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Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

David S. Brown discusses his new book, “Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War.” With chapters on Emerson, Stowe, Thoreau, and Fitzhugh, alongside with a cast of presidents, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Professor Brown shows how political, cultural, and literary history foreshadow the […]

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Nov 13, 2017 Dr. Thoreau Redcrow is an American academic with a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis with a concentration in Global Conflict. Thoreau is a researcher who specializes in studying armed guerrilla movements, and who has over a decade of experience studying the life and legacy of Che Guevara. His prior investigations into Che's biography have taken him to Cuba to speak to those who knew and fought alongside Che, as well as to other arenas around the world which have been influenced by Che Guevara's armed struggle. Brett sits down with Dr. Redcrow to discuss the Argentine Marxist revolutionary; including an entire segment of the podcast dedicated to debunking many of the right-wing and anti-communist lies about him. Topics Include: Che's childhood, the political context out of which Che emerged, the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, debunking lies and slander about Che, The Bay of Pigs, Anti-Imperialism, "Guevarism", Marx, Lenin, and much, MUCH more! ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

In this episode, we explore the deep roots and evolving expressions of what it means to be "Spiritual But Not Religious" (SBNR), especially through the lens of Christian mysticism and contemplative history. We ask: What does it truly mean to be SBNR? Where did these spiritual instincts come from? And can we trace a meaningful lineage that validates the SBNR experience as more than just a modern reaction, but part of a legitimate spiritual path? The conversation journeys through the lives and legacies of figures like Emerson, Thoreau, John Muir, and the Quakers—spiritual seekers who shaped an evolving Christian spirituality that was less institutional and more experiential. We touch on the influence of Calvinist Puritanism, the rise of Transcendentalism, and the period that became known as The Jesus Movement. Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to consider how the SBNR impulse—often seen as post-religious—is in fact deeply rooted in the Christian mystical and contemplative tradition. It's not about rejecting religion entirely, but about seeking a more integrated, soulful, and embodied way of being. Whether you're inside, outside, or somewhere in between institutional religion, this is a conversation for anyone on a spiritual path. Stay connected! Follow us on Facebook or Instagram @natureasbeloved. Send us your ideas, questions, or feedback: natureasbeloved@gmail.com.

John McGowan joins the podcast again to discuss a recent republication of Hannah Arendt's essay "Civil Disobedience, which responds to Plato's Crito, Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government," and the leftwing mass movements of the 1960s. John and I discuss Arendt's importance as a theorist of revolution and totalitarianism, as well as the complex life of the idea of civil disobedience and its reception by Tolstoi, Gandhi, and King.

Jan-Hendrik Bakker spreekt met Bart Geeraedts over de cursusweek De filosofie van stilte en luisteren. Hij is daarin een van de gastsprekers. Jan-Hendrik schreef het boek In stilte. Een filosofie van de afzondering, waarin hij pleit voor een herwaardering van afzondering in stilte. Belangrijke schrijvers en filosofen als Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Diogenes, Baudelaire, Merton en Thoreau zochten afzondering en stilte op om kracht uit te putten, om te protesteren tegen economische verspilling en weerwerk te leveren aan vervreemding en verlies van privacy. Je afzonderen is tegenwoordig moeilijker dan ooit, en daarom juist zo essentieel. Jan-Hendrik legt uit waarom afzondering dé manier is om onze individuele waarden te herijken. De filosofie van stilte en luisteren vindt plaats op 26 – 30 mei 2025. Anne-Mathije Bogerd modereert. Met bijdragen van Jan-Hendrik Bakker, Michel Dijkstra, Marlies De Munck, Pablo Lamberti, Miriam Rasch, Dianne Sommers, Martine Prange, Mark Reybrouck, Marthe Kerkwijk, Wendy Tollenaar en Naomi Kloosterboer.

Step into the timeless world of Walden, Henry David Thoreau's iconic meditation on simplicity, nature, and self-reliance. Recorded here in its complete and unabridged form, this audiobook captures Thoreau's two-year journey living deliberately in a small cabin by Walden Pond. In this profound reflection, Thoreau critiques modern society, questions materialism, and explores how reconnecting with nature...

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button.   You can find Ben Shattuck at his website https://www.benshattuck.com/ or on IG @Benshattuck_   This week we chat with Ben Shattuck, author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau published by Tin House Books in 2022.  Amy knew this book would appeal to Carrie because she is nothing if not a literary weirdo, and she has been since high school when she quoted from Thoreau in her senior yearbook. Despite her hopes that Ben would, like her, have a high school infatuation with Thoreau, he explains that his interest began much later. Even if you don't know anything about Thoreau, if you're a walker or a hiker, you have experienced the unique meditative impact of this activity and can appreciate Ben's insights on it. Ben also has a book of fiction out titled The History of Sound that is a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner prize so we are just really thrilled to have him with us today.  And this week, for our recommendations section, we didn't just pick a random topic like asparagus or comas to share books about—we actually continue with the theme of walking. We each share at least 3 books that feature walking, hiking, or being in nature in some meditative way. We have literary fiction, memoirs, essays, and even a romance.   Books mentioned-- 1- Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau by Ben Shattuck   2- The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck   3- Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper   4- A Paris Year: My Day to Day Adventures in the Most Romantic City in the World by Janice Macleod   5- Dear Paris by Janice Macleod   6- The French Ingredient: A Memoir by Jane Bertch (La Cuisine French Cooking School)   7- Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard   8- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard   9- The Journals of Henry David Thoreau by Henry David Thoreau    10 - Matrix by Lauren Groff   11- Year of Wonder by Geraldine Brooks   12- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt   13- Dancing Woman by Elaine Neil Orr   14- A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Simone Praylow @fullof_lit - Twenty Years Later by Charlie Donlea   15- Summit Lake by Charlie Donlea   16- Don't Believe It by Charlie Donlea   17- In My Boots: A Memoir of 5 Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail by Amanda K. Jaros 18- Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail by Sally Chaffin Brooks 19- The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge by Wendell Berry 20- Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabelle Abbs 21- Ulysses by James Joyce  22- The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher 23- The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses by Patrick Hastings 24- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce 25- You Are Here by David Nichols   Media mentioned-- The Residence (Netflix, 2024)  

In today's complex, fast-paced world, what can we learn from philosophers? John Kaag thinks we can learn a lot. He's created an audiobook Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life), discussing his ideas highlighting Thoreau, Emerson and William James. He's also the co-founder of Rebind, an AI company transforming classic literature into interactive, guided experiences. Rebind pairs books with original interactive commentary from some of today's greatest thinkers who serve as expert guides,  featuring conversations, personal anecdotes, historical context, and reflections. Rebind was named to Fast Company's prestigious list of the World's Most Innovative Companies of 2025 and was a TIME Magazine "Best Invention of 2024." John Kaag joins us from Massachusetts. __________________ Bio John Kaag is a distinguished philosopher and author, widely recognized for his deep knowledge of Henry David Thoreau's classic Walden. He has authored several books, including American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, both of which were New York Times and NPR Best Books of the Year. In 2023, he published Henry at Work, a thorough examination of Thoreau's philosophy as it relates to post-pandemic work habits. Kaag has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harper's Magazine, bringing timeless philosophical insights to a wider audience. ________________________ For More on John Kaag Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life)  Rebind Try Rebind - Discount offer _________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Living for Pleasure – Emily Austin, PhD The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD An Artful Life – John P. Weiss _________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You'll get smarter about the investment decisions you'll make about the most important asset you'll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren't quite done yet, discover what's next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn't just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He's the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ Wise Quotes On Philosophers - and AI "I think it's interesting. I think that when it comes to the perennial questions of philosophy, like why am I here? What is the good life? Why is life worth living? These questions typically are answered in very personal settings, between friends, between family members, between, I teach at UMass Lowell, so my classes are relatively small within a classroom setting. But I think what's interesting is that when like lots of readers and lots of thinkers don't have the chance to interact with others in a sort of active way. My mother was one of these individuals. She retired when she was 68,

Since publishing his debut essay collection—Video Night in Kathmandu, featuring far-flung reportage from 10 Asian countries—in 1988, the prolific travel writer Pico Iyer has gone on to write more than a dozen books exploring themes ranging from displacement and identity to globalization and technology, as well as contribute to publications such as The New York Times, Time, and Condé Nast Traveler. Over the years, Iyer's travels have taken him to some of the world's most remote destinations—North Korea, Bhutan, and Iceland, to name a few—but it's his hundred-plus visits to a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, that form the heart of his latest book, Aflame: Learning From Silence. Connecting with his inner stillness during these various sojourns in solitude has left him wholly transformed, opening him up to discover the thrumming, ineffable joy of being truly awake to the world and wonderfully alive. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Iyer explores the purpose and joy of travel, and shares deeply moving reflections about what he finds most essential in life.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L'École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Pico Iyer[4:25] “Aflame”[4:25] “Autumn Light”[4:25] Philip Larkin[4:25] “The Art of Poetry No. 30”[7:18] Bashō[7:18] Leonard Cohen[10:21] New Camaldoli Hermitage[10:21] Post Ranch Inn [16:25] “Postmodern Tourism: A Conversation with Pico Iyer”[17:08] “The Eloquent Sounds of Silence”[21:48] “The Joy of Quiet”[31:42] “What Ping-Pong Taught Me About Life”[33:14] “Walden”[37:28] “The Open Road”[41:37] “Video Night in Kathmandu”[41:37] “The Lady and the Monk”[41:37] “Lonely Places”[41:37] The Global Soul[44:40] “In the Realm of Jet Lag”[52:35] “Culture: The Leading Hotels of the World”[55:17] Potala Palace[55:17] Naoshima, Japan[55:17] Teshima, Japan[55:17] Narita, Japan[01:00:43] “The Half Known Life”[01:10:10] “No Time”

Kevin Maier is an English professor at the University of Alaska Southeast. In this episode we discuss the Outdoor Skills and Leadership Certificate program at UAS. This one-year certificate offers a unique academic approach to outdoor pursuits, integrating academic inquiry with practical skills like swift water rescue and ice climbing. We then discuss how reading classic outdoor literature, such as works by Thoreau and Hemingway, enriches outdoor experiences and informs our understanding of nature and conservation. Check out the On Step Alaska website or subscribe on Substack for articles, features and all things Alaska. Click here for a 20% discount on an annual subscription to The Westrn, the outdoor community's newest newspaper. Thanks to the sponsors: Sagebrush Dry (Alaskan-owned business that sells the best dry bags you can buy.) Alpine Fit (Premium outdoor layering from another Alaskan-owned business.) Backcountry Hunters and Anglers

Thoreau said it well when he said, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Well Meredith, Luke and Strider discuss what else goes down in the woods and much, much more! Meredith Casey: @meredith_casey_ Luke's Special Bill Burr's Special is out now on Hulu! Strider's Special Makin' Memories Sources: britannica.com, plato.stanford.edu, history.com, brainyquote.com, allamericanatlas.org, ranker.com

With "Walden," Henry David Thoreau presented fresh viewpoints about materialism, independence and community which have challenged readers for well over a century. But what did the famed American writer believe about religion? Matthew Peterson speaks with Richard Higgins about his recent book, "Thoreau's God," to find out.

This was originally a lecture given by Thoreau in 1851 at the Concord lyceum titled "The Wild" . He revised it before his death and it was included as part of the June 1862 edition of Atlantic Monthly. This essay appears, on the surface, to be simply expounding the qualities of Nature and man's place therein. Through this medium he not only touches those subjects, but with the implications of such a respect for nature, or lack thereof. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Send us a textDonna Kunde, a true polymath and the force behind Influence Radio Network, joins us to share her incredible journey of empowering voices through podcasts, books, and TV talk shows. Discover how Donna has navigated life's unexpected twists, from snowy adventures in Virginia to life-altering encounters that set her path ablaze with purpose. Her innovative podcasting methods, such as leveraging global networks, offer fresh insights into reaching and influencing a worldwide audience without traditional reliance on ads. This episode promises a wealth of knowledge on creating lasting legacies through storytelling.Listeners will be captivated by Donna's reflections on pivotal life moments, including her disciplined and musical journey in the United States Army. A gifted clarinet from a mentor sparked a lifelong passion, illustrating the profound impact of small, meaningful gestures and the belief others place in our potential. As we explore these transformative experiences, Donna shares her insights into borrowed belief and how it has guided her path, inviting us to consider the moments and people who shape our own narratives.In our conversation, Donna also dives into the timeless wisdom of historical thinkers and the refreshing perspectives of Gen Z and millennials, revealing how these insights can inspire intentional living. The episode concludes with a poetic nod to the everyday miracles that fuel creativity, from the allure of platforms like AppSumo to the historical charm of Colonial Williamsburg. Donna's favorite Thoreau quote serves as a guiding light, reminding us to pursue our dreams with confidence. Be sure to listen in and be inspired to embrace your own hero's journey, and don't forget to subscribe for more stories that spark change.We explore the profound impact of storytelling on leadership and creativity with Donna Kunde, who highlights how her experiences have shaped her mission to help others amplify their voices. The episode emphasises the interconnectedness of individual narratives and their potential to inspire global change. • Discusses the role of storytelling in creating a legacy • Explains the vision behind the Influence Radio Network • Highlights personal experiences that shaped Donna's journey • Explores the significance of mentorship and influence • Encourages embracing vulnerability to connect with listeners • Underscores the importance of sharing personal narratives for community building • Offers practical tips for aspiring podcasters • Calls for individuals to take ownership of their storiesTune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website. Show Website: https://www.thegoodlisteningtoshow.com You can email me about the Show: chris@secondcurve.uk Twitter thatchrisgrimes LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-grimes-actor-broadcaster-facilitator-coach/ FaceBook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/842056403204860 Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW wherever you get your Podcasts :) Thanks for listening!

This week Jeff and Dave leave aside that French guy (H.I. Marsomething) and go back to their OTHER book series, Carl Richard. What was happening in the early 19th century after the American founding? Pastoralism! Oh, the idyllic life of lounging with livestock, as the kine low loudly through the meadows. But there is also the counterattack of utilitarianism. After all, the business of America is business. So which view is going to dominate American culture? Will it be the Jeffersonian gentleman farmer, with his 40 acres, picturesque outhouses and a landscape larded with Roman villas (paging Wendell Berry)? Or will it be a Hamiltonian mercantile paradise, with everyone trading with their neighbor? And where do the Classics fit in all this? Come along as we take a Thoreau look at this question, complete with the Yale Report of Jeremiah Day, the full-scale assult on Classical languages, the counter-attack, and the daring denouement. You won't wanna miss this one. Listen up, or go barbarian.

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What are we born to do? How shall we do it?" The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What are we born to do? How shall we do it?" The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What are we born to do? How shall we do it?" The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What are we born to do? How shall we do it?" The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What are we born to do? How shall we do it?" The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cathryn McIntyre is a natural psychic and clairvoyant and the author of two books about her experience living as a psychic in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts. She is also an astrologer; a UFO experiencer; and an occasional ghost investigator. A blog McIntyre wrote about one of her investigations in Boothbay Harbor, Maine got the attention of author, Greg Latimer, who investigated and validated McIntyre's findings and included the story in his book, Ghosts of the Boothbay Region. Ronny LeBlanc, star of the Travel Channel's Expedition Bigfoot, featured an interview with McIntyre in the latest of his Monsterland series of books in which she discussed her alien abduction experiences and her ability to connect to spirit, including tapping into the consciousness of the creature known as Bigfoot. In her latest book, The Thoreau Whisperer, McIntyre writes about her experience channeling the spirit of Concord's most famous writer, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau is best remembered for his essay Civil Disobedience, which was his plea in defense of the rights of man, and for his book, Walden, written about his experiment living alone in a cabin at Walden Pond in Concord. It was soon after moving from Michigan to Massachusetts in 1984 that McIntyre encountered the spirit of Thoreau at a home near Walden Pond but it wouldn't be until 2006, following an after-death encounter with her mentor, who was an eminent Thoreau scholar, that the channeling would begin. Cathryn McIntyre is the author of The Thoreau Whisperer: Channeling the Spirit of Henry David Thoreau (2018), and Honor in Concord: Seeking Spirit in Literary Concord (2008). She is also the founder of The Concord Writer, a literary and publishing concern dedicated to the words, wisdom and enduring spirit of Henry David Thoreau.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-x-zone-radio-tv-show--1078348/support.

We are all strangers singularly and a brotherhood en masse.   With a seamless earth and a sky being shared between us, in spite of boundaries - of homes, cities, countries, continents, hearts, colour - we cannot but be similar, looking out for each other and being there lending a hand when we see the other struggle.   The tragedy of borders is their illusion of easy divisibility. But a line drawn is a slash on a heart which in spite of divisions seeks conjoinment. In thought, religion, spirit or opinion. How can we be anything less than a whole?   If a million stars can be a galaxy, and adorn the skies with their synergetic beauty, how can millions of us be merely individuals, concentrating on differences, trying to find our fulfilments alone, and not strive for connections?   I love the idea of all of us solitary as a reality, but being part of a collective as a necessity. It could be the way our parents are the nurturers and the caregivers, to the way we marry and start our own broods, seeking and getting succor and shoulders. It's not a case of quid pro quo but a primordial need. We are not meant to be alone - however much we might do a Thoreau. And if we can be at one with a partner why can't it be with a collective, a mass, a country, across countries?   In the hullabaloo of our own egos and existences, we forget we are lesser alone, as soon enough we start to struggle with the minutiae of our solitary existences, wondering where time went, wondering why we are not what we can really be.    In the schemata of life's design, we are made independent by body, but are never enough in brain or brawn to pull the entirety of our existence alone. It is my firm belief that it is the universe's strategy, its design, that we are made adequate, but lesser - so we can reach out, join hands and find both the strength and the comfort of being in each other's company and support.   We are more because we are more, lesser when we are less.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the need for being solitary and together -  I Heard That You Just Set Off On a Journey I Can Sense Her Loneliness The Art of the Lonely Good Deed Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Epic Intro 2017 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/epic-intro-2017 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

Kim Stanley Robinson returns to discuss his novel Green Earth, a technothriller about a near future world in which scientists work to solve the global climate crisis. Stan and I discuss how the book went from a trilogy to a single volume, its similarity to The Ministry for the Future, and its place in the genre of naturalism. Plus Emerson and Thoreau!And yes, I get the title of The Ministry for the Future wrong every time I say it in this episode. Oops.

I recorded this episode for the men who listen, and who struggle with insecurity. I feel you. I've been on a decade long journey of trying to find some sense of honest, solid self confidence. I wasn't born as the man you see here. I've had to fight every demon I had to be where I am. I have had to let go of everything that wasn't aligned. There's not much left of my life as it was a decade ago. But in reality, most of the life I built up to that point wasn't me trying to be me…it was me trying to be liked, valued, and lovable in other people's eyes. And everything that wasn't real had to go away. How could I love myself when I was only trying to be some fake persona that people would like? I needed their validation to feel like I had any value as a man. But when I was being a false version of me, any love they did give me was for that fake self. So I kept myself separated from being loved…and in a place where I could only, ever, feel insecure. I was a social outcast in school. I was terrified of losing love. I was desperately needy, especially when it came to my girlfriends, and even with Dawn. I was 85 pounds heavier than I am now. I lived out what Thoreau called the “life of quiet desperation”. And I couldn't tolerate it. I'm sharing more of my back story and my less than flattering moments in this episode to hopefully help you realize that we really can find a better life. A stronger sense of self. An honest feeling of self worth. But it's not an overnight process, as much as I wish it was. My hope is that in listening to this episode, you can start to find some acceptance for yourself in where you're at. Then make the commitment to yourself to unwind the inauthentic ways that you're living and to slowly, progressively close the gap between your true self and the persona that you've adopted. Because that's the only way to overcome insecurity and truly feel Dominant. If you want any help with this, I share my own step by step process in my course Becoming a Dominant Man. Check it out here: https://infinitedevotion.com/becoming-a-dominant-man-1 Enjoy! ~~~~~ Social Links: Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion YouTube: https://instagram.com/@infinitedevotion Facebook: https://facebook.com/domsubdevotion Andrew & Dawn are full time coaches and educators, working to support individuals and couples in building healthy, loving Dom/sub relationships. Here are some of the different free and paid options of how to work with and learn from us! Subscribe: Get updates when we publish new episodes of Dom Sub Devotion and other new content at https://www.infinitedevotion.com/podcastsubscribe Website: Visit our website at https://infinitedevotion.com for all of our latest content. Coaching: You can learn more about working with us in 1-1 coaching and our various workshops, courses, and programs at https://infinitedevotion.com/store Free Resources: FREE: The 12 Steps to Dominance: A free ebook showing men how to embody a healthy, loving Dominance. Download here: https://www.infinitedevotion.com/12-steps-to-dominance FREE: Inspiring Her Submission Masterclass: A deep dive on how to inspire any woman to submit and surrender to you. Watch here: https://infinitedevotion.com/dominance-masterclass FREE: Devotional Dominance & Submission: A free ebook showing you how D/s dynamics and loving long term relationships work hand in hand. https://infinitedevotion.com/devotional-ds FREE: Get Dawn's Manifesto: The Self Respecting Submissive Woman. Click here to download it now! https://www.infinitedevotion.com/self-respecting-submissive-woman Listen to Andrew's other podcast, Conscious Dominance! Conscious Dominance is a weekly conversation between two Dominant men as we navigate the demands and growth that are required of us in living in and leading inside of 24/7 Dom/sub relationships. These are deep conversations that go straight to the true heart of a Dominant man. Find Conscious Dominance at https://conscious-dominance.captivate.fm/ or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you like to listen! Becoming a Dominant Man is Andrew's flagship course for Dominant Men. Becoming a Dominant Man leads men through a 12 step process, the 12 Steps to Dominance, to claim full ownership of their lives and their inner strength, so that they can carry a loving strength, true Dominance, into their lives and relationships. Becoming a Dominant Man is a pre-recorded course that men can work through on their own time, but also includes live weekly instruction and Q&A with Andrew at no extra cost. Learn more about Becoming a Dominant Man at https://infinitedevotion.com/becoming-a-dominant-man Our newest course for submissive women is available NOW. Submissive Foundations teaches women how to embody submission from a healthy emotional inner strength. Click the link to learn more! https://infinitedevotion.com/submissive-foundations 00:00 Introduction to Dom Sub Devotion 00:33 Personal Growth Journey 01:41 Facing Insecurity 05:42 Childhood Sensitivity 11:29 High School Struggles 21:29 College and Early Relationships 34:37 Facing Insecurity and Realization 35:11 Turning Point in the Relationship 37:58 A Decade of Self-Discovery 43:36 Clearing Out the Old Self 46:39 Struggles with Identity and Health 50:30 Embracing Brutal Honesty and Compassion 53:50 The Journey to Authenticity 56:06 Advice for Men on Overcoming Insecurity 01:06:11 Gratitude and Acknowledgment

In this episode of The Peripatetics, we explore the interplay of shadow and light — how each shapes and reveals the other, and ultimately defines the contours of our lives. Following Thoreau's assertion that “the hours of darkness are as necessary,” we enter the shadows, considering their role not as absence, but as a vital source of restoration and clarity. Host Trey Hill shares stories of crossing personal thresholds – moments when testing limits required courage, and unearthed connection and meaning. From a midnight adventure through the vast American West to the lessons gleaned in the darkroom, he examines how experiences of struggle and hardship can transform into sources of unexpected light. Along the way, we encounter the discoveries of Joseph Niépce, a photographic pioneer, reflect on the timeless wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, and ask if the name of one of Japan's best selling automobiles has anything to offer this story. So, join our journey along shadowed paths, as we test the limits of our light, and admire the hidden vistas of meaning waiting to be developed within the dark chambers of our own experience. Transcripts of all episodes are available here. Find Trey on Instagram. Episode Themes Include: The Necessity of Darkness: Inspired by Thoreau's reflections, this episode explores how the hours of darkness — both literal and metaphorical — are essential for restoration, creativity, and growth. We delve into the role of shadows, sleep, and unseen forces in shaping our understanding of life. Testing Limits: Through stories of personal adventure and rebellion, this theme considers the importance of venturing beyond the boundaries imposed by society, nature, and ourselves. It's in these moments of daring that we rediscover our untamed rhythm and learn the art of self-governance. Extracting Light From Shadow: Drawing on the photographic innovations of Joseph Niépce, the episode examines the interplay of light and shadow, illustrating how what seems like irrecoverable darkness can reveal the brightest truths about who we are and the world around us. About The Show Inspired by the ancient tradition of walking philosophers — from Aristotle and his followers to Thoreau and Nietzsche  — who walked as a way to engage deeply with their thoughts and ideas, The Peripatetics wanders through th e thoughts of great thinkers in nature, art, literature, and philosophy as they intersect with the simple, transformative act of walking. In season 1, we are discussing Henry David Thoreau's definitive essay on the subject of walking, connecting it with wisdom from a wide swath of philosophic tradtions which share his devotion to achieving clarity and peace through movement. Whether you're a fellow walker, someone looking for a bit of tranquility, or just curious about how a good walk can change your perspective, you're in the right place. May your path be smooth and your pace steady. About The Host Trey Hill is a filmmaker who cut his teeth as a photographer and one-man-band storyteller for non-profits and NGOs, work which carried him around the world as he sought to expose the inner light present in some of the planet's most overlooked people. He also spent 10 seasons in the NHL as team photographer for the Dallas Stars and has, for the better part of the last decade, directed TV commercials for global brands, working with household names, musicians, sports heroes, and politicians. In 2019, his feature-length debut, the documentary LOUD KRAZY LOVE about Korn's Brian “Head” Welch, premiered on Showtime.

Civil disobedience is a form of political protest where individuals intentionally violate laws to address perceived injustices and convey their discontent to the government, media, and public. This can involve overt, public acts aimed at opposing unjust or unconstitutional laws and policies, and may include breaking unrelated laws to bring attention to the cause. The concept of civil disobedience was popularized by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau in his essay “Civil Disobedience,” first published in 1849. Thoreau argued that individuals should prioritize their conscience over compliance with unjust laws, asserting that passive submission to government authority enables injustice. His essay has had a significant impact on political thought and activism, influencing figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Could it be that Thoreau was just another historic Anarchist/Voluntaryist? Or was he something more? Was he a patriarch of the movement? Go to: https://voluntaryistacademy.com/ Support the show: https://voluntaryistacademy.com/donate/ Get AUTONOMY: https://getautonomy.info/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.universityofreason.com%2Fa%2F2147825829%2F8sRCwZLd Musical Artist: Brendan Daniel https://www.instagram.com/brendandanielmusic/

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In this episode of The Peripatetics, we turn our attention to names — their meaning, their limits, and the tension they create between essence and identity. With Thoreau as our guide, we wander through the wild landscapes of Walking, reflecting on his assertion that “at present, our only true names are nicknames.” What do names reveal, and what do they obscure? And how do we move beyond the constraints of the names we've inherited to discover the truth of who we are? Such a journey requires vulnerabiltiy, and willingness to remember the things we ultimately need to forget. Modeling this, Trey traverses the topography of himself through the stories of some of the names he's answered to in his life. Along the way, we trace the philosophical threads of Aristotle, Linnaeus, and Monet, weaving their ideas into a rich tapestry of inquiry into clarity, essence, and the human need for connection. Join us as we strip away the labels, rediscover the unbridled nature within, and seek the truest name of all — the one that emerges when we dare to crest the higher hills of our own becoming. Transcripts of all episodes are available here. Find Trey on Instagram. Episode Themes Include: The Essence of Identity: This episode delves into the meaning and limitations of names, reflecting on Thoreau's idea that “our only true names are nicknames.” By examining the tension between essence and identity, we explore how names can reveal, obscure, or constrain our understanding of who we are. Remembering to Forget: In a conversation that spans millenia, this episode explores the paradoxical act of remembering the things we must ultimately forget to see clearly. Drawing on the ideas of Monet, Aristotle, and Linnaeus, the episode challenges us to strip away the assumptions and biases attached to names and labels. The Journey to the Truest Name: This theme explores the idea of becoming — how the names we answer to evolve with us and how discovering our truest name requires vulnerability and self-exploration. The episode reflects on the human need to transcend inherited labels and connect with the unbridled nature within. About The Show Inspired by the ancient tradition of walking philosophers — from Aristotle and his followers to Thoreau and Nietzsche  — who walked as a way to engage deeply with their thoughts and ideas, The Peripatetics wanders through th e thoughts of great thinkers in nature, art, literature, and philosophy as they intersect with the simple, transformative act of walking. In season 1, we are discussing Henry David Thoreau's definitive essay on the subject of walking, connecting it with wisdom from a wide swath of philosophic tradtions which share his devotion to achieving clarity and peace through movement. Whether you're a fellow walker, someone looking for a bit of tranquility, or just curious about how a good walk can change your perspective, you're in the right place. May your path be smooth and your pace steady. About The Host Trey Hill is a filmmaker who cut his teeth as a photographer and one-man-band storyteller for non-profits and NGOs, work which carried him around the world as he sought to expose the inner light present in some of the planet's most overlooked people. He also spent 10 seasons in the NHL as team photographer for the Dallas Stars and has, for the better part of the last decade, directed TV commercials for global brands, working with household names, musicians, sports heroes, and politicians. In 2019, his feature-length debut, the documentary LOUD KRAZY LOVE about Korn's Brian “Head” Welch, premiered on Showtime.

The Gateway Podcast – Marilynne Roach– Six Women of Salem Date: Jan. 7, 2024 Episode: 58 Discussion: Six Women of Salem About Marilynne: Marilynne Roach, writer, researcher, illustrator, and lecturer, has so far written nine books for adults and children on topics ranging from Thoreau at Walden to the Salem witch trials, and articles for publications as diverse as the Lizzie Borden Quarterly and the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. She was an associate editor on the definitive Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt and a member of the Gallows Hill Project that proved the correct location of the 1692 hangings (included in Archaeology Magazine's list of the world's ten most important discoveries of 2016). Roach's The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege is considered the bible of the Salem witch trials. She is currently writing the companion volume (Six Men of Salem) to her biographical Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. Host: CL Thomas C.L. Thomas travels widely every year as a fine arts photographer and writer exploring various afterlife research, OBEs, metaphysics, folklore, and lectures at events. C.L. does "Spirit" art on request. She is the author of the haunting memoir "Dancing with Demons" and the acclaimed historical-fiction novel “Speaking to Shadows”. C.L. is the creator and host of the Small Town Tales Podcast. She has written many articles and maintains a blog on legends, folklore magic, and paranormal stories. Currently, she resides in Las Vegas, Nevada with her beloved Golden Retriever and Maine Coon cat. www.clthomas.org Follow CL on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?...

Translator & author Damion Searls kicks off our 2025 season with a talk about his amazing new book, THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSLATION (Yale University Press). We talk about how all writing — translation or not — involves constraints, he balanced the book between philosophical argument and concrete examples of translation, and how he came to define translation as "reading one thing and writing something else." We also get into where all the languages — German, Dutch, Norwegian, French — started for him (+ his lockdown project of teaching himself modern Greek), how the business of translation has changed during his career and the problems with the English market's dominance, how a 'book report' led to him becoming the translator of Nobel-winner Jon Fosse, how he edited an abridged version of Thoreau's (7000 pages of) journals, and why he only put one negative example in The Philosophy of Translation. Plus we discuss how he doesn't look over his own translators' shoulders, why he resents critics' bias against translation and the notion of "a 'faithful' translation" or "getting it right," how he & his peers fought for royalties over fee-for-service and the days when translators treated like typesetters, and plenty more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

[SEGMENT 1-1] ICYMI Post-Christmas Edition   I hope you are enjoying your time off with family and friends. I won a $10 gift certificate at a party at friend's house, so I'm a happy camper. What's happened since we last got together? Well I was forced to do a “best of” show, and I chose the days after the election to remind us of our big win. But I want to touch on something deeper in this ICYMI segment. Much happened as we celebrated Christmas…I will get to some of it.   Title Options"Success, Failure, and Settling: Life's Rigged Lottery""Cut to the Chase: Lessons from Life and a Rigged System""Three Choices, One Revolution: Success, Failure, and Settling"Cut to the ChaseI'm not sure why my mind defaults to cutting to the chase. Maybe it's my programming as a management consultant, where I've heard more excuses for failure than a politician at a budget hearing. Here's an example of cutting to the chase: the LGBTQIA+ community has nothing on conservative men—we, too, were all once trapped in a female's body. Let's scratch that argument off the grievance list. Of course, it's a tongue-in-cheek joke meant to highlight a bigger point: we all have our issues. But issues don't matter as much as how we deal with them. In life, you get three choices: succeed, fail, or settle. Let's break that down.Success: The Rarely Complained-About ProblemSuccess is the toughest road, yet oddly enough, nobody complains about having it—except Leftists. If a Leftist won the lottery, they'd demand reparations for the 49 other states they didn't live in. Speaking of the lottery, a guy just hit the $1.5 billion Powerball and took home $628 million. Guess who really hit the jackpot? The government, of course. They're not playing the lottery—they're winning it. The lottery is a perfect metaphor for government: the people put in all the money, and Uncle Sam shows up like the cousin you didn't know you had, grabbing the biggest slice of the pie. Elon Musk could probably run the lottery for 10% of the take and still send you a Tesla as a thank-you card.   https://www.lotteryusa.com/opinion/surprising-economics-behind-states-lottery-money The revenue for the 45 states that participate in government-operated lotteries has grown by over 80 percent since 2010. (…) From that humble rebirth, however, state lotteries have snowballed into a massive government business. In 2022, the total revenue from the 45 states that participate in government-operated lotteries, plus the District of Columbia, clocked in at nearly $108 billion (a rather staggering 83 percent increase from 2010 figures). States with the highest total lottery revenue include New York, Florida, Texas, and California, which each took in north of $8 billion that year. For at least 10 states, lottery games regularly generate more total revenue than corporate income taxes. While these swelling proceeds are indisputably impressive—especially considering the growth over the past decade or so—they look even more striking when examined on a per capita basis. Essentially the lottery is a way to tax you that gives you a one-in-a-trillion chance to get your money back. Think of it as FUN taxation. Where do you think this money really goes? To “education”? Another story for another day…[SEGMENT 1-2] Failure: The Unexpected TeacherNow, let's talk failure. It's where most of us live, and oddly enough, it's where we learn the most. My grandfather used to say, “Discipline your disappointment; it's always there—until it isn't.” Translation: embrace failure. You'll face plenty of it before you taste success. Some of my best lessons came while failing. I've failed in business, relationships, and even hobbies. You're looking at a guy who plays piano so badly that my piano probably thinks I'm trolling it. But I settled for being terrible at piano because I don't need to be Van Cliburn—I'm too busy succeeding elsewhere. Failure builds character. And if you don't embrace it, you'll never get to the next level. People stuck in failure are the ones who missed the memo: it's not a final destination—it's just a layover.Settling: The Comfortable CompromiseAnd now, settling. We all do it in some areas because we can't be great at everything. But there's a difference between settling smartly and selling out. Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That's true, but it's also a choice. Did you settle for a job you hate because it pays the bills? Or did you take the leap and find out what you're made of? Did you marry someone who makes you better, or did you settle for someone who just makes dinner? Settling isn't always bad. Sometimes it's strategic. But if you're in a rut, ask yourself: are you settling because it's easy, or because it's right?The Revolution of Not SettlingThis year, many of us made a choice not to settle. Politically, we dumped the high-maintenance “gold-digger” government. It's time to find a fiscally responsible “around-the-way girl”— who doesn't want a new butt, new boobs, and lips that look like she's a cartoon character in The Simpson's. We've had enough of a government that treats our wallets like a piggy bank for its Botox fund. We want something real, something sustainable. And the good news is: the revolution has already begun. Circling back on success. Success only comes with massive failure. Elon Musk almost went broke twice. Donald Trump lost in a sham election, only to win “bigly” in 2024. What's your big success built on failure? Remember your three choices: succeed, fail, or settle. Just make sure the choice is yours—not someone else's. Democrats have one thing they do better than anybody: they sell failure as success[SEGMENT 1-3] ICYMI Post-Christmas 2   [X] SB – Karl Rove on Trump's impact on economic outlook Biden 41% approval Karl Rove is now a Trump guy? Up 41 pts Good time to expand Expect sales to rise Plan capital outlays in the next 6 months     Failure sold as success. Democrats have one thing they do better than anybody: they sell failure as success. But all you need to do is wait for the real results to see the Leftism is the poster child for failure. https://x.com/StephenMoore/status/1871540676782903720Stephen Moore Another half-million jobs reported under Biden turn out to be phantom!   The Philly Fed's recent findings reveal that Q2 job growth was actually negative, with all reported gains set for revision in 2025. This follows an alarming downward revision of 800,000 jobs from last year.  Stay tuned for January's non-farm payrolls—more adjustments on the way!   A woman was burned to death in the NYC subway and by an illegal Biden let into the country. The suspect accused of setting a woman on fire in the NYC subway is Sebastian Zapeta. He is an illegal migrant from Guatemala. He sat on a bench and watched his victim burn alive. I saw the video of this woman, and it's truly horrific. And the guy who set her on fire actually fans her. Understand that the governor of NY has declared their transit system safe! A friend tweeted: I am so confused about the woman being burned alive in the subway… How did this happen? How was she still standing? Why is the assailant casually sitting on the bench watching his victim burn? And WHY DID NO ONE HELP? Please explain this to me like I'm five…   Felonies surged 47%, violent crime is up, daily disruptions and a rise in murder on NYC Subways. January's stats reveal a 16% rise in violent felonies and 74 major operational disruptions - over 2 per day. Latest NYC crime statistics: Overall crime up 35.6% and transit crime up 49.1% year-to-date. Crime in NYC is at a twelve-year high.  [SEGMENT 1-4] ICYMI Post-Christmas 3   Kilauea is erupting. Cows are complaining that their farts no longer matter.   Wikipedia got $177M donated to it. They spent $50M on DEI           The woman the Left accused of having underage sex with Matt Gaetz is in prison for lying about underage sex accusations. Mollie @MZHemingway Sometimes I feel like I was the only reporter to look into the Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kevin-jackson-show--2896352/support.

Cut to the ChaseI'm not sure why my mind defaults to cutting to the chase. Maybe it's my programming as a management consultant, where I've heard more excuses for failure than a politician at a budget hearing. Here's an example of cutting to the chase: the LGBTQIA+ community has nothing on conservative men—we, too, were all once trapped in a female's body. Let's scratch that argument off the grievance list. Of course, it's a tongue-in-cheek joke meant to highlight a bigger point: we all have our issues. But issues don't matter as much as how we deal with them. In life, you get three choices: succeed, fail, or settle. Let's break that down.Success: The Rarely Complained-About ProblemSuccess is the toughest road, yet oddly enough, nobody complains about having it—except Leftists. If a Leftist won the lottery, they'd demand reparations for the 49 other states they didn't live in. Speaking of the lottery, a guy just hit the $1.5 billion Powerball and took home $628 million. Guess who really hit the jackpot? The government, of course. They're not playing the lottery—they're winning it. The lottery is a perfect metaphor for government: the people put in all the money, and Uncle Sam shows up like the cousin you didn't know you had, grabbing the biggest slice of the pie. Elon Musk could probably run the lottery for 10% of the take and still send you a Tesla as a thank-you card.   https://www.lotteryusa.com/opinion/surprising-economics-behind-states-lottery-money The revenue for the 45 states that participate in government-operated lotteries has grown by over 80 percent since 2010. (…) From that humble rebirth, however, state lotteries have snowballed into a massive government business. In 2022, the total revenue from the 45 states that participate in government-operated lotteries, plus the District of Columbia, clocked in at nearly $108 billion (a rather staggering 83 percent increase from 2010 figures). States with the highest total lottery revenue include New York, Florida, Texas, and California, which each took in north of $8 billion that year. For at least 10 states, lottery games regularly generate more total revenue than corporate income taxes. While these swelling proceeds are indisputably impressive—especially considering the growth over the past decade or so—they look even more striking when examined on a per capita basis. Essentially the lottery is a way to tax you that gives you a one-in-a-trillion chance to get your money back. Think of it as FUN taxation. Where do you think this money really goes? To “education”? Another story for another day…[SEGMENT 1-2] Failure: The Unexpected TeacherNow, let's talk failure. It's where most of us live, and oddly enough, it's where we learn the most. My grandfather used to say, “Discipline your disappointment; it's always there—until it isn't.” Translation: embrace failure. You'll face plenty of it before you taste success. Some of my best lessons came while failing. I've failed in business, relationships, and even hobbies. You're looking at a guy who plays piano so badly that my piano probably thinks I'm trolling it. But I settled for being terrible at piano because I don't need to be Van Cliburn—I'm too busy succeeding elsewhere. Failure builds character. And if you don't embrace it, you'll never get to the next level. People stuck in failure are the ones who missed the memo: it's not a final destination—it's just a layover.Settling: The Comfortable CompromiseAnd now, settling. We all do it in some areas because we can't be great at everything. But there's a difference between settling smartly and selling out. Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That's true, but it's also a choice. Did you settle for a job you hate because it pays the bills? Or did you take the leap and find out what you're made of? Did you marry someone who makes you better, or did you settle for someone who just makes dinner? Settling isn't always bad. Sometimes it's strategic. But if you're in a rut, ask yourself: are you settling because it's easy, or because it's right?The Revolution of Not SettlingThis year, many of us made a choice not to settle. Politically, we dumped the high-maintenance “gold-digger” government. It's time to find a fiscally responsible “around-the-way girl”— who doesn't want a new butt, new boobs, and lips that look like she's a cartoon character in The Simpson's. We've had enough of a government that treats our wallets like a piggy bank for its Botox fund. We want something real, something sustainable. And the good news is: the revolution has already begun. Circling back on success. Success only comes with massive failure. Elon Musk almost went broke twice. Donald Trump lost in a sham election, only to win “bigly” in 2024. What's your big success built on failure? Remember your three choices: succeed, fail, or settle. Just make sure the choice is yours—not someone else's. Democrats have one thing they do better than anybody: they sell failure as success[SEGMENT 1-3] ICYMI Post-Christmas 2   [X] SB – Karl Rove on Trump's impact on economic outlook Biden 41% approval Karl Rove is now a Trump guy? Up 41 pts Good time to expand Expect sales to rise Plan capital outlays in the next 6 months     Failure sold as success. Democrats have one thing they do better than anybody: they sell failure as success. But all you need to do is wait for the real results to see the Leftism is the poster child for failure. https://x.com/StephenMoore/status/1871540676782903720Stephen Moore Another half-million jobs reported under Biden turn out to be phantom!   The Philly Fed's recent findings reveal that Q2 job growth was actually negative, with all reported gains set for revision in 2025. This follows an alarming downward revision of 800,000 jobs from last year.  Stay tuned for January's non-farm payrolls—more adjustments on the way!   A woman was burned to death in the NYC subway and by an illegal Biden let into the country. The suspect accused of setting a woman on fire in the NYC subway is Sebastian Zapeta. He is an illegal migrant from Guatemala. He sat on a bench and watched his victim burn alive. I saw the video of this woman, and it's truly horrific. And the guy who set her on fire actually fans her. Understand that the governor of NY has declared their transit system safe! A friend tweeted: I am so confused about the woman being burned alive in the subway… How did this happen? How was she still standing? Why is the assailant casually sitting on the bench watching his victim burn? And WHY DID NO ONE HELP? Please explain this to me like I'm five…   Felonies surged 47%, violent crime is up, daily disruptions and a rise in murder on NYC Subways. January's stats reveal a 16% rise in violent felonies and 74 major operational disruptions - over 2 per day. Latest NYC crime statistics: Overall crime up 35.6% and transit crime up 49.1% year-to-date. Crime in NYC is at a twelve-year high.  [SEGMENT 1-4] ICYMI Post-Christmas 3   Kilauea is erupting. Cows are complaining that their farts no longer matter.   Wikipedia got $177M donated to it. They spent $50M on DEI   Fauci lost his SS security details. $15M per month was the cost to taxpayers. There were 6 US Marshalls in SUVs parked outside his home at any given time. He will now have to use some of that Pfizer money to protect himself. I suggest he do two things: wear a mask and quarantine.         The woman the Left accused of having underage sex with Matt Gaetz is in prison for lying about underage sex accusations. Mollie @MZHemingway Sometimes I feel like I was the only reporter to look into the details of the Gaetz allegations. That's how I learned the accuser is in prison for making the same false sex-with-minors accusation against someone else.   Democrats are demanding Fetterman leave the party…   Swedish politician who fought for open borders was beheaded in Congo     The most recent US - Panama Treaty includes the right for the US to take action to keep the canal open if its neutrality is threatened Like, for example, selling the canal operations to China    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kevin-jackson-show--2896352/support.

Thoreau said something like, "My friends have come unsought." Sometimes, when luck is on your side, a nice person will come into your life, and it just fits, and you want that energy around you like sunshine and good waves. Each time you have a conversation, surf, or round of golf with Bruce Reynolds @surfinista, you'll feel some of this good fortune. His story and visual art share a sense of what it is to be a Floridian surfer who has returned from adventures in Mexico, Fiji, New Zealand, California, and more; he is a content and settled soul in Cocoa Beach, producing new work on the regular. Enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meet Blake Smith, the visionary founder of Walden Retreats, a boutique property that masterfully blends the serenity of nature with sophisticated design. Inspired by his years living and working in East Africa, Blake brought lessons from safari camps and Ugandan hospitality back to Texas, reimagining what it means to escape into nature. Walden Retreats, named after Henry David Thoreau's iconic work, offers guests a profound connection to the outdoors—crafted through thoughtful design, simplicity, and intentional experiences. From hand-curated spaces that encourage guests to slow down and reconnect, to the inspiration behind their signature safari tents, Blake's journey from building a social enterprise in Uganda to creating an immersive nature retreat in the Texas Hill Country is nothing short of extraordinary. Tune in to hear: How Blake's time in East Africa shaped his unique hospitality vision. The story behind Walden's name and its connection to Thoreau's philosophy. Why Walden Retreats eschews traditional luxury for thoughtful simplicity. Insights on balancing guest comfort with an authentic connection to nature. The future of Walden as it grows from a 15-unit retreat to an expansive portfolio. Learn more about Walden Retreats Follow Walden Retreats on Instagram  Connect with Blake Smith on LinkedIn This episode is brought to you by the Short Term Rental Forum hosted by IMN! Join me this January 15-16 at the Miami JW Marriott for the premier Short Term Rental Forum hosted by IMN—the industry leader with over 30 years of experience! I'll be speaking at the forum, and you'll have the chance to network with 400+ top investors, operators, property managers, lenders, and tech providers in the Short Term Rental space. It's the must-attend event of the year to elevate your business strategy and connect with the industry's best. You can use code BTS for an extra 15% off this lowest available rate. Register now at events.imn.org/str25 – I'll see you in Miami! Behind the Stays is brought to you by Journey — a first-of-its-kind loyalty program that brings together an alliance of the world's top independently owned and operated stays and allows travelers to earn points and perks on boutique hotels, vacation rentals, treehouses, ski chalets, glamping experiences and so much more.  Your host is Zach Busekrus, Head of the Journey Alliance. If you are a hospitality entrepreneur who has a stay, or a collection of stays with soul, we'd love for you to apply to join our Alliance at joinjourney.com/alliance.  

Oxford University Press has named “brain rot” the word of the year for 2024. The term beat out five other finalists: “demure,” “dynamic pricing,” “lore,” “romantasy,” and “slop.” This hour, a look at brain rot, from Thoreau’s Walden through to social media. GUESTS: Casper Grathwohl: President of Oxford Languages at Oxford University Press Katie Notopoulos: Senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture Laura Dassow Walls: Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life, among other books Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Psalm 119:33-48 (NKJV)Andrew and Edwin discuss the psalmist's cry for God to give him life.Read the written devo that goes along with this episode by clicking here.    Let us know what you are learning or any questions you have. Email us at TextTalk@ChristiansMeetHere.org.    Join the Facebook community and join the conversation by clicking here. We'd love to meet you. Be a guest among the Christians who meet on Livingston Avenue. Click here to find out more. Michael Eldridge sang all four parts of our theme song. Find more from him by clicking here.   Thanks for talking about the text with us today.________________________________________________If the hyperlinks do not work, copy the following addresses and paste them into the URL bar of your web browser: Daily Written Devo: https://readthebiblemakedisciples.wordpress.com/?p=19595The Christians Who Meet on Livingston Avenue: http://www.christiansmeethere.org/Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TalkAboutTheTextFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/texttalkMichael Eldridge: https://acapeldridge.com/ 

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)In 1845, when he was 27 years old, Henry David Thoreau walked a ways from his home in Concord, MA and built a small house on a small lake—Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, two months, and two days, and he wrote about it. Walden has since become a classic. A treasure to naturalists and philosophers, historians and hipsters, conservationists and non-violent resistors. Something about abstaining from society and its affordances, reconnecting with the land, searching for something beyond the ordinary, living independently, self-reliantly, intentionally, deliberately.Since then, Thoreau has risen to a kind of secular sainthood. Perhaps the first of now many spiritual but not religious, how should we understand Thoreau's thought, writing, actions, and way of life?In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Lawrence Buell (Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus, Harvard University) for a conversation about how to read Thoreau. He is the author of many books on transcendentalism, ecology, and American literature. And his latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief philosophical biography and introduction to the thought of Thoreau through his two most classic works: “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.”In today's episode Larry Buell and I discuss Thoreau's geographical, historical, social, and intellectual contexts; his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson; why he went out to live on a pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days and how it changed him; the difference between wildness and wilderness; why we're drawn to the simplicity of wild natural landscapes and the ideals of moral perfection; the body, the senses, attunement and attention; the connection between solitude and contemplation; the importance of individual moral conscience and the concept of civil disobedience; Thoreau's one night in jail and the legacy of his political witness; and ultimately, what it means to think disobediently.About Lawrence BuellLawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of many books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Invention of American Culture, Writing for an Endangered World, and Emerson. His latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief introduction to the thought of Thoreau to his two most classic works: Walden and “Civil Disobedience.”Show NotesHenry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently (Oxford 2023) by Lawrence BuellRead Walden and “Civil Disobedience” online (via Project Gutenberg)Production NotesThis podcast featured Lawrence BuellEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

We are here early this week - for Election Day! And we bring you a panel that looks at elections, and Presidents, from American history, putting this year's choice in perspective.  Gordon Wood, the greatest historian of the early Republic; Steven Smith, an expert on political institutions, on The Federalist, on Lincoln; Paul Grimstad, authority on great American thinkers and writers like Emerson and Thoreau; and of course, Professor Amar, weigh in on all sorts of questions and aspects of this year's crucial choice.  And we have an audience for this live-to-tape podcast - an EverScholar audience - who asks questions on the mind of many.  Here are perspectives you won't gain anywhere else. CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

Ratting Out Traffickers. That story and more on H2O Radio's weekly news report. Headlines: Climate change might have ratcheted up the gota fría that produced extreme rainfall in the region around Valencia, Spain. Plastic on beaches can now be seen from space. Poison…or panacea? How a tiny aquatic fern could feed the world. They have names like Attenborough, Teddy, and Thoreau—and like their namesakes, they are conservationists—only with tails.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with distractions and demands, the concept of commitment often takes a back seat. But what does it truly mean to commit? Let us delve into the concept of commitment, inspired by the teachings of Henry David Thoreau. Explore how Thoreau's legacy of living deliberately and his stance on civil disobedience can guide us in today's challenging times. Discover the influence of the Transcendentalists and their commitment to truth, equality, and nature. Learn about an upcoming retreat in Concord Massachusetts, and the transformative power of engaging in meaningful conversations. Tune in to find out how you can be part of this ongoing revolution! Join Lori A. Harris for the Walden Pond Retreat happening this November 7th-10th, Click here to reserve a spot. If you would like some help with figuring out how to transform your life! I can help you create a vision for a life that you absolutely love living. Click here to arrange a session with me. If you're enjoying the podcast, please share the show with a friend or, even better, leave a review to ensure others can benefit from it too! WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THE EPISODE We are obligated to say who we are and what we stand for. Commitment requires us to not only speak our truth but to live it. Importance of living in harmony with nature. FEATURED ON THE SHOW: If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love to hear from you! Please share the show with a friend or even better, leave a review to ensure others can benefit from the podcast.

  Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee  Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community Botanical History On This Day 1811 Texas botanist Charles Wright is born on this day in Wethersfield, Connecticut. 1972 The Berkshire Eagle published a revealing article about Henry David Thoreau [pronounced: THOR-oh] titled "Thoreau: The Amateur Botanist." Grow That Garden Library™ Read The Daily Gardener review of A Home in Bloom by Christie Purifoy Buy the book on Amazon: A Home in Bloom by Christie Purifoy Today's Botanic Spark 1830 Plant science pioneer Effie Almira Southworth Spaulding is born in North Collins, New York. Her story illuminates both the challenges and triumphs of women in early American botanical science. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2024 is: palaver • puh-LAV-er • noun Palaver is an informal word that usually refers to unimportant or meaningless talk. It can also refer to misleading or deceptive speech, or to a conference or discussion. In British English the word is sometimes used as a synonym of fuss to refer to unnecessary excitement about something. // Enough of this palaver. We have more important things to discuss. See the entry > Examples: "Henry [Thoreau] was working at his journal, as he usually did for a part of each day. He was reading Chaucer and liking it. A couple of days later, on Monday, January 3, he made popcorn, which he playfully called 'cerealious blossoms' because they were 'only a more rapid blossoming of the seed under a greater than July heat.' On Wednesday, January 5, as early clouds gave way to midday sun, he praised manual labor as 'the best method to remove palaver from one's style.' Maybe he took his own advice about palaver. We hear no more from him about cerealious blossoms." — Robert D. Richardson, Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives, 2023 Did you know? Let's talk about palaver. Though the word comes from Portuguese, it likely entered English by way of the West African coast in the 18th century. Portuguese sailors there used their word palavra, which in general use means "speech" or "word," as a term for discussions with the native people they encountered. English sailors applied palaver for the same, and then brought the word back to their own shores. The Portuguese word comes ultimately from the Late Latin noun parabola, meaning "speech" or "parable." If Portuguese isn't in your wheelhouse, perhaps you'll recognize the influence of Latin parabola on other tongues: the Spanish palabra, for instance, means "word," and the French parler means "to speak."

In tonight's Hypnotic Bedtime Story, we'll be diving into Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Just relax, and let the words sink into you, peacefully, like you are sitting next to Thoreau in his cabin, at the fireplace, as he describes Walden pond. As always, tonight's episode will start with a relaxing introduction from Jessica, before we sink into tonight's Sleep Hypnosis.  Want more Sleep Magic? Join Sleep Magic Premium ✨ Enjoy 2 bonus episodes a month plus all episodes ad-free, access to Jessica's complete back catalog of over 60 episodes, and show your support to Jessica.  To Subscribe 

Akmayan trafik, susmayan kornalar, bitmek bilmeyen bildirim sesleri ve susmak bilmeyen zihnimiz... Her gün bunlara maruz kalıyor, kendimizi şehrin içinde sıkışmış gibi hissediyoruz çoğumuz. Fakat bu kaostan çıkıp doğaya adım attığımız anda, hemen huzurlu hissediyoruz. Peki doğa bunu nasıl başarıyor? 111 Hz'in bu bölümünde bu soruya cevap arıyoruz. Doğada zaman geçirince neden kendimizi daha iyi hissettiğimizi, farklı yaklaşımlar üzerinden anlamaya çalışıyoruz.Sunan: Barış ÖzcanHazırlayan: Kevser Yağcı BiçiciSes Tasarım ve Kurgu: Metin BozkurtYapımcı: Podbee Media------- Podbee Sunar -------Bu Podcast Parolapara hakkında reklam içerir.Parolapara'nın toplamda 2.600 TL kazanabileceğiniz tüm nakit iade avantajlarından faydalanmak için uygulamayı şimdi indirin. Ayrıntılı bilgi ve ek koşullar için; Parolapara.com'u ziyaret edin.Bu podcast, Hiwell hakkında reklam içerir.Podbee50 kodumuzla Hiwell'de ilk seansınızda geçerli %50 indirimi kullanmak için Hiwell'i şimdi indirin. 1400'ü aşkın uzman klinik psikolog arasından size en uygun olanlarla terapi yolculuğunuza kolaylıkla başlayın.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Henry David Thoreau is known for Walden Pond, his writings on solitude and nature, and his staunch, even strident, abolitionism. He is not known for his pencils. But it's his pencils, writes the historian Augustine Sedgewick in our Autumn issue, that have been overlooked by scholars for so many years, along with one particularly damning detail that Sedgewick discovered for the first time: the cedar in those pencils, which the Thoreau family manufactured to great success, was logged by enslaved laborers. That a connection to slavery was “discovered” in the unlikeliest of places—on the desk of an iconic American abolitionist—speaks to how limiting this idea of discovery is. Connections to slavery in 19th-century America, after all, were everywhere and rarely hidden. Sedgewick's essay has already been making waves in Thoreauvian circles, and it has the real potential to change the narrative not only about Thoreau, but also about how we talk about racial justice and reparations in this country.Go beyond the episode:Augustine Sedgewick's essay “Thoreau's Pencils”Henry David Thoreau's “Civil Disobedience”Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Self-Reliance”Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Let that person step to the music that he or she hears, however measured or far away." In this captivating episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast, host Lori Harris explores the profound influence of women on the life and legacy of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. Discover the untold stories of the women who helped shape Thoreau's beliefs in social justice and civil disobedience, including his mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, and literary critic Margaret Fuller. Delve into the historical context of Concord, Massachusetts, and learn about the revolutionary ideas that continue to inspire change today. Join Lori as she invites you to a spiritual retreat at Walden Pond to uncover the rich history of Black Walden and the ongoing impact of Thoreau's teachings. Join Lori A. Harris for the Walden Pond Retreat happening this November 7th-10th, Click here to reserve a spot. If you would like some help with figuring out how to transform your life! I can help you create a vision for a life that you absolutely love living. Click here to arrange a session with me. If you're enjoying the podcast, please share the show with a friend or, even better, leave a review to ensure others can benefit from it too! WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE Importance of diverse voices in shaping societal change. The power of diverse influences and the importance of recognizing multiple perspectives. We are all part of a larger story, and by embracing diverse narratives, we can better understand our place within it. FEATURED ON THE SHOW: If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love to hear from you! Please share the show with a friend or even better, leave a review to ensure others can benefit from the podcast.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, endeavoring to live the life they've imagined, they pass an invisible boundary.” In this episode of the SoulTalk podcast, Mary Morrissey returns for another inspiring conversation. As a leading authority in personal development and founder of the Brave Thinking Institute, Mary shares her transformative insights on navigating change and harnessing the power of vision. With a remarkable journey that includes overcoming significant challenges, Mary delves into the process of letting go of past attachments and embracing new possibilities. She discusses the profound difference between persevering through difficulties and recognizing when it's time to pivot, emphasizing the importance of making decisions from a place of expansion rather than fear. Mary explores how to maintain faith in your dreams even when faced with setbacks and highlights the critical role of aligning your thoughts with your goals. Through her personal experiences and practical advice, she offers valuable strategies for overcoming obstacles and achieving your aspirations. She also underscores the significance of understanding and practicing universal laws and how they can shift your perspective to create extraordinary outcomes. Tune in to discover how to move forward confidently in the direction of your dreams, learn from challenges, and unlock your full potential for happiness and success. Timestamps:  (00:02:25) -  Abundance and the Nature of Life. (00:05:08) -  Biggest Blocks to Manifesting Abundance. (00:07:11) -  Shifting from Scarcity to Abundance. (00:11:39) -  Creating a Clear Vision for Abundance. (00:14:44) -  The Gift of Imagination: Envisioning a Life You Love. (00:18:28) -  Advancing Confidently Toward Your Dream. (00:26:09) -  Partnering with a Higher Power. (00:34:00) -  Can We Manifest Anything? (00:39:00) -  Visualization and Holding the Vibration. (00:43:00) -  Practical Steps and The Art of Sourcing Ideas. (00:46:33) -  Letting Go and Embracing New Dreams.   Some Questions I Ask: When someone has a dream or vision, how do they discern when to continue and when to let go? Is there any guidance you can give on when to persevere with a vision and when to realize it may no longer be aligned with your path? Could you share how people can connect with you and find out about what you have going on? Could you just share that Thoreau quote again? In This Episode You Will Learn:  How to gracefully release projects or phases in your life that no longer serve you to make space for new opportunities. Discover  key methods for evaluating whether to continue with your goals or pivot based on alignment with your long-term vision. How transforming negative thinking into a positive mindset can help you navigate and overcome obstacles effectively. How using visualization and affirmations can enhance your ability to manifest your dreams, even in challenging times. Recognize the benefits of regularly engaging with motivational content to drive significant personal and professional growth. Discover how embracing Henry David Thoreau's wisdom about pursuing your dreams can lead to transformative changes in your life. LINKS MARY MORRISEY URL:  https://www.marymorrissey.com https://www.bravethinkinginstitute.com  Mary Morrisey's previous Soultalk episodes:  http://podcast.kuteblackson.com/304-mary-morrissey-on-how-to-create-a-life-you-love Get in Touch: Email me at kuteblackson@kuteblackson.com Visit my website: www.kuteblackson.com Events with Kute Blackson: Join me on a life-changing journey in Bali this December. Apply here: www.boundlessblissbali.com         -- Create a life that is a masterpiece!   Join me on a life-changing journey: www.boundlessblissbali.com   What if today was your last day? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6BzFzBqFBU  

Come to our first ever live show! In Boston, on Friday, September 13th. Tickets are available now!It's August 13th. This day in 1846, Henry David Thoreau is thrown in jail -- for one night -- for refusing to pay his back taxes.Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss why Thoreau objected to the poll tax, and how his political stances intersected with the more personal work that emerged from his two years living on Walden Pond.This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.comGet in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Follow us on social @thisdaypodOur team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

In a first, NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered pure sulfur on Mars. And, we revisit a conversation from 2015 about Alexander von Humboldt and Andrea Wulf's “The Invention of Nature,” which is our August book club pick.Curiosity Rover Discovers Pure Sulfur On MarsNASA's Mars Curiosity rover ran over a rock, which cracked open to reveal pure sulfur crystals. This was the first time pure sulfur has been discovered on the planet. The rover found many other similar rocks nearby, raising questions about the geologic history of the location.Ira talks with Alex Hager, who covers water in the West for KUNC, about Martian sulfur rocks and other top science stories of the week, including melting glaciers increasing the length of the day, life rebounding at Lake Powell, a rare whale and new research on how psilocybin rewires the brain.A Science Hero, Lost and FoundAlexander von Humboldt was a globetrotting explorer, scientist, environmentalist, and the second-most famous man in Europe—after Napoleon. So why haven't you heard of him? This week we revisit an interview with writer and historian Andrea Wulf, whose 2015 book The Invention of Nature aims to restore Humboldt to his rightful place in science history. Not only did this singular polymath pioneer the idea that nature is an interconnected system, but, Wulf argues, he was also the lost father of environmentalism.Ira speaks with Wulf about the man who inspired the likes of Darwin, Thoreau, and Muir, whom contemporaries called “the Shakespeare of the Sciences.” If this book sounds like a great read for your upcoming vacation, you're in luck! The SciFri Book Club is reading The Invention Of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf in August. Find out all you need to know, including how to win a free book on our website.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.