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PREMIUM-Episode 65: The Federalist Papers
On Alexander Hamilton/James Madison's Federalist Papers (1, 10-12, 14-17, 39, 47-51), published as newspaper editorials 1787-8, plus Letters III and …
13 years, 11 months ago
PREMIUM-Episode 64: Celebrity, with guest Lucy Lawless
On Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity by Tom Payne (2010). What's the deal with our f'ed up relationship with celebrities? P…
13 years, 11 months ago
PREMIUM-Episode 63: Existentialist Heroes in Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men"
On philosophical issues in McCarthy's 2005 novel about guys running around with drug money and shooting each other, and about fiction as a form for e…
14 years ago
PREMIUM-Episode 62: Voltaire's Novel "Candide"
On Candide: or, Optimism, the novel by Voltaire (1759). Is life good? Popular Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz argued that it's good by definition. …
14 years ago
PREMIUM-Episode 61: Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism
On Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873). What is truth? This essay, written early in Nietzsche's career, is taken by …
14 years, 1 month ago
PREMIUM-Episode 60: Aristotle: What's the Best Form of Government?
On Aristotle's Politics (350 BCE), books 1 (ch 1-2), 3, 4 (ch 1-3), 5 (ch 1-2), 6 (ch 1-6), and 7 (ch. 1-3, 13-15). Aristotle provides both a taxonom…
14 years, 2 months ago
PREMIUM-Episode 59: Alasdair MacIntyre on Moral Justifications
On Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981), mostly ch. 3-7 and 14-17. What justifies ethical claims? MacIntyre claims that …
14 years, 2 months ago
PREMIUM-Episode 58: What Grounds Ethical Claims? (Moore, Stevenson, MacIntyre)
On G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, ch. 1 (1903); Charles Leslie Stevenson's "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937), and Alasdair MacIntyre's Af…
14 years, 3 months ago
PREMIUM-Episode 57: Henri Bergson on Humor
On Bergson's Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social cor…
14 years, 4 months ago
PREMIUM-Episode 56: More Wittgenstein on Language
Continuing discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360. With guest Philosophy Bro. On "family…
14 years, 4 months ago