The highlighted song here is "We Who Have Escaped," the final New People recording, completed for ep. 83. First of all, check out Mark's web site for nearly every song I've recorded that's not on an album, including those for most of the podcast episodes. If you enjoy it, please send that link around to your friends, or pick a song you like and post the link to that on your Continue Reading …
Citizen Feed Episodes: Paywalled and Ad-Free
Available only to PEL Citizens: All of our paywalled and ad-free regular episodes in a single feed. That includes paywalled full episodes from the back catalogue, Nightcap and (Starting in September 2020) Part 2 of all episodes. You can add this feed to the podcast app of your choice by following the instructions here. You can download them, listen to them here, or get them on the podcast app of your choice by following the instructions here. Not a Citizen? Join here.
Essays & Stories
A draft essay by David Brin, "16 Questions About Religion." Here's some background (and where you can post your comments on it). Here's info on some correspondence between Mark and David on this. Here's part of ch. 1 of Jonathan R. White's book Terrorism and Homeland Security. He was the guest on our ep. 72 and you can buy the whole book here. Here's Eric Petrie's Continue Reading …
Transcriptions & Episode Guides
About transcriptions: We have experimented with some transcription companies and have on the whole not found the effort worth the number of users that access them. We therefore only have a limited number of episodes covered below. If you wish to sponsor all or part of a transcription ($200) for a particular episode, or would like to volunteer to proof some or all of a Continue Reading …
Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living”
Discussing Plato's "Apology." This reading is all about how Socrates is on trial for acting like an ass and proceeds to act like an ass and so is convicted. Big surprise. On this our inaugural discussion, Mark, Seth, and Wes talk about how philosophers are arrogant bastards who neglect their children, how people of all political stripes don't usually examine their Continue Reading …
Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?
Discussing Descartes's Meditations 1 and 2. Descartes engages in the most influential navel gazing ever, and you are there! In this second and superior-to-the-first installment of our lil' philosophy discussion, we discuss what Descartes thinks he knows with certainty (hint: it is not you), the Matrix, and burning-at-the-stake.com. Mark and Wes agree to disagree about Continue Reading …
Episode 3: Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Social Contract
Discussing Hobbes's Leviathan, Chapters 13-15. Have we implicitly signed a social contract whereby our native right to punch other people in the face is given to the President? Hobbes does things that eventually result in the U.S. Constitution and makes Wes nauseous. Plus: Star Trek and the Bible! Buy the book or read it online End song: "The Villa" by Mark Lint and Continue Reading …
Episode 4: Camus and the Absurd
Discussing Camus's "An Absurd Reasoning" and "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942). Does our eventual death mean that life has no meaning and we might as well end it all? Camus starts to address this question, then gets distracted and talks about a bunch of phenomenologists until he dies unreconciled. Also, let's all push a rock up a hill and like it, okay? Plus, the fellas dwell Continue Reading …
Episode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
Discussing Books 1 and 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. What is virtue, and how can I eat it? Do not enjoy this episode too much, or too little, but just the right amount. Apparently, if you haven't already have been brought up with the right habits, you may as well give up. Plus, is Michael Jackson the Aristotelian ideal? Buy the book or read it online. End song: A newly Continue Reading …
Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?
Discussing Leibniz's Monodology Have some tasty metaphysics, in mono! Leibniz thinks that the world is ultimately made up of monads, which are like atoms except nothing at all like atoms, because they're alive, and mindful, and eternal, and windowless, placed in the best kind of harmony at the beginning of time by God. Is there a concept album in all of this? Plus, does Continue Reading …
Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?
Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mr. W. wrote that the world is made up of facts (as opposed to things) and that these facts can be analyzed into atomic facts, but then refused to give even one example to help us understand what the hell he's talking about, and so Wes and Mark argue about it per usual while Seth Continue Reading …
Episode 8: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (and Carnap): What Can We Legitimately Talk About?
Continuing last ep's discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap (a logical positivist from the Vienna Circle: “The Rejection of Metaphysics” from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax) about what kind of crazy talk is outside of legitimate discourse. Carnap interprets W as simply ruling out as unscientific most of the talk we'd Continue Reading …
Episode 9: Utilitarian Ethics: What Should We Do?
Discussing Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation chapters 1-5, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and modern utilitarian Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality.") Going full tilt on the Greatest Happiness principle, with talk of gladiators, consensual cannibalism, and illegal downloads. How many Pleetons were in your last Continue Reading …
Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?
Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). We try very hard to make sense of Kant's major ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative, wherein you should only do what you'd will that EVERYONE do, so, for instance, you should not will to eat pie, because then everyone would eat it and there would be none left for you, so too Continue Reading …
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?). We go through Nietzsche's convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss Continue Reading …
Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?
Discussing the "Chuang Tzu," (now transliterated as Zhuangzi) Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. It's the second-most-famous Taoist text and the most humorous, with anecdotes about people singing at funerals and jumping out of moving coaches while drunk. What could it possibly mean to "make all things equal?" and how is the Taoist sage different from our other favorite paragons Continue Reading …
Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?
On Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy" (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey. What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) right that we need to reject "metaphysical realism" based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges over Continue Reading …
Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics
Reading Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. What's a philosophically astute approach to political matters? What makes a government successful? Should you keep that fortress or sell it for scrap? If you conquer, say, Iraq, do you have to then go and live there for the occupation to work out? Is it OK to display Continue Reading …
Episode 15: Hegel on History
Discussing G.W.F Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Though he didn't actually write a book with this name, notes on his lectures on this topic were published after his death, and the first chunk of that serves as a good entrance point to Hegel's very strange system. How should a philosopher approach the study of history? Is history just a bunch of random Continue Reading …
Episode 16: Danto on Art (Citizens Only)
What effect should the avant garde have on our understanding of what art is? We read three essays by modern, first-rate American philosopher Arthur Danto, all published in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, "The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art," and "The End of Art." I understand you may not have heard of Danto, and you may Continue Reading …
Episode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know? (Citizens Only)
On David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). David Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, i.e. what our moment-to-moment experiences tell us. Funny thing, though: he thinks that no experience shows us one event causing another event. We only experience one thing happening, then another, and these sequences tend to display a lot of Continue Reading …