The Lightning Podcast

This week, Zohar sits down with Nicholas Lyons, investor, autodidact, ex-banker, numerologist, and champion of Verus (a blockchain technology), to talk about consilience, reflexivity, network effects, the promising business model of web3, and whether new technology can cure us of cynicism and misinformation.

This week, Zohar is joined by Michael Gibson, venture capitalist, founder of the Thiel Fellowship, and author of Paper Belt on Fire, to talk about why philosophers aren't saints, his pivot from studying philosophy to investing, why charisma is a mixed bag, how Aristotle can help with talent scouting, and the future of education.

This week, Zohar is joined by journalist and pundit Damon Linker, to discuss passionate skepticism, Strauss vs. Heidegger, religion, the legacy of the Enlightenment, humility, judgment, and changing your mind.

This week, Zohar is joined by Jennifer Frey, philosopher, professor, and podcaster, to talk about how to read the ancients, the importance of philosophical friendship, Christopher Lasch's critique of the "therapeutic," the relationship between theoretical and practical wisdom, education as character formation, and why everyone is a conservative about something.

This week Zohar is joined by intellectual biographer Cynthia Haven to discuss the life of the mind, mimetic desire, envy, forgiveness, the Joseph story, Girard, California, and the "double passport" we all carry.

This week, Zohar is joined by Jay Tolson, editor of the Hedgehog Review, to discuss the meaning of modernity and "late" modernity, the communal spirit of religion and the military, the rising threat of authoritarianism, conspiracy theory, and the promise of moral education.

This week, Zohar is joined by Kieran Setiya, philosopher, MIT Professor, author of Life is Hard and Midlife, and podcast host of Five Questions, to discuss the genre of self-help, brokenness, AI, why moral philosophy can't be outsourced, existentialism, phenomenology, podcasting, the conditions of knowledge, and how to balance the ameliorative and the contemplative.

This week, Zohar is joined by Martin Gurri, former CIA analyst and author of The Revolt of the Public, to talk about trust, power, communication, polarization, technology, and strategy in an age of waning institutional legitimacy and fragmented authority.

This week, Zohar is joined by Leon Kass, Dean of Faculty at Shalem College, to discuss the Book of Genesis, Rousseau, Odysseus, moral vs. intellectual virtue, the challenge of transmitting tradition, and the need for clever people to accept their limits.

This week Zohar speaks to Peter Cole, acclaimed poet and translator, about medieval Hebrew and Arabic poetry, Yehuda Amichai, liminality, modernism, solitude and tradition, the sacred and the secular, and the war for the imagination.