Podcast How to Be Healthy January 22, 2024 The second-century Greek physician Galen鈥攖he most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates鈥攊s a central figure in Western medicine. Read More
Podcast Listen in: The Weirdness of the World January 22, 2024 Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? Read More
Essay New year, old problems January 10, 2024 The struggle against distraction might seem utterly specific to the twenty-first century, but it was in fact singled out as a crisis more than a millennium and a half ago. Read More
Podcast Chinese Cosmopolitanism January 08, 2024 Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. Read More
Essay Galen and health: Inspiration, caution, and some useful advice January 02, 2024 What use to today鈥檚 physicians is the writing of Galen, an educated but pompous and (we now see, in 2023) misguided healer who lived 1,800 years ago? Read More
Essay Aristotle and ecology October 12, 2023 Aristotle urges us to study animals closely for what they reveal about the larger world around us, including ourselves. Read More
Interview Myisha Cherry on Failures of Forgiveness September 28, 2023 Forgiveness聽is one way at repair. It is not the only way.聽Forgiveness聽can never reach repair by itself. It requires work from community members as well as victims and wrongdoers. Read More
Essay Plato the constitutionalist鈥攁nd the Supreme Court July 27, 2023 A cabal of unelected men and women appointed with tenure for life, making the most important decisions for an entire society with no chance of appeal. That is a good description of the United States Supreme Court. It鈥檚 also a good description of the philosopher-rulers of Plato鈥檚 Republic. Read More
Interview In dialogue: Rethinking climate change and catastrophe July 18, 2023 This month, in pursuit of clarity and advice, we gathered some of our authors and asked the following question: How should we think about the future in the face of climate change? Their perspectives offer us the tools to collectively rethink catastrophe in order to generate alternative possibilities of hope, action, or simple awareness regarding the planet and its beings. Read More
Essay Aristotelian virtues for social media June 23, 2023 There was no social media in Aristotle鈥檚 day. But a trio of virtues Aristotle invokes for social situations鈥攁nd their corresponding vices鈥攏icely capture the landscape of human (mis)behavior on the social media of today. Read More
Podcast Night Vision June 08, 2023 Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. Read More
Essay The therapist and the gadfly May 24, 2023 If you want to improve yourself鈥攂e happier, for example鈥攜ou shouldn鈥檛 consult society鈥檚 ideas of a good life, as portrayed in magazines, pillows, and posters. Instead, you should find the equivalent of a horse trainer. Read More
Podcast Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality May 09, 2023 Derek Parfit (1942鈥�2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Read More
Essay David Edmonds on Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality April 14, 2023 Derek Parfit was an obsessive. For much of his adult life he had two obsessions. Philosophy was one, photography another. Every year, for many years, he would travel to Venice and St. Petersburg and photograph the same buildings, trying to take the perfect shot. Read More
Essay The origins and importance of talk March 29, 2023 I come from a family of talkers. The household in which I grew up was always noisy. My parents were loud and opinionated, and interrupted and quarreled boisterously with each other. Read More
