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Hubert "Bert" Dreyfus (1929-2017) was a ⁠professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley⁠ who specialized in phenomenology, 20th century Continental philosophy, artificial intelligence, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and the aesthetics/literature of existentialism from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard to ⁠Terrence Malick⁠. He is probably most famous for his ⁠exposition of Heidegger's early masterpiece⁠ "Being and Time" (German: Sein und Zeit), and for his ⁠negative predictions about artificial intelligence.⁠ He taught multiple courses through MOOCs from roughly 2006-2012 about Greek philosophy, existentialism in film and literature, Heidegger's opus Being & Time, and the limits of AI. In this course he uses the ⁠Fitzgerald poetic translation⁠ of the Odyssey with his own amendments and R. Lattimores' meaning-literal translation.

He was also extremely kind to me.

Arete, techne, poesis, aletheia, gnosis...

Books Mentioned:

The Discovery of the Mind - Bruno Snell

The Greeks and the Irrational - E. R. Dodds

Chapters:

(00:00:00) Intro

(00:22:40) Lecture 1

(01:03:31) Lecture 2

(02:12:12) Lecture 3

(03:19:29) Lecture 4

(04:29:04) Lecture 5

(05:38:59) Lecture 6

Watch "Cruel and Unusual" on Kanopy!

https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/cruel-and-unusual

Follow Sabrina and I on Bluesky or Patreon:

⁠Note To Self // Patreon⁠

Sabrina Jennings // Bluesky

Hemlock // Patreon

William Engels // Bluesky

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Rulin and Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠⁠

⁠⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠⁠

⁠⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠⁠

Books and Sources Mentioned:

Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison by Chris Hedges

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour Hersh

The Minds of Men (YouTube Documentary)

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Aramark and Prison Industrial Labor (Article)

Watch Vita Activa on Kanopy!

https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/vita-activa-spirit-hannah-arendt-1?vp=newschool

Follow Sabrina on Bluesky or Patreon:

Note To Self // Patreon

Sabrina Jennings // Bluesky

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠

⁠Rulin and Family⁠

⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠

⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠

⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠

Books and Sources Mentioned:

Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, and Weil by Deborah Nelson

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

"Evil resides in the pretended necessity that we claim for those choices which we make that at are, at bottom: mere preferences."

-me, a few days ago

The final book in Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, on the compatibility of divine omniscience and human free will, the eternal and the continual, and the rarefaction of intelligence.

Cheers! Virginia Woolf is next...

Music: Beethoven, String Quartet No 13, "Cavatina", Orion String Quartet. I also recommend the Lindsay String Quartet version, and the Takács Quartet on Decca.

English translation by WV Cooper, with some modifications by the host (e.g. dropping some 'thee' and 'wherefore' archaisms)

McNamara at War is available September 23rd from Amazon! There's an audiobook as well for the audio-inclined...

Summary (AI Generated, Model = NotebookLM)

The podcast features an insightful conversation between host William Engels and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian William Taubman, co-author of the recent book "McNamara at War". Taubman, a distinguished Cold War expert, has also penned biographies of Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev. The discussion delves into the complex life and career of Robert McNamara, who served as US Defense Secretary during the early years of the Vietnam War. Topics covered include McNamara's personal biography, the controversies surrounding his strategic approach to Vietnam, his profound regrets, and his role in pivotal Cold War events like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The conversation explores McNamara's impressive pre-Pentagon career, characterized by his "brilliance" and a methodical, data-driven approach he applied at Harvard Business School and in reorganizing the US Air Force during World War II. He notably became the first non-Ford family president of Ford Motor Company. However, this trajectory of success ended with his leadership of the Vietnam War, a conflict that ultimately "mastered him". The US involvement in Vietnam was largely fueled by the "domino theory," a deeply held, though ultimately "paranoid," belief within the US government that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would trigger a cascade of communist takeovers across Southeast Asia, eventually isolating the United States. The sheer scale of the US aerial bombardment in Vietnam was staggering, with more bombs dropped than by all sides in all of World War II, leading to immense death and destruction.

A significant point of discussion is the American government's perceived failure to understand its adversaries during the Cold War. Engels references McNamara's assertion in the documentary "The Fog of War" that the US had empathy for the Soviets but lacked it for the Vietnamese. Taubman, however, counters that even the Soviets, particularly Khrushchev, were never fully understood, leading to dangerous misinterpretations of his intentions in crises like Berlin and Cuba. McNamara emerges as a "tragic figure" – a man of intellect and a "highly developed moral conscience," influenced by his pushy mother and distant father, who nonetheless became embroiled in a military system that he failed to control. Despite his growing conviction that the war was unwinnable, McNamara found it difficult to express these doubts to President Johnson, constrained by bureaucratic consensus and a desire to mitigate even greater escalation from within.

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠

⁠Rulin and Family⁠

⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠

⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠

⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠

Articles

"The Nuclear Club Might Soon Double" in The Atlantic

Trump Pushing Japan, South Korea to Nuclearize (Japan Times)

Books

• The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb by Philip Taubman

• Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

• Rage by Bob Woodward

• Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

• War by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

  In Retrospect by Robert McNamara

Now It's Dark.

Explicit Advisory: This episode contains potentially upsetting discussions of child sexual abuse/violence as well as addiction, domestic abuse, and human trafficking.

Music Credit: Twin Peaks Theme (Cover) by Dehli Musikk

Correction: I said that Lynch married Rossellini. Actually they were just romantic partners and were never married.

In this one Richard and I cover David Lynch's pocket biography, Blue Velvet (1986) and Twin Peaks (1988), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive.

Wishing DL an auspicious passage into the Bardo - see you, President Roosevelt...

Watchlinks:

Blue Velvet

Twin Peaks (TV Series)

Twin Peaks: The Return

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Lost Highway

Mulholland Drive

Interviews / Sources

Painter: Francis Bacon

Isabella Rossellini (Plays Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet)

1997 Charlie Rose Interview

"The Art Life" Interview with Artforum

Outstanding Essay by Auteur Cinema (YT) (Rossellini Interview Source)

Bad Canadian Interview for Blue Velvet

Braindead Siskel and Ebert Takes on BV

Lynch Interview about Roy Orbison and the BV Music

(Pre-) Order Kaila's new book, out August 19th:

Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty

Summary (AI Generated by Gemini 2.5 Pro):

Author Kaila Yu joins the show to discuss her powerful new memoir, "Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty." The conversation unpacks the complex and often damaging ways Asian women are portrayed in Western media. Yu deconstructs the through-line from cultural touchstones like Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly and the original Little Mermaid  to modern media, linking them to the historical origins of the Southeast Asian sex trade in American colonialism and military occupation. She shares her personal journey through modeling and music, explaining how these experiences informed her critical perspective on beauty, stereotypes, and the insidious nature of fetishization.

The discussion also explores the real-world consequences of these stereotypes, examining the rise in anti-Asian violence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, while also considering the massive global success of K-Pop as a sign of shifting cultural representation. Yu offers a nuanced take on the feminist debates surrounding sex work, questioning the emotional toll on its participants while affirming the need for workers' rights and safety. Ultimately, the episode delves into the power of self-love and critical awareness as tools to navigate and dismantle a culture that seeks to define individuals through a narrow, fetishized lens.

Donation links for Palestine:

Amjad Hamad and his Family

Rulin and Family

Sammar and her Husband

MSF (Doctors Without Borders)

Palestinian Youth Movement

My Patreon:

Hemlock | Patreon

Check out the premium podcast Welcome to the Crusades: The First Crusade and unlock all ten episodes now. Click here for the full first episode.

I am joined by Eleanor Janega and Luke Waters of the We're Not So Different Podcast (Patreon Page) and the fellas over at American Prestige podcast (Website) Derek Davidson and Daniel Bessner.

My Patreon, fwiw~

References, Citations, People, Assorted Wikipedia & Amazon Pages:

Albert of Aix (Reputable Christian Chronicle of First Crusade)

The Rhineland Massacres (Jewish Pogrom at Start of First Crusade)

A Chronicle of the Above, Namely the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle

The First Crusade with the Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres by Edward Peters

The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading by Jonathan Riley-Smith

The First Crusade by Steven Runciman

Shipping, Trade, and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean

Best Contemporary Arab Source/Perspective: The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf

Derek's mention of the first Complete History of the World by Ali ibn al-Athir

Arab chronicle by El-Isfahani

Persian chronicler under Mongol/Il-Khanate rule Hamadani

This episode is Lecture #3 of 6 in Susan Neiman's "Heroism for a Time of Victims" lecture series, part of the Gifford Lectures delivered in May 2022. The other 5 can be found in HoPAA #171.

Read about ⁠Susan Neiman's⁠ May 2022 Gifford Lecture Series "Heroism for a Time of Victims" at the ⁠Gifford Lecture blog.⁠

View the original YouTube playlist with all six lectures (and a Q&A which I did not include) ⁠here⁠.

Music Credits:

-Schubert, Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major by ⁠Max John⁠

-Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat Major, Movement 2

Support me on Patreon!

Read about Susan Neiman's May 2022 Gifford Lecture Series "Heroism for a Time of Victims" at the Gifford Lecture blog.

View the original YouTube playlist with all six lectures (and a Q&A which I did not include) here.

Music Credits:

-Schubert, Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major by Max John

-Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat Major, Movement 2

Lecture Table of Contents:

(00:00:00) Host Intro

(00:01:33) Who Needs Heroes?

(01:06:22) Odysseus, the First Modern Hero, and his Critics

(02:09:27) John Brown: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?

(03:09:43) George Eliot: Heroes Without Faith

(04:22:38) Einstein: Hero to Celebrity

(05:28:54) Paul Robeson: Art in Service of Heroism