accordance With Nature"
• Philosophy Pop-Up - October 2017 - Topic: Stoicism, Epictetus, and the Dichotomy of Control
• Philosophy Pop-Up - November 2017 - Topic: Friedrich Nietzsche On Three Noble Responses To Life
• Philosophy Pop-Up - December 2017 - Topic: Philosophy, Festivals, and Holidays
• Philosophy Pop-Up -January 2018 - Topic: Plato's Allegory of the Cave

How Hard Is It To Find An Aristotelian Friend?

A thoughtful piece published last month in the Columbia Spectator, An Aristotelian Friend Is Hard To Find, brings up an issue about which I've often found myself engaged in not-entirely-satisfactory discussion:  the nature of friendship and the types of relationships.  I've taught Aristotle's classic treatment of friendship from book eight of the Nicomachean Ethics more times than I can easily tally up.  In my philosophical counseling practice - perhaps because so many people have encountered Aristotle's distinction - my clients also bring it up occasionally.

What seems to be the most problematic feature of his account for most people - and for good reasons that I'll explore below - is that the most primary and paradigmatic sort of friendship turns out to be quite rare, and requires a good bit of time and various factors coming together just right.  The other sorts of friendship, not quite so much deserving of the name, are much more common and easier to find.  So in terms of relationships, what is mediocre to decent to fairly good seems quite realizable, but what is really good to outstanding, while easy enough to imagine or conceive, appears extraordinarily difficult to realize.

The author of the piece is a young person, a college student, and she narrates and reflects upon the various kinds of relationships she has experienced amongst her fellow students in terms informed by Aristotle's distinction.  My own students have often been of the same age, as have some of the clients with whom I've worked through this distinction as they attempt to apply it within the framework of their own lives and relationships.  I've been mulling over Aristotle's theory of friendship since my own graduate school days - about two decades - and it seems like a fitting time to finally write out some of those ruminations here.

Reflections Upon Gratitude

There's a marked tendency to talk a lot about "gratitude" these days.  In fact, springboarding off an oft-quoted passage from Cicero's speech For Plancius - "gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues, but the parent of them" - (and then never engaging with Cicero's thought again after that) there's even quite a lot of buzz about gratitude in terms of virtue ethics, or at least what we might call "virtue-lite morality."  There's also a rising and somewhat paradoxical tendency to focus on the positive effects of gratitude on the life, the attitude, even the physical health of the grateful person.

I wonder myself at times whether we really ought to include "gratitude" among the virtues, or whether -  as I've argued elsewhere about forgiveness - we ought instead better regard it as something connected with and flowing from virtues, but not actually a virtue in its own right.  That's a topic on which I admittedly need to do more thinking.  But, one thing I have been reflecting upon quite a bit lately, is what gratitude ought to look like.  Or, you might say, how far it ought to extend in attitude and action, if it is really to be gratitude.

Should Stoics Be Concerned About Others?

In a 6-week online course on Epictetus I'm presently teaching though my company, ReasonIO, I got asked a question that keeps popping up, quite naturally, when we're considering Stoic Ethics.  I'm also in the process of consolidating and rewriting posts from my other blogs into pieces here in Orexis Dianoētikē. Here's a piece originally published in Virtue Ethics Digest that frames and addresses those general concerns - Should a Stoic be concerned about (non-)Stoic others? And further, how and why?

Over the course of Stoic Week 2015, I created a sequence of seven videos, four of which focused on discussions of key Stoic doctrines in the works of the Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, Cicero (who was not himself a Stoic, but who did admit himself attracted to a number of their doctrines, particularly in the field of Ethics.  On one of those videos, one of my interlocutors - a very bright, young South African student and blogger, Marc Smit asked me a very important question.

I feel that Stoicism does offer relevant ideas for me as individual, in the sense that I can apply it to my own thoughts, feelings or actions bearing on things that happen to me, but how do I respond to these things when then happen to others, notably friends or loved ones?