#796: L.A. Paul — On Becoming a Vampire, Whether or Not to Have Kids, Getting Incredible Mentorship for $250, Transformative Experiences, and More

L.A. Paul is the Millstone Family Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University. She is also the author of Transformative Experience. Her work on transformative experience has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, NPR, and the BBC, among others. And in 2024, she was profiled by The New Yorker.

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Timestamps:

[00:00;00] Start

[00:05:55] The role of Quentin Smith.

[00:09:56] Early philosophy class disasters.

[00:13:34] How is philosophy relevant to the average person?

[00:20:17] A correspondence experiment with philosophers.

[00:25:29] The role of philosophy in modern times.

[00:27:50] The vampire problem.

[00:39:31] What you can't expect when you're expecting.

[00:42:36] When transformative experiences happen without our consent.

[00:48:12] Choosing between potentially transformative experiences.

[00:52:09] How Laurie made the choice to have children.

[00:56:34] What galvanized Laurie's trajectory from hard sciences to philosophy?

[01:01:14] Recommended reading for the novice philosopher.

[01:02:59] An aside defining counterfactuals.

[01:07:15] What makes understanding analytic philosophy a worthwhile endeavor?

[01:10:29] What readers can expect of Laurie's book, Transformative Experience.

[01:12:30] Epistemology.

[01:13:15] How to maintain a passion for philosophy.

[01:17:21] Commonly misrepresented philosophical concepts.

[01:19:59] Continental philosophy.

[01:21:48] Philosophy beyond the academic.

[01:23:46] Laurie vs. Agnes Callard.

[01:25:34] Aristotle vs. drugs.

[01:32:01] Thoughts on life's final transformative experience: death.

[01:35:48] Forgiving the philosophers and other parting thoughts.

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