Orexis Dianoētikē: videos and online education

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Apr 15, 2021

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

Apr 9, 2021

Eight Videos On Philosophy As A Way Of Life

This semester, I have been teaching a class at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design titled "Philosophy, Mindfulness, and Life". "Mindfulness" in that title has a much more broad scope than just contemporary mindfulness movement teachings and techniques. The class is actually much more focused on what has come in recent years to be referred to a "Philosophy as a Way of Life".

That formulation is most closely associated with the French 20th century philosopher Pierre Hadot, but as I've discussed elsewhere, it is a way of understanding and doing philosophy that has been around since antiquity and continued on down to the present, developing through a number of traditions and movements (and Hadot would agree with this).

Earlier in the semester, I created eight new core concept videos specifically on Philosophy as a way of life for my students enrolled in that class. I knew they would also be of interest to a much broader audience, so I'm bringing them all together here in one place.

Five of them are on chapter 3 of Pierre Hadot's book Philosophy As A Way Of Life, entitled "Spiritual Exercises".

Three of them are on John Sellars' excellent article, "What Is Philosophy As A Way Of Life".

I hope you find them useful for understanding this way of understanding and engaging in philosophy!

Apr 2, 2021

April AMA (Ask Me Anything Session) Coming Up Tomorrow Noon Central

Every month I hold an online AMA - an Ask Me Anything - session for my viewers, listeners, readers, supporters, and other fans. They're hosted on YouTube Live, and I record each session so that people who would like can go back through them.

The next one is coming up tomorrow at Noon Central Time If there's a question you've been wanting to ask me, pop in to the session and I'll do my best to provide an answer for you. You'll want to get your questions in early, since these sessions tend to draw a lot of viewers, and many of them ask questions.

Since some people ask a lot of questions in these sessions, I prioritize people who haven't yet had a question answered, rather than just answering multiple questions by the same person.

If you click on the video link here, you can go right to the YouTube page. There you can get a question into the queue ahead of time, and you can also set a reminder for when the session starts, if you'd like.

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world. If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

I hope to see you there, and look forward to an engaging conversation!

Mar 20, 2021

Next Thinkers for Sadler's Lectures Podcast Selected

Every once in a while, I do polls about which authors' works I should focus on next for the Sadler's Lectures podcast. I ran one earlier this week in three places - Twitter, YouTube, and Patreon - and I think at this point in time I can call the winner of the poll: Thomas Hobbes. I'll be producing podcast episodes from the recent core concept videos on his masterwork, Leviathan.

For those who don't already know, the stock of 800 or so core concept videos I have produced provide the raw material for the podcast episodes. Hence the title "Sadler's Lectures" - that's exactly what they are, lectures I gave originally in video form, and then converted to audio, boosting sound quality, taking out filler words, and exporting into mp3 format podcast episodes.

The four alternatives for the polls were:

Anselm of Canterbury - On Freedom of Choice
Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
Lev Shestov - All Things Are Possible
Frantz Fanon - Black Skin, White Masks

Each of these is a work on which, in the last several years, I produced a sequence of short lecture videos, and which I intended eventually to get to producing podcast episodes on. I'll be doing so for all of them in which remains of this month and throughout next month. The only question was where I should start.

I take the votes from the polls and add them all together. My Patreon supporters, however, get their votes much more heavily weighted than the general public - each of their votes counts as 20 votes. 17 Patreon supporters have voted. 80 or so people voted on Twitter, and over 700 on YouTube. Here's how the votes came out (Patreon + Twitter + YouTube)

Thomas Hobbes 80 + 14 + 260 = 354
Anselm of Canterbury 100 + 23 + 175 = 298
Frantz Fanon 80 + 31 + 175 = 286
Lev Shestov 80 + 15 + 91 = 186

So, there you go! I'll be starting with Thomas Hobbes, then moving on to Anselm, then to Frantz Fanon, and then Lev Shestov. I've got my work cut out for me. You'll see me posting the podcast episodes in my social media, but if you want to listen to them as soon as they come out, you might want to subscribe to the Sadler's Lectures podcast. You can do so at its home on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Player FM, iHeart Radio, and plenty of other places online.

Jan 22, 2021

Six Lecture Videos on Michel Foucault's Technologies of the Self

One of the texts that I've taught in my classes in the past, but never produced any lecture videos about until nowis Michel Foucault's piece, Technologies of the Self. It fits in particularly well with one class I'm teaching this semester for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. It's titled "Philosophy, Mindfulness, and Life, but the class mainly focuses on Philosophy As A Way Of Life.

That's a term popularized by 20th century French philosopher Pierre Hadot, but as as approach towards philosophy it goes far beyond the ambit of his works. Foucault's study of technologies of the self covers much of the same ground (as does, I would argue, what Alasdair MacIntyre calls "tradition-constituted inquiry"). The focus is on how intentional ways of living develop, employ, borrow, and transform practices.

Foucault's own emphasis on technologies allows him to explain his own overarching projects, framing them particularly in terms of his earlier focus on technologies of power, and his later shift to examining what he calls "technologies of the self."

You can find the essay in multiple places - one of them is in the collection Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth.

Here are those six videos:

I hope you find them 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.

Jan 10, 2021

Ten Podcast Episodes on John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism

One text that I teach frequently in my classes is John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. Years back, I produced a set of short core concept lecture videos covering the main ideas Mill sets out in that short but important work. My students have been using them for quite some time, but they are just a fraction of the viewers that have watched those videos in order to better understand the text.

Last year, I added a new set of resources on this text, taking the lecture videos and converting them into podcast episodes in my Sadler's Lectures channel, boosting the sound quality, and editing out all of the longer pauses and filler words.

Here are those ten podcast episodes on Mill's Utilitarianism. All told, they run for about 2 1/2 hours:

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.

Jan 3, 2021

Worlds of Speculative Fiction Selections Set For 2021

After soliciting viewer, subscriber, and supporter suggestions for the final three slots in the monthly Worlds of Speculative Fiction series for this new year, and then having a run-off vote for the final slot, we now have a full line-up for the series.

Each month - usually the second Saturday - we will focus on one specific author, the narrative world of some of their works, and philosophical themes found in their writings. These events we're holding online -until it is completely safe to return to the face to face setting - have two parts.

Part 1 is a video premiere, with live-chat between me and viewers - of me discussing the author, their narrative world, their biography, and some selected philosophical themes. Those usually run about 90 minutes, and the videos are then added to the series playlist

Part 2, immediately following, is a videoconferencing conversation, carried out by Zoom, where we get to go a bit more into depth about anything that the viewers found particularly interesting. We usually have some great conversations about the works in those sessions.

You don't have to have read the author or the specific works in order to get something out of these sessions. But obviously, it certainly does help to have done so. Here's the list of the authors and the recommended books for each session this year.

January - Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy

The Three-Body Problem
The Dark Forest
Death's End

February - Philip K. Dick's stories of Colonization and Insanity

Martian Time-Slip
Clans of the Alphane Moon
We Can Build You
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
A Maze of Death

March - R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy

The Darkness That Comes Before
The Warrior-Prophet
The Thousandfold Thought

April - Margaret Atwood's Gilead dystopia stories

The Handmaid's Tale
The Testaments

May - Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers novels

The Maker of Universes
The Gates of Creation
A Private Cosmos
Behind the Walls of Terra
The Lavalite World
More Than Fire

June - A.E. Van Vogt's Weapon-Makers novels

The Weapon Shops of Isher
Weapon Makers

July - Octavia Butler's Parable novels

Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Talents

August - J.G. Ballard's modern dystopias

Crash
Concrete Island
High Rise

September - Stanislaw Lem's Ijon Tichy stories

The Star Diaries
The Futurological Congress
Peace on Earth
Observation on the Spot

October - Neal Stephenson's Anathem

Anathem

November - Jorge Luis Borges - theme TBD

selected stories, TBD

December - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy

Northern Lights
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass

Aug 11, 2020

Ten Videos on Seneca's Letters

Earlier this summer, I created seven new core concept videos on a selection of letters from the great Stoic philosopher Seneca, in which he ranges over a number of key topics, not just in Stoic, but also Aristotelian, Platonic, and other philosophical traditions. Each video focuses on one of the Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius.

Adding these to the three I had produced previously for my Intro to Philosophy students, the sequence now covers a number of key topics, distinctions, and arguments in metaphysics and ethics. Here is the set so far:

I will likely start shooting additional videos on Seneca's Letters later on this Fall.

Aug 1, 2020

Sadler's Lecture Podcast Hits 200 Episodes!

A bit over two years ago, I created the Sadler's Lectures podcast. Viewers had been asking me for years to convert some of my YouTube videos into downloadable podcasts that they could listen to anywhere. I'd balked at it for a while, hesitating to add yet another activity to my chronically-full schedule, but then decided that once I hit a certain level of monthly support on Patreon, I'd commit to starting a podcast.

Sadler's Lectures is exactly what it sounds like. I'm not hosting a new podcast - not at this point - in which I'd do something different from my video lectures. In fact, what I've done (with a very few exceptions) is take my already existing core concept videos and turn those into podcast episodes. I generally boost and tinker with the sound quality, and then edit out all the filler words - "ums", "ahs", "y'knows" - and the pauses, tack on standard intros and outros, and then they're ready to release.

The podcast is officially sited on Soundcloud, but you can also get it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Player FM, Himalaya, iHeartRadio, and quite likely some other places out there that have flown under my radar. Sadler's Lectures episodes are also incorporated into TrueSciPhi Radio as well.

With the release of the last in the series (for now) on Albert Camus' work, The Myth of Sisyphus, Sadler's Lectures hit a new benchmark. I've produced and released 200 episodes! (Actually 208, since I early-released a sequence on Epicurus to my Patreon supporters - I'll be releasing those episodes over this weekend and the coming week).

Since I keep producing core concept videos - I'm probably well past the 700 video mark - I'm not going to run out of content to edit into podcast episodes anytime soon. I've been putting out abut 5 per week on average, so you can expect to see about 250 additional episodes a year if I keep it up!

At present, the podcast includes lectures on Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epictetus, Anselm of Canterbury, Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Martin Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ursula K. Leguin, James Rachels, Lawrence Kohlberg, Mary Midgley, and John Rawls. I'll be adding quite a few new authors as time goes on!

Jul 17, 2020

Three Podcast Episodes on Lawrence Kohlberg and Moral Development

One of the thinkers whose work I teach in my Ethics classes is the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. I tend to assign his essay "Moral Development: A Review of the Theory," which provides a good overview of his six stages of moral development, and also discusses its applications to and implications for K-12 education. Some time back, I shot a sequence of three core concept videos covering the main ideas of the piece.

Recently, in order to provide the same lecture material to my students in another format, I edited the sound files from those videos into Sadler's Lectures podcast episodes. I boost the sound quality where possible, and take out all of the"ums", "ahs", and other such filler, so that listeners get an improved lecture.

If you'd like to listen to or download these episodes, you can do so in a variety of places - Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Player FM, as well as other sites - but the best place to do so is on my Soundcloud. Here's those three episodes:

All told, they come to a bit more than 40 minutes total playing time, so you can learn the basics about Kohlberg's moral development theory in the space of a commute, a walk, or a workout!

May 17, 2020

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

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!

May 9, 2020

May AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session at Noon Central Today

I have one coming up at Noon Central Today. If there's a question you've been wanting to ask me, pop in to the session and I'll hopefully have an answer for you. You'll want to get your questions in early, since these sessions tend to draw a lot of viewers, and many of them ask questions.

Since some people ask a lot of questions in these sessions, I prioritize people who haven't yet had a question answered, rather than just answering multiple questions by the same person.

Here's the link to the session. You can click on it and go right to the YouTube page. There you can get a question into the queue ahead of time, and you can also set a reminder for when the session starts, if you'd like.

If you'd like to watch and listen to any of the earlier AMA sessions - you can also see what all the questions and comments were for that session by looking at the chat replay on the left side of the screen - here's a link to a playlist containing all of them.

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world.

If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

May 6, 2020

Core Concept Playlist Split into Five Playlists

For years, I have been producing shorter (10-25 minute) videos on key ideas, distinctions, arguments, and topics in philosophy. I use these routinely as a resource for my students in classes that I teach.

Many other people use them as well. Students in other people's classes watch or listen to them to help them understand their assigned material. Lifelong learners use them to study or just brush up on philosophy. Professors sometimes assign them to their own students, and I've even had some instructors write to tell me that the videos helped them prepare their own class notes, lectures, and discussions!

I used a YouTube playlist to gather them all together into one place, and that worked all right for a while. But some time back, I passed the 600-video mark in that playlist, and it began to develop some glitches (which is actually not bad, since YouTub officially says don't put more than 200 videos in a playlist!), so I've been kicking around the idea of splitting the one massive playlist into five more manageable ones.

What kept me from doing that for the time being was the work involved. It means going in manually and moving all of those videos around. So I've been putting it off for quite a while. But today, I bit the bullet, put in the hours of work, and now all five are ready for prime time (or whatever the equivalent is for YouTube!). With no further ado, here they are (click on the link to see the actual) playlists).

Ancient Philosophy - 340 videos on Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca, and Epictetus
Medieval Philosophy and Theology - 64 videos on Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, and Thomas Aquinas
Modern Philosophy - 80 videos on Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, and Immanuel Kant
19th Century Philosophy and Literature - 70 videos on G.W.F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James
20th Century Philosophy and Literature - 127 videos on A.J. Ayer, Martin Heidegger, Rainer Maria Rilke, W.D. Ross, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Ruth Benedict, Hannah Arendt, Ayn Rand, John Rawls, George Dickie, Ursula K. Leguin, Lawrence Kohlberg, Virginia Held, Alasdair MacIntyre, Mary Midgley, James Rachels, Rosemarie Tong, and Peter Singer

That's 681 total core concept videos - quite a lot! As I look at it, I'm pretty sure that I'll need to split that first playlist again sooner or later (most likely into everything before and including Aristotle, and everything after him).

So if you're looking for short, on-point, accessible but rigorous videos on any of these thinkers, you can now much more easily find them. Just click on the relevant playlist and you'll be able to see everything I've got available in that format.

Apr 9, 2020

Eight Lecture Videos on Plato's Republic book 4

A number of years back, I created two core concept videos - drawn from my classroom discussions - about some of the key issues in Plato's Republic book 4. This is a particularly important part of the work, for in it, Socrates finally makes good on his promise to tell the other characters of the dialogue his answer to the central question - what is justice?

All of Socrates' lead-up in sketching an ideal city (actually, if you read closely in book 2, the second-best ideal city) - with the idea that the city is a person's soul writ large - bears fruit in Plato's analysis of the soul, its parts, and their functions.

That Republic book 4 analysis of the tripartite soul, and of the four cardinal virtues associated with the parts of the soul, becomes massively influential throughout ancient and medieval philosophy (and theology as well), exercising influence within and without the specifically Platonic tradition. So studying this part of the work - enjoyable in its own sake - is also important for understanding the history of ideas.

Here are those eight videos:

Apr 4, 2020

AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session Coming Up Today

Each month I hold an online AMA - an Ask Me Anything - session for my viewers, listeners, readers, supporters, and other fans. They're hosted on YouTube Live, and I record each session so that people who would like can go back through them.

I have one coming up a bit later on today, so if there's a question you've been wanting to ask me, pop in to the session and I'll hopefully have an answer for you. You'll want to get your questions in early, since these sessions tend to draw a lot of viewers, and many of them ask questions.

Some people ask a lot of questions in these sessions. I try to prioritize people who haven't yet had a question answered, rather than just answering multiple questions by the same person. That seems fair to me.

Here's the link to the session. You can click on it and go right to the YouTube page. There you can get a question into the queue ahead of time, and you can also set a reminder for when the session starts, if you'd like.

Feb 26, 2020

Sadler's Honest Review - Piotr Stankiewicz, Does Happiness Write Blank Pages?

I recently added a new review to my Sadler's Honest Reviews series - this one focusing on Piotr Stankiewicz's work, Does Happiness Write Blank Pages? On Stoicism and Artistic Creativity.

Put very simply, I highly recommend his book, both for its discussion of modern Stoicism and for its examination of artistic creativity. Here's the video review, going into the details about why I recommend the book.

This review is the tenth in the series. If you'd like to watch any of the others, and hear my in-depth discussions and evaluations of the books, here are the other nine.

Feb 23, 2020

Five Podcast Episodes On Anselm's Proslogion

One of the often underrated Medieval thinkers who I teach routinely in Introduction to Philosophy classes is Anselm of Canterbury. He also happens to be the thinker upon whom I've published the most in the course of my academic career - and I point that out mainly to stress that he's definitely a thinker whose works are worth studying. The work most students encounter him through is the Proslogion - or rather a short portion of it, chapter 2 (maybe supplemented by 3 and 4) - since Anselm provides a version of what later comes to be called the "ontological argument".

It's a shame that most of the time, people don't read further on in the work, since it is quite fantastic (and even more so in the original Latin). Even in his own time, there were critics - like the monk Gaunilo - who basically misunderstood what Anselm was up to in the work, and focused in solely on the argument about God's existence. The Proslogion uses the same line of argument to lead the reader into consideration of the divine attributes, resolution of some seeming paradoxes, discussion of our capacities to even understand God, and in the end even some conjectures about what heaven would be like.

I recently produced five podcast episodes on the Proslogion, drawing upon the core concept videos I'd created for my students on the work. They don't cover the entirety of the ideas contained in the work, but do hit on some of the most important points and passages. (I'll likely shoot more videos on the work and convert those to podcasts this summer.)

All told, the five episodes come to a little over an hour of lectures you can download and listen to wherever you like. Here they are:

Feb 9, 2020

Five Recent Guest Appearances and Interviews

It's been a while since I did a roundup of my recent appearances on radio shows, podcasts, and video channels, so it's time for another one!

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 podcast, 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.

Interview on Cooper Cherry podcast - two-hour conversation hosted by Cooper Cherry, discussing the nature of Hegelian dialectics, Marxism and post-structuralism, political perspectives of the present, and what's right and what's wrong with Hegel - you can listen here

Interview on Rendering Unconscious podcast - hosted by Vanessa Sinclair, discussing how philosophy gets put into practice, what philosophical counseling is and how it is connected with psychotherapy, and a range of other topics - you can listen here

Guest Show on Riverwest Radio - "Why It's Good To Give (Philosophical Perspectives)" - fundraising two-hour show with Dan Hayes, discussing philosophical insights about generosity, giving, and supporting community from Stoic and other perspectives - you can listen here.

Interview on Nathan Ormand channel - video interview hosted by Nathan Ormand, discussing Anselm of Canterbury's works and key ideas, what the "single argument is", Anselm's views on human freedom, how Anselm revolutionized prayer, and other topics - you can watch or listen here

Guest Appearance on the Post-Structuralist Tent Revival podcast: hosted by Eric Aldieri, Jacob Given, and Paula Landerreche Cardillo, discussing perspectives on anger in ancient philosophy and theology, and techniques for managing anger – you can listen here

There are several other podcast interviews I've done in the last month or so which aren't yet out. As they appear, I'll post about them in my social media and on my Patreon site.

Jan 29, 2020

Ten Videos on A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic

One of the texts I teach regularly in my Intro to Philosophy and Ethics classes is A.J. Ayer's classic text of logical empiricism, Language, Truth, and Logic. Last semester, I finally got around to creating a set of lecture videos on chapters 1 and 6 of the work as aids for my students.

These might be of interest or use to other people as well, as they tackle reading through the work. So, here are links to those videos:

A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, ch. 1

A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, ch. 6

Nov 22, 2019

Nine Authors Selected for Worlds of Speculative Fiction 2020

Year 5 of my monthly talk series - Worlds of Speculative Fiction - starts in January, and I already have nine of the twelve authors we'll be reading and discussing picked out. I had selected seven of them by the time I arrived at our session last week to discuss Bram Stoker. Two of the regular participants in the discussions contributed two other excellent suggestions.

Next week, I'll start soliciting more suggestions about the remaining three slots for 2020. I'll create a video, and likely a blog post, and then use the comments on those - and on social media posts - to come up with a list of the top 6 or so choices, and then we'll do an actual vote. That's how we wound up with Aldous Huxley, Bram Stoker, and R Scott Bakker for the 2019 series.

We have quite an interesting mix of speculative fiction authors, series, and narrative worlds for 2020. Here they are:

January - Mary Shelley's Modern Worlds (Frankenstein, The Last Man)
February - China Mielville's Bas-Lag Novels
March - Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
April - Liu-Cixin's Rememberance of Earth's Past Series
May - Veronica Roth's Carve The Mark Universe
June - Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind
July - Margaret Atwood's Gilead Dystopia
August - Larry Niven's Ringworld Series
September - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Series

If you've got ideas about what other authors you'd like me to consider for the 2020 series, don't post them quite yet - keep them for next week.

Here are the authors we've done already (or will have done by the end of this year: J. R. R. Tolkein, A. E. Van Vogt, C. S. Lewis, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Leguin, Michael Moorcock, Philip K. Dick, Mervyn Peake, George R.R. Martin, Philip Jose Farmer, Madeline L'Engle, Douglas Adams, Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, Iain Banks, H. P. Lovecraft, William Gibson, C. L. Moore, Octavia Butler, Jorge Luis Borges, Fritz Leiber, Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Andre Norton, Arthur Clarke, Robert Howard, Gene Wolfe, C. J. Cherryh, Jack Vance, Edgar Allan Poe, G. K. Chesterton, Mary Shelly, Lewis Carroll, Tanith Lee, Piers Anthony, Gordon Dickson, August Derleth, Karl Edward Wagner, Aldous Huxley, Bram Stoker, and R. Scott Bakker.

If you'd like to watch any of the videorecordings of the sessions so far, here's the playlist.