Dialogues #65 Read in browser↗️ Public discourse is ailing. Instead of yielding mutual understanding and respect, our debates are often infected with suspicions, accusations, belief polarization, and ideological entrenchment. One malady is what Richard Lipsky calls the athleticization of politics, “the transposition of sports values into political discourse”. - Robert Garcia and Nate King I had just finished teaching on consequentialism in my ethics class. If you’re not familiar with...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Dialogues #64 Read in browser↗️ "Contemporary philosophy as we practice it, the very analytical [philosophy]...we haven't done a very good job of finding things that resonate with people, even though there are so many things that we do that really should resonate with people." - L.A. Paul 🚨 Episode 18 of the podcast with L.A. Paul and the premiere of the new season is OUT! 🚨 If you subscribe to this newsletter, you know I've been thinking about the idea of transformative experience for a...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Dialogues #63 Read in browser↗️ "Sitting for even five minutes with a journal offers a rare cease-fire in the battle of daily life." - Alexandra Johnson I had no idea how much people loved notebooks, but Notebook People are passionate people. And for good reason. I first learned about the world of notebooks through my friend Parker Settecase. (You can see my conversation with him here.) The brief back story is that Parker has a podcast and channel called Parker's Pensées, where he interviews...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Dialogues #62 Read in browser↗️ "A goal without a strategy is useless.” - Will Guidara The semester has officially started, and my philosophy students are already hard at work on assignments. To jumpstart the faculty and staff, my school invited Will Guidara to come speak to us. Out of all the talks and speeches I've heard through the course of my life, Will's talk has to rank in the top five or so. If you're not familiar with Will Guidara, he's the author of the New York Times bestseller...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Dialogues #61 Read in browser↗️ "Instead of validating products, I think about validating problems.” - Jay Clouse I’ve said this before, but I am excited for you all to see and hear the next season of the podcast, starting next month. I can’t believe that some of these people take the time to talk to me about their work and some bigger, philosophical questions. If you’re not yet subscribed, hit subscribe here on YouTube to get notified when they’re released, and if you prefer to listen, just...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Dialogues #60 Read in browser↗️ "“mainstream feminism has morphed from a movement with both communitarian and libertarian strands, to one focused almost entirely on individual freedom, imagined as the property of functionally interchangeable ‘humans'.” - Mary Harrington Last week I introduced the first part of a two-part piece, where I talked about how men are doing generally. (Spoiler: not great.) In this piece, I'll give a few more recommendations for books that evaluate whether some of the...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Dialogues #59 Read in browser↗️ "Increasingly today, young men are the second sex in education...The gender equity movement deploys an unusual logic: gaps favoring men, those are evidence of invidious discrimination. They demand massive attention, including national legislation. Gaps favoring women, no matter how large, no matter how momentous or devastating to men's progress, those go unmentioned, unaddressed." - Christina Hoff Sommers A friend of mine recently told me he is in the early...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Dialogues #58 Read in browser↗️ "Wonder is where philosophy begins." - Alex Byrne When someone starts connecting with philosophical ideas, you can bet one of their first questions is, What's the best book for someone who wants to get started learning philosophy? Before recently, I usually had some answer to this question that involved explaining how enormous philosophy is as a field, and a few suggestions that included a hodgepodge of books, depending on the person's interests. But these...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Dialogues #57 Read in browser↗️ "Logic is part of our shared language and inheritance." - Ted Sider I am really pumped about the next season of the podcast. I have just started scheduling episodes, and so far I have a musician/podcaster, a philosopher at UNC, a scholar specializing in the second century, and a journalist. More to come. Subscribe here 👈🏻 In honor of Prime Day, I just launched the biggest sale I’ve ever put on for my Introduction to Logic course: a $4.99/month subscription for...
3 months ago • 5 min read