Episode 323: Debate Me 'Phro
Very Bad Wizards23 Joulu 2025

Episode 323: Debate Me 'Phro

David and Tamler dive into Plato's Euthyphro, part of our intermittent Back 2 Basics series. A young cocksure priest, confident in his holiness, bumps into Socrates on his way to court to prosecute his father for a wrongful death. After a few rounds with Socrates on the nature of piety, he becomes a little less sure of himself. We talk about Plato's decision to set the dialogue in the days before Socrates' own trial, the famous Euthyphro dilemma, the seemingly little progress that's made in defining piety, and much more.

Plus Oliver Sacks wrote books where the truth seemed stranger than fiction, but how much of what he wrote was really true?

Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost? by Rachel Aviv [newyorker.com]

Plato's Euthyphro [wikipedia.org]

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Episode 322: A Theater of Simultaneous Possibilities (William James' "The Stream of Thought")

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Episode 321: The Journey Begins (Plus Blind Ranking Philosophers)

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Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")

Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")

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Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")

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Episode 317: For Shame

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Episode 316: A Four-Letter Man (Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber")

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Episode 315: Ceaseless Striving (Schopenhauer's Pessimism)

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