PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: With the publication of Essays: The Philosophy Crush Podcast, my intention in releasing this book was to bring this podcast project to a conclusion. The book contains all the podcast episodes with several additional […]
Category: Blog
Belief and temperament
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: Over a century ago, the American philosopher and psychologist William James argued in his book Pragmatism that what he called “the present dilemma in philosophy” is that philosophers may not be as objective as they […]
Deschooling?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: Half a century ago, Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich published a little book called Deschooling Society. Illich’s principal aim in that book was to critique existing educational institutions from the elementary school to the […]
What kills a democracy?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: We make a very large mistake when we imagine that western-style democracy is destined to remain ascendant forever. Authoritarianism is the proverbial wolf at the door in every democratic society, and its constant […]
The banality of evil
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: The second chapter of Leo Tolstoy’s short story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” begins with the following sentence: “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” I […]
Judging historical figures
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: In the city where I live, a statue of John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, has been removed from its pedestal in a public park and placed in an undisclosed location for […]
How do you become a philosopher?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: It’s customary for people in my profession to answer this question in the following way: you become a philosopher by earning usually three degrees in philosophy from the best universities you can get into and for which you can […]
Cancel culture and academic freedom
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: I can only hope that cancel culture is a trend that, like many similar phenomena, is here today and will be gone tomorrow, although I’m not about to offer a prediction about this. When a pendulum […]
What makes innovation possible?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: We all value innovation, or at least we say we do. A question I seldom see answered or even asked, however, is what makes innovation possible? The question, what makes something possible, is […]
The search for meaning
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: One of the questions that first attracted me to philosophy when I was a teenager is the perennial problem of the meaning of life. The search for meaning drove me to read widely […]
Philosophy Crush 