May Newsletter For That Philosophy Guy

This is going to be a really busy month! My academic classes are finishing up at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. My oldest child, Cat, graduates from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a degree in theater, and is busy making that transition into full post-graduation adulthood. And in a week and a half, I’m taking my first post-Covid lockdown flight, ultimately winding up at the Table in the Wilderness camp for Wyoming Stoic Camp 2024, where I’ll be one of the invited guest speakers!

Last month, I enabled paid subscriptions in this Substack, and I started producing some content that’s (for the time being) exclusive to paid members, in particular episodes of the Mind & Desire podcast. If you want to remain a free subscriber, you can of course. You’ll still get posts categorized under News, Resources, and Reading Recommendations, as well as seeing the Notes. But I’’ll be writing more articles specifically for paid subscribers this month as well.

I plan to put together a decent page later this monthexplaining free vs. paid subscriptions, and why people might want to consider supporting me by becoming a paid subscriber, so for the moment, I’ll just repeat this from last month’s newsletter

Producing the sort of content you’ve seen me posting and writing about here is one main way that I support myself economically, so if you’re considering becoming a paid subscriber, I’ll just say that I’m very grateful for everyone who contributes to my ability to earn a decent living providing resources and guidance that help people learn about, study, and apply philosophy.

All right then! On to the updates and news!

Online Events And Classes

My online 8-week Aristotle on the Moral Virtues class has met for 3 class sessions so far, and we have had some great discussions about virtue and vice in general, and Aristotle’s takes on three virtues in particular: courage, temperance, and good temper. If you missed getting in on this third section of the online class, and you’re interested in it, we’ll be offering it again next year.

We do have another online synchronous 8-week class starting up next month, Rene Descartes’ Meditations, Objections, and Replies, and I’ll be putting out information about it in the coming weeks. It meets Saturdays, 10 AM Central Time for 90-minute class sessions, starting on June 15.

I’m also building an asynchronous online class on Plato’s dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo that will open for enrollment later this month. That’s a class that doesn’t have class meetings, and which you can work through at your own pace. More about that once I’ve got it ready to run!

We do have quite a few events this month as well, most of which are online. All times are Central Daylight Time

May 4, 12 PM - monthly AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session - YouTube live event in my channel. Got questions for me? Ask away and I’ll do my best to answer them - https://youtube.com/live/K0JWUBAA2B0

May 8, 6 PM - Philosophers in the Midst of History: Peter Abelard, Medieval Scholasticism, and Heloise of Argenteuil - this is a local event partnering with the Frank Weyenberg Library in Mequon, WI, part of an ongoing quarterly series

May 11, 12 PM - Worlds of Speculative Fiction: Anne McCaffery's Harper Hall Trilogy - YouTube video premiere in my channel with live chat, followed by Zoom videoconferencing - link will be posted after video is produced

May 18, 12 PM - Classic Metal Class Session 27: Bands That Say They're Not Heavy Metal (rescheduled from last month) - Zoom videoconferencing for students enrolled in the free class (they get the Zoom link there) - https://reasonio.teachable.com/p/classic-metal-class

May 25, 12 PM - Understanding Anger 2.0 Class Session 12: Seneca's On Anger - we continue our study of ancient philosophical, literary, and religious viewpoints on the emotion of anger, starting our study of Seneca’s work https://youtube.com/live/JawRTal1iXs

May 26, 12 PM - Self-Directed Study: Thomas Aquinas (rescheduled from last month) - providing advice for self-directed study of this important Medieval thinkers through a YouTube video premiere and live chat in my channel - link will be posted after video is produced

Video And Podcast Production

As mentioned earlier, I have started a new podcast, Mind & Desire. This podcast provides me a space to take interesting philosophical insights, distinctions, arguments, practices, and the like and do something I’m well-known for, making them accessible to a more general audience. I also sometimes give some advice and reflections about how to productively study and apply philosophy. I’ll be producing more of those, at least one episode a week, for my paid subscribers here.

In the Sadler’s Lectures podcast, I’m approaching 1,200 episodes! I published a resource page with links to all the playlists of the downloadable episodes last month. I’m still finishing up with releasing the episodes on Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, but the last of those will be out next week. You’ll also see a few one-off episodes on various texts by Franz Kafka, William James, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rainer Maria Rilke. And then, the plan is to convert the core concept videos I produced on Plutarch’s On Having Many Friends and Kafka’s Metamorphosis into sets of Sadler’s Lectures podcast episodes.

What about video production? I produced an entire set of core concept videos on Kyoto school philosopher Nishitani Keiji’s work The Self-Overcoming Of Nihilism for my online Existentialism class at MIAD, and I released the first of those to the public earlier today. So, you’ll see five more of those coming down the pike. I’ve also been shooting video footage for core concept videos on a text I’ve been meaning to get to for some time, Cicero’s dialogue On The Nature of The Gods. So you’ll see core concept videos on book 1 of that work later on this month. I still have to get to the commissioned video on the “body without organs” in Deleuze and Guittari’s Anti-Oedipus.

Shooting Sadler’s Honest Book Review videos is a major priority for me this month, not least since I’ve got so many books piled up waiting for review! I’ll also be shooting some more personal videos, including an updated version of this video about the 10 philosophical books I’d bring to a desert island. I’ll also be shooting another Fake Quotes video, at least one Ideas That Matter interview, at least one more Quick Takes, and perhaps some videos from Wyoming Stoic Camp 2024. Hopefully towards the end of the month, I can also start something a bit new and shoot a review video of one of the non-alcoholic beers I enjoy.

Some Personal Updates

As you may have seen in my social media, if you follow me, a story recently broke about the college where I teach as an adjunct, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, having a pretty significant budget shortfall. That’s a source of concern for the entire faculty, and for our household, since my wife teaches full-time there and I part-time. We’ll know later this month whether and what sort of financial hit we might take. That sort of precarity for academic teaching income is one reason I try to build and rely upon other sources for income for doing the philosophy work that I do.

As mentioned above, my oldest child graduates in just a few weeks. It’s always a bit of a surprise to me just how old I am, and having a young adult child finish up college really drives that home. Finding a place to live, looking for work, continuing the crafts involved in theater (Cat not only acts, but also writes, directs, manages, does puppetry, and makeup), those are the key preoccupations not just for Cat but also for me as a parent.

The cat shelter I volunteer at, Almost Home Cat Rescue was closed for 3 weeks in March and April as they dealt with a case of ringworm, medicating all of the cats, and giving the shelter a complete cleaning. Since they reopened, I’ve visited several times and done one volunteer shift. I’ll be there a good bit this coming month.

Recovery from my gallbladder surgery in late March has gone well, but slowly. All of the incisions healed up well, and my pains are gone. I still do have a bit of fatigue, which is apparently a common effect, but it’s getting better. I’m able to get out and about to take long walks, and I’m hoping to go to one of my favorite places since childhood, Lapham Peak State Park, this weekend to do a bit of hiking. I’m cleared medically to resume lifting weights, but frankly, have been a bit too busy to start that back up again.

I will say something about some books I’ve been reading. I’m going to write a good bit more about this in an article later on. So as you see above, in Worlds of Speculative Fiction this month, we’re looking at Anne McCaffery’s Harper Hall Trilogy. These are Young Adult novels set in her Dragonriders Of Pern series and narrative universe. I hadn’t read them since I was a kid in middle school, when like several other series, they were kind of an emotional lifeline to me. That was a dark and lonely time. Rereading them as a middle-aged person has given me a lot to reflect on, as well as to remember and feel. So I hope to do some writing about that later on.

That’s it from me in this May Newsletter! If you’d like to know more, or you’re particularly excited about, about any of these things going on, feel free to leave a comment!