Episode 331: Who's Your Law Daddy? (Plato's "Crito")
In another Back 2 Basics episode, David and Tamler talk about Plato's "Crito," a dialogue that takes place two days before Socrates' death by hemlock. His friend Crito wants him to escape, but Socrate...
28 Apr 1h 31min
Episode 330: A Fact-Based Podcast (Gogol's "The Overcoat")
David and Tamler return to the strange world of Nikolai Gogol and discuss his absurdist masterpiece "The Overcoat," a story that both calls for and steadfastly resists interpretation. But first we dis...
14 Apr 1h 16min
Episode 329: Why We Suffer
David and Tamler return to the work of Richard Shweder and colleagues, focusing this time on his foundational paper "The "Big Three" of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the "Big Three" Exp...
31 Mar 1h 20min
Episode 328: Weapons Free
David and Tamler cross the border into Denis Villeneuve's taut and propulsive thriller Sicario, the story of an FBI agent who gets pulled into a task force drawn from the shadiest elements of the US g...
17 Mar 1h 42min
Episode 327: You Ain't So Smart (Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People")
David and Tamler return to the Southern Gothic well and talk about Flannery O'Connor's short story masterpiece "Good Country People." A nihilistic atheist philosophy PhD named Joy or Helga (depending ...
24 Feb 1h 32min
Episode 326: The Most Important Episode of Your (Academic) Life
Are you a college student or about to be one? Do you have friends or family in college? This is the most important episode of your life. David and Tamler do something a little different this episode a...
10 Feb 59min
Episode 325: It Is Happening Again
David and Tamler return to Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane and discuss the chapter "Sacred Time and Myths." How does viewing time as circular give us a periodic window into the sacred? What doe...
27 Jan 1h 12min
Episode 324: Irruption of the Sacred
David and Tamler consecrate their podcast with a discussion of "The Sacred and the Profane" by Mircea Eliade. We focus on the first chapter on sacred spaces, where the divine breaks through (or irrupt...
13 Jan 1h 7min
