Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchMarcus Aurelius: Plague, War, and the Private Diary of an Emperor
Episode 11297
At eleven, the heir to a Roman brickworks fortune chose to wear a rough Greek cloak and sleep on the floor to imitate ancient philosophers. This epis…
4 days, 15 hours ago
The Sorites Paradox: When Does a Pile of Sand Become a Heap?
Episode 11296
Scoop up a heap of sand and let it fall away one grain at a time: at what exact moment does it stop being a heap? This episode explores the Sorites p…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems: How Math Proved Its Own Limits
Episode 11295
Mathematics is supposed to be the one domain of absolute certainty, yet in 1931 a 24-year-old named Kurt Gödel used math itself to prove that math ca…
4 days, 15 hours ago
John Dewey: The Reflex Arc, the Lab School, and Democracy as a Way of Life
Episode 11294
John Dewey was born in Vermont in 1859, forty weeks after the death of an older brother who shared his name, and began his career as a grade school t…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Immanuel Kant: The Copernican Revolution of the Mind Explained
Episode 11293
Neighbors in Königsberg set their watches by Immanuel Kant's afternoon walks, yet from that rigidly scheduled life he mapped the formation of galaxie…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Epictetus: From Roman Slave to Stoic Teacher of Emperors
Episode 11292
The name Epictetus simply means acquired, a term for property added to an estate. This episode traces how a nameless, disabled slave in the household…
4 days, 15 hours ago
David Hume: The Skeptic Who Dismantled Cause and Effect
Episode 11291
At eighteen, David Hume thought so hard that his body broke down, developing scurvy-like spots and emotional numbness that a doctor diagnosed as the …
4 days, 15 hours ago
Anaximander: The Greek Who Set the Earth Afloat and Mapped the World
Episode 11290
Anaximander of Miletus predicted an earthquake that saved Sparta, drew the first geometric map of the known world, and believed early humans develope…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Hannah Arendt: Statelessness, Totalitarianism, and the Banality of Evil
Episode 11289
Hannah Arendt spent her career dissecting tyranny and totalitarianism, yet concluded that the highest human calling is an active love of the world. T…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Gottlob Frege: The Father of Modern Logic and His Shattered Life's Work
Episode 11288
Gottlob Frege grew up in a household where language was engineered: his father wrote grammar textbooks on the logical structure of German, and his mo…
4 days, 15 hours ago