The Wisdom Of

Why are mystery novels so popular? Maybe it's because, unlike real life, they promise to explain everything! 

The Iliad is one of the two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, the other being The Odyssey. In this episode, we discuss the prophecy about Achilles: that either he'll live a long but uneventful life , or he'll live a short but glorious one!

In this episode, I talk about our attitude or approach to future generations and to climate change. 

Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion. In this episode, we talk about his book The Sacred and the Profane, which is about how archaic and religious people experience the sacred and how it is we modern nonreligious people don’t! 

According to the psychologist Rollo May, anxiety and despair isn't as bad as we might think. Facing up to these emotions can be vitalizing and the beginning of genuine freedom! 

Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher, born 470 BC, who’s often seen as the founder of western philosophy. In this episode, we discuss how it is Socrates is still relevant or topical today!  

Erich Fromm was a German psychologist. Among other great works, he wrote The Art of Loving, published in 1956. The central message: love is active not passive! 

Happiness isn't about pleasure, says Nietzsche, it's about meaning and overcoming resistance! 

Mary Wollstonecraft was a British philosopher and writer. She’s maybe most famous for her seminal work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in 1792, and is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In this episode, we discuss how it is she understands independence and what she thinks education should be about! 

In this brief episode, I reflect a bit on what genuine morality requires. It requires, not that we maintain a pure conscience, but that we accept getting our hands dirty!