New Books in Psychology
1,038 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★ - 44 ratingsInterviews with Psychologists about their New Books
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Episodes
Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture
May 03, 2023 09:00 - 32 minutesIn Break On Through, Lucas Richert explores Anti-psychiatry, psychedelics, and radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. In this interview Lucas discusses the issues that run through the sixties and seventies and how they're forming debates about mental health today. "Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s g...
James Charney, "Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters' inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness. Based on the highly popular course that Charney taught at Yale University...
Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourDo we know what we really want, and what we are willing to do to get it? What if what we want doesn’t align with who we think we are supposed to be? Dr. Charlotte Fox Weber joins us today to help us think about what we really want. In this episode we consider some of life’s messy questions about opportunity, regret, ego, growth, and power. Today’s book is: Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires (Atria Books,2023), by Dr. Charlotte Fox Weber, which is...
Alan Lightman, "The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science" (Pantheon, 2023)
April 26, 2023 08:00 - 30 minutesAre science and spirituality incompatible? From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to that question... Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spir...
Alan Lightman, "The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science" (Pantheon, 2023)
April 26, 2023 08:00 - 30 minutesAre science and spirituality incompatible? From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to that question... Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spir...
Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem
April 25, 2023 19:36 - 14 minutesA discussion with the the author of Free Will (from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) and Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem, Mark Balaguer, in which we discuss the scientific arguments for and against the possibility of free will. In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the cou...
Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston, "The Transgender Studies Reader Remix" (Routledge, 2022)
April 24, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesHello, this is Eric LeMay, a host on the New Books Network. Today I interview Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston about The Transgender Studies Reader Remix (Routledge, 2023). This is a book that’s as big as it is rich. It brings together 50 previously published articles that track both the history and the current directions in the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies. The reader shows the conversations taking place not only within transgender studies but also between transge...
Tom Hutton, "Hitler's Maladies and Their Impact on World War II" (Texas Tech UP, 2023)
April 23, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesToward the end of World War II, Hitler's many health complications became even more pronounced, making an evil man yet more erratic and dangerous. While the subject of Hitler's health has been catalogued previously, never has it been done so this thoroughly or with this level of up-to-date medical expertise. Tom Hutton's Hitler's Maladies and Their Impact on World War II (Texas Tech UP, 2023) draws from a lifetime of medical research and clinical experience to understand how the dictator's pa...
M. Johnson and T. Misiaszek, "Branding That Means Business: How to Build Enduring Bonds Between Brands, Consumers & Markets" (PublicAffairs, 2022)
April 20, 2023 08:00 - 29 minutesToday I talked to Matt Johnson about his book (co-authored with Tessa Misiaszek) Branding That Means Business: How to Build Enduring Bonds Between Brands, Consumers & Markets (PublicAffairs, 2022) Too often companies look down the road, trying to future-proof their business when it fact they should be clueing-in on the fundamentals of human nature to stay aligned with the eternal verities of their consumers. So argues Matt Johnson, pointing out for instance our desire to belong (leveraged by ...
How Attention Works: Finding Your Way in a World Full of Distraction
April 18, 2023 08:00 - 14 minutesStefan Van der Stigchel discusses how we filter out what is irrelevant so we can focus on what we need to know. We are surrounded by a world rich with visual information, but we pay attention to very little of it, filtering out what is irrelevant so we can focus on what we think we need to know. Advertisers, web designers, and other "attention architects" try hard to get our attention, promoting products with videos on huge outdoor screens, adding flashing banners to websites, and developing ...
Susan Burch, "Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and Beyond Institutions" (UNC Press, 2021)
April 14, 2023 08:00 - 24 minutesBetween 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of inst...
William J. Doherty, "The Ethical Lives of Clients: Transcending Self-Interest in Psychotherapy" (APA, 2021)
April 12, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourClients often seek therapists’ input for dealing with ethical dilemmas in their lives, but there is little guidance for therapists in how to do this. The Ethical Lives of Clients: Transcending Self-Interest in Psychotherapy (APA, 2021) shows therapists how to serve as ethical consultants who help clients balance their personal needs with their sense of responsibility to others. Dr. Bill Doherty blends decades of clinical experience with personal and philosophical insights to frame the skills ...
Dimitris Xygalatas, "Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)
April 10, 2023 08:00 - 38 minutesRitual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. And yet, though rituals exist in ev...
Tessa West, "Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them" (Portfolio, 2022)
April 06, 2023 08:00 - 23 minutesToday I talked to Tessa West about her book Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them (Portfolio, 2022). This conversation explores the seven types of jerks that West has diagnosed: the kiss-up / kiss downer, the credit stealer, the bulldozer, the free rider, the micromanager, the neglectful (boss) and the gaslighter. The last type is, in West’s words, almost “clinically” an evil spirit, even more cleaver and intent on doing harm than the kiss up / kick downer, both of whom are...
Moheb Costandi, "Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness" (MIT Press, 2022)
April 03, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesHow the way we perceive our bodies plays a critical role in the way we perceive ourselves: stories of phantom limbs, rubber hands, anorexia, and other phenomena. The body is central to our sense of identity. It can be a canvas for self-expression, decorated with clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, tattoos, and piercings. But the body is more than that. Bodily awareness, says scientist-writer Moheb Costandi, is key to self-consciousness. In Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press...
The Good Enough Life
March 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourToday’s book is: The Good-Enough Life (Princeton UP, 2022) by Avram Alpert. We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible—a good-enough life for all. Dr. Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread politi...
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, "The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games" (U California Press, 2023)
March 28, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesThe Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023) creatively examines the parallels between spiritual and digital activities to explore the roles that symbolic second selves—avatars—can play in our lives. The use of avatars can allow for what anthropologists call ecstasy, from the Greek ekstasis, meaning "standing outside oneself." The archaic techniques of promoting spiritual ecstasy, which remain central to religious healing trad...
Tracy Livecchi and Liza Morton, "Healing Hearts and Minds: A Holistic Approach to Coping Well with Congenital Heart Disease" (Oxford UP, 2023)
March 26, 2023 08:00 - 26 minutesCongenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most commonly diagnosed birth abnormality in the US. With great advances in surgery and medicine, however, survival rates have improved by 75% since the 1940s. Welcome news, of course, as only a few decades ago these birth defects were considered a death sentence, but as with any chronic condition, survival does not mean the issue is cured. With better medical care, babies born today with CHD have a good chance of surviving, but throughout their entire li...
David J. Halperin, "Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO" (Stanford UP, 2020)
March 24, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesIn his book Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO (Stanford University Press, 2020), David J. Halperin explores the phenomena of UFO's through a psychological lense. UFOs became part of our cultural landscape in 1947, and they've been with us ever since. Debunked innumerable times, they refuse to go away. Made the subject of great expectations by their believers, they invariably disappoint. They've been called a myth, both in disparagement and, more properly, in appreciation of their po...
Todd McGowan, "Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets" (Columbia UP, 2016)
March 23, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIf you have ever gotten excited over buying a new object only to feel let down once you acquire it, then today’s discussion will be relevant to you. My guest is Todd McGowan, author of the book Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (2016, Columbia University Press). We discuss his critique of capitalism as a system that encourages us to forever chase satisfactions that never come. And we explore his suggestion that true satisfaction lies in the wanting, not the acquiring. It...
Tobias Tanton, "Corporeal Theology: The Nature of Theological Understanding in Light of Embodied Cognition" (Oxford UP, 2023)
March 22, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesAppropriating insights from empirical findings and theoretical constructs of 'embodied cognition', Corporeal Theology: The Nature of Theological Understanding in Light of Embodied Cognition (Oxford UP, 2023) explores how theological understanding is accommodated to the bodily nature of human cognition. The principle of divine accommodation provides a theological framework for considering the human cognitive capacities that are accommodated by theological concepts and ecclesial practices. A ri...
The Future of Genes and Equality: A Discussion with Kathryn Paige Harden
March 22, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesIf your genes make you better suited to succeed, is that fair? And if not, can anything be done about it? Kathryn Paige Harden – professor psychology at University of Texas in Austin – tells Owen Bennett Jones that we should acknowledge the difference in our genetic make ups and then set about thinking about how to make a fairer society in the light of this differences. Harden is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton UP, 2021). Owen Bennett-Jones i...
Nadia Abu El-Haj, "Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America" (Verso, 2022)
March 21, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourOne of the most recognizable tropes in American society in the past few decades is the scarred war veteran, returning from foreign lands with wounds both visible and invisible. His experiences are incomprehensible to those who’ve not served, but we owe him everything, and it is our duty as American citizens to honor him with nonjudgmental empathy so that he might eventually heal and reintegrate into the national community. But this narrative, this response to combat is neither natural or the ...
Marissa A. Harrison, "Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
March 20, 2023 08:00 - 35 minutesYou've heard of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. But have you heard of Amy Archer-Gilligan? Or Belle Gunness? Or Nannie Doss? Women have committed some of the most disturbing serial killings ever seen in the United States. Yet scientific inquiry, criminal profiling, and public interest have focused more on their better-known male counterparts. As a result, female serial killers have been misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated. In this riveting account, Dr. Marissa A. Harrison draws on or...
Jessica Wilson, "It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies" (Hachette Go, 2023)
March 17, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesIn It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies (Hachette Go, 2023) eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson challenges us to rethink what having a "good" body means in contemporary society. By centering the bodies of Black women in her cultural discussions of body image, food, health, and wellness, Wilson argues that we can interrogate white supremacy's hold on us and reimagine the ways we think about, discuss, and tend to our bodies. A narrative that s...
Nilofer Kaul, "Plato's Ghost: Liminality and Psychoanalysis" (Phoenix Publishing House, 2021)
March 16, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesPsychoanalytic encounters are filled with the unknowability of two unconscious minds meeting. Here one may forge a link that enables the process of meaning-making, or else it can become the space for destruction, perversion, evacuation, regression, and stasis. The area that lies between the mind of the analyst and that of the analysand is thus the liminal area of psychoanalysis - of growth, change, turbulence, as well as that of impasse, bastion, and failure. This latter could be what Bion me...
Tzachi Slonim, ed., "Richard M. Billow's Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process" (Routledge, 2021)
March 13, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesOn this episode, J.J. Mull speaks with Richard Billow and Tzachi Slonim about Richard M. Billow’s Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process: Changing Our Minds (Routledge, 2021). This volume presents Billow’s unique contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalytic group therapy, along with introductions and explications by Slonim, the volume’s editor. Weaving together various theoretical traditions and thinkers (Bion, Laplanche, the relational school, etc.), Billow extend...
Matthew Ratcliffe, "Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience" (MIT Press, 2022)
March 10, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe grief we feel when someone close to us dies is characterized by a complex and profound experience of loss. But what is this experience? In Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience (MIT Press, 2022), Matthew Ratcliffe articulates a common structure to grief experiences even while emphasizing that each person’s experience is highly individual. In his account, we live in experiential worlds structured by valued possibilities and anticipations that are integral to our identities as perso...
Ayelet Fishbach, "Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)
March 09, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutesToday I talked to Ayelet Fishbach about her book Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) The key to motivating yourself is to change your circumstances. You can do so by the goals you set, how you accept feedback in pursuing them, the flexibility you show in making progress, and how well you leverage social support. Each of those four aspects has its own pitfalls, and today’s interview explores in depth a number of challenges. To harness the ...
H. Yumi Kim, "Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan" (Oxford UP, 2022)
March 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourTo fend off American and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, Japan strove to strengthen itself by drawing on the most updated ideas and practices from around the world. By the 1880s, this included the introduction of Western-derived psychiatry and its ideas about mental illness. The first Japanese psychiatrists claimed that mental illnesses required medical treatment in specialized institutions rather than confinement at home, as had been common practice. Yet the state implemented...
Jamie Kreiner, "The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction" (Liveright, 2023)
March 08, 2023 09:00 - 45 minutesThe Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction (Liveright, 2023) by Dr. Jamie Kreiner presents a revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge—and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later. Although we think of early monks as master concentrators, a life of mindfulness did not, in fact, come to them easily. Delving into the experiences of early Christian monks living in the Middle East, around ...
Measure for Measure Episode 6: IQ
March 07, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutesThe Intelligence Quotient is a measure of intelligence that has life-or-death consequences. Should we trust it? GUEST Alan Gouddis is a Partner with Sherman & Sterling. He was recognized by The Legal 500 as a “Leading Lawyer” in M&A Litigation Defense in 2021. This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
Choice Architecture
March 07, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutesIn this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of ...
Carl H. Shubs, "Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality" (Routledge, 2020)
March 04, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourTraditionally, trauma has been defined as negatively impacting external events, with resulting damage. This book puts forth an entirely different thesis: trauma is universal, occurring under even the best of circumstances and unavoidably sculpting the very building blocks of character structure. In Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality (Routledge, 2020), Dr. Carl Shubs depathologizes the...
Thomas Kelly, "Bias: A Philosophical Study" (Oxford UP, 2023)
March 01, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe concept of bias is familiar enough, partly because it is deployed frequently and in different contexts. For example, we talk about biased jurors, biased procedures, biased laws, biased decisions, and biased people. But we also talk about bias as a feature of certain frames of mind, habits, dispositions, and mental processes. In most of these contexts, bias is seen as a kind of failing or a bad-making feature. Attributions of bias are hence often accusatory, or at least a matter of negativ...
Contemplative, Existential Psychotherapy and Dzogchen
February 28, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourKen Bradford, Ph.D., has been a practitioner in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions since 1975, and engaged in introducing meditative sensibilities and nondual wisdom streams into the experience-near practice of psychotherapy since 1988. Formerly, he was in private psychotherapy practice for 25 years, an Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University and CIIS, Co-Director of Maitri Psychotherapy Institute, and a teaching associate with Jim Bugental. Bradford is a clinical psycholog...
Making Meaning Episode 24: The Shining Surface
February 27, 2023 09:00 - 6 minutesIt's common to equate meaning with depth, but the surface of things, with its wild and rapturous beauty, can coax us into life. GUEST Stephanie Paulsell is the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies in the Harvard Divinity School and served as the Interim Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church from 2019 to 2020. An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she is the author of Religion Around Virginia Woolf, (2019), editor (with David Carr...
Adrian Bejan, "Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies" (World Scientific, 2022)
February 26, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutesPoets and philosophers are fascinated by time and beauty. They are two of our most visceral perceptions. In Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies (World Scientific, 2022), Adrian Bejan — a physicist — explains the scientific basis for the perception of time (“mind time”) and beauty. His is an evolutionary argument for understanding both perceptions, based on visual processing and change. To observe our immediate surroundings and to understand them faster is highly advantageous...
Making Meaning Episode 23: Limits and Love
February 26, 2023 09:00 - 10 minutesWe are finite creatures who struggle to accept our finitude. But if we can learn to embrace our limits, we will find that our relations with one another, the created world, and God allow us to experience a love so exquisite, it need not last forever. Guest: Matthew Ichihashi Potts is Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. He studies the thought and practice of Christian communities through attention to diverse literary and theol...
Making Meaning Episode 22: Head and Heart
February 25, 2023 09:00 - 22 minutesMeaning paradoxically has to be both made and discovered, an inescapable entanglement of the singular and the universal. And though the fruit of such wrestling may not be uncomplicated happiness, it often leads to a deeper awareness of the sweetness of existence, the holiness of an hour. Guest: Zohar Atkins is the Founder of Etz Hasadeh, a Center for Existential Torah. He is a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He holds a DPhil in Theology from Oxford, where he was a Rh...
Rick Repetti, "Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation" (Routledge, 2022)
February 23, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutesRick Repetti's Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (Routledge, 2022) provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the state of the field of the philosophy of meditation and engages primarily in the philosophical assessment of the merits of meditation practices. This Handbook unites novel and original scholarship from 28 leading Asian and Western philosophers, scientists, theologians, and other scholars on the philosophical assessment of meditation. It critically assesses t...
Jerry Pannone, "Survive: Why We Do What We Do" (John Hunt, 2022)
February 23, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutesToday I talked to Jerry Pannone about his new book Survive: Why We Do What We Do (John Hunt, 2022) Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model is famous, but more so the 5-layer model than the 8-layer model he eventually arrived at. Why the later addition of knowledge and understanding, aesthetics and transcendence as needs in Maslow’s model? The answer is that balanced out the 4 of the 5 original needs more focused on overcoming deficiencies, with four needs focused on personal growth. Indeed,...
Making Meaning Episode 20: Love, Work, and Play
February 23, 2023 09:00 - 10 minutesThough life’s ultimate meaning may be elusive, the goods of love, work and play are so deeply rewarding that for most people they are sufficient for creating a happy life. And with new advances in neuroscience, we increasingly understand why that is at a molecular level. Guest: Paul Thagard is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author of many interdisciplinary books. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, where he founded and directed the Cog...
Making Meaning Episode 19: Mysteries and Metaphors
February 22, 2023 09:00 - 12 minutesThere is a deep mystery to the existence of the universe. And although a final answer to the question of meaning is not possible, it is our highest responsibility and greatest hope to seek one. Guest: Francis J. Ambrosio is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University. Dr. Ambrosio’s teaching interests are in the areas of Plato, Dante, Existentialism, and Postmodernism. Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived ...
Making Meaning Episode 18: Unfolding Narratives
February 21, 2023 09:00 - 12 minutesMeaning is less an objective thing to be discovered than a life-project, a narrative that unfolds over time. This doesn’t mean that every detail of our life fits a perfectly coherent plot, but rather we forge a beautiful expression of our deepest values. Guest: Todd May is Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University and the author of A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe. Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how lif...
Making Meaning Episode 17: Remaking the World
February 20, 2023 09:00 - 11 minutesWe inherit a world that is already made, full of stories and structures and significance. But all of us have the capacity to remake the world and the meanings available in it. Guest: Simon Critchley is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His work engages in many areas: continental philosophy, philosophy and literature, psychoanalysis, ethics, and political theory, among others. His most recent books include The Problem with Levinas and ABC of Impossi...
Jonathan Herring, "The Right to Be Protected from Committing Suicide" (Hart Publishing, 2022)
February 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourProfessor Jonathan Herring makes an argument that suicidal people have a right to be protected from committing suicide, and that the state should be under a duty to take reasonable steps to protect them from killing themselves. In The Right to Be Protected from Committing Suicide (Hart, 2022) Herring takes a deep dive into ideas surrounding autonomy and capacity, to draw out the tensions between these concepts and the legal and ethical debates which provide support for non-interventionist arg...
Making Meaning Episode 16: Passionate Engagement
February 19, 2023 09:00 - 13 minutesMeaning is more than pleasure or even happiness—it is an intense and fulfilling engagement in projects and relationships that bring forth the best within us and disclose mysterious, beautiful worlds of love. Guest: Susan R. Wolf is the Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Wolf’s interests range widely over moral psychology, value theory, and normative ethics. Her research has focused especially on the relation betwe...
Making Meaning Episode 15: Subjectivity and Significance
February 18, 2023 09:00 - 16 minutesWe have a tendency to view our lives as meaningful only if we are involved in heroic acts of service, creativity, or achievement. But this is misguided. Even when we are ordinary, we are all, as living creatures, capable of an intense engagement with the world that infuses life with significance. Guest: Michael Hauskeller is the head of philosophy department at the University of Liverpool. He is a generalist, trying to come to terms with this "deeply puzzling world" (to borrow an expression ...
Making Meaning Episode 14: The Challenge of Choice
February 17, 2023 09:00 - 11 minutesThe vast range of choices we can make about our lives is one of the great blessings of modernity. But that very freedom makes it hard to know what to believe or where we belong. Even more difficult is that capitalism is constantly shaping our values and perceptions towards its own ethos. Perhaps there is a way out through making our worlds smaller. Guest: Paul Froese is a Professor of Sociology at Baylor University and the Director of the Baylor Religion Surveys. He is the author of three bo...