Podcast appearances and mentions of Bertrand Russell

You keep telling yourself the space is coming.After the launch.After this quarter.After the next promotion.But somehow, it never arrives.In this episode, Fernanda explores why busyness has become one of leadership's most celebrated habits - and what it may be quietly costing you.Drawing on the work of Martin Hägglund, Bertrand Russell, and neuroscience research on the brain's Default Mode Network (DMN), this conversation challenges the assumption that more activity creates better leadership.Inside you'll discover:• Why busyness became a status symbol• What the Default Mode Network reveals about insight and creativity• Why strategic thinking requires more space than most leaders allow• Why vacations often fail to create lasting change• The leadership lesson hidden in the Japanese concept of ma• The question Martin Hägglund believes every leader should considerBecause your next breakthrough may have less to do with doing more.And more to do with what happens when you finally stop filling every available space.Your Next Steps:Watch the Free MasterclassIf success still feels heavier than it should… this masterclass will help you understand why.Watch The Rewired Method™ in action How we help women executives end burnout and build sustainable success in less than 90 days...I recorded a step-by-step training for you here: The Sustainable Success Plan for Executive Women LeadersExplore The Rewired Woman™https://therewiredwoman.com/Follow on InstagramConnect on LinkedInCorporate Partnerships & Leadership Programshttps://rewiredglobal.com/corporates/

Hoy traemos a Podcaliptus al gran Kike de "Mundo Gilipoy". Doctor en física teórica, no solo puede destruir el mundo con su rayo de neutrones, sino que encima ha escrito un libro sobre el ser humano. En él da respuesta desde el mayor rigor científico a lo que sabemos acerca de nosotros mismos como especie y sobre nuestro lugar en el universo. Por eso entra en la categoría de libros necesarios, ya que permite ayudarnos a saber —si queremos— el porqué podemos ser tan gilipollas y a solucionar —si queremos— nuestras movidas apoyándonos en lo que no hemos hecho tan mal. Por cierto, lo ha dejado gratis en archive.org (ponemos el link más abajo), incluyendo formato EPUB. No se puede pedir más. ENLACES RELACIONADOS —Libro "Ultra Alto Vacío". Una reflexión (paradójicamente larga) sobre la nada: https://archive.org/details/ultra-alto-vacio_20260402_1715 —Pódcast "Mundo Gilipoy": https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-mundo-gilipoy_sq_f11501113_1.html —Pódcast "La hoguera de los necios": https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-hoguera-necios_sq_f1759115_1.html —Pódcast sobre el libro "La Francia de Gilles de Rais": https://www.ivoox.com/francia-gilles-rais-el-primer-audios-mp3_rf_135301344_1.html —Pódcast sobre la relación entre filosofía y ciencia: https://www.ivoox.com/10-x-12-filosofia-ciencia-audios-mp3_rf_119758093_1.html —Pódcast sobre Bertrand Russell: https://www.ivoox.com/podcaliptus-7-x-30-pensamiento-vida-de-audios-mp3_rf_69137769_1.html —Pódcast sobre Jesús Mosterín: https://www.ivoox.com/filosofia-tambien-es-para-verano-jesus-audios-mp3_rf_133281555_1.html

Partido de San Martín, Buenos Aires Alejandro Dolina, Patricio Barton, Gillespi Introducción • 0:01:14 Presentación del programa en San Martín, con Dolina, Barton y Gillespi. Segmento Inicial • 0:02:08 Conversan humorísticamente sobre un informe acerca de cómo tener un amante sin que la pareja lo descubra. • 0:03:07 Señalan que, según el informe, conviene ser sincero con el amante y dejar claras las “reglas del juego”. • 0:08:44 Comentan que sería más conveniente que el amante también tenga pareja, para que ambos tengan el mismo interés en mantener el secreto. • 0:10:00 Discuten que la relación extramatrimonial no debería prolongarse y derivan en una mención humorística a Picasso. • 0:10:51 Recomiendan que amante y pareja pertenezcan a mundos distintos y no se conozcan, especialmente evitando relaciones en el trabajo. • 0:12:22 Bromean con los riesgos que implican las mascotas, los pelos en la ropa y los rastros dejados en visitas a casa del amante. • 0:17:13 Desaconsejan repetir siempre los mismos días y horarios para los encuentros y mencionan la necesidad de un cómplice. • 0:22:33 Dolina cierra con una reflexión sobre la mentira: distingue entre las mentiras interesadas y aquellas piadosas que buscan no herir. Segmento Dispositivo • 0:25:39 Dolina anuncia una charla sobre el calendario revolucionario francés, Fabre d'Églantine y la religión de la razón. • 0:26:05 Cuenta que el barón de Batz, agente monárquico, comprometió en maniobras bursátiles ilegales a Chabot y a Fabre d'Églantine para desacreditar a los revolucionarios. • 0:27:48 Explica que, para desviar la atención de ese escándalo, Fabre d'Églantine impulsó la creación del calendario revolucionario. • 0:28:28 Describe la burla que provocó el nuevo calendario, con sus nombres de meses y el reemplazo de santos por animales, frutos e instrumentos de labranza. • 0:31:06 Relata el intento de descristianización y la conversión de Notre Dame en “templo de la razón”. • 0:31:48 Narra la ceremonia del culto de la razón con una actriz personificando a la diosa razón. • 0:32:40 Cuenta episodios sobre Mademoiselle Maillard, elegida para encarnar a la diosa razón, y una anécdota de duelo disfrazada de hombre. • 0:34:33 Describe cómo esas celebraciones derivaron en orgías dentro de las iglesias y en una sucesión de bacanales. • 0:37:18 Señala que Robespierre puso fin a esa etapa, instauró el culto del Ser Supremo y mandó arrestar a los implicados. • 0:37:51 Cierra con una reflexión: si hubiera que fundar una religión, el amor parecería más adecuado que la razón. • 0:39:06 Interpretan una canción vinculada al tema del amor. Segmento Inicial • 0:43:57 De regreso en San Martín, Dolina comenta una paradoja de Bertrand Russell sobre los catálogos de bibliotecas que se incluyen o no a sí mismos. Segmento Humorístico • 0:46:47 Presentan un informe con consejos para sobrevivir a un tsunami y a una erupción volcánica. • 0:48:02 Sobre el tsunami, remarcan que ante un terremoto costero hay que ir inmediatamente a un lugar alto y no acercarse al mar cuando retrocede. • 0:51:05 Bromean con la utilidad del celular, la ropa de abrigo, la comida y los puntos de encuentro familiares en medio de una evacuación. • 0:53:10 En la parte sobre erupciones volcánicas, insisten en mantenerse informado, no acercarse al volcán y protegerse de gases y cenizas. • 0:57:44 Añaden recomendaciones sobre evacuar con equipaje limitado y no dejarse llevar por rumores. Sordo Gancé / Trío Sin Nombre • 1:01:37 Presentación del segmento musical. • 1:02:35 “Drive My Car” ♫ (The Beatles) • 1:06:07 “La moza del pueyrredón” ♫ • 1:11:40 “No te perdono más” ♫ • 1:14:19 “Un poco de amor francés” ♫ • 1:18:06 “Night and Day” ♫ • 1:20:32 Dolina agradece al público y hace una breve reflexión sobre el trasfondo trágico de la condición humana aun en medio de la risa. • 1:23:20 “Hit the Road Jack” ♫ (Resumen generado automáticamente con IA, puede contener errores)

W nowym odcinku wideokastu „Kultura na weekend” Janusz Wróblewski i reżyser Marcin Borchardt, twórca takich dokumentów jak „Beksińscy. Album wideofoniczny” oraz „Tony Halik. Tu byłem”. Rozmawiamy o tym, jak powstaje film dokumentalny, który potrafi ożywić archiwum filmowe i zamienić je w uniwersalną opowieść o sztuce i wolności. Głównym tematem jest awangarda polska i jej najwybitniejsi przedstawiciele: Franciszka oraz Stefan Themerson, o których Marcin Borchardt nakręcił swój najnowszy film „Moi Themersonowie”. Reżyser analizuje ich nowo odnaleziony film eksperymentalny z lat 30. pt. „Europa”, stawiając ich w jednym rzędzie z takimi postaciami jak Salvador Dalí czy Luis Buñuel, autor przełomowego dzieła sztuki awangardowej „Pies andaluzyjski”. Dowiecie się, dlaczego malarstwo Franciszki Themerson jest dla gościa równie poruszające co prace, które stworzyli Lucian Freud i Francis Bacon, oraz jak wyglądało ich życie po drugiej wojnie światowej w Londynie i Paryżu. To tam prowadzili wydawnictwo Gaberbocchus Press, publikując takie tytuły jak „Król Ubu” czy „Wykład profesora Mmaa”, książka, o której sam Bertrand Russell pisał, że jest równie istotna co „1984” George'a Orwella czy „Nowy wspaniały świat” Aldousa Huxleya. W rozmowie poruszamy także wątki historyczne, takie jak II wojna światowa, modernizm w sztuce oraz emigracja Polaków. Marcin Borchardt zdradza, jak dziś, korzystając z nowych technologii, można na nowo interpretować polski film sprzed dekad. Na koniec pytamy, jakie są jego plany filmowe i dlaczego dokument to dla niego nieustanne odkrywanie nieznanego. Dowiesz się z tego odcinka: – Jak reżyser filmu „Moi Themersonowie” pracuje z archiwalną taśmą, by zamienić stare dokumenty w emocjonujące, nowoczesne kino? – Co sprawiło, że Bertrand Russell zachwycił się polską prozą i porównywał ją do najważniejszych antyutopii Orwella i Huxleya? – Czy polski eksperyment filmowy z lat 30. był bardziej rewolucyjny od zachodnich klasyków? Oś czasu: 00:00 – Najciekawsze fragmenty 00:09:26 – „Europa”: Filmy Themersonów na tle zachodniej awangardy 00:15:40 – Malarstwo Franciszki w zestawieniu z Baconem i Freudem 00:21:12 – Gaberbocchus Press i wydawanie „Króla Ubu” 00:31:00 – Jasia Reichardt: przewodniczka po Themersonach 00:45:50 – Co łączy Beksińskich, Halika i Themersonów?

Bertrand Russell è un simbolo del pensiero libero e progressista del Novecento. È stato uno dei più grandi logici e filosofi del secolo, e ha vinto il premio Nobel per la letteratura nel 1950. Ha fondato una scuola alternativa per i bambini, e divulgato in maniera inimitabile la scienza e la filosofia. Ha combattuto contro la religione e la superstizione, e a favore dell'amore libero e dei matrimoni aperti. Un grande pensatore “immorale” del Novecento per affrontare le questioni più spinose del nostro tempo. È stato incarcerato due volte per pacifismo: la seconda, a novant'anni! Ha istituito un tribunale contro i crimini di guerra degli Stati Uniti in Vietnam. E a novantott'anni, due giorni prima di morire, ha lanciato un ultimo appello contro i crimini di guerra di Israele in Palestina. È considerato un “cattivo maestro” da tutti i farisei, di ieri e di oggi.*********************************Piergiorgio Odifreddi"Cattivo maestro"Bertrand Russell: logico, ateo, libertino, pacifistaRaffaello Cortina Editorewww.raffaellocortina.it

Piergiorgio Odifreddi"Cattivo maestro"Bertrand Russell: logico, ateo, libertino, pacifistaRaffaello Cortina Editorewww.raffaellocortina.itBertrand Russell è un simbolo del pensiero libero e progressista del Novecento. È stato uno dei più grandi logici e filosofi del secolo, e ha vinto il premio Nobel per la letteratura nel 1950. Ha fondato una scuola alternativa per i bambini, e divulgato in maniera inimitabile la scienza e la filosofia. Ha combattuto contro la religione e la superstizione, e a favore dell'amore libero e dei matrimoni aperti. Un grande pensatore “immorale” del Novecento per affrontare le questioni più spinose del nostro tempo. È stato incarcerato due volte per pacifismo: la seconda, a novant'anni! Ha istituito un tribunale contro i crimini di guerra degli Stati Uniti in Vietnam. E a novantott'anni, due giorni prima di morire, ha lanciato un ultimo appello contro i crimini di guerra di Israele in Palestina. È considerato un “cattivo maestro” da tutti i farisei, di ieri e di oggi. Piergiorgio Odifreddi ha studiato matematica in Italia e negli Stati Uniti, e ha insegnato Logica matematica presso l'Università di Torino e la Cornell University di New York. Nel 2011 ha vinto il premio Galileo per la divulgazione scientifica. Nelle nostre edizioni ha pubblicato Il computer di Dio (2000), La repubblica dei numeri (2002), Pillole matematiche (2022), A piccole dosi (2023), C'è del marcio in occidente (2024) e Incontri ravvicinati tra le due culture (2025).Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

My colleague Oliver Traldi recently published an essay called ‘Jane Austen's Virtuous Liberalism'. It's a very nice discussion of the ways in which Austen understand the challenges of character formation.Virtue, as Austen sees it, faces two tough challenges. First, people whose characters are not yet formed must see how to be virtuous rather than vicious. Then, the virtuous must somehow find a way to succeed in their struggles against the vicious without adopting vicious means.In this episode, Oliver and I discussed Austen's ideas of virtue, what that has to do with liberalism, the relationship between philosophy and literature more broadly, as well as poetry and ideas about the Great Books. We also talked about the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice. Yes, we both liked it. Here is why Oliver thinks Jane Austen is so popular among philosophers.TRALDI: And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.And here is an extract about Austen, Smith, and the wonderfully fertile period at the end of the eighteen century.TRALDI: But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—This was my favourite bit.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?Oliver is an analytical, political philosopher. You can find out more about his work here. Here he is on Twitter. His Substack is orting. You can watch the episode on YouTube here.TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to Oliver Traldi. Oliver is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is my colleague on the Emerging Scholars Program at the Mercatus Center, and he's written a book about political beliefs as well as many other articles for magazines, online.He's got a Substack. He's maybe the most prominent political and epistemological young philosopher of his generation. [laughter] But most importantly for us, he is interested in Jane Austen and the idea of virtue. Oliver, welcome.OLIVER TRALDI: Thank you so much for having me.Reading Austen as a PhilosopherOLIVER: Let's just start—before we get to this article you've written, tell me about being a philosopher but reading Jane Austen, because she's often read and commented on by people who are not philosophers or who are only philosophers by acquaintance or whatever.TRALDI: Right.OLIVER: Is it different reading as a philosopher, do you think?TRALDI: I think yes and no. One thing as a philosopher, there are—contemporary philosophy, we have very exacting standards of rigor and clarity. And when we look for a theory, we want something that's been improved by hundreds of people and thousands of journal articles.And so, if you were to simply extract a theory of virtue from a novel and say, “Does this—is this the end-all, be-all of moral thinking?” obviously you're going to be disappointed. So I think as a philosopher, you have to look for other types of things, other types of sensitivities rather than logical sensitivity.You have to say, how sensitive is the author to the different types of situations where people's virtue can be exhibited or challenged? Or how sensitive is the author to the different types of pressures that a character's convictions can be put under, or the different sorts of compromises that they might have to make, or the different sorts of people who might not be virtuous who they might have to interact with and sort of, you know, contract with or avoid? And what are going to be the impacts of different kinds of choices in those situations?So the novelists, I think, tend—if they do it well, a novelist who's interested in morality will understand living morally probably better than a philosopher, while maybe not understanding, say, arguments about whether morality supervenes on reality or vice versa, or what grounds morality, or different theories of meta-ethics or whatever.OLIVER: I mean, there are obviously some novelists who do have a better appreciation of those things than others, we should say.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And as I wrote in my article, I do think Austen in particular had an appreciation for this issue that you might call moral disarming or unilateral disarming. You know, does the moral person put themselves at a disadvantage relative to the immoral person? And then how do we actually help—how does morality survive?So that's a kind of philosophical question, but I tend to think—I taught last year—I think we've talked about this a bit. I taught in a great books program at Tulsa.OLIVER: This is the Jennifer Frey program.TRALDI: This is the ill-fated Jennifer Frey program. Jennifer—I don't know if you've met her, but she's an incredibly charismatic person. But somehow the program, despite being enormously successful, did not survive. You know, I was there for a year, and they decided that was long enough.OLIVER: [laughs] You don't think your arrival was the—TRALDI: No, no. I hope not. I most certainly hope not.OLIVER: No. General problems of higher education prevailed. Yes.TRALDI: Yes, many, many problems of higher education these days. But yes, so I think—what was I saying?OLIVER: Well, I think we're getting to this question of, you are not just a philosopher; you teach the great books.TRALDI: Right, exactly. The great books. That's where I was. Yes.Philosophy and the Great BooksOLIVER: So, one thing I'm interested in is that, you know, reading as a philosopher, you get a slightly different perspective on Austen. When you read other fiction, poetry, whatever, is there a benefit to you as a philosopher? Does it broaden you in some way?TRALDI: Yes. I think absolutely, it's broadening, but it's also focusing in a different way. You know, contemporary philosophy is often described or captured with the word epicycles. So what we mean when we say epicycles is, you have some major theory, which is supposed to answer some big question. And then your career as a philosopher—you're like three layers deep in the theory, in some sub-debate, and you're making some really fine-grained distinctions.And if you can make those distinctions successfully, you've had a really great career. But I think it's easy to forget, why are we doing—you know, what attracted us to philosophy? Why are we doing this to begin with?And the great novels, great books in general—one example I always use is the Book of Job. It doesn't really—it's not doing clear philosophy on the question of why do bad things happen to good people. But when you read it, you feel the question, why do bad things happen to good people? You get it, you know? You get why this is a question that people have worried about for thousands of years. You get why it calls out for an answer.You know, there's a lot of truth out there. I'm looking at a set of coat hangers, and I could count the coat hangers. But if you were given the decision, would I rather have an answer to how many coat hangers are across the room from me, or why do bad things happen to good people? You'd probably go with the latter one. There's somehow some kind of depth or importance to that question, right?And I think there's—a great novelist can often generate some vividity to these questions. They can show how these questions are part of a good life, asking these questions, trying to have these questions answered—or a not-so-good life.Certainly in Austen there are a lot of characters who learn to be more virtuous. Probably Emma is the clearest example. But you might also think of Marianne Dashwood. Really—OLIVER: Lizzy Bennet.TRALDI: Lizzy Bennet really learns to be a better person. I actually think her character is rather close to Emma in a lot of ways.OLIVER: Yes, I think Emma's sort of a clear rewrite of Lizzy in some—yes, yes.TRALDI: Yes, and in some ways more evocative, actually. Yes. I mean, we can talk about all these books. But yes, I think there's these things, even—obviously qua literature, they have other virtues, right? Which much philosophy doesn't have; very little philosophy has the literary virtues.But the philosophical virtue that a lot of literature does have is you see, okay, these are the—this is what a life is like. This is what making choices is like. These are the big questions when you decide how to live your life and what kinds of choices to make.And I think Austen—these questions are all through Austen, even though nobody has to murder anybody in Austen. Nobody has to make decisions about war and peace or about, you know, civilizational decline or civilizational progress or anything like that. These people making these small choices in a lot of ways. But those are the lives that most of us lead. And when you read Austen, you think, “Oh, okay, there's a virtuous and a vicious way to lead this kind of rather normal life.”The Good LifeOLIVER: The question of what is a good life, or what is a good life in a commercial society, maybe, is the sort of bedrock of what she's doing.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. And that's why I think Austen—you know, Austen wasn't on our syllabus at Tulsa, but she was certainly discussed. And the “what is a good life” question—to me, it's the big question that a great books program for college students should always come back to.If I didn't know what else to talk about, I would just say, “Well, we just read this book.” You know, we read these old biographies of Charlemagne from, like, Einhard—Notker the Stammerer and Einhard, his adopted son or whatever. I don't remember. But this is like 800s. I'm sure you know more about this stuff than I do.And I wasn't quite sure what to do with them because what do I know about Charlemagne? So I just said, “Does it seem like Charlemagne lived a good life?” And you know, you're off to the races. And I think that's important at that age, because that's the age at which—OLIVER: For the undergraduates?TRALDI: Yes. I think that's the age at which you're starting to make your own big decisions about what sort of life to lead. And I think for me, looking back to myself at that age, I think one thing I did wrong—at Tulsa I was in some ways as much a student as a teacher. I was rereading a lot of this stuff for the first time in decades. And some of it I was reading for the first time. As I told you, I was reading a lot of Austen for the first time for this essay.OLIVER: Right, right.TRALDI: And yes, it was stuff that I had thought about at a theoretical level, you know, like what are the ins and outs of this theory or this philosophical move or something like that. But you feel the question a bit differently when you're like, “Okay, I'm an adult. I have to decide whether to live in this way or that way.”The world is open to you. You could convert to Thomism [laughter] like so many have tried to have me do, or you could become a merchant after reading The Wealth of Nations. Or you could become a revolutionary after reading Marx, or you could become a Nietzschean. You know, there are all these choices open to you.OLIVER: Please don't become a Nietzchean.TRALDI: No, no. That is, I'm a—OLIVER: Keep your children out of school if that's going to be the result. [laughs]TRALDI: Yes. I'm a committed moralist, so I cannot, but he is—he made a comeback, that's for sure.Philosophy and PoetryOLIVER: Now, there's this obviously sort of long-running question in philosophy about, what is the relationship between philosophy and poetry? Are they antagonists, or are they in some way, you know, twins, and each provides one half of what is needed for a complete way of understanding the world? Do you have a position on this?TRALDI: Yes, I mean, I think they're what the kids call twinning.OLIVER: Twinning? [laughs]TRALDI: I think they're twinning. No, no, I think that means something different. I think that means when you're wearing the same outfit or something like that.OLIVER: So we're almost twinning with our stripes—yes, I see.TRALDI: We're almost. We actually—we are stripes and blue. Yes, we're closer than I would've expected.I would say closer to twins. There are a lot of claims that philosophy is at odds somehow with this or that. There's also this—certain people will say, “Well, ever since Socrates, philosophy has been at odds with politics.” And a big part of philosophy is, how do you survive? Well, I don't know. Nobody's trying to kill me. I think of myself as a decently committed philosopher.OLIVER: It seems to me this changed fundamentally in the Enlightenment and with the Romantics, and they see it all much more joined up. It's a sort of ancient-and-modern dynamic.TRALDI: Yes, there may be an ancient-and-modern distinction there. But yes, for me I don't see any kind of contradiction. Now, there are—and I think this comes out of what I said before—philosophical attempts to understand poetry. And certain kinds of literary and aesthetic devices do sometimes fall a little flat.The philosophical literature on metaphor, for instance—I think some theories of metaphor really don't get why people use metaphors. [laughter] So one of the most important theories of metaphor is that they're all just false, that it's like everybody who uses a metaphor is lying. This isn't the full theory. There are bells and whistles added.OLIVER: Sure, sure.TRALDI: But yes, so I think there's no contradiction. But at the same time, they are different modes in some ways, and people who do the one are often trying to do something different than the other.I do think that the desire for rigor and precision and clarity that philosophers have can be a little maddening to nonphilosophers, who see the pull of philosophical questions like, “What sort of life I should lead?” and then see, what do philosophers actually do?And we're doing all this modal logic and all these truth tables and all this very technical stuff that looks like math. And they say, “That can't possibly be the right way to think about how to live.” And it's true that there are these studies of—that suggest ethicists aren't actually very good people and things like that, although you have to wonder what is the background ethical theory that went into evaluating them.So yes, I don't think there's really a contradiction between philosophy and anything else. But certainly, there was a point in my life where I always come back to trying to write poetry and do poorly and then stop. But it was always something where I would say, “Okay, if I'm doing philosophy in the afternoon, I better wait till the evening to write poetry.” You have to sort of reboot and get into a different mode.OLIVER: Iris Murdoch used to write philosophy in the morning and novels in the afternoon. That kind of thing.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's very sensible.OLIVER: And she was upstairs for the one and downstairs for the other.TRALDI: Yes. That's even better, you know?Favorite PoetsOLIVER: Which poets do you like?TRALDI: Geez, I guess for an American, I like Wallace Stevens. I wasn't expecting this question. For a Brit, you know, I actually like Philip Larkin a lot.OLIVER: Oh, yes?TRALDI: I know—what is the opinion of Larkin? Is he considered—OLIVER: Very high.TRALDI: Very high? Okay.OLIVER: Some—there are some dissenters, but basically he's the guy.TRALDI: He's the guy, okay. Yes.OLIVER: Twentieth-century English poetry is like Auden, Larkin, Betjeman.TRALDI: Yes, Auden is—actually, my friend Jane Cooper just wrote something about Auden.OLIVER: Yes, Jane is excellent.TRALDI: Yes, Jane is really great.OLIVER: That was in the New Statesman if you want to look it up.TRALDI: That was in the New Statesman. Yes, yes, yes. But Auden, I don't know quite as well.I mean, poetry is—I think it's interesting the way that we receive poetry now. I think you were talking about this a few days ago, about things like poems appearing as inspirational quotes on social media or something like that, and whoever is the most quotable. And you felt like maybe Dostoevsky is very quotable.OLIVER: Dostoevsky has a sort of screenshot quality.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: As does Martin Amis.TRALDI: Yes. So I—OLIVER: Whereas Philip Larkin in a funny way—you know, he has very short poems. You can get the whole poem on Twitter. Like, Robert Frost has that. But something like “The Whitsun Weddings,” it's quite hard to just take three lines out. The whole thing works as a—and that, so that poem gets less—TRALDI: Yes. Which is what you would expect from a good poem, really, that it would form a kind of whole.OLIVER: Exactly. If it's a three-page ode, it should have a continuous quality.TRALDI: Yes, it should have a kind of internal structure. Yes.OLIVER: There are some one-line things and—but I think it's notable that a poet like Wordsworth doesn't seem to get a lot of social media play. And I think probably that's one reason.TRALDI: So yes, I think Larkin is somebody who, I did see some shorter references to him, and I thought I'd better just go and look up a ton of poems by this guy. And Stevens was the same way.Death and Philip LarkinOLIVER: So, which Larkin do you like?TRALDI: You're really putting me on the spot here. [laughter] It has been a little while.OLIVER: I lied to you and said it would be about Jane Austen.TRALDI: Yes, now I'm completely screwed. Well, he has a bunch about death. He has one where death is a ship following you. And he has one where death is, like, a fruit that gets picked or something.OLIVER: Apple?TRALDI: Might be an apple.OLIVER: He decides not to throw the apple.TRALDI: There's one with sweetbreads in it. And now I'm really—OLIVER: The ship one, “Next, Please”—that's excellent.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: He sees the—it's like hearing the music coming, and then the ship.TRALDI: I forgot that that was the title. I forgot that that was the title.OLIVER: And then as the ship goes past, it leaves nothing in its wake. It's very sort of—very gloomy.TRALDI: It's very gloomy, yes. I think I read Larkin in a gloomy phase; it was like Larkin and Radiohead or something.OLIVER: But he's a good example of what you were saying before, that he won't think propositionally. He's logical in the sense that he's sort of orderly, and he goes from one thing to the next. But he's not being a philosopher.TRALDI: No, of course. Yes.OLIVER: But he's very preoccupied with the sorts of questions that philosophers are probing, but has a sort of very meaningful treatment of them.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: And I think in a way, the sharp response that you want from the reader in those questions, Larkin is better at provoking than someone like Bertrand Russell or some other contemporary of his.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: Bertrand Russell's a bit earlier, but you know what I mean.TRALDI: No, I think that's exactly right. And I think that is why I'm a fan of the great books pedagogically and not—I don't know if Larkin will be called a great, you know, like, who knows? I don't really understand that designation, but tings like poetry and novels.OLIVER: The biggest dissenter was Harold Bloom, who said Philip Larkin's just a period piece. And he doesn't understand why everyone likes him.TRALDI: Oh, yes, well, I'm not on board with everything. Oh, I've also been—OLIVER: No, you're not very Bloomian.TRALDI: I'm not very Bloomian, I don't think.OLIVER: Either Allan or Harold.TRALDI: Yes. Well, I actually—this is very embarrassing, but I've actually never read The Closing of the American Mind, which I know is—OLIVER: But why should you? I'm not sure it's retained its—TRALDI: Well, it's certainly been received into my circle. But it is like a classic of anti-ideological—OLIVER: Sure. Have you read Adler, How to Read a Book, that kind of great books stuff?TRALDI: No. There's so many things that I haven't read. I mean, I'm just learning how to read. I learned how to read in Tulsa last year, [laughter] in Oklahoma, which is not where most people would go to learn how to read.Jane Austen and the Problem of MoralityOLIVER: So let's move to Jane Austen. Your thesis basically is, many moral theories face this problem that if I believe XYZ theory and you don't believe it, you can get the advantage of me. Because I'll always stick to my principles and you can just be a bad guy.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: So is morality screwed? This is what people say about liberalism. This is what you're arguing. And you think Jane Austen's got an answer to that?TRALDI: Yes, I think she has a kind of answer. And again, one decision I had to make while writing the essay was, am I going to go super—this is a completely philosophically rigorous and respectable answer? Or am I just going to kind of sketch it?OLIVER: Slum it in literary criticism? [laughter]TRALDI: Yes, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but—and I think I went for the latter, where I just wanted to kind of evoke the answer. And I think the answer has something to do with living in a large enough society where—and Austen I think is not the only person to give this answer. But you live in a large enough society where, when people see you acting well and somebody else acting poorly, the disadvantage that you have in that one interaction is outweighed by the advantages you have from the society that you gain from being seen to act well by many others.So one thing I didn't mention here, but a connection I made when I was first coming up with this idea, is that it's actually a lot like what Martin Luther King Jr. says about civil disobedience. So he says, you might think, if you're out there and the police are coming at you with bats, or the white supremacists are coming at you with bats or whatever, weapons or whatever, you might think, “I'm on the losing end of this interaction.”But actually what will happen is that this interaction will be seen by many others. And you, by keeping your calm, will be seen to be the virtuous one, and they, by being violent, will be seen to be the vicious ones. And this can only help your political cause. I'm probably abstracting some of the details of King's presentation.OLIVER: In a vulgar sense, this is the sort of “be the change you want to see” approach.TRALDI: Yes, but also, be the change you want other people to see. You know? Because that's how it gets saved from—and again, one of the ways in which this is not quite philosophically rigorous is because the philosopher can say, “Well, what about an example where nobody's going to see it? Or what about an example where the situation is set up that in doing the right thing, you're perceived to have done the wrong thing?” And you get back into tough problems. And that's why we have philosophy. You know, there's always going to be these puzzles.OLIVER: But we don't get the—I think this is what the novelists are helpful for. We don't get to set the conditions in our lives. You know, when you're doing a philosophical problem, you can just say, “Well, these are the conditions. What happens then?” And what Jane Austen is so good at is saying, “I'm going to take her and drop her in this house, and that's life. And she's just going to—she won't even know what the conditions are for a long time.” That's the novelist's preoccupation.TRALDI: Yes. Yes. It's interesting what you said about not even knowing what the conditions are. It's one thing I love, which is there in, I think, a lot of Austen—and it's done by a lot of my favorite novelists. I think Kazuo Ishiguro is really good at this. It's just novels where you see the characters' growing awareness of their circumstances and—OLIVER: Like in Klara and the Sun or something.TRALDI: Yes, or I think certainly in Never Let Me Go and in Remains of the Day, a lot of the action is in a situation where you understand what's going on better than the characters do.Clues and GamesTRALDI: And I think we talked about this the other day. In Austen, Emma, for example, is this sort of, like, halfway detective where she sees a lot of clues that could help her understand the nature of the life she's leading and the circumstances she's in, but she always misinterprets the clues. But on the other hand, it's not like she misses them entirely. She's kind of on the right track, and at least she's trying.OLIVER: And what I think Austen does so well in that book—I think it's her most important book—is that by putting us, without quite realizing it, with Emma's blinkers on, as it were, and only allowing our perspective to be her perspective, she makes us the detective.But whereas in a detective novel, you know, there's a funny little man and he is a detective, and he says, “Oh, there's a clue in this novel,” the read of—on the first read very often goes straight past what they must later realize to be a clue. And that is such a normal condition of life, that, “Oh, actually, that was one of the conditions, but you couldn't have known it. Sorry.” And you can only work it out in retrospect.TRALDI: Yes. In modern love, these are sometimes called red flags. [laughter] I think it's not quite a precise analogy, but yes, I think it's right. And I certainly—I had read Emma years ago and didn't really notice. As you say, on my first read, I didn't really notice, even having watched—I think it was the, what is it, the Kate Beckinsale version maybe, from ITV in like 1996 or something.It was really in reading it for this essay that I noticed that this feature that, starting on page 30 or 40 or so, there's a—and they're often in games. The clues are often in games. So very early on, Elton is playing some sort of poem game with Emma.OLIVER: The riddles, yes.TRALDI: The riddle game. And you know, Emma already misinterprets his riddles as being about Harriet rather than about her. But then there's also—the riddles also have some relation to things that happen much later.OLIVER: Then there's the anagram game at the end.TRALDI: There's the anagram game at the end. Yes, it's the—and I don't think there are many games like that in any of the other Austen.OLIVER: People play games, but we're not taken into them and have them narrated in that way.TRALDI: And they're not word games in general. There's card games and things like that. And you know, in Pride and Prejudice, Wickham has all these gambling debts and things like that.OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: You know, in—I don't know if you know Whit Stillman, but for the same magazine a couple years ago I wrote about Whit Stillman, who's a sort of conservative filmmaker who's a huge Austen fan and brings in Austenian themes to a lot of his movies, but writes them about characters in the 1960s and '70s. And one of them was called The Last Days of Disco, for example, about—and some of the broader social themes he talks about are also there in Austen.So one thing that was just on the edges of my consciousness as I read through the novels for this essay was the question of the noble man versus the working man, which I think is very present in Austen and has something to do with her conception of virtue: that the virtuous person will be engaging in commerce in some way.OLIVER: Those moments of the noble and the virtuous man or whatever often take place in a shop, like the drapier in Emma or the jewelry shop in Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: That's interesting. That's interesting.OLIVER: She's very careful to take us into a commercial situation and contrast.TRALDI: See, that is the sort of detail that I think a philosopher—I think we—the mere—the vibe of, “You're in a shop, and this means something.” I think this is something philosophers are—we can watch for the action; we can judge the characters' actions. But then there are these questions of atmosphere and milieu. And certain things happen in a shop; certain things happen at the seaside. In Persuasion there's an injury by the seaside.OLIVER: Yes. That's one of the most exciting scenes in Austen. Very dramatic.TRALDI: Yes, yes. I think actually Persuasion in some ways is quite different than her other books. It has a sort of—you know, in some ways it feels a little more like Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights at points. There's a little bit of a windblown, dark quality to it at times. It's a little bit bleaker. It's a little hard to explain why, but that's just a feeling that I had reading it that maybe had changed with some of the other literary tastes of the time.Artlessness in Austen's HeroinesOLIVER: Now, the quality that you focus on in the heroines, in this question of virtue defending itself against bad actors who break the rules, is artlessness.TRALDI: Yes. So this is a term Austen uses quite a bit, and almost always, she very much picks and chooses the characters who are going to receive this term. And I thought that this is like—it's not only her artless characters who face this question about how can morality survive, or how can virtue prevail, but I think they're the limit point.Like, if you really are unwilling to use—and I mentioned in the essay, when Darcy describes—I forget what; maybe it's him describing how he found Lydia and Wickham, or it's something to do with Wickham—he said, “I had to resort to arts.” So it must be, the “arts” back then means—one of the meanings of the term is dishonesty or subterfuge or something.OLIVER: Yes, if someone was artful, it could have—TRALDI: Yes, like the Artful Dodger.OLIVER: Exactly. Could have negative connotations for sure.TRALDI: Yes. And so the artless one, you know, they're missing something.So it's the question of, if you view—morality in a way means you're missing something, right? You've taken arts out of your arsenal. You've taken tools that could deal with certain situations, and you've just decided not to use them. So the question is, how can it be an advantage to have less tools?You know, we're here at Mercatus; the economists would tell you it's never advantageous to have fewer choices, right? There's no paradox of choice. It's never advantageous to have fewer choices. And so I think this is the—if morality is a kind of unilateral disarmament, artlessness is the clearest case of that.OLIVER: And you're seeing that in Fanny Price, Elinor—TRALDI: You see that in Fanny Price. You see that in Elinor. Harriet Smith is described as artless over and over again. And then there are these other characters who are described as artful, or other things that are mentioned as arts.I think Harriet, in a lot of ways, is the one who's most often described this way. And it's interesting because you think of Emma changing a lot in Emma, but Knightley actually shifts in his evaluation of Harriet, who he thought of as sort of an unserious person. And Knightley himself comes to recognize her artlessness as a kind of seriousness which makes her a good match, not ultimately for him, but for his dude, Robert.OLIVER: The farmer.TRALDI: The farmer, yes.OLIVER: He doesn't change his view of her social position, though.TRALDI: No, certainly not. But he does change his view of her character, basically. You know, her artlessness is not silliness. It has a sort of depth to it.And yes, certainly Fanny. In the Whit Stillman movie Metropolitan that's part of what set me on this, there's this whole discussion of the book Mansfield Park and this old Lionel Trilling essay about it where he says, how is it—there's this question about how modern people can even like Mansfield Park because we've sort of lost the notion of virtue being exciting or something.One of the most provocative lines to me in Austen was in Sense and Sensibility where it says that Elinor glories in Edward's integrity, which is an odd thing to glory in. You don't glory—nobody is on Instagram showing off their integrity, you know?OLIVER: It's like that René Gerard quote people like to pass around: “Everyone is on diet pills and nobody wants to be a saint.”TRALDI: I like that. That is very Instagrammable.OLIVER: Exactly. Exactly.TRALDI: That's very good, actually. I like that. Yes, so there's something provocative about the notion that virtue can be exciting, and in particular can be romantically exciting.The Importance of IntegrityOLIVER: Or even less than that. One thing I think is difficult for people interpreting Austen today is that virtue, whether it's exciting or romantically exciting, or the notion of integrity is of interest for its own sake.There's a lot of—you know, we have integrity as an organization. It's very important for me to have integrity as a professional. But there's not as much a sense of, just having integrity is the good life. We don't need to be complicated about this. That's just—you should just do that. And Austen's very firm on that all the way through.And criticism wants to pull her towards sometimes feminism, sometimes discussions of slavery, sometimes various other things. And she's just constantly sort of resisting that by saying, “I like integrity. I like good people. I don't think it's that hard.” It's a good line you've picked up on, I think.TRALDI: There's a character in The Wire who says, “A man's gotta have a code.” I think he's Omar, who murders the drug dealers and steals from them.OLIVER: I haven't seen it.TRALDI: So he says, “A man's gotta have a code.” And I think there is a—even in a character who in some ways is bad, we admire the integrity of having a code and sticking to it.There is this debate, I guess in moral philosophy, or at least on the outskirts of moral philosophy, about, “Well, if your code is wrong, maybe it's better not to stick to it.” I don't share that perspective. I think part of the good life is holding yourself to certain standards. And if those standards turn out to be wrong, the holding yourself is still of moral value, right? Not allowing yourself—OLIVER: It doesn't mean they're not adjustable.TRALDI: Yes, no, of course. If you decide the standards are wrong, and in Austen—OLIVER: It's sort of implicit in the idea of having standards that you will be honest and therefore accept when your standards need to be improved or whatever. Right?TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And in Austen we certainly see people shifting their standards. And I think one thing that I—of course, modern readers and watchers of Austen do not quite understand some of these things. But I think in Pride and Prejudice in particular, we're supposed to feel that Lizzy Bennet is quite hard on people and has to learn to improve herself in that way.OLIVER: We're delighted with her when she does that because we think it's sassy.TRALDI: Yes, exactly. If you go on YouTube, you can see all these, like, “Lizzy Bennet owning people's lives for 50 minutes,” these compilations of clips from the various movies or whatever. And she's obviously very, very clever.But she realizes—after coming to understand who Wickham is and feeling that she might not have another chance with Darcy, she comes to realize that she has had certain prejudices, which have made her blind to the realities of the world and blind to what might be her best options.So yes, I was saying I believe in integrity; that's all I was saying. And integrity obviously is adjustable, but I tend to think that it's better—even if the rule is wrong, it's better for the person who has it to hold themselves to it, rather than to adjust to try to get an advantage.And in philosophy, we have all sorts of terminology for these sorts of questions: “Are you an internalist or an externalist about reasons or about rules or whatever?” I think the more literary way to say it would just be that integrity is a virtue. And people should stick to their codes unless they see a good reason to change them.Austen and Adam SmithOLIVER: Now, you have recently been reading Adam Smith.TRALDI: Yes, I did read a lot of Adam Smith for this debate we had last week. Although I did a poor job because I had forgotten that the debate was about whether Smith was a philosopher or an economist. [laughter] I thought it was simply, is he a philosopher or not? So I put myself in the odd position of arguing that Adam Smith is not an economist.But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—OLIVER: Primarily from Theory of Moral Sentiments.TRALDI: So I would say that the notion of sympathy as being fundamentally part of how you recognize a good person seems to me to be there in Austen. The characters are—OLIVER: And this is the thing about awareness of other people and learning from that awareness.TRALDI: Awareness of other people and learning from other people and feeling other people's emotions. One thing that is related to sympathy in an odd way—and I think actually Austen and Smith conceive of it a bit differently, but that is there for both of them, in particular in Sense and Sensibility—is this notion of self-control or self-command.OLIVER: Self command. Yes. Yes.The Importance of Self-CommandTRALDI: Now, Smith gives a really odd argument about self command, which is that if you don't have control over your emotions, you will end up feeling or expressing something that other people can't sympathize with. And this is bad because sympathy is good, or something like that. I actually think it's a rather confused argument.OLIVER: I think what he's saying is that if you display a lack of self-command, then no matter what you are feeling, people find it difficult to deal with that sort of uncontrolled behavior. It's not the particular expression of feeling; it's the fact that you are a little unstable or—TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right.OLIVER: —a bit extra.TRALDI: I think what Smith doesn't do is explain quite how that's bad. But what I think is that actually, in Sense and Sensibility, it's a little bit the reverse, where actually Elinor and their mother, they do sympathize with Marianne. They do feel what she's feeling after—who's the other, the w guy in Sense and Sensibility? They're all w's.OLIVER: Oh, Willoughby.TRALDI: Willoughby, right, right. Not Wickham, Willoughby. When Willoughby—OLIVER: You can just say “the cad.”TRALDI: The cad. There's always a cad. So when the cad leaves, Marianne has all these emotions, and you really feel them. And Marianne also has a lack of self-command when Willoughby is there. There's this whole episode, which I didn't quite make the most of but felt very important, where they go to the house of this woman. They just sort of barge into this house, Willoughby and Marianne.And this is really supposed to show something about the relationship. If you and your partner barge into somebody's house, it can't be a good relationship somehow because it's leading you into bad actions. That's my sense of what that episode is supposed to show from the highest possible remove.OLIVER: I think, yes, and I think there are several other instances of that: when they ride in the carriage together, unaccompanied.TRALDI: Right, right.OLIVER: And there's a sort of general consternation about this. And Marianne sort of says, “Oh, well, how can it be a problem?” And they—part of the consternation is, you're breaking the rules in a very flagrant way, but also that you are assuming that it's okay because you'll get married. And this assumption is a very big one.TRALDI: Yes. And obviously there is this assumption that—she doesn't recognize quite how—she thinks her position is much more secure than it actually is, which is how it turns out in the book. But I think we're supposed to think that even if she were right about Willoughby's affection, which in a sense, she—Willoughby—OLIVER: No. Even if they do get married, she's broken the rules in a way that—TRALDI: She's broken certain rules in a way that is—but I think what's different from Smith is, there is sympathy from her family even though she lacks self-command. But that is precisely—so it's sort of a different theory of why self-command is good. It's precisely because her emotional state is actually draining for her family.And then Elinor says—when she learns that Elinor has actually been going through something—OLIVER: The same.TRALDI: —very similar, and maybe even rougher, in this whole thing with Lucy Steele telling her about this, you know, blah, blah, blah.OLIVER: Which is a beautiful name—to steal. I mean, it's great.TRALDI: It's an amazing—honestly, in some ways Sense and Sensibility may have been my favorite. I think it's just lovely.OLIVER: If I just wanted to just read one for fun, that's what I go to. I do, yes.TRALDI: Yes. And there's a lot—none of these things are quite perfectly in there. But I think honestly, everything that's in the other novels has a little part to play in Sense and Sensibility. You know, I think if I were to recommend just one, if somebody was like, “I have time for just one,” I might recommend Sense and Sensibility.But in the end, Marianne says—again, it's one of these amazingly evocative lines. Elinor says, “You didn't act that badly. Do you compare your conduct with Willoughby's?” And she says, “No, I compare it with—Elinor, I compare it with your conduct. You have this self-command.”And it's precisely the fact—it's not—and I think this is why philosophers do like Austen, because it's not—it's still literary, but there is a precision to her moral evaluations. It's precisely the fact that Elinor knew that her family loved her and didn't want to burden—it's all quite conscious. She didn't want to burden her family with her emotions. But you actually see that Elinor has this family trait of having very strong sentiment, which Marianne does, and simply also has this virtue of self-command.And that is—there are film adaptations and TV adaptations that demonstrate self-command, but it's a very hard thing to film. It's something you feel inside. It's a very hard—the actors have to be very good for you to see—you see pieces of it in some of the adaptations of Persuasion and some of the adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, but self-command is very hard to find.Austen AdaptationsOLIVER: Which adaptations do you like the best?TRALDI: I'm forgetting—I often like the long ones that I think were for the British ITV. So I like the—I think Kate Beckinsale was in the Emma one. Although I think there was one of Persuasion, which was also quite good. I like the one of Northanger Abbey. I don't think it's that good, but it's kind of cute, which I think it's probably the cutest of her long novels.Whit Stillman did a very loose adaptation of Lady Susan, which is hilariously funny at times, and also has Kate Beckinsale and some other great actors in it.OLIVER: Did you see the new Persuasion on Netflix a couple of years ago?TRALDI: No. No.OLIVER: It has that—is it Dakota Johnson, the actress, who's famous for other non-Austenian—Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever.TRALDI: Yes, and isn't she one of the Avengers or something like that?OLIVER: Something like that. But everyone was very upset that it was this terrible adaptation.TRALDI: Oh, yes.OLIVER: Didn't—it sort of killed all of Austen's words. She looks at the camera; she drinks from the bottle. I actually thought it was quite fun. On the basis that all adaptations are bad—TRALDI: I think if you allow some looseness, it can be quite fun. So for example, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, I think if you're just sort of like, “Well, this is just somebody who was inspired by Pride and Prejudice,” you can have a lot of fun with the movie.OLIVER: I think as an interpretation of the book, that film is quite bad.TRALDI: Oh, yes. I think it's absolutely missing the mark.OLIVER: But in terms of like, the countryside and the house and the geese and the food, it's fantastic.TRALDI: Oh, yes. It's lovely to look at.OLIVER: The dresses, right? The clothes are amazing.TRALDI: And a lot of the—and the cast is honestly like—OLIVER: Yes, it's great.TRALDI: The cast is really, really great. And the parts as they are—OLIVER: Rosamund Pike is maybe the best Jane on TV.TRALDI: She's terrific. And who's the one who plays Kitty?OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: Who is in—and the father is the guy from The Hunger Games. I forget his name, but I think the father is excellent in that. But of course, it's not exactly the father from Austen.OLIVER: No, no, no.TRALDI: But as a movie itself—but yes, I like a lot of these longer TV versions.One odd thing—they make these choices. So there is some scholarly apparatus brought to bear on some of them. So I think maybe it's Persuasion that there were multiple versions of, and some of the adaptations use pieces from the unpublished version, which are interesting. And as I was reading it, I had to Google around a bit and figure out these things.Austen's Moral PrecisionTRALDI: I was going to say about Austen's moral precision, the other place where I think this comes in—and I wrote a bit about this in the essay—is near the end of Mansfield Park, when—the names are what I'm worst at—when Edmund, right, is finally disillusioned with—OLIVER: Mary.TRALDI: With Mary Crawford?OLIVER: Mm-hmm.TRALDI: It's because there was this affair. There's always a sibling or a cousin who makes some horrible mistake, you know? So there was this affair, and Mary Crawford can only criticize it by saying that they weren't very prudent, you know, in prudential terms. They took a big risk. They made a bad decision. You know, they really screwed themselves over.OLIVER: They could have made it work. Yes.TRALDI: Yes. And Edmund realizes that she lacks moral fervor because he thinks the appropriate criticism should be a moral one. And as a psychological matter, it shouldn't even enter your head, I think is the idea. I'm extrapolating a bit, but if you see somebody acting this badly, to then say, “Well, geez, you're doing something that isn't in your interest”—for that to be your first thought indicates that your priorities are highly misplaced in a way that, to him, is quite unattractive.And this also struck me as a moment of—this is something we philosophers talk about. What is the distinction between prudence and morality? They both tell you what you should do, in some sense, but there's different—the shoulds have different forces, right? So Edmund has a certain moral precision and sensitivity which, actually, Fanny is basically the only person he knows—not that everybody in the house is a bad person; his father is a decent guy, and one of the aunts is okay, I think.But yes, there's a real sophistication to this evaluation. And it's funny to me that she actually used this as the—I mean, I suspect that even at the time there were readers who were just like, “Wait, I really don't get what the nature of Edmund's problem is here,” because it's not like Mary—Mary's not like, “Oh, yes, I support infidelity.” You know? She's not like— it's if you blinked, you might miss it, the mistake that Mary has made.And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.Every Word MattersOLIVER: I mean, one way people talk about the great books is to say that every word matters. And a lot of novelists will say that about their own. Well, you know, Elizabeth Bowen used to say, “What you're doing is to make everything count.” Austen is one of the examples where it's actually true. Every word is being used carefully.TRALDI: Yes. It's funny, this bears on another Twitter argument I had recently about this phrase logographic necessity. Basically, every word in a great book is there for a reason. I think that's right. Although you have to be careful about—if you were to say, “Well, every word in Plato is there for a reason, so you can't really say he's wrong about every—” you would be kind of abandoning the philosophical mission.OLIVER: I mean it in the sense of what you might call the artistic or structural integrity of the book. Not everything has to tell in the meaning sense. But it all holds as a unit for some—TRALDI: Yes. I think everything is there—there is what we could call an internal reason for everything to be there. Everything is there to hold together—OLIVER: Like the making of a piece of furniture or something.TRALDI: And I think you hear—I think this is one thing that—and not all classical music, but I think it's one thing that distinguishes classical music even from very good contemporary pop music or jazz or rock music, is that you have this sense of, “Yes, every note I hear basically is holding up a larger structure of some sort.”OLIVER: Yes. And Jane Austen is very Mozart in that way.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right. Yes.Austen's Place in Great Books ProgramsOLIVER: So should Jane Austen have a bigger place on great books programs, based on all these things you've said about her?TRALDI: Yes, this is—so, there was actually a debate—I did not write the piece in response to this debate, but this is—OLIVER: Tanner Greer.TRALDI: Yes, there was—Tanner Greer weighed in on this, and my friend Circe. I think—OLIVER: I think they're just desperately wrong.TRALDI: You think they don't—that she—OLIVER: I think Emma is obviously a book that should be on one of these syllabuses. Maybe Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: Yes. I think the ones I would consider are Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park. I do think they're actually longer than I realized, which is always—I mean, there are these very practical concerns with putting together a syllabus.OLIVER: Sure, sure. Although I want to ask you about that, because my response to a lot of these debates, which is maybe just because of where I studied, but just make them read more. And if they don't do the reading, that's their, you know—TRALDI: That's true. Well, I don't want to get into this too much. We already make them read a lot compared to—so for example, a year ago, I had my students read two novels in a week, which is more than most courses make college students read.OLIVER: But that's by no means unreasonable.TRALDI: No, no, of course, of course.OLIVER: You know.TRALDI: Well, exigencies of the teenage mind aside—OLIVER: Because I often think this, when people debate how things should be taught and why it's so important to keep these programs, and they'll talk about the importance of writing essays. And then it turns out the students maybe write one essay a semester. And I sort of think, well, who cares? All this rhetoric for one essay.TRALDI: Yes. I don't know if I'm really ever going to assign essays again. It just is—the age of AI is upon us.OLIVER: Sure. But you see what I mean.TRALDI: No, yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I do think reading a lot is the main part of—and certainly, you know, when I read all seven of these in two weeks, that's much more reading than I normally do, as well, to write this essay.OLIVER: But you didn't have to lie on the sofa afterwards with a cold compress. You were fine.TRALDI: In a way it was a really good two weeks. If you get to read—I mean, this is why we have good lives, right? If you get to read Jane Austen and you call that work, it's a nice life.OLIVER: So yes, will you be putting Emma on your program?TRALDI: I would definitely consider Emma. I would definitely consider Sense and Sensibility. I would consider Mansfield Park. I think these are the ones that have—the moral element is very prominent. But it's obviously there in all of her books.OLIVER: You can have a really good moral discussion about Mansfield Park, which is a bigger, broader thing than Pride and Prejudice, for example.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. I would definitely consider—in the 1800s there were—obviously the British novel of the 1800s was a big deal, and there's—OLIVER: [laughs] We did quite well, yes.TRALDI: You all did quite well. So the ones we did at Tulsa—we had Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray. And then we had one Irish, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And I don't think anybody—if you replaced one of those with Emma or Mansfield Park, I don't think anybody would say, “Oh, you made a horrible call.”OLIVER: I think Tanner's point was that you simply don't have that many slots for an English novel that deals with these sorts of ideas, and that it should obviously be Middlemarch because that is the bigger novel. It's about bigger questions of society. It's about the whole—it's got more greatness in it, whereas Austen is sort of more about the individual.TRALDI: So I do think that this question of greatness—I think there are some people who read Austen and they think, “Well, this is—obviously it has all these sorts of themes, but it's not great. It has this littleness to it. It has this smallness to it.”OLIVER: It's domestic.TRALDI: That is not my reading of it. I think if that's the question, I don't feel that way. I think it pulls out these great themes about the nature of virtue and the nature of moral learning, becoming a better person, the nature of love. We read Sappho. We read the Symposium.To me, you read Wuthering Heights and you say, “Oh, this is a really big book because it's about society and how trauma gets passed down, and it has these horror elements, and it's very dark.” But actually, it's quite hard to figure out, how do we turn Wuthering Heights in a discussion about how to live? With Austen, it's just completely straightforward.OLIVER: [laughs] How not to live, maybe.TRALDI: Yes. In Austen, it's just completely straightforward. This is the discussion. This is what she had in mind as well, this question of how to live. So to me, Austen is completely—in terms of her successes as an artist, she belongs. In terms of her themes, she belongs. So I would not rule her out. I think she is absolutely a great, and who knows what that means, but I think she would be completely appropriate on any of these syllabi.Reading PlansOLIVER: Very good. And what will you read next?TRALDI: What will I read next? I mean, our—from the beginning, I'm thinking I should read some more poetry. It's been a while. Actually, speaking of—this is funny. Well, I want to get into William Empson. He had an odd life, which I think somebody should do like a movie about him or something.OLIVER: Yes, he'd make a great movie.TRALDI: I think Empson would be a good movie. So that might be—OLIVER: Are you going to read the poems or the criticism?TRALDI: Probably a little of both, but that's for a while from now. I think, you know, at the moment I'm back to reading philosophy. So what novel will I read next? That's a good question. What should I read next?OLIVER: If you like Jane Austen?TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Maybe read one of the people that she admired, like Samuel Richardson or Fanny Burney, someone like that.TRALDI: You know, I do think—you saying Samuel Richardson reminded me, I've read very little Samuel Johnson. I think reading some of the great critics, I think, writing this piece—OLIVER: Oh, Johnson, yes. You would like Johnson.TRALDI: I think I would like Johnson. I think I would like Empson. The history of literary criticism is something I have very, very little idea of.OLIVER: Oh, well, then, Johnson. I mean, he's the best.TRALDI: Yes, I think I should, I should definitely read Johnson.OLIVER: English literary criticism begins and ends with Samuel Johnson.TRALDI: You know what, this is a little different, but—I might have talked about this with you a little bit—I want to read The Fable of the Bees, Mandeville, because reading about Smith—a lot of the ideas that we think of as Smithian are actually Mandevillian, and he kind of moderated them.OLIVER: Well, he hated Mandeville.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Very hard on him.TRALDI: Yes. So a lot—like the invisible hand, it's only a small part of Smith's thinking, but it was like the entirety of Mandeville's thinking, this sort of dynamic.OLIVER: Well, I think it means different things for them. I think Mandeville, in a funny way, is more philosophical in the sense you were saying, and trying to make these propositions. And Smith was saying, “Well, what about feelings? What about all these funny things that we can't account for? Like, look around. It's too messy.”TRALDI: No, that makes sense to me. Yes, I think between Mandeville and Smith, Mandeville is somebody who thought virtue was sort of like a con.OLIVER: A fool's game.TRALDI: Exactly. You're sort of a sucker if you try to be virtuous.OLIVER: I think he also just assumed that if you were commercial, you were obviously on the get.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?In philosophy, we do ask, what is a good character and what is the good action in this sort of situation? What is the bad action in this sort of situation? But it's not for the philosopher to say, “Okay, in the sorts of situations you're likely to be in, what do you pay—where do you direct your attention to try to figure out these things about?”And it's not—I don't think Austen—it's not super subtle either. In Persuasion—I mentioned in the essay—in Persuasion, it starts out by saying Anne really cared about paying off the family's debts, and the rest of her family didn't give a s**t, you know? And it's sort of like, okay, so we just immediately are like, Anne's the sort of person who you might want to have a business transaction with because if she has a debt to you, she might actually pay it. And I forget if that's the exact detail, but it's something like that, you know?OLIVER: And there's also the novelist—Jane Austen is very good at what you don't see, which aga

Sağduyu programının bu bölümünde, Medyascope programcısı Tarık Çelenk ve Hülya Adak, Türk edebiyatının en önemli isimlerinden biri olan Halide Edip Adıvar'ı farklı ve az bilinen yönleriyle ele alıyor. Programda, Halide Edip'in yalnızca romanlarıyla değil; uluslararası entelektüel ilişkileri, Londra, Paris, Amerika ve Hindistan yılları, Batı ile kurduğu entelektüel bağlar, Türkiye'nin modernleşmesine dair eleştirileri ve kadın, toplum ve medeniyet üzerine fikirleri detaylı şekilde tartışılıyor. Halide Edip'in Virginia Woolf, Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand Russell ve Mahatma Gandhi gibi dünya çapında isimlerle kurduğu ilişkiler, Türkiye'nin uluslararası entelektüel tarihi açısından da önemli bir perspektif sunuyor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

April 30th, 2026Commitee of 300-LET'S GET JACKED UP!In this episode, Tim allows the audience to hear a lecture from Dr. John Coleman about the subject of The Committee of 300. 300 elite people that make the decions for the world. Dr. John Coleman, being a historian in intelligence community, researched in full scope the sinister forces behind the New world order movement. This video lecture represents a culmination of his findings about secret societies which form this global movement and how it came into existence. More Info: http://Coleman300.com ~Free PDF Book & Sources: http://goo.gl/2q6dz & http://goo.gl/L3wSL John Coleman (born 1935) is an author and analyst of world affairs. He has written several books and numerous papers analyzing the power structure of the world. He argues that a relatively small group of people - whom he calls 'The Committee of 300' - constitute a ruling elite who are pursuing a goal of one-world government. Coleman's books have been influential among more well known conspiracy authors such as David Icke and Jim Marrs who quote him in their own works. Coleman researched the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is a secret Masonic order created, with support from T. E. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell and St John Philby, to "keep the Middle East backward so its natural resource, oil, could continue to be looted." Coleman has also criticized the Club of Rome, the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Global 2000, the Interreligious Peace Colloquium, the Tavistock Institute, and other organizations. Coleman has published 22 books and hundreds of white paper reports—and currently publishes the "Weekly Intelligence Report," which can be purchased at http://coleman300.com The book titles include: "The Rothschild Dynasty" a book documenting the extensive and secretive influence of the Rothschild extended-family of banksters. ~"The Tavistock Institute Of Human Relations: Shaping the Moral, Spiritual, Cultural, Political and Economic Decline of the United States of America" ~"Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300 ~"One World Order: Socialist Dictatorship" (formerly titled "Socialism: The Road To Slavery") ~"Diplomacy by Deception: An Account of the Treasonous Conduct by the Governments of Britain and the United States" ~"Beyond The Conspiracy: Unmasking The Invisible World Government, The Committee Of 300" ~"What You Should Know About The United States Constitution And The Bill Of Rights" ~"Gun Control" " Apocalypse Waiting too Happen" "Drug War Against America" "PEARL HARBOR" "The Federal Reserve" "THe Club of Rome" "The Vanishing Middle Class" "Abortion: Genocide in America" "The Rothschild Dynasty" "We fight for Oil" "National Suicide: The Immigration Reform Act"To Listen to all episodes of LGJU, go to LetsGetJackedUp.com  or  FringeRadioNetwork.com Central Illinois-CONTACT Tim or Jack about a new roof or repairs by emailing us atRooferTimmer@gmail.com  Or Call Jack at (309) 989-5566Get FRN Gear at FringeRadioNetwork.com/shop

William Taylor - The Incas and Pharoahs mummified their dead for eternal life. Mufasa taught Simba that the dead are amongst the stars in the 'Circle of Life'. Bertrand Russell insisted 'When I die, I rot'. Jesus teaches resurrection. It is altogether more credible.

697. Most people think "fitness" is just about how you look at the beach or your 5K time. But after two decades of coaching, host Kevin Don has realized that what people actually want isn't bigger biceps—it's to be happy. This week, we look back at an episode from step away from November 2024. We look at the squat rack and into the world of philosophy to answer a bold question: Which mode of exercise will actually increase your happiness the most?Drawing from Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," Kevin explores the concept of eudaemonia (human flourishing) and why true "fitness" requires exercising your virtues rather than just your muscles. If you've ever felt like a new gym PR or a lower number on the scale didn't provide the fulfillment you expected, this episode explains why.In this episode, we discuss:The Puzzle of Identity: A quick (and nerdy) dive into Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions.Why Fitness Isn't Compartmentalized: Moving toward a "whole" definition of health that permeates every facet of your life.The Greatest Self-Help Book of All Time: An introduction to Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" and its relevance to modern wellness.The Doctrine of the Mean: How finding the balance between deficiency and excess (like courage vs. recklessness) creates a harmonious life.Practical Wisdom (Phronesis): Why knowing what is "good" in theory isn't enough—you have to practice it in real-life situations.The Three Types of Friendship: Why your social circle is a crucial component of your physical and mental flourishing.Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty podcast. Have a question for Get Fit Guy? Email: getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com.Discover more from Get-Fit Guy!FacebookTwitterNewsletter Transcripts available on your podcast app. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Life doesn't always give you the path you would choose...There's a race set before you, shaped by your circumstances, your story, and the challenges you didn't ask for. The question isn't whether you chose it… the question is: will you run it with perseverance?In this powerful teaching, we explore what it really means to persevere—not just through willpower, but through purpose. Drawing from Scripture, philosophy, and real-life stories of suffering and resilience, this message shows how perseverance is fueled by hope, vision, and a deep sense that your life matters.If you're tired, discouraged, or wondering if it's worth it to keep going… this is for you.Because sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is just to take the next step.

Did analytic philosophy ruin the entire discipline?For more than a century there has been a divide in Western philosophy between two distinct approaches, often described as analytic and continental philosophy. Analytic philosophy is predominantly based in the English-speaking world taking its name from Bertrand Russell's philosophy of logical analysis that overthrew the grand Hegelian metaphysics of the 19th century. It did so in favour of a focus on logic and linguistic precision, with the assumption that science would do the serious work of uncovering the nature of reality. Continental philosophy, based primarily in France and Germany, has offered a broad range of outlooks on the nature of the human condition and the world. It has been defined by its critics simply in opposition to analytic philosophy.Few thinkers have bridged the divide to be taken seriously by both camps. Yet both traditions now have deep challenges. The original focus of analytic philosophy has become increasingly blurred while in France English speaking philosophy is now in vogue. What is the future of European thought? Are we seeing the end of the analytic and continental divide? Or is the Enlightenment tradition itself under threat and with it the influence and identity of European philosophy?Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London, Christoph Schuringa is known for his works on German philosophy and is Editor of the Hegel Bulletin. Genia Schönbaumsfeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and the author of several books – most recently, Wittgenstein on Religious Belief. Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and the editor of the journal New Nietzsche Studies. Hosted by Danielle Sands.Don't hesitate to email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode!To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Participants: John Steppling, Hiroyuki Hamada, and Dennis Riches. Topics covered: Jonathan the 193-year-old tortoise, Bertrand Russell, Napoleon and ancient the tortoises on St. Helena Island, Trump's falling star, No Kings protests—performance art with no demands, US allies back away nervously from the Israel-US war on Iran, Iran War as a Project Hail Mary, the atrociousness of Israel exceeds that of South African apartheid in the 1980s, FBI, CIA and military advisors on Hollywood writing teams, Klaus Theweleit's “Male Fantasies”, Andrew Ross' choice of four iconic moments of the 1960s, Andy Warhol, Music track: “Betty” by Jack Littman (used with permission).

The smarter you are, the easier it is to get stuck - not because you lack ability, but because intelligence can quietly build a wall between you and the reality that would actually move you forward.EPISODE SUMMARYIn this episode, John explores one of the most common — and least talked about — reasons experienced speakers plateau.It's not a skill gap. It's a distance-from-reality problem.Drawing on 15 years of coaching speakers, John introduces the concept of psychological limiter loops: self-reinforcing cycles that keep you feeling productive while quietly keeping you stuck. He unpacks how intelligence, identity, and the need to protect your status can build a wall between you and the feedback, visibility, and real-world exposure that would actually accelerate your growth.This episode covers:• Why smart people overthink instead of executing• How psychological limiter loops work — and why they feel like progress from the inside• Why the hardest part of any speaker's journey challenges your identity, not just your skill• Five practical ways to break the loop and reconnect with realityWhether you're just starting or you've been speaking for years and know you should be further ahead, this one is for you.TIMESTAMPS00:00 The smarter you are, the easier it is to get stuck00:40 What this episode covers01:15 The Bertrand Russell quote and why intelligence creates doubt01:50 What a psychological limiter loop is — and what it looks like in practice02:40 How the loop builds a wall between you and reality03:15 Why this isn't just a beginner problem04:00 The dip - and why it's an identity challenge, not just a skill test04:50 Potential doesn't pay the bills. Bookings do.05:10 Personal story: nearly never doing stand-up comedy07:15 Personal story: the keynote I was hiding behind07:50 Five ways to break the loop07:55 1. Reconnect with reality08:15 2. Shorten the loop08:45 3. Lower the exposure threshold09:10 4. Knock the wall down09:45 5. Act before certainty10:20 Close — most speakers have a distance-from-reality problem11:00 How to work with JohnRESOURCES & LINKSBook mentioned: The New Comedy Bible by Judy CarterConcept mentioned: The Dip by Seth GodinVisit https://strategic-speaker.scoreapp.com to take the 2-minute Strategic Speaking Business Audit and find out what's blocking you from getting more bookings, re-bookings, referrals and bigger fees. There's a special surprise gift for everyone who completes the quiz.Want to get coached for free on the show? Fill in the form https://forms.gle/mo4xYkEiCjqtz9yP6, and if we think your challenge could help others, we'll invite you on.For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedInYou can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluenceThanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algorithm recommend the show, so please take a moment to follow the show and leave a rating.Mentioned in this episode:SPGFS - Hiro.fmBecoming known will always make it easier to get booked and podcast guesting is one of the easiest ways to make that happen, when you have the right strategy. This program will teach you everything you need to know about podcast guesting, from the tech stack to making an impact. You'll get all the tools to stand out as an amazing podcast guest and get booked on great shows.The Strategic Speaking Business AuditTake this quick quiz to find out where and why your speaking business is leaking opportunities.

"Das Klima”, der Podcast zur Wissenschaft hinter der Krise. Wir lasen den [sechsten Bericht](https://www.ipcc.ch) des Weltklimarats und erklären den aktuellen Stand der Klimaforschung. In Folge 166 geht es um die Wirtschaftswissenschaft, die in einer aktuellen Studie über sich selbst sagt, dass sie nicht in der Lage ist, die Risiken der Klimakrise korrekt zu erforschen. Warum das so ist und warum das anscheinend niemanden so wirklich interessiert: Das diskutieren wir in der neuen Folge. Wer den Podcast unterstützen will, kann das gerne tun: https://steadyhq.com/de/dasklima/ und https://www.paypal.me/florianfreistetter.

In this episode of An Examined Education, we hear from Mason Settergren, Class of 2024, now a sophomore at Hillsdale College studying Classics and Math. Mason reflects on how 13 years at The Cambridge School cultivated a deep and abiding intellectual curiosity. From physics and Greek to neuroscience and theology, he describes an education where subjects were never siloed but woven together, each illuminating the other. A memorable moment in 11th-grade physics, wrestling with the implications of the double-slit experiment, sparked not only scientific wonder but philosophical and theological reflection. Rather than dismissing those connections, his teachers encouraged them. At Hillsdale, Mason continues to see the fruit of that formation. In studying the history of mathematics, even the words of Bertrand Russell prompt him to consider beauty, order, and perfection as reflections of a Creator. For Mason, math, language, science, and faith are not competing domains, but harmonies within a unified vision of truth. This episode is a thoughtful meditation on curiosity, integration, and the distinctly classical Christian conviction that all truth is God's truth. It is a reminder that education, rightly ordered, forms not only knowledgeable students, but worshipful learners. Think well. Love rightly. Live wisely.

Chris grew up Catholic, lost his faith in college after his twin brother nearly died and he was later diagnosed with stage three cancer, and spent years immersed in atheism shaped by thinkers like Bertrand Russell and the New Atheists. In this episode, we talk about the limits of scientific materialism and romantic idealism, the problem of suffering, the reality of consciousness, and why atheism is never just disbelief but always carries a worldview. Chris shares why he ultimately returned to Catholicism, how he holds faith and doubt together, and why hope, transcendence, and human dignity still matter in a culture shaped by fear, anxiety, and self-interest.Christopher Beha is former editor of Harper's Magazine; the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet; and the novels Arts & Entertainments and What Happened to Sophie Wilder. His most recent novel, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award. Chris' Book:Why I Am Not an AtheistChris' Recommendations:Madame BovaryThe Dying GrassConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.comGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowGet Your Sidekick Support the show

“How do you tend to respond when you do not know?” We had this question in our Journal Circle a couple of weeks ago. It’s at the heart of many issues in our world right now. How do we hold it?When do we conceal it?Where do we turn for knowledge?And what do we do with it when we acquire it? That’s what we explore in this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast. https://youtu.be/QRAS1dib_GM Our Relationship With Not Knowing I find this advert baffling. A couple are wandering around the Leeum Museum in South Korea. They didn't know it was big; they only gave themselves an hour. He thinks a roof tile is a book. Even when his phone corrects him, they skip off giggling without listening to the information. It reminds me of a billboard from the AI company Turing that says the quiet part out loud: “We teach AGI to think, reason, and code—so you don’t have to.” Are we being encouraged to outsource our thinking and reasoning, not to support and deepen our cognitive abilities, but to replace them? Are they saying we don’t have to think or reason anymore? Even if that’s not the intention, it’s certainly the outcome of using many tools like this. There seems to be a disregard for the sacred delight of human consciousness, thought processes, and creativity. And a subtle quest to eliminate mystery, curiosity, and the learning that comes from not knowing. Yet not knowing has always been central to human potential. It is the driving force of creativity, innovation, and deeper connection to the worlds within, around, and between us. Open and Closed Stances As people reflected in our Journal Circle, a thread emerged: openness vs closedness. Closed not-knowing: defensive, protective, secretive. Open not-knowing: curious, relational, exploratory. Closedness can feel tight. Clenched. Like rushing to paint over the threat of embarrassment or being found out. Openness can feel spacious. Physically expansive, deeper, and less pressured. Where the uncertainty is met with an invitation into possibility and curiosity rather than grasping, clinging, and defensiveness. We explore several ways this plays out in everyday life. Pretending To Know One response to not knowing is pretending to know. We’ve probably all done it. Nodding along when everyone else seems to understand. Staying quiet because asking a question feels risky. Research in 2007 found that children aged 14 months to five years ask an average of 107 questions per hour. By the time they reach late primary school, many stop asking questions altogether. In the episode, I share an anecdote from research led by Susan Engel, where a ninth grader is stopped mid-question with the instruction: “No questions now, please; it's time for learning.” Within institutional settings, our natural curiosity and creativity can be left behind, and if questions are deemed disruptive or inappropriate, we may simply pretend to know and struggle quietly. This is especially true for many more introverted and sensitive people, who are already generally disposed to slot in around others without drawing much attention to themselves. Child-like Curiosity A child doesn’t see their lack of knowledge as a reason to be ashamed. It’s underpinned by the electric buzz of connection. Everything is new, mysterious, and waiting to be explored. For an adult moving through and out of a rigid system, not knowing can feel like an exposing story in which their worth as a human is assessed. Pretending to know can become an adaptive strategy. A way to keep the peace. A way to belong. There's also the technological version, prominent in many AI tools people rely on for accurate information. These systems are designed to always produce an answer, even when they are wrong. This reflects the kind of closed pretending that aims to foster a perception of expertise, so those listening believe that the source’s confidence equates to competence. But pretending doesn't only come from intentional deception. It can stem from stories we absorb, linking knowledge with worth: “I must know in order to be useful.”“I must be useful in order to be accepted.” Letting go of that story can be liberating. Saying “I Don't Know” “I don't know” is an option. A surprisingly radical one. When it is open, it creates space to explore our unknowing. An open “don’t know” admits not knowing with hands turned towards learning and discovery. It might come with an inner spark and the freedom from performance. A closed “I don't know” shuts things down. It can signal indifference or defensiveness. Sometimes that boundary is healthy. Sometimes it is armour. Being “In The Know” There is also the social currency of being “in the know.” Trends. News. Other people's business. Ignorance can feel like bliss. It can also feel like exclusion. From a closed place, being in the know becomes about control. From an open place, it can become a source of connection. The ability to link ideas, introduce people, and catalyse collaboration. Knowing What's Best Another response to uncertainty is doubling down on certainty. We are pattern-seeking creatures. We build cognitive maps to navigate a complex world. But when ambiguity feels overwhelming, certainty can feel like solid ground, even if it's forged, manufactured, and brittle. Closedness says “this is how it is”, refuses nuance, and punishes curiosity and accountability as disrespect, insolence, and rudeness. Open wisdom looks different. It sits shoulder to shoulder, acknowledges nuance, and is willing to say, “I don't know the best thing to do here.” Admitting one does not know can be a radical act in cultures that equate doubt with weakness and desperately seek a way to explain and understand everything, even without empirical evidence. Knowing That We Don't Know In a 1933 essay lamenting the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany, Bertrand Russell wrote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Charles Bukowski said something similar when giving advice to budding writers: “But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt.“ These quotes highlight the importance of knowing what we do not know — and recognising the limits of our own perspective. This took us to a detour into the Dunning–Kruger effect, which is the idea that we can speak confidently about subjects precisely because we don't yet know what we don't know. Reading Maps and Navigating Life “I don't know, but I am aware of where to look to figure it out.” In The Return To Serenity Island course, we map elements of life, seeing it as a treasure laden island. Not knowing is a door to connection, curiosity, creativity, and exploration. But it can also feel disorienting, confusing, and alienating at times. Maps help disorientation become orientation-in-progress without strict instructions or someone else’s path to follow. They can bring us home to ourselves.

Bertrand Russell showed that clear thinking is a moral act

A @Christadelphians Video: **[OVER 18 MILLION PLAYS SO FAR!]**In this thought-provoking presentation from the sixth season of Bible Unlocked Live, we tackle one of the most significant obstacles to faith: the reality of miracles. Can we believe in a God who intervenes in His creation? Join us for an insightful exploration that contrasts the philosophy of naturalism with the outstanding power of God. We delve into a personal journey from seeking natural explanations for everything to embracing the wonderful truth that for God, nothing is impossible. This session lays a foundational stone for our series, "Why You Should Believe the Bible," revealing how faith is built on a rock-solid foundation of evidence and reason.**CHAPTERS:**00:00 - Introduction to Bible Unlocked Live Season 600:29 - The Essential Goal of This Season01:25 - The Life-Changing Hope of the Bible02:55 - Addressing Doubts and Building Confidence04:15 - The Big Question: Did Miracles Really Happen?05:05 - A Personal Story: A Scientific Upbringing06:34 - The Challenge of Joshua's Long Day07:40 - The Foundational Miracle: The Resurrection08:19 - Defining Miracles and the Philosophy of Naturalism09:53 - The Apple Analogy: Understanding Divine Intervention11:17 - The Limits of Scientific Naturalism12:20 - Bertrand Russell and the Irony of Scientism13:20 - The Righteous Approach: Admitting What We Cannot Comprehend14:51 - The Big Bang and the Limits of Science15:47 - The Bible as a Lamp to Our Path16:47 - Conclusion and Series Invitation**BIBLE VERSES EXPLORED:**

This week Jason Socrates Bardi joins in to talk about about the rivalry between three mathematicians that defined the fifty years surrounding World War I.About our guest:Jason Socrates Bardi is an award-winning journalist in DC who has written two books about the history of math: The Calculus Wars and The Fifth Postulate. He has published hundreds of articles about modern science and medicine in outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, Good Morning America, US News & World Report, and The Lancet. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

--{ "Times and Portents to Conjure Terror"}-- Property time again; if you are able please support - How does interacting with a chatbot affect you? - Alan's talk from July 14, 2019, seeing time in different ways, reconstructing the past - Wage and debt slavery - Total surveillance,cameras in trees - Movie, The Circle - A sense of freedom, being totally on your own, total silence. The sounds of nature, the poet Yeats on the necessity of total silence. - Sounds of other people, wireless technology. - Stewart Brand, lifelong education, sexual revolution - Bertrand Russell, total conditioning. - Jeffrey Epstein, lowering the age of consent - Intelligence Systems including Five Eyes - Given stars to follow, including scientists. We worship wealthy people. - Protests at globalism meetings; told what to protest - NGOs, Climate Change, Scary Scenarios - Remember to go to my website and make a donation. www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com - Creation of Super-Soldiers. This is the World of the Power-Mad and the Psychopath - Everything is Connected with a Force Behind It that Runs Many Organizations Underneath It.

In this New Year's Eve special of Breaking History, Matt Ehret flies solo to close out 2025 with an extended, classroom-style presentation focused on what he describes as the intellectual, moral, and psychological traps shaping the road ahead. Matt frames the episode around themes of classical tragedy, mob psychology, and the loss of sovereignty, arguing that societies are repeatedly steered into fear-based thinking that leads people to participate in their own destruction. He examines the construction of modern enemy narratives, particularly surrounding China, Russia, and global war rhetoric, drawing on statements from figures such as George Soros, Steve Bannon, and U.S. national security officials. The episode then moves into a deep historical exploration of transhumanism, eugenics, and ideological convergence between technocratic elites and religious eschatology, tracing figures like Julian Huxley, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Bertrand Russell, and the Jesuit tradition. Matt concludes by urging viewers to raise their standards of thinking, reject simplistic narratives, and actively engage their reason and moral judgment as 2026 approaches.

The Conquest of Happiness (1930) is Bertrand Russell's short, practical guide to living more happily in the modern world. Russell argues that much unhappiness comes from patterns of thought and social pressures—like envy, fear of opinion, boredom, and the obsessive pursuit of status—and that these can be unlearned. He offers a clear-eyed, non-mystical path toward...

 Dom and Chris of Sheep Farm Studios, and Matt Sergiou of The Occult Beatles site are going on a deep dive into the entity that is ‘The Beatles,' and the all-encompassing and often hidden influence of the Asher family, particularly its maternal line, the Eliot's. In this first episode of what is the ‘Asher's Addendum,' much of the focus is on one of the Eliots' most (in)famous ancestors, Bertrand Russell, so-called ‘philosopher and intellectual,' and a supporter of eugenics and a one world government, and he was, in Matt's words, the “grandfather” of the UK Sixties counter-culture. He was also 3rd Earl Russell, a member of the bloodline that lent its name to the Tavistock Clinic in London. Not enough for one episode? Well, listen on, there's lots more! WWW.SHEEPFARM.CO.UKHTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/@SHEEPFARMSTUDIOS2921/VIDEOSHTTPS://WWW.PODOMATIC.COM/PODCASTS/SHEEPFARMSTUDIOSHTTPS://RUMBLE.COM/USER/SHEEPFARMSTUDIOHTTPS://ODYSEE.COM/@SHEEPFARMSTUDIOS:FDom's Health Bunker Supplements www.shop.healthbunker.co.ukKIDS Liposomal Multi (120ml)Strawberry Bubblegum FlavourSpecial offer HB-KIDS35OFFuse - HB-SF25OFF for all HB other Products.use - HB-SF10OFF for HB Liposomal ProductsALL DISCOUNT CODES CAN BE USED AT CHECKOUT ON MULTIPLE ITEMSDISCOUNT CODES ONLY AVAILABLE ON HEALTH BUNKER PRODUCTSHealth Bunker Clinic www.healthbunker.co.ukChris's Gaping Gobs – Etsy UK

In the 1800s, it seemed like mathematics was a solved problem. The paradoxes in the field were resolved, and even areas like advanced calculus could be taught consistently and reliably at any school. It was clearly understandable in a way that abstract fields like philosophy weren’t, and it was on its way to solving humanity’s problems. Mathematical work on electromagnetism made modern electrical engineering and power systems possible. New research in algebra created the logical basis for future computer science and digital circuits. But then new problems appeared. In the early 20th century, mathematicians made discoveries that showed them enough to know how little they really knew. Bertrand Russell showed that at its edges, math fell apart. It couldn’t fully define itself on its own terms without becoming logically inconsistent. He gave the analogy of a small-town barber who shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself; the question is, who shaves the barber—if he shaves himself, he breaks the rule, but if he doesn't shave himself, he must, by the rule, shave himself? In today’s episode, I’m speaking to Jason Bardi, author of The Great Math War: How Three Brilliant Minds Fought for the Foundations of Mathematics and we explore the story of three competing efforts by mathematicians to resolve this crisis. What do you do if math, the most logical of all sciences, becomes illogical at a certain point? Bertrand Russell thought the problem could be solved with even more logic, we just hadn’t tried hard enough. David Hilbert thought redemption lay in accepting mathematics as a formal game of arbitrary rules, no different from the moves and pieces in chess. And L. E. J. Brouwer argued math is entirely rooted in human intuition—and that math is not based on logic but rather logic is based on math. Set against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent periods of European history (from the late 19th century through World War I, the 1920s, the Great Depression, and the early days of World War II), we look at what happens when rock-solid truths don’t seem so rock solid anymore.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of European thoughtWhat is analytic philosophy and what is continental philosophy? And, perhaps most importantly, does this distinction make any sense?The division between these two branches has divided Western philosophy for decades now, with the Anglo-Saxon world largely associated with the analytical school, and the European continent with the, well, continental one. In this panel, our speakers discuss the future of thought for Western philosophy and Europe. Is the division between these schools obsolete? Are they both under threat? What can we expect?Join our three philosophy professors, Christoph Schuringa, Genia Schönbaumsfeld, and Babette Babich to discuss these themes. Hosted by Danielle Sands.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hablamos de realismo sucio, del absurdo y de la risa con el joven escritor Manuel Mata, autor de El tema (Ed. Pre-Textos), poemario juguetón, inteligentísimo y se diría que casi mutante por su capacidad para cambiar de piel en cada página con el que ha ganado el V Premio de Poesía Antonio Ródenas García- Nieto.Luego, Ignacio Elguero nos recomienda La conquista de la felicidad, el clásico del filósofo británico Bertrand Russell en una edición de lujo ilustrada por Montse Galbany para la editorial Taurus y Pan de ángeles (Ed. Lumen), las apasionantes memorias de la compositora y cantante estadounidense Patti Smith. En su sección, Javier Lostalé recuerda a su amigo -el también poeta- Antonio Hernández al hilo de Voy a contarles mi vida (Ed. Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker), antología preparada por Óscar Martín Centeno que recoge algunos de los poemas más icónicos del autor gaditano ahora que se cumple el primer aniversario de su muerte.Además, Sergio C. Fanjul nos pone tras la pista de El único planeta verdaderamente alienígena es la Tierra (Ed. Akal), ensayo del escritor y teórico cultural Alberto Santamaría que pone de relieve la vigencia de la obra del narrador británico J. G. Ballard, pionero en la exploración de los rincones más oscuros de nuestra sociedad contemporánea.Terminamos en compañía de Mariano Peyrou, que hoy hace sonar la Música popular. Así se titula el nuevo poemario de Juan Bello Sánchez, un libro minimalista y muy coherente en lo formal en el que el autor demuestra, sin embargo, su pericia en el uso de distintos tonos y estrategias compositivas. Escuchar audio

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), um dos maiores representantes do racionalismo analítico moderno, teve influência vasta e duradoura na filosofia, na ciência e no pensamento político do século XX. Ganhador do Nobel de Literatura e conhecido por sua clareza lógica e ceticismo intelectual, Russell representa uma síntese poderosa entre crítica à religião, defesa do empirismo, e ideal de progresso humano por meio da razão autônoma. Na perspectiva adventista, porém, sua obra exige leitura crítica e teológica criteriosa. Apesar de alguns aspectos positivos – como a valorização do pensamento claro, a denúncia do autoritarismo irracional e a defesa da responsabilidade moral –, o cerne do seu sistema colide com os fundamentos do governo e da liderança eclesiástica adventista. Sua negação da revelação objetiva, sua crítica à religião como sistema de autoridade e sua desconfiança da metafísica são ameaças reais à estrutura profética e representativa que sustenta a ordem adventista. Este episódio propõe uma análise rigorosa e fluida das ideias de Russell, alinhando os pontos úteis e confrontando as ameaças que sua filosofia representa à ordem bíblica e organizacional da IASD.

🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En el episodio de hoy nos adentramos en la Escuela de Filosofía del Lenguaje de Cambridge, un núcleo decisivo para el desarrollo de la filosofía analítica del siglo XX. Repasaremos las figuras clave que enseñaron allí —Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein y G. E. Moore— y su impacto en la manera de entender el lenguaje, el pensamiento y la realidad. Hablaremos también de la revista Analysis, de la figura de John Wisdom y del enfoque característico de esta escuela, concebida como una forma de “terapia lingüística” cuyo objetivo no es construir teorías, sino disolver confusiones conceptuales. ❓ ¿Crees que la filosofía debe ofrecer teorías sobre el mundo o, más bien, ayudarnos a aclarar y sanar los malentendidos que crea el lenguaje? Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este recorrido filosófico y por el apoyo constante que hace posible este proyecto. 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. 1. PROFESORES EN CAMBRIDGE. 2. LA REVISTA ANALYSIS. 3. JOHN WISDOM. 4. UNA TERAPIA LINGÜÍSTICA. 🎼Música de la época: Pompa y circunstancia op. 39 de Elgar 🎨Imagen: Portada de la escuela de Cambridge. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

After 27 years, Melvyn Bragg has decided to step down from the In Our Time presenter's chair. With over a thousand episodes to choose from, he has selected just six that capture the huge range and depth of the subjects he and his experts have tackled. In this third of his choices, we hear Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Greek philosophy. Their topic is Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher from c490-430 BC whose paradoxes were described by Bertrand Russell as "immeasurably subtle and profound." The best known argue against motion, such as that of an arrow in flight which is at a series of different points but moving at none of them, or that of Achilles who, despite being the faster runner, will never catch up with a tortoise with a head start. Aristotle and Aquinas engaged with these, as did Russell, yet it is still debatable whether Zeno's Paradoxes have been resolved. With Marcus du Sautoy Professor of Mathematics and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford Barbara Sattler Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews and James Warren Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world

The philosophers Russell and Han come from different historical contexts, but they both agree on one thing: if you want to be happy stop being pre-occupied with yourself! 

Giorgio Vallortigara"Desiderare"Marsilio Editoriwww.marsilio.itDa una parte c'è Douglas Spalding, grande scienziato – siamo in piena epoca vittoriana –, etologo, che anticipa il lavoro sull'imprinting di Konrad Lorenz, e che alla passione dell'osservazione degli animali non umani aggiunge quella degli animali umani. Dall'altra, Itzhak, il protagonista, grande scienziato contemporaneo, che si muove, proprio come l'autore, Giorgio Vallortigara – al quale somiglia –, in quel mondo vasto e largo che è la scienza. La scienza, nonostante sia cosa diversa dagli uomini e dalle donne che la fanno, può essere raccontata attraverso alcuni tipi, e così, accanto a Itzhak, stanno Pietro Ongaro, professore espatriato in Gran Bretagna, ironico e realista, Patrick de Gray, noto, notissimo scienziato, vanitoso e arrogante, Vittorio, che studia il cervello ed è ben conscio che da certe avventure non si torna indietro – la curiosità è pericolosa –, e Sylvia, ex matematica, dalla quale Itzhak è attratto. E infine la contessa, che consente a Vallortigara di spingere la scienza in quel grande immaginario gotico che è l'impossibile, l'irraggiungibile, l'impensabile, lo spaventoso. Itzhak ha una grande passione e un grande modello, Douglas Spalding, e come lui ondeggia tra la scienza e l'amore. D'altronde nel corpo c'è pure la testa. Spalding, per esempio, era stato raccomandato come tutore alla famiglia Russell, cioè ai genitori di Bertrand Russell, e in quella casa era diventato l'amante di Lady Amberley, madre di Bertrand, col beneplacito del marito John: la libertà delle menti che si accorda a quella dei corpi. Vallortigara racconta che non esistono due culture contrapposte, come sosteneva Charles Snow, ma una, e decide di dimostrare la coesistenza di ragione e sentimento, di scienza e umanesimo, con una storia che consente di far capire le cose senza spiegarle. Un grande romanzo che, per struttura – le storie incrociate, una nel passato e una nel presente –, somiglia a Possessione di A.S. Byatt, e per lingua e intenzione non somiglia a nient'altro; l'esordio alla narrativa di un grande scienziato.Giorgio Vallortigara  è professore di Neuroscienze al Center for Mind/Brain Sciences dell'Università di Trento. È autore di moltissimi articoli scientifici su riviste internazionali e di libri divulgativi, tra i quali ricordiamo: Altre menti (il Mulino 2000), Cervello di gallina. Visite (guidate) tra etologia e neuroscienze (Bollati-Boringhieri 2005), Pensieri della mosca con la testa storta (Adelphi 2021), Il pulcino di Kant (Adelphi 2023), A spasso con il cane Luna (Adelphi 2025). Desiderare è il suo primo romanzo.Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

L'héritage de Nuremberg traverse l'Atlantique. Aux États-Unis, les militants des droits civiques invoquent les crimes contre l'humanité pour dénoncer le racisme. Pendant la guerre du Vietnam, des tribunaux d'opinion, comme celui de Bertrand Russell reprennent cet esprit de justice universelle. Sans sanction, mais avec une portée symbolique puissante. Avec Guillaume Mouralis, historien et auteur de Le moment Nuremberg. Le procès international, les lawyers et la question raciale paru aux Presses de Sciences Po

🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En el episodio de hoy nos acercamos a la figura de Ludwig Wittgenstein, discípulo aventajado de Bertrand Russell y una de las mentes más enigmáticas y decisivas de la filosofía contemporánea. Repasaremos su biografía y su peculiar recorrido vital, y nos centraremos en las tesis fundamentales del Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, donde se plantea la relación entre realidad, pensamiento y lenguaje y el célebre límite según el cual “de lo que no se puede hablar, es mejor callar”. Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este viaje intelectual y por el apoyo constante que sostiene este proyecto. 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. VIDA 1. TESIS FUNDAMENTALES 2. REALIDAD Y LENGUAJE. 🎼Música de la época: Cuarteto para cuerdas Nº 2 de Enescu que acabó de escribir en 1951, el mismo año en el que falleció nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Viena, 26 de abril de 1889-Cambridge, 29 de abril de 1951), conocido como Ludwig Wittgenstein, fue un filósofo, matemático, lingüista y lógico austríaco, posteriormente nacionalizado británico. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En este episodio nos adentramos en la figura de Alfredo Whitehead, quien fuera colaborador y ayudante de Bertrand Russell, y que con el tiempo desarrolló un pensamiento propio y profundamente original. Revisaremos su biografía, su reflexión sobre la relación entre filosofía y ciencia, su visión del universo como proceso dinámico, así como las críticas que recibió desde la tradición espiritual, tomista e idealista. Whitehead nos invita a pensar un cosmos en movimiento, donde la realidad no es sustancia estática sino devenir y creatividad. Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este viaje filosófico y por el apoyo que hace posible seguir compartiendo conocimiento. 📗ÍNDICE 1. BIOGRAFÍA. 2. RELACIÓN CIENCIA-FILOSOFÍA. 3. EL UNIVERSO COMO PROCESO. 4. CRÍTICAS. 🎼Música de la época: Sinfonía nº 6 de Prokofiev. 🎨Imagen: Alfredo Whitehead (15 de febrero de 1861- 30 de diciembre de 1947) fue un matemático y filósofo inglés. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

“恐惧是迷信的主要源头，也是残忍的主要源头之一。征服恐惧，是智慧的开端”，这句话精准戳中了人类负面行为的深层根源。面对未知时，恐惧会让人寄望于迷信寻求慰藉；面对威胁时，恐惧又可能催生伤害他人的残忍。而真正的智慧，从不始于无畏，而是始于正视恐惧、掌控恐惧 —— 唯有打破恐惧的枷锁，才能跳出盲目的迷信，摒弃伤人的残忍，走向清醒的认知。New Wordssource [sɔːs]n. 来源；出处；源头；We need to find a reliable source of information for the report.我们需要为这份报告找到可靠的信息来源。superstition [ˌsuːpəˈstɪʃn]n. 迷信；迷信观念；Many people still hold the superstition that black cats bring bad luck.很多人仍抱有黑猫会带来厄运的迷信观念。conquer [ˈkɒŋkə(r)] v. 征服；战胜；克服；攻克He managed to conquer his fear of public speaking with practice.通过练习，他成功克服了对公开演讲的恐惧。wisdom [ˈwɪzdəm]n. 智慧；明智；学识；Years of life experience have given her a lot of wisdom.多年的生活阅历给了她很多智慧。Quote to learn for todayFear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.——Bertrand Russell翻译恐惧是迷信的主要源头，也是残忍的主要源头之一。征服恐惧，是智慧的开端。—— 伯特兰・罗素更多卡卡老师分享公众号：卡卡课堂 卡卡老师微信：kakayingyu001送你一份卡卡老师学习大礼包，帮助你在英文学习路上少走弯路

En 1952, le philosophe et écrivain britannique Bertrand Russell publie un article resté célèbre dans lequel il imagine un objet improbable : une petite théière en porcelaine qui flotterait quelque part dans l'espace, en orbite autour du Soleil, entre la Terre et Mars. Invisible aux télescopes les plus puissants, cette théière serait indétectable. Et pourtant, explique Russell, si quelqu'un affirmait son existence sans pouvoir la démontrer, ce ne serait pas à ses contradicteurs de prouver qu'elle n'existe pas. C'est bien à celui qui avance une affirmation extraordinaire qu'il revient d'en apporter la preuve.Cette image, connue sous le nom de « théière de Russell », est devenue un argument philosophique majeur dans le débat entre croyance et scepticisme. Ce que Russell cherchait à illustrer, c'est le renversement du fardeau de la preuve. Trop souvent, dit-il, on demande aux sceptiques de démontrer que Dieu n'existe pas. Or, selon lui, c'est l'inverse qui devrait être exigé : à ceux qui affirment l'existence d'une divinité de fournir les preuves de ce qu'ils avancent. Sa théière spatiale sert donc de métaphore ironique : absurde mais logique, elle met en évidence la difficulté de réfuter une affirmation invérifiable.La portée de cette parabole va bien au-delà de la théologie. Elle s'applique à de nombreux domaines : les pseudo-sciences, les théories du complot, ou encore les affirmations extraordinaires dans les débats publics. Chaque fois qu'une idée invérifiable est présentée comme une vérité, on peut se rappeler l'enseignement de Russell : l'absence de preuve ne constitue pas une preuve d'existence.La comparaison a également marqué la culture populaire et la vulgarisation scientifique. On retrouve la théière de Russell évoquée dans des discussions sur l'agnosticisme, l'athéisme ou encore dans des manuels de logique. Elle est parfois rapprochée du fameux rasoir d'Occam, ce principe qui recommande de préférer l'explication la plus simple quand plusieurs hypothèses sont possibles.En résumé, la « théière de Russell » est une métaphore provocatrice qui rappelle une règle essentielle du raisonnement critique : ce n'est pas à celui qui doute de prouver son doute, mais à celui qui affirme de justifier son affirmation. Une petite théière imaginaire, lancée dans le vide spatial, pour rappeler que la charge de la preuve n'est pas un détail, mais le cœur même de toute démarche rationnelle. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

En 1952, le philosophe et écrivain britannique Bertrand Russell publie un article resté célèbre dans lequel il imagine un objet improbable : une petite théière en porcelaine qui flotterait quelque part dans l'espace, en orbite autour du Soleil, entre la Terre et Mars. Invisible aux télescopes les plus puissants, cette théière serait indétectable. Et pourtant, explique Russell, si quelqu'un affirmait son existence sans pouvoir la démontrer, ce ne serait pas à ses contradicteurs de prouver qu'elle n'existe pas. C'est bien à celui qui avance une affirmation extraordinaire qu'il revient d'en apporter la preuve.Cette image, connue sous le nom de « théière de Russell », est devenue un argument philosophique majeur dans le débat entre croyance et scepticisme. Ce que Russell cherchait à illustrer, c'est le renversement du fardeau de la preuve. Trop souvent, dit-il, on demande aux sceptiques de démontrer que Dieu n'existe pas. Or, selon lui, c'est l'inverse qui devrait être exigé : à ceux qui affirment l'existence d'une divinité de fournir les preuves de ce qu'ils avancent. Sa théière spatiale sert donc de métaphore ironique : absurde mais logique, elle met en évidence la difficulté de réfuter une affirmation invérifiable.La portée de cette parabole va bien au-delà de la théologie. Elle s'applique à de nombreux domaines : les pseudo-sciences, les théories du complot, ou encore les affirmations extraordinaires dans les débats publics. Chaque fois qu'une idée invérifiable est présentée comme une vérité, on peut se rappeler l'enseignement de Russell : l'absence de preuve ne constitue pas une preuve d'existence.La comparaison a également marqué la culture populaire et la vulgarisation scientifique. On retrouve la théière de Russell évoquée dans des discussions sur l'agnosticisme, l'athéisme ou encore dans des manuels de logique. Elle est parfois rapprochée du fameux rasoir d'Occam, ce principe qui recommande de préférer l'explication la plus simple quand plusieurs hypothèses sont possibles.En résumé, la « théière de Russell » est une métaphore provocatrice qui rappelle une règle essentielle du raisonnement critique : ce n'est pas à celui qui doute de prouver son doute, mais à celui qui affirme de justifier son affirmation. Une petite théière imaginaire, lancée dans le vide spatial, pour rappeler que la charge de la preuve n'est pas un détail, mais le cœur même de toute démarche rationnelle. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En este episodio concluimos nuestro recorrido por el pensamiento de Bertrand Russell, una de las figuras más influyentes de la filosofía del siglo XX. Analizaremos su teoría de las descripciones, clave en el desarrollo de la lógica moderna, su debate intelectual con el segundo Wittgenstein, donde se evidencian dos visiones opuestas del lenguaje y la realidad, y finalmente, su crítica al cristianismo, reflejo de su visión de una razón libre de dogmas religiosos. Gracias por seguir acompañándome en este ciclo dedicado a la filosofía del lenguaje. Vuestro interés y apoyo hacen posible que sigamos pensando juntos. 📗ÍNDICE Introducción a la Filosofía del Lenguaje. 0. Resúmenes iniciales. 1. VIDA Y OBRAS. 2. ATOMISMO LÓGICO. >>> https://go.ivoox.com/rf/159444007 3. TEORÍA DE LAS DESCRIPCIONES. 4. CONTRA EL SEGUNDO WITTGENSTEIN Y LA FILOSOFÍA ANALÍTICA. 5. PACIFISMO Y CRÍTICA DEL CRISTIANISMO. (AUDIO DE HOY) 🎼Música de la época: Sinfonía Nº8 de Miloslav Kabeláč escrita en 1970, año del fallecimiento de nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Bertrand Arthur William Russell (Monmouthshire; 18 de mayo de 1872-Gwynedd, 2 de febrero de 1970) fue un filósofo, matemático, lógico y escritor británico, ganador del Premio Nobel de Literatura. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

Let's relax with a listener request for more from the marvelous mind of Bertrand Russell. This time, thoughts about the nature of thought, induction versus deduction, and whether we can know anything. Spoiler alert, yes. But also, no. That's philosophy for you.   Help us stay ad-free and 100% listener-supported! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boringbookspod Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/d5kcMsW Read “The Problems of Philosophy” at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5827   Music: "Boring Books for Bedtime,” by Lee Rosevere, licensed under CC BY, https://leerosevere.bandcamp.com   If you'd like to suggest a copyright-free reading for soft-spoken relaxation to help you overcome insomnia, anxiety and other sleep issues, connect on our website, https://www.boringbookspod.com.

🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: Con este episodio damos inicio a un nuevo bloque dedicado a la filosofía del lenguaje. En primer lugar, presentaré una síntesis de sus líneas generales y algunas de las críticas formuladas desde el tradicionalismo espiritualista. A continuación, nos adentraremos en la figura de Bertrand Russell, con un repaso a su vida y obra, y una introducción a su primera gran aportación: el atomismo lógico, fundamento de su proyecto de análisis del lenguaje y la realidad. Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este camino de exploración filosófica, que solo es posible gracias a vuestro apoyo constante. 📗ÍNDICE Introducción a la Filosofía del Lenguaje. 0. Resúmenes iniciales. 1. VIDA Y OBRAS. 2. ATOMISMO LÓGICO. 🎼Música de la época: Sinfonía Nº8 de Miloslav Kabeláč escrita en 1970, año del fallecimiento de nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Bertrand Arthur William Russell (Monmouthshire; 18 de mayo de 1872-Gwynedd, 2 de febrero de 1970) fue un filósofo, matemático, lógico y escritor británico, ganador del Premio Nobel de Literatura. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos! 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. 1. VIDA Y OBRAS. 2. SUFRO ESTE CUERPO QUE GOBIERNO. 3. UNA VOLUNTAD HUMANA QUE YERRA Y PECA. 4. LA SIMBÓLICA DEL MAL. >>> https://go.ivoox.com/rf/156150521 5. LA ESCUELA DE LA SOSPECHA. 6. EL CONFLICTO DE LAS INTERPRETACIONES. 7. EL SÍMBOLO. 8. LA RECONQUISTA DE LA PERSONA. (audio de hoy) 🎼Música de la época: Purple Rhapsody es un concierto para viola de la compositora estadounidense Joan Tower estrenado en 2005. 🎨Imagen: Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (Valence, 27 de febrero de 1913 - Châtenay-Malabry, 20 de mayo de 2005) fue un filósofo y antropólogo francés conocido por su intento de combinar la descripción fenomenológica con la interpretación hermenéutica. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!

Jim Marrs joins Freeman for a discussion of Alien connections to the Nazi elite and the rise of the Fourth Reich in America. Also discussed are the Annunaki, ancient Sumer and Egypt. Jim is an expert on Ancient Astronauts, the NWO, Nazi UFOs, Skull and Bones, Bush Dynasty, the CIA, and NSA, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, CFR, Flying Saucers, and the Alien Agenda. This show with Jim Marrs aired on Radio Freeman Nov. 09, 2010 on American Freedom Radio Jim Marrs is author of Rule by Secrecy, which traced the hidden history that connects modern secret societies to the Ancient Mysteries. It reached the New York Times Best Seller list. In 2003, his book The War on Freedom probed the conspiracies of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. It was released in 2006 under the title The Terror Conspiracy. In mid-2008, his book The Rise of the Fourth Reich, detailing the infiltration of National Socialism into the USA, was published followed by a study of mysteries entitled Above Top Secret. Associate Producer: Steve Mercer Send comments and guest suggestions to producersteve@freemantv.com Topics include: Freemasonry, Religion of World - Bureaucrats - Skull and Bones - Perks for Lower Masons - Albert Pike, Albert Mackey - Rosicrucians. Levels, Grades, Degrees - Noble Orders, Old Aristocracy, Knighting, Sirs - Terminology of Architecture and Building - "Building the Temple" - Knights Templars. United States, Founding Fathers, British Crown, Royal Charters - Masonic Lodge Meeting, Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, France. Foundations under Cloak of Charity - Political Group and NGO funding - Demands for Laws to be Passed - Soviet Union. Chemtrails - Aerial Spraying of Prozac, Valium - Weather Modification - Tranquilizing Public - "Brave New World". Hollywood (Holy Wood, Grove) - Giving You Your Thoughts - Subliminals - Royal Institute for International Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations. Worldwide HAARP - Earthquake, Tornado, Drought, Famine, Tsunami Creation. Mystery Religions, "Societies with Secrets" - Masonic Obelisks across U.S.-Canada Border. Hermaphroditic Symbol - Perfection of Human Being - Cessation of All Conflict - Perfected Worker Breed, Ideal Design, Purpose-Made Humans. Dictatorships - Scientific Indoctrination, Bertrand Russell, Experimental Schools - "Contaminated Ideas" - Kindergarten. Total War - British Military Academies, Hitler's Army - Mercenaries, Armies - Carroll Quigley. Project for a New American Century, Wolfowitz - War in Middle East - John Stewart Mill - Peoples, Races to be Eliminated - H.G. Wells.

Jasun Horsley was born into a family of the British 'elite'.  When he was a child he was unaware that his paternal grandfather, Alec Horsley, Oxford Balliol graduate and founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, was also a Fabian and helped found the Hull branch when he was Sheriff of Hull. Jasun's father also rubbed elbows with characters like Sir Richard Acland, Bertrand Russell, and the Paedophile Information Exchange, a British pro-paedophilia activist group. Jasun was made aware that his family's circle of influence were mockingly called “champagne socialists,” and that the family business, Northern Foods was in cahoots with other notable corporate giants, while being a major player in world business. One thing was clear to Jasun from an early age, he had no interest in joining the family business! At 18, he inherited a small fortune from his father, which landed him in New York as an aspiring filmmaker. Upon his discovery of "The Teachings of Don Juan" through the works of Carlos Castaneda he decided that sorcery was a truer and more adventurous path.  He later concluded that there was much congruity between the film industry and sorcery, which was later explored in his book "Seen and Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist" that examines the military-entertainment complex, and how American movies have become weaponized. Jasun's pursuit of sorcery knowledge led him to Oaxaca, Mexico, and then to New Mexico, where he made a "misguided" attempt to start an intentional community, after which, at age 24, he disinherited his fortune and disappeared to Morocco, with nothing but a poncho and meager belongings. Some thirty years since, Jasun has continued his introspection into the ways in which popular culture, alternate or “counter-” culture, politics, and pseudo-spiritualty are all limbs of a covert, multi-generational, social-engineering octopus that includes occult societies, intelligence agencies, and organized crime networks. While spanning centuries along many disparate groups, ideologies, organizations, and agendas, Jasun has determined this “superculture” to be largely consistent in its aims, principles, and methods. Join us in this free-flowing discussion as Jasun and the Alfacast crew review his many provocative works for an insider's view of the world through the eyes of the so-called "elite". Show links: https://childrenofjob.substack.com/ Learn The True Nature Of Dis-Ease & How Our Bodies Actually Work: https://alfavedic.com/themyth/ Join Our Private Community And Join In The Discussion: https://alfavedic.com/join-us/ Follow our new YT channel: / @offgridelegance Start healing yourself and loved ones with ozone! https://alfavedic.com/ozone Protect yourself & your teens from media manipulation & groupthink w/ Dani Katz's Pop Propaganda Course! http://alfavedic.com/poppropaganda Get our favorite blue blocker glasses! Use code 'alfavedic' for 10% off! https://alfavedic.com/raoptics Join Qortal for free, the truly decentralized internet. https://qortal.dev/downloads Learn how to express your law and uphold your rights as one of mankind. https://alfavedic.com/lawformankind Alfa Vedic is an off-grid agriculture & health co-op focused on developing products, media & educational platforms for the betterment of our world. By using advanced scientific methods, cutting-edge technologies and tools derived from the knowledge of the world's greatest minds, the AV community aims to be a model for the future we all want to see. Our comprehensive line of health products and nutrition is available on our website. Most products are hand mixed and formulated right on our off grid farm including our Immortality Teas which we grow on site. Find them all at https://alfavedic.com​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Follow Alfa Vedic: https://linktr.ee/alfavedic Follow Mike Winner: https://linktr.ee/djmikewinner

As the physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker—the author of the mind-expanding book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence—sees it, every single thing on Earth can be traced to life's beginnings. Walker studies the origins of life on this planet—one of science's greatest unsolved puzzles—and, beyond that, whether alien life exists on other planets. As part of her research, she's advancing a physics known as “assembly theory,” a new way of thinking and talking about life's origins and, in turn, time. She displays that rare gift for demystifying deeply layered concepts—and for reminding us of how profound it is to be alive, in this moment, in the first place. On this special episode—produced in partnership with the Aspen Art Museum and recorded in Aspen, Colorado, during the inaugural AIR festival earlier this month—Walker makes a compelling case for why understanding life's origins is crucial to understanding ourselves.Special thanks to our episode sponsor, the Aspen Art Museum. Show Notes:Sara Imari Walker[6:59] Assembly theory[10:00] Thomas Moynihan[11:13] “Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence” (2024)[13:36] Michael Lachmann[18:38] Lee Cronin[18:48] Bertrand Russell [21:04] “A.I. Is Life”[24:10] Paley's watch argument[25:36] Steve Jobs[25:54] “Reflecting on the iPhone's cultural impacts as it turns 18”[29:14] “It's Time to Retire the Word ‘Technology'”[32:46] Copernican Revolution[36:14] “Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein” or “One Hundred Authors Against Einstein” (1931)[40:54] Arizona State University: School of Earth and Space Exploration[45:03] AIR Aspen[46:20] Carlo Rovelli[47:44] Thaddeus Mosley[47:54] Constantin Brâncuși[47:55] Isamu Noguchi

Dr. John Patrick delivers a provocative critique of modern education and worldview in this intellectually rich episode. From challenging Bertrand Russell's idea that knowledge only comes from science, to explaining why reading Dante or Pascal feeds the soul more than media ever could, Dr. Patrick urges listeners to think deeply and live wisely. He explores how language is corrupted, why universities have abandoned truth, and how God's revelation through the Bible offers a foundation for meaning, value, and beauty. This is not just a philosophical discussion. It's a wake-up call for parents, teachers, students, and Christians to seek wisdom, pass on truth, and live lives of consequence. // LINKS // Website: https://www.johnpatrick.ca/ Podcast: https://doctorjohnpatrick.podbean.com/ Biblical Literate Quiz: https://www.johnpatrick.ca/meaning-metaphor-and-allusion/ Recommended Reading list: https://www.johnpatrick.ca/book-list/ Ask Doctor John: https://www.johnpatrick.ca/ask/ LINKS: https://beacons.ai/doctorjohnpatrick

A troubling statement makes us want to think of exceptions to it that would prove that statement to be wrong.“Outliers are interesting, but they rarely matter,” is a troubling statement, and you may already be thinking of exceptions to it. But it remains true nonetheless.This second statement is also true. “If there were no outliers, there would be no new inventions, no innovations, no progress. We would be trapped forever in the status quo.”These seemingly contradictory statements can both be true because there are two kinds of outliers.Leonardo da Vinci made marvelous art and filled fabulous sketchbooks with his insightful ideas, but he didn't really change anything. He was just an interesting outlier whose mind was ahead of his time.Rare is the outlier who throws a pebble into the ocean of time and shifts the world off its axis. Electricity is harnessed. Computers are invented. Someone connects them and now everyone knows everything all the time.“What distinguishes the past from the present is not biology, nor psychology, but rather technology. If the world has changed, it is because we have changed the world.”– Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson in their new book, AbundanceTechnology changes the world, but persuasion changes hearts and minds.I am an ad writer.When I was in my 20s, I was told,“People never change their mind. If you give a person the same information they were given in the past, they will make the same decision they made in the past. When a person appears to have ‘changed their mind,' what they have really done is made a new decision based on new information.*”Ten years later I realized that those people were trying to use logic to create “persuasion technology.” Their mistake was assuming that people make their decisions logically. But people do not trust new information when it disagrees with their belief system.New information may allow you to win the argument, but it rarely wins the heart.And a person convinced against their will, remains unconvinced, still.Wash away the opinions, bravado, and fluff, and you will find that most people are NOT seeking new information. They are seeking identity reinforcement.Bertrand Russell was a mathematician and a logician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature eight years before I was born.He said,“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence.”When your goal is persuasion, don't begin with new information. Begin by agreeing with what they already believe. Meet them where they are. Only then can you hope to lead them to where you want them to go.Abraham Lincoln knew that persuasion is easier when you begin at a point of mutual agreement.“If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the greatest high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the...

In philosophy of mind, panpsychism is the view that the mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe". It is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed in some form to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell. In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought, but it saw a decline in the mid-20th century with the rise of logical positivism. Recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness and developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum mechanics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21st century because it addresses the hard problem directly.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monster-fuzz--4349429/support.