The Liberal Soul

In this short bonus episode I meditate on why Christmas is such a wonderful holiday beyond its religious affiliations.

This episode is a celebration of the life and impact of Christopher Hitchens. December 15th, 2021 is the ten year anniversary of his death, so Cole and I discuss all things Hitchens in memorial. Both Cole and I were introduced to Hitchens through the religion angle, but there was so much more to his life and career. We free associate on his charm, intelligence, humor, wit and how he became must see Youtube. We also wax a bit on Hitchens as Quality (in a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sense), and finally give our thoughts on why Hitchens matters. Enjoy the episode!

Here is the link to Hitchens Free Speech debate in Toronto from 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDap-K6GmL0&t=27s

For this episode of The Liberal Soul I have borrowed a bonus episode from my other podcast Really True Fiction. For that episode, I recorded a chat with my RTF cohost (David Parker) and guest (Josiah Martinoski) on the 2021 film Dune; directed by Denis Villeneuve. This was a follow up to a recording about a year earlier on the novel Dune which was a full episode on RTF. Please check out that episode if you are interested.

In this episode the three of us discuss all things Dune from the new film and everything in between. Even though this wasn't initially intended as a Liberal Soul episode, I think it fits the bill. Enjoy!

Welcome back to another episode of The Liberal Soul. This episode is a hashing out of something I have been thinking about for a while, as well as a concept alluded to in episode 4 of this podcast with Cole Kander. It is that I have always considered Religion to be much too broad of a term; thus allowing for confusing disagreement and talking past one another when debating its merits. As such, I have broken the concept of religion (specifically Christianity for this episode) into four separate categories in order to specify what is or isn't useful about them. Namely they are: Empirical claims about the world, Metaphysical claims about the world, the Social Ethic that comes with religion, and the Psychology of the stories.

My argument is that basically the first two are incorrect, completed, non sensical or damaging aspects of what we call religion and should be more or less discarded. But also that the latter two contain much wisdom, compassion and insight and deserve to be incorporated into modern life more tightly.

Either way, religion is not a useful term all on its own, and this is my first stab at asking what we are talking about at any given point under the rubric of "religion". Below are the time stamps for each of the four concepts. Enjoy!

Empiricism - 14:25

Metaphysics - 25:17

Social Ethics - 35:30

Psychology - 46:15

Welcome to the last part of a three part series on the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In this final episode I talk about:

- What it's like to live in fear with no peace of mind - which means no psychological freedom

- The betrayals in the Soviet Union - and how they are a little bit reminiscent of cancel culture

- The great lie - cliches and slogans and slave psychology

- The kids that are guarding him - like the puppies in Animal Farm

- Expansion of the enemy group will be inevitable when your Utopia not realized

- How there is no freedom to opt out of Utopia - a regime being irrelevant is insufferable

Thank you so much for listening. I will be back soon with another episode.

This is part two of a three part series on the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If you have not yet listened to part one I would recommend you do as it sets the context for the book and the episodes I am doing on it. In this episode I discuss the parts of the book that have to do with:

- The over capacity of the prison cells as well as the implications that has for basic human functions

- When the concentration camps started in the Soviet Union as well as the estimated amount of lives lost in said Union.

- All of the imaginative ways people could violate Rule 58 (political agitation)

- What it was like for the Communists who got arrested

- Particular forms of Soviet Logic

- The weeding out process of the guards until it was only the cruelest people left

Thanks again for listening! If you want to get in touch with me you can send an email to [email protected].

You can also follow on Twitter: @liberalsoul87 or search for The Liberal Soul on Facebook.

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I begin the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, essayist, dissident and one of the great moral titans of the twentieth century. Largely thanks to his courage the rest of the world learned in depth what was going on behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union during the Stalin years. In part one I talk about Solzhenitsyn's observations on:

- How the Party would arrest people - and how eventually people felt relief at being arrested

- That this was happening from the start - group guilt was an essential part of the Soviet Unions ethos

- The performative and theatrical nature of the Soviet Union - because its not easy in a bureaucracy when you are bringing value

- Soviet relativity - but the bullet is absolute.

- The people who don't think or feel - these will be the interrogators in your society.

- The line of good and evil runs through everyone's heart. Ideologues don't think this.

- Insight on ideology in general - the ability to justify beliefs and behaviours.

Thanks to everyone who listens to this podcast. I will be back with more episodes on The Gulag Archipelago.

For this episode I (only begin) tackling the concept of Free Will and it's relationship to our liberal lives. I use the short book Free Will by Sam Harris as a springboard to discuss to my thoughts on this concept; and why I think it's been a little misunderstood in the culture since his book was published in 2012. (At least to the extent it's been in the culture at all haha). Some of the things I talk about are:

- Framing the concept of Free Will different than Harris

- Volition is the kind of free will we care about because it manifests itself in the social world

- That there has been a confusion about Free Will that comes from Christian metaphysics and its attempts to solve the Problem of Evil

- A poker analogy for what part of the game (real life) we care about

- Some musical examples to illustrate my point (PS. I mention in the recording that I had perfect syllable fidelity for the Harry Potter song. I don't know if that is true actually, but it is very close if not).

- A tennis analogy for morality

- A special surprise at the end.

Thanks again for listening to The Liberal Soul. I hope you enjoy and please give a rating or review if you listen on Apple Podcasts. Here is the link to the show as well:

https://theliberalsoul87.libsyn.com/

What are we talking about when we are talking about doing science? How is doing science different from the other forms that we call knowledge or discovery? This is the philosophical task at hand covered by Karl Popper in his work Conjectures and Refutations. I have already done several episodes on Popper's book The Open Society And Its Enemies; but I thought it would be fruitful to talk a little as well about some of the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method as they strike me as similar to the concept of fallibility which is so crucial in understanding liberalism.

In this episode I discuss Popper's notions on:

- The problem of demarcation in science

- The difference between asking "How do you know that?" vs "How can be best eliminate errors?"

- Criticizing our own theories if we can - Critical Rationalism

- Verificationism actually a weakness of a theory, not a strength of it.

- Scientific theories are risky - and can be disproved by certain observations

- Irrefutability a vice

- Dogmatic thinking in line with verification thinking and critical thinking in line with scientific thinking

- Using philosophy to solve problems outside of philosophy - its about problem solving not just internal gazing

I hope you enjoy another episode from the unperishable Karl Popper.

I am pleased to be joined by guests Brady Gavin and Danica Weager in this episode of The Liberal Soul to talk all about travelling and visiting different places around the world. Some of the things we talk about are:

- Where in the world we have all been

- How travel affects perspective

- How easy it can be to get along with people in other countries

- Weird travel stories and highlights

- Environmentalism in travel

- Travel as interconnectedness

Thanks again everyone. Please subscribe to The Liberal Soul if you like the podcast.