The Wisdom For Life Radio Show
My cohost Dan and I started up the Wisdom for Life radio show started in February 2020, hosted on our local community radio station here in Milwaukee, Riverwest Radio, WXRW 104.1 FM. The focus of the show is practical philosophy, and applications of philosophy to everyday life, so we have ranged over a wide number of topics.
I’ve created a curated list of the show episodes here, along with links to where you can listen to them in podcast form, or even watch the video of Dan and I recording the show (occasionally with guests) . As we air new episodes, I’ll add them to the episode list below.
Before that, I’d like to say just a few words about the history of the show. My co-host Dan Hayes and I had been discussing the idea of producing something like a podcast dealing with practical philosophy, and Stoicism in particular, for some time — we were both co-organizers of the Milwaukee Stoic Fellowship. And since I had gone on as a guest on a number of their host’s shows, the station manager at Riverwest Radio had been asking me if I had any interest in producing a regular show myself.
So, Dan and I put our heads together, came up with a concept, attended the required new host workshops, and got ready for our first on-air weekly live show. We got two episodes in before the station shut down during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, episode 2 focused on how to deal with the emotions that a global pandemic provoked, and we were the very last show to be recorded before the station closed its doors.
It wasn’t all that long, though, before we worked out another way to produce and record Wisdom for Life show episodes, and that is what we have been doing since! I hope you enjoy listening or watching these radio show episodes below! If you do, feel free to tell us that by writing comments here, on the Soundcloud podcast episodes, or on the YouTube videorecordings.
Show Episode 1 — Philosophy As A Way of Life. Intro to the show and the hosts; why practical philosophy is becoming popular; philosophy as a way of life and spiritual practices | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 2 — Dealing With Fear During A Crisis. Fear, anxiety, crises, Covid-19, and the philosophical practice of taking a pause | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 3— Defining What Is Good and Bad. Genuine and apparent goods and bads, prioritizing between better and the less good, worse and the less bad, and common reasons people get mixed up | listen here
Show Episode 4— Setting and Maintaining Boundaries. Why setting and maintaining boundaries is important, in personal relationships, in the workplace, and with neighbors | listen here
Show Episode 5— What Makes Relationships Good. Features of good and bad relationships, including friendships, romantic relationships, collaborative partnerships, and familial relationships | listen here
Show Episode 6— What Is Resiliency? What resiliency is, why it is important to develop it, why it is good for us and others, and how we can approach it | listen here
Show Episode 7 — The Stockdale Paradox. . Stockdale’s advice about brutal realism and faith things will turn out, how it can be applied in everyday life, why people find it paradoxical, and how hope could be a rational response | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 8 — Balancing Autonomy and Connection in Relationships. Autonomy, respect for the autonomy of others, and desire for genuine connection within the framework of relationships | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 9 — Circles of Concern and Care. A common image of concentric circles used to understand relationships with other people towards whom we might have affection, care, or moral obligations, in Stoicism, Buddhism, and Utilitarianism | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 10 — Is Lying Ever Good? What is a lie, and what counts as “lying”? Can lying ever be something good, right, required, or even just all right? | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 11 — Technology and the Good Life. What role contemporary technology, particularly mobile technology, the internet, social media, and AI/robotics, can play in “the good life” | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 12 — Protests and Policing. Nationwide protests in 2020 over police misconduct and aggression towards African-American citizens, and the variety of police responses to these | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 13 — The Social Contract and Modern Life. What the social contract is and whether or not it has been broken for many Americans. What ideas from classical social contract theory can be useful for understanding our present situation | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 14 — Freedom, Facticity, and Existentialism. Key ideas and issues within people’s lives illuminated by Existentialist philosophy. Concepts of freedom, facticity, responsibility, anxiety or anguish, and meaning | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 15 — Work, The Future, and Meaning. Issues facing us in terms of the types and availability of work, as further developments in robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, surveillance and logistics take place | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 16 — What Is Stoicism? Main ideas, insights and techniques of Stoicism. Distinguishing genuine Stoicism from “bro-icism” and “lower-case-s stoicism” | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 17 — Pitfalls To Labelling People Good or Bad. Problems and pitfalls that arise when labeling people as entirely good or entirely bad. Arriving at realistic assessment of other people | watch here| listen here
Show Episode 18 — Giving In To Doing The Wrong Thing. Why do we sometimes give in and do the wrong thing instead of the right one? “Akrasia” as a kind of ethical or moral failure that we can call lack or loss of self control, or “weakness of will” | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 19 — Free Speech: From Rights to Responsibility. How people think about freedom of speech, what genuinely responsible exercise of one’s speech or expression would look like, and two different modes of freedom of speech | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 20 — Hitting the 20-Episode Milestone & Answering Listener Questions. What the show is about, and how it got started, challenges producing the show in COVID-19 times, and what we learned by producing the show | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 21 — A Deeper Dive into Negative Visualization. Deeper dive into negative visualization, sometimes called “praemeditatio malorum”, a practice useful for dealing with anxiety, anger, and other emotions, and for developing resilience | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 22 — What We Can Learn From Thought Experiments. what Using philosophical thought experiments to improve our lives or to better understand ourselves. What a thought experiment is, and how it differs from other kinds of fictions, counterfactuals, or “what if”s | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 23 — What Else We Can Learn From Thought Experiments. Continue the conversation from the last show, examining philosophical thought experiments to see what we can learn from them to improve our lives or to better understand ourselves | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 24 — The Season of Stoicism. Practices and insights from Stoic philosophy, and a recent case of a person who wrongly used Stoicism as a pretext for bad behavior in the workplace. Whether taking medication for mental illness is compatible with Stoicism | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 25 — Professional Sports, Fandom, and a Rational Life (with Michael Devito) Can being a committed fan be a part of a rational way of living? Or is a genuine attachment to a professional sports team incompatible with an intentional, virtues-oriented mode of life? | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 26 — Doing Well in a Polarized Society. How people can use resources and insights from philosophy to do well in the sort of polarized society we have been becoming for decades, revealed even more in our recent 2020 election | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 27 — Handling the Holidays in a Pandemic. Why the holidays are a difficult time for many people, but also involve reconnections with family and friends that people look forward to. Why priority ought to be on maintaining the safety of others and oneself | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 28 — The Paradox of Choice. The idea that having a greater range of options, usually looked at as a good thing, often makes people less able to choose and less happy with the choices they make | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 29 — Asymmetric Knowledge Problems. Situations in which some people involved have significantly more knowledge or information than others, who typically ought to be provided with that information | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 30 — AITA Posts as Moral Dilemmas. Discussing an advice forum on Reddit called AITA (Am I The A-Hole), which allows people to post their accounts of moral conflicts they are in or anticipate being in, and then advice and judgements from reader | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 31 — Philosophy As A Way Of Life (with John Sellars). What philosophy as a way of life is and what its main characteristics are, how it differs from standard types of academic philosophy, and the importance of philosophical practices | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 32 — One Year Into The Show! Backstory for the show itself, lessons learned (sometimes the hard way), favorite episodes, why community radio is so important, and plans for the show this coming year | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 33 — Living a Meaningful Life. What living a meaningful life is, challenges, obstacles, and misunderstandings that stand in the way, useful perspectives and practices for keeping, finding, or developing meaning on one’s life | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 34 — Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Who Marcus was, how they got into his work, why the Meditations matter, and some of the useful ideas, insights, and practices Marcus provides us | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 35 — Stoicism, Pain, and Mental Health (with Matt Van Natta) Stoic philosophy, practices, and their applications in life, dealing with acute and chronic pain, mental health and illness, relationships, and other areas of challenges in life | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 36 — Studying Philosophy Outside Academia. Why it is useful for non-academics to study and apply philosophy to their lives. Resources available today for independent and lifelong learners, and where and how to find them | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 37 — Memory and Truth. What memory is and how it works, how our memories work less like a camera simply recording images and more like an artist putting together a complex mosaic | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 38 — The Meaning of Truth. Whether truth can be subjective or objective, moral truths and experiential truths, main theories of what truth is or what makes something true | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 39 — The Topic of Truth Take Two. The correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories of truth. How and where a pragmatic approach can be helpful for how we approach truth in our everyday lives | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 40 — Truth, Society, and the Marketplace of Ideas. The popular metaphor of the marketplace of ideas as a locus in which true opinions and viewpoints are likely to be discovered, and false ones revealed as such | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 41 — AITA Cases Revisited. Real-life moral dilemmas set out in the Reddit AITA forum, judgements on whether anyone in these cases is acting like a jerk or not | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 42 — Stoicism, Concern, and Care. Examining a common misconception of Stoic philosophy, that it involves withdrawing from the world and from other people, in order to insulate oneself from negative experiences and emotions | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 43 — Getting Caught In The Gaze. The phenomenon that gets called “the gaze” or “the look”, starting with Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous analysis of it. The “panopticon” and the “surveillance society”, gender and power-relations in the “male gaze” | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 44 — Stoicon and Gathering. Stoicon and Stoic Week offering opportunities for people to learn more about Stoicism. The Stoic view of human nature as “pro-social”, that is, as made for living and developing in communities with others | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 45 — The Gaze and Identity. Examining the gaze or the look focus to the issue of a person’s identity and how it is generated in relation to other people and to groups| watch here | listen here
Show Episode 46 — Lessons From Stoicon 2021. Lessons learned from planning and hosting Stoicon, held online this year. Organizing and structuring events, and particular concepts or insights from Stoic philosophy | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 47 — Leadership, Lying, and Legacy. The case of quarterback Aaron Rogers, covid vaccination, lying, and deception | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 48 — The Trolley Problem. The history, the meaning, the implications ,and the many permutations of a moral dilemma that has come to be called “the trolley problem” | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 49 — Breaking and Reworking New Years Resolutions. New Years resolutions many of us make, what makes resolutions good or bad ones, and the reasons why. Structuring these sorts of commitments in terms of goals, ends, and means | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 50 — Reviving Plato’s Academy (with Donald Robertson). The revival of a Plato’s Academy in contemporary Greece, public philosophy, how to bring philosophy to ordinary people, stories about ancient philosophers and the places they taught, and reviving an institution gone for hundreds of years | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 51 — Apologies Good and Bad. How and when people ought to make apologies to those they have wronged, insulted, harmed, or otherwise negatively effected. What elements go into making a good, genuine, sincere apology, and how people produce bad and even counterproductive apologies | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 52 — Parasocial Relationships. Interpersonal situations in which one person feels or thinks themself to have a relationship with another person who doesn’t view matters that way, for example “relationships” with a celebrity, actor, political figure, or athlete | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 53 — Back To Considering AITA Cases. More real-life moral dilemmas and mini-drama from the Reddit AITA forum, our judgements on whether anyone in these cases is acting like a jerk or not, and our reasons why| watch here | listen here
Show Episode 54 — When Heroes Let You Down. What to do when our role models or mentors let us down by not being as great, excellent, or morally good as we had thought them to be. Approaches we can take to avoid traps of disappointment, cynicism, or even misanthropy | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 55 — Stoic Practices From Epictetus’ Enchiridion. Philosophical practices, Stoicism, and philosophy as a way of life. Practices: The Dichotomy of Control; Loving Fate (Amor Fati); Depersonalizing Problems; Determining A Person’s Value | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 56 — Personhood & Empathy in Philip K. Dick’s Works. Key themes of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, adapted as film Blade Runner in 1982. Empathy as a central theme, what empathy means, and how empathy works in the story | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 57 — Cynicism as a Philosophy of Life. The Cynics, who advocated living a life focused on virtue, frankness of speech, breaking social conventions, and self-reliance, simplicity, and tranquility | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 58 — Is Rhetoric Good Or Bad? What rhetoric is, a bit about its history and some of its early theoreticians, and its complicated and sometimes conflicted relationship with philosophy | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 59 — Interview with Carneades. Interview with the YouTuber Carenades, discussing his recent book, Are All Lives Equal?: Why Cost Benefit Analysis Values Rich Lives More and How Philosophy Can Fix It | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 60 — Rhetoric and Beyond. Reprising rhetoric, its nature, and its value. Logos, ethos, and pathos as means of persuasion, and what other kinds of appeals we have to be attentive to. Conviction, belief, and certainty, the in-group/out-group distinction, deep canvassing, and street epistemology | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 61 — Why Taking Downtime Is Important. Making space for good forms of downtime, relaxation, unwinding, or play, drawing upon insights from Aristotle, the Stoics, and Rainer Maria Rilke | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 62 — Justice, Fairness, and Anger. Differing views people have about what is just and unjust, what is fair and unfair, and how anger figures in. Drawing on insights from philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and John Rawls | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 63 — Ethical Dimensions of Gambling. Gambling and the institutions that provide or promote gambling, discussing complex ethical dimensions involved, changing laws that have opened gambling up more widely, and negative outcomes and consequences | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 64 — Responding Rationally To Red Flags. What red flags are, less productive responses people choose, and more productive rational responses to red flags | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 65 — Stoic Resources From Seneca’s On Anger. A selection of insights and practices for understanding and controlling anger derived from Seneca’s book on the emotion. Also, how the hosts got drawn into Stoicism and Seneca’s works | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 66 — AI, Large Language Models, & Intelligence. What Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models like ChatGPT are and how they work. Common problems humans run into when working with them, and speculations about where they’re going in the near future | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 67 — Examining Ethical Dimensions of A**holery. Considering a new set of AITA (Am I The Asshole) posts, making moral judgements and explaining them about a range of topics and problems raised by people in the AITA Reddit | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 68 — Cynicism Ancient and Modern. The development and distinctives of the ancient Cynic school of philosophy, including some of the key early members such as Antisthenes, Diogenes, and Crates. How cynicism has changed in meaning in modern times | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 69 — Ethics and Pirating Digital Products. Ethical dimensions and issues involved in the various kinds of digital products that get reproduced, used, and shared without the permission of or payment to the owners or copyright holders. These include software and games, music, film and television, and academic publishing | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 70 — What Is Public Philosophy? Discussing the range of answers that have been provided by a number of people and organizations. How the radio show is an example of public philosophy, commonly brought up definitions, different distinctions and classifications, and finish by discussing a proposal for a pluralist conception of public philosophy | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 71 — Adjunctification of American Higher Education. A side of American colleges and universities many people often don’t know much about. Adjuncts are instructors who are hired only part-time for fixed periods, at significantly lower wages and usually with little to no benefits or job security. Colleges and universities have come to rely heavily upon adjunct labor | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 72 — Stockholders, Stakeholders, and Ethics. The distinction between stockholders and stakeholders, an idea that first gets developed in business ethics and corporate governance. This distinction turns out to have implications and applications going far beyond just the domain of business | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 73 — Misapplications of Informal Fallacies. Common informal fallacies that many people mistakenly diagnose, particularly in internet culture. Those they discuss are: Ad Hominem, Straw Man, Begging The Question, Slippery Slope, Argument From Authority | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 74 — Philosophical Projects and G.W.F. Hegel. Discussing a massive online commentary project Greg recently completed, Half Hour Hegel, consisting of 375 YouTube videos providing a close reading of every paragraph of G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 75 — Interesting Questions About Stoicism. Discussing Stoic philosophy and practice, looking at and answering a number of listener contributed questions about this particular tradition of philosophy as a way of life | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 76 — The Venture Brothers: Nihilism, Conflict, and Hope. How the show’s content draws on and parodies tropes from spy, adventure, super-hero, and super-scientist genres. Some of the key recurring themes from the show: failure, coming to terms with who one is, and the importance of relationships | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 77 — Wading Back Into The Deep End of AITA Posts. Examination of the ethical perspectives and assumptions involved in AITA (Am I The Asshole) Reddit posts | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 78 — Artificial Intelligence Ethical Art. Looking at concerns that AI art generators could put visual artists out of work, or in some ways diminish things that are distinctively human, like craft, skill, and creativity | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 79 — Practical and Ethical Concerns About AI Text Generators. Discussing ethical questions within the world of art and creative work, business, and ordinary person’s lives, bearing on uses of artificial intelligence text generators based on large language models | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 80 — Concerns Over Artificial Intelligences Becoming Persons. Examining one direction applications of AI are headed, towards creating artificial persons or person-like entities which human beings would then have relationships of various sorts with | watch here | listen here
Show Episode 81 —What’s In A Name? Meanings Of Philosophical Schools. Looking at terms that originally came from philosophy which have taken on different, sometimes even opposed meanings in popular culture | watch here | listen here