Dialogues #67 Read in browserâď¸ For the first time in history, women hold substantial cultural and institutional power. Men and women differ, on average, in their values: women are more harm-averse, equity-oriented, and prone to resolving conflict through social exclusion. As a result, shifting sex compositions can bring palpable cultural change. The transition has been particularly dramatic in academia, where women were once almost entirely excluded and now constitute majorities. - Dr. Cory...
24 days ago â˘Â 2 min read
Dialogues #66 Read in browserâď¸ Resilience is insanely important. I generally believe that most people who fail at things, and this can be anything, anything in life, from a diet to a relationship to a project to a career, I think most failure is actually just giving up too early. I think that's the most common cause of failure. - Zuby, on the latest Selling Plato podcast episode đ¨ Episode 19 of the podcast with Zuby is OUT! đ¨ Meet Zuby. Zuby is a podcaster, rapper, author, born in England,...
3 months ago â˘Â 2 min read
Dialogues #65 Read in browserâď¸ 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, âthe transposition of sports values into political discourseâ. - Robert Garcia and Nate King I had just finished teaching on consequentialism in my ethics class. If youâre not familiar with...
3 months ago â˘Â 3 min read
Dialogues #64 Read in browserâď¸ "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 đ¨ Episode 18 of the podcast with L.A. Paul and the premiere of the new season is OUT! đ¨ If you subscribe to this newsletter, you know I've been thinking about the idea of transformative experience for a...
3 months ago â˘Â 2 min read
Dialogues #63 Read in browserâď¸ "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 PensĂŠes, where he interviews...
3 months ago â˘Â 3 min read
Dialogues #62 Read in browserâď¸ "A goal without a strategy is useless.â - 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...
4 months ago â˘Â 4 min read
Dialogues #61 Read in browserâď¸ "Instead of validating products, I think about validating problems.â - Jay Clouse Iâve said this before, but I am excited for you all to see and hear the next season of the podcast, starting next month. I canât believe that some of these people take the time to talk to me about their work and some bigger, philosophical questions. If youâre not yet subscribed, hit subscribe here on YouTube to get notified when theyâre released, and if you prefer to listen, just...
4 months ago â˘Â 5 min read
Dialogues #60 Read in browserâď¸ "âmainstream 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 âhumans'.â - 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...
4 months ago â˘Â 4 min read
Dialogues #59 Read in browserâď¸ "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...
5 months ago â˘Â 4 min read