Celebrating Two Million Downloads: A Highlights Minisode
Our highlight reel in thanks to all you listeners who have brought us to the milestone of approximately two million downloads.
8 Nov 20127min
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 IV from Brutus, an Anti-Federalist. What constitute...
27 Okt 201231min
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? Payne says that celebrities serve a social need that...
7 Okt 201235min
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 exploring philosophical ideas. What can morality mea...
21 Sep 201231min
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. God is perfectly good and all-powerful, so whatever...
5 Sep 201235min
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 many to make the extreme claim that there is no tru...
15 Aug 201231min
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 taxonomy of the types of government, based on observations...
23 Juli 201232min
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 no modern attempt to ground ethics has worked, and ...
5 Juli 201230min
