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What Would a Stoic Actually Do? The Practical Wisdom of Seneca, Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius

Everyone's seen "Stoicism" turned into ice baths, cold showers, and "no excuses" bro-wisdom. Dr. Gregory Sadler — philosopher, editor of Stoicism Today, and one of the most prolific Stoic teachers on the internet — has spent over a decade fighting exactly that misreading. He calls it "Broicism," and in this conversation he tells us why it gets Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius almost exactly backwards.

We go past the quote-graphics and into the actual discipline: Epictetus's dichotomy of control, done properly — not as a slogan but as a lifelong training of judgment. Seneca on grief, drawing on Sadler's own current research and his own experience of loss. And Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, as the ultimate test case: does this philosophy survive contact with real power, real war, real hardship?

If you think you already know what Stoicism is — this episode is for you especially.

🎙️ Guest: Dr. Gregory B. Sadler (ReasonIO, Stoicism Today, Modern Stoicism Steering Committee)

📚 Texts referenced: Epictetus's Enchiridion, Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

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For most of the last 50 years, Sigmund Freud has been treated as a discredited relic — unscientific, unfalsifiable, a historical curiosity kept alive only by literary critics. Neuropsychologist Mark Solms disagrees, and he has the credentials to make the case: Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, discoverer of the actual brain mechanism behind dreaming, and translator of the 24-volume Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

In his new book "The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing," Solms argues that modern neuroscience is independently confirming several of Freud's central ideas about the unconscious mind, repression, and dreams — while also correcting him where he got it wrong.

In this episode of The Prometheans, we go through Freud's legacy point by point: what neuroscience now vindicates, what Solms says Freud got flatly wrong, and whether psychoanalysis deserves a place back at the center of mental health care.

📚 Book discussed: The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing (Mark Solms, 2026)

The Prometheans is a series on interfaith dialogue, philosophy of religion, and cross-civilizational intellectual history, hosted by Ali Zaka (AZD).

If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

Is Reality Fundamentally Mental? Howard Robinson on Idealism, Consciousness, and Reality

What if the physical world is not ultimately what we think it is?

In this episode of The Prometheans, we are joined by philosopher Howard Robinson for a deep exploration of one of philosophy's most fundamental questions: Is reality fundamentally mental?

Robinson is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Central European University and the author of Matter and Sense, Perception, From the Knowledge Argument to Mental Substance: Resurrecting the Mind, and Perception and Idealism: An Essay on How the World Manifests Itself to Us, and How It (Probably) Is in Itself.

Our conversation begins with the nature of perception and the controversial idea of sense-data, before moving into the philosophy of mind, consciousness, physicalism, substance dualism, and the hard problem of consciousness.

We then explore Robinson's contemporary defence of idealism, particularly his engagement with George Berkeley. If the world we perceive is a manifestation rather than a transparent window onto reality as it is in itself, what can we legitimately say about the underlying nature of the world?

And if physical reality cannot ultimately explain consciousness, does that push us toward idealism, dualism, panpsychism, or theism?

Robinson's Perception and Idealism takes the argument further, proposing that the world is best understood in a broadly Berkeleian manner—as a nomological structure in the mind of God that sustains our empirical world.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss:

• What is consciousness?

• Can physicalism explain subjective experience?

• What are sense-data?

• Is perception direct or mediated?

• What is the Knowledge Argument and what does Mary learn?

• Does consciousness require a non-physical mind?

• What exactly is matter?

• Can science tell us what reality is in itself?

• Why did Berkeley think reality is fundamentally mental?

• What role does God play in idealism?

• Is panpsychism a better alternative?

• Could reality ultimately be grounded in mind rather than matter?

This is a conversation about consciousness, metaphysics, idealism, Berkeley, physicalism, dualism, perception, God, and the ultimate nature of reality.

Guest: Howard Robinson

Topic: Is Reality Fundamentally Mental? Idealism, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality.

If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

The world was once alive — every river, tree, and threshold humming with meaning. Then, somewhere between Descartes and the Scientific Revolution, the West performed an exorcism on its own imagination. We call it progress. Psychologist and mythologist Dr Sharon Blackie calls it disenchantment — and in this conversation, we ask whether it was ever truly inevitable, and whether it can be undone.

Dr Blackie — a former neuroscientist turned mythologist, and bestselling author of The Enchanted Life and If Women Rose Rooted — joins The Prometheans to trace how the West traded a participatory, storied cosmos for a measurable, mechanical one. We talk about Max Weber's "disenchantment of the world," the epistemic cost of privileging pure rationality, myth as a technology of meaning rather than primitive superstition, and her concept of the "Post-Heroic Journey" as an alternative to conquest-driven myths of the self. This is not a conversation about magical thinking — it's a conversation about what got lost when the West decided only one way of knowing counted, and what it might mean to recover the rest.

If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

🔮 Guest: Dr Sharon Blackie — psychologist, mythologist, founder of the Nostos Institute, author of seven books including The Enchanted Life, If Women Rose Rooted, and Ripening.

Timestamps: [add once episode is cut]

Guest links: [Substack — The Art of Enchantment / Nostos Institute / latest book]

The Prometheans is a podcast on interfaith dialogue, philosophy of religion, and cross-civilizational intellectual history.

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who treated both the tortured and the torturers of colonial Algeria — and concluded that colonialism doesn't just occupy land, it occupies the mind. In this episode, philosopher Lewis Gordon, one of the world's foremost interpreters of Fanon and a leading voice in Africana philosophy, joins The Prometheans to unpack how colonial power gets internalized — psychologically, culturally, and politically — and why Fanon's diagnosis still explains the world seventy years later.

We go inside Fanon's key ideas: the "zone of nonbeing," the "epidermalization" of inferiority, the Manichean logic of colonizer and colonized, and the controversial role of violence in his thought — separating what Fanon actually argued from the caricature. We also discuss Gordon's own recent work, including his role in the acclaimed documentary Rediscovering Fanon, and what Fanon's philosophy has to say about racial violence and postcolonial politics today.

A conversation about psychiatry, philosophy, empire, and the unfinished work of decolonizing the human mind.

Guest: Professor Lewis R. Gordon, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs, University of Connecticut. Author of What Fanon Said, Fear of Black Consciousness, and Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge.

If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

Is the Rumi quoted on Instagram the same Rumi who wrote the Masnavi?

For 25 years, Rutgers scholar Jawid Mojaddedi has been doing something no one had ever done before: translating all six books of Rumi's 26,000-verse masterwork, the Masnavi, into English verse — faithfully, completely, and for the first time ever unabridged. In 2025, he finished it.

In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka sits down with Professor Mojaddedi to talk about what it actually took to finish a quarter-century translation project, what the Masnavi is really saying beneath its most famous opening image — the reed flute crying out in separation from its source — and why the "Rumi" beloved by millions of English readers may be further from the original than anyone realizes.

We talk about:

The Song of the Reed: the opening passage that unlocks the entire 26,000-verse poem

Why the Masnavi has been called "the Qur'an in Persian" for centuries

Rumi as a trained Islamic theologian and jurist — not just a mystic

What was lost, and what wasn't, in the West's most popular versions of Rumi's poetry

Twenty-five years, six books: what changed in Mojaddedi's own understanding of Rumi along the way

The Sufi doctrine of "friendship with God" (wilaya) and how it shaped Rumi's teaching

Book Six and fana: what the poem — and the translation — resolves toward at the end

This is a conversation about translation, fidelity, longing, and what it means for a 750-year-old Persian poem to still be the best-selling poetry in North America.

If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going.

https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

Where did the Greek gods come from? What existed before Zeus—and how did the cosmos itself come into being?

In this episode of The Prometheans, we sit down with distinguished classicist Professor Jenny Strauss Clay, author of Hesiod’s Cosmos, to explore one of the earliest surviving Greek attempts to explain the origins of the gods and the structure of reality.

Beginning with Hesiod’s Theogony, we trace the emergence of Chaos, Gaia, Ouranos, the Titans, Kronos, and ultimately Zeus, examining how a divine order develops through generation, conflict, succession, and the establishment of Zeus’s rule.

We also explore Clay’s influential argument that Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days should be understood together: one presenting the cosmos from the perspective of the gods, the other from the perspective of human beings. What does this reveal about the Greek understanding of gods, humanity, justice, labor, fate, and cosmic order?

A deep conversation about Greek mythology, ancient Greek theology, Hesiod, and the world before Zeus.

Who was Shaikh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani, and why is he regarded as one of the most influential spiritual masters in Islamic history?

In this episode of The Prometheans, I am joined by Dr. Louay Fatoohi to explore Revelations of the Unseen (Futuh al-Ghayb)—one of the most celebrated works of Islamic spirituality. We discuss the true meaning of Tasawwuf (Sufism), the purification of the soul (tazkiyah), the struggle against the ego (nafs), trust in Allah (tawakkul), sainthood (awliya), miracles (karamat), and why the teachings of Shaikh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani continue to inspire millions of Muslims around the world.

This conversation is based on the acclaimed edition of Revelations of the Unseen, translated and thematically organized by Dr. Louay Fatoohi and Prof. Shetha Al-Dargazelli, who consulted multiple Arabic manuscripts to produce a reliable and accessible English text.

Whether you're curious about Islamic spirituality, interested in the history of Sufism, or seeking a deeper understanding of one of Islam's greatest scholars, this episode offers an engaging introduction to the spiritual legacy of Shaikh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani.

Topics Covered:

Who was Shaikh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani?

What is Sufism?

The meaning of Revelations of the Unseen

Purification of the heart

The ego (nafs) and spiritual discipline

Trust in Allah (tawakkul)

Saints (awliya) and miracles (karamat)

Common misconceptions about Sufism

Why al-Jilani still matters today

👤 Guest Bio

Dr. Louay Fatoohi is an independent scholar of Islamic studies and comparative religion. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, he earned a BSc in Physics from the University of Baghdad and a PhD from the University of Durham (UK). His research focuses on Qur'anic studies, the historical Jesus, comparative Abrahamic religions, and Sufism. He has authored more than twenty-five books in English and Arabic and has edited and translated several classical Sufi texts, including Revelations of the Unseen (Futuh al-Ghayb) and Purification of the Mind by Shaikh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani. He is also Managing Director of Safis Publishing.

🔔 Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and civilizational history.

The Prometheans is an interfaith and cross-civilizational philosophy podcast/YouTube channel hosted by Ali Zaka, exploring philosophy of religion, comparative theology, and the history of ideas.

Was Socrates a sincere philosopher condemned for his honesty — or a master ironist who talked his way into a death sentence? In this episode of The Prometheans, host Ali Zaka sits down with C.D.C. Reeve, Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the landmark study Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato's Apology of Socrates (Hackett, 1989), to reconstruct one of the most consequential courtroom speeches in Western history.

Reeve — also the translator behind some of the most widely read English editions of Plato's Apology, Euthyphro, and Crito — makes the case that Socrates meant exactly what he said: that he possessed no expert "craft knowledge" of virtue, only a hard-won human wisdom built from a lifetime of relentless self-examination. We dig into why Reeve rejects the popular "ironic Socrates" reading, what his daimonion (his inner divine sign) actually tells us about the relationship between reason and revelation, and why the historical and legal context of 399 BC Athens matters for understanding why the jury convicted him.

Along the way, we open a wider, cross-traditional question that sits at the heart of The Prometheans: how do different philosophical and religious traditions understand the rationality of trusting an inner voice, a private prompting from the divine? Is the examined life a purely rational project, or does it require something more?

Topics covered:

— Who was the historical Socrates on trial?

— The "sincerity thesis": why Reeve rejects Socratic irony

— Human wisdom vs. divine/expert wisdom

— The daimonion debate: reason, revelation, and the "foundationalist" reading

— The legal and cultural background of the trial

— Why the examined life still matters today

🔔 Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and civilizational history.

The Prometheans is an interfaith and cross-civilizational philosophy podcast/YouTube channel hosted by Ali Zaka, exploring philosophy of religion, comparative theology, and the history of ideas.

Guest: C.D.C. Reeve, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Book referenced: Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato's Apology of Socrates (Hackett Publishing, 1989)

One hundred years after its publication, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land remains one of the most quoted, most difficult, and most argued-over poems in the English language. In this episode of The Prometheans, I sit down with Fr. Jayme Stayer, S.J. — professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, past president of the International T. S. Eliot Society, and author of Becoming T. S. Eliot — to trace how the poem actually came into being: Eliot's breakdown and recovery in Margate and Lausanne, Ezra Pound's radical editorial cuts, and the 1971 rediscovery of the original drafts that rewrote everything scholars thought they knew.

We go beyond composition history into the poem's intellectual scaffolding — the Fisher King myth, Frazer's The Golden Bough, Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance, and Eliot's deliberate weaving of Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist sources into a single portrait of post-war civilizational exhaustion. And we close by asking the question a centenary forces on every reader: does a poem written out of one man's crisis in 1922 still diagnose something true about the world a hundred years later — or does it need to be read differently now?

This conversation sits at the intersection of literature, history, and the philosophy of religion — exploring how sacred and mythic traditions from across civilizations can converge in a single work of art without being flattened into one another.

About the guest:

Fr. Jayme Stayer, S.J. is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and past president of the International T. S. Eliot Society. He is the author of Becoming T. S. Eliot: The Rhetoric of Voice and Audience in "Inventions of the March Hare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) and co-editor of Volume 5 of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, winner of the MLA Prize for a Scholarly Edition. His writing on The Waste Land includes "Ambition and Despair: The Centenary of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land" (Catholic Herald) and "Snuggling Up to the Abyss" in The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual.

About The Prometheans:

The Prometheans is a podcast and YouTube series exploring philosophy of religion, interfaith dialogue, and the great intellectual traditions of East and West — hosted by Ali Zaka (AZD).

Subscribe for more conversations at the crossroads of literature, philosophy, and faith.