There are jobs, and then there are careers. What’s the difference? At ten, perhaps you should have neither. Hear Michael Silverblatt on “Bookworm.” Read John McWhorter’s, “Why Grown-Ups Keep Talking Like Little Kids.” Listen to “Company Man” by James Taylor on YouTube.
Episode 22 - Why Study Philosophy?
Open Culture has made available 135 free philosophy eBooks.
Episode 21 - Addiction, Death, and Meditation
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We are all addicted to pop culture, and maybe pop culture gives us a series of little deaths that temporarily occupy consciousness so that we have less attention available for the things that we claim to believe would make our lives more meaningful. Hear Jamie Cullum’s, “All At Sea,” written by, yes, Jamie Cullum. Hear power pop music by Larry May, or listen to him on YouTube. To be alive is to be dying; to be dying is to be alive; and to recognize this is to be human. By all means, enjoy your ingestments.
Episode 20 - Nationalism: A Fallacy?
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What is a fallacy, and is nationalism one of them? With a lot of help from Yuval Noah Harari, MoFo addresses this issue. MoFo’s uncle Linus R. Fike addressed the topic in a book that was sitting on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s desk at the time of his passing. Progress, not perfection . . . Kudos to a student who prompted the revisitation!
Episode 19 - Social Science: Historicism, Social Engineering, and the Case of Edward Bernays
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Who was right? Plato, Aristotle, neither, or both? Tough questions deserving a lifetime of study, or so thinks MoFo. What did Karl Popper think? (Hint: It wasn’t Plato!) Once Popper distinguishes historicism from social engineering as two strains within social thought, the strange case of Edward Bernays may make your skin crawl. As Bernays may have intended it! Listen in . . .
Episode 18 - Discursive Thinking, Meditation, and Contemplation
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MoFo goes whack-a-mole as thoughts wax irrepressible in this whacky episode.
Episode 17 - The Declaration of Independence and the "Founding Fathers" Who Did Not Sign It
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Be it known to all that MoFo has indeed read the Declaration of Independence, and that he has noted that four of the so-called “Founding Fathers” did not sign the Declaration of Independence by reason of the exculpatory conditions articulated herein.
Episode 16 - Time: Part 2 (Digiphrenia)
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What is “digiphrenia”? The metaphors we use to describe time, do more than distort a genuine understanding of time itself. They also shape the lives we live. Because we are living through the advent of the digital age, our awareness of these transformations in our relationship to time requires us to take a step back. MoFo reads from “Digiphrenia,” a section of Douglas Rushkoff’s book, Present Shock. Mofo also reads from his book, Unheard Tick of Time.
Episode 15 - Time: Part 1
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What is time? MoFo knows until you ask him. So, we listen to Augustine, Lakoff & Johnson, and Douglas Rushkoff of the Team Human Podcast write about it instead. “Seeing Double” by Larry May and Larry Fike.
Episode 14 - Human Flourishing: Plato and Aristotle
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Episode 13 - "A Few Things About Raymond Carver's Influence"
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MoFo reads Appendix 1 of Piker, weaving together literary observations on the poetry and short stories of 20th Century American author Raymond Carver; stories from MoFo’s own childhood; and his relationship with Carver’s intimates. Music: “Yellow Bird” by Larry May and Larry Fike.
Episode 12 - MoFo as a Foster Youth, Part 2 of 2
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MoFo spends his teen years in a stable foster home in Bell Gardens and then Downey, California, until the pasta hits the wall and he is declared an emancipated minor by the State of California after a stint at Prison Ministries in Sacramento, California.
Episode 11 - MoFo as a Foster Youth, Part 1of 2
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Larry begins discussing his life as a foster child. This episode focuses on an overtly in-it-for-the-money Eagle Rock family, and then describes his introduction to his second official foster home, where life came to make a modicum of sense - but only a modicum. The saga will continue in Part 2, Episode 12. And, of course, there’s a little further exploration of consciousness near the outset.
Episode 10 - Consciousness, Robotics, Analyticity, Social Media, Honesty, and Kindness
MoFo (Larry Fike) has a speed-through consideration of the Hard Problem of Consciousness, robotics, the uses of analyticity and why many words is not always a bad thing, the nature of Social Media today, the apparent dilemmas presented by honesty and kindness, and the complexity and importance of intermingling our conscious contents. Enjoy!
Episode 9 - Taking Notes, Listening to Lectures, and Other Unpopular Habits
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Descartes (1596-1650) is most famous for saying, “I think, therefore I am.” But he also had four “rules” for the right conduct of human understanding and progress, and these rules constituted his method. Guess what his fourth rule was? Take notes! Find out why. And then recommend this podcast to one friend who suffers from insomnia, or who lays claim to boredom.
Episode 8 - The Misery of Tyrants: Plato's Republic, Book IX
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“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” -Eleanor Roosevelt. MoFo allows Plato to fill his mental content and speak to us today about the psychological origins of tyranny. Written in 380 BCE, you the listener can judge the relevance of its psychological pronouncements for the twenty-first century.
Episode 7 - Bibliomania: For the Love of Books
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Middlemarch author George Eliot’s actual name was Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880). Here is MoFo’s Booklist.
Episode 6 - Human Beings as Value-Laden Spirits
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We are spiritual beings, but what is a spirit? Nothing ethereal, but rather, embodied - at least for now, and in the form of a human being. Beliefs, opinions, perceptions: these are all modes of conscious experience, but what about moods? They are, too. Allen Ginsberg recommends that you, “notice what you’re thinking.” MoFo did this while looking at a drainage spout at age 10, and again while out for a run back in 1998. What’s it like to regard yourself as “a spiritual being having a human experience”? For a dose of existential angst, check out Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery.”
Episode 5 - Logos, Logocentrism, and 'Marriage'
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‘Logos’ can mean: story, explanation, narrative, account, argument, reason, word (or, Word) . . . and the list goes on. Heraclitus said we breathe the Logos in and out, but fail to recognize its significance. The concept of Logos is deeply entrenched in at least Western thought, and from it we get logic, logo, biology, psychology, geology, sociology . . . and that list continues as well. MoFo thinks we have an uneasy relationship with the distinct roles played by the mind and the language we use to express it: we are logocentric. What’s happened in recent decades around the word ‘marriage’ illustrates that this blind spot in our thinking is not neatly divided along political lines - which is good - but due instead to the vestiges of magical thinking - which ain’t so good.
Episode 4 - Opinions, Beliefs, and Knowledge: A Nested Hierarchy
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“Is that just your opinion, or is it a fact?” Such confusion! Let’s try to clear this mess up once and for all, even if it takes twenty nuanced episodes. Join MoFo for the second in a series of reflections that have as their end the social goods of cooperation, coordination, human understanding and eventual flourishing!