Good In Theory: A Political Philosophy podcast

#Society #Podcasting Education #Government #Philosophy #Clif Mark #Politics Theory #History #Politics #Plato #Political Philosophy #Aristotle #History Of Ideas #Political Thought #Theory #Greece

22:08

Host Francesca Amiker sits down with directors Joe and Anthony Russo, producer Angela Russo-Otstot, stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, and more to uncover how family was the key to building the emotional core of The Electric State . From the Russos’ own experiences growing up in a large Italian family to the film’s central relationship between Michelle and her robot brother Kid Cosmo, family relationships both on and off of the set were the key to bringing The Electric State to life. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts . State Secrets: Inside the Making of The Electric State is produced by Netflix and Treefort Media.…

Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

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Good in Theory is a podcast about political philosophy and how it can help us understand the world today. Want to know what's in Plato's Republic or Hobbes's Leviathan but don't want to read them? This is your pod. I explain my favourite books in political theory in enough detail that you’ll feel like you read them yourself. Deep but not heavy. No experience needed.

47 episodes

Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

29 subscribers

updated 2 years ago

Series home•Feed

47 episodes

#Society #Podcasting Education #Government #Philosophy #Clif Mark #Politics Theory #History #Politics #Plato #Political Philosophy #Aristotle #History Of Ideas #Political Thought #Theory #Greece

All episodes

1
46 - Athenian democracy and Plato w/ Graham Culbertson (Everyday Anarchism Podcast) 1:04:13

2 years ago1:04:13

1:04:13

This episode is a crossover collabo with Graham Culbertson of the Everyday Anarchism podcast. Graham asked me over to talk Athenian democracy, Plato, anarchism and how modern meritocratic education sucks. We had a nice time with it and hope you do too. Support the show

1
45 - Humane War feat. Samuel Moyn 1:05:16

3 years ago1:05:16

1:05:16

War tends to bring out the human propensity for atrocity. Nobody likes indiscriminate killing, torture and so on. What to do about it? One response is to avoid war altogether. According to Yale prof Samuel Moyn, that’s what most people wanted after World War II and after Vietnam. But more recently, he’s noticed a shift. Now, politicians, especially in America, are focussing on making more humane. Leaders like Obama say they’ll make war as ‘clean’ as possible by using drone strikes and special forces and minimizing civilian deaths and secret torture programs. That’s all well and good but Moyn sees a danger: making war more humane makes it easier to justify. If war is ‘clean’, why not wage it forever? Samuel Moyn, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War Moyn’s podcast about legal theory Digging a Hole Support the show…

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44 - Samuel Huntington "The Clash of Civilizations?" 36:46

3 years ago36:46

36:46

Samuel J. Huntington’s 1993 “The Clash of Civilizations?” is the most assigned article in American political science. It predicts a worldwide culture war (but not the kind you're thinking of). The book became a massive bestseller, Huntington was all over TV and his theory is still talked about all the time. It made him a darling to the press but reviled by his fellow academics. Think of "Clash" as a dark rejoinder to Fukuyama’s already-pretty-morose “End of History.” Instead of a peaceful but boring post-history, Huntington thinks that the end of the Cold War heralds a new era of worldwide civilizational conflict not only because of the Muslims (but also because of the Muslims). Support the show…

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43 - Tyranny at Work feat. Elizabeth Anderson 54:36

3 years ago54:36

54:36

Americans hate when the state tells them what to do. They’ve got freer speech, freer access to guns and less regulation on business than any other rich country. So why do they let their work bosses walk all over them? American workers have less rights and worse conditions than workers in any other developed country. Employers can fire employees at will, impose arbitrary schedules and prevent them from forming unions. They tell them what to wear, what they can publicly say and even when they can take a shit. Why do freedom-loving Americans stand for this? Elizabeth Anderson is a philosopher at Michigan State University, Ann Arbor. She thinks her country is in the grip of free-market ideology AKA “libertarianism” AKA “classical liberalism.” According to this viewpoint, any interference by the state in the private sector is a violation of freedom. But when the state won’t defend workers’ rights, they allow employers to subject their employees to a tyrannical form of “private government.” Freedom for the boss means servitude for the worker. We talk about the history of this ideology, the consequences for American workers and how the tide may finally be starting to turn. Support the show…

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42 - The New Aristocracy feat. Matthew Stewart 54:19

3 years ago54:19

54:19

Matthew Stewart is a philosophy PhD and author. He’s also a Princeton guy and former management consultant so he knows rich people. His new book, The 9.9% , is about them. Not the super-rich, but the doctors, lawyers and managers that go to good colleges and live in nice neighbourhoods. The “nearly rich and not-famous,” as he puts it. We talk about how these people raise their kids, get their money and block the poorer element from their neighbourhoods. Matthew reckons the 9.9% are a new kind of aristocracy that’s entrenching inequality and making everyone hate parenting. In the end, it’s not really the white collar player he hates; it’s the game of inequality. Though he doesn’t sound very fond of the players either. Support the show…

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41 - Love in the Time of Big Data feat. Alfie Bown 58:22

3 years ago58:22

58:22

Big tech companies tell us they’re our servants, existing to fulfill our desires more cheaply and conveniently than ever. Alfie Bown doesn’t think so. He thinks Deliveroo, Tinder, Pornhub etc. aren’t just giving us what we want, they’re shaping what we want. He reckons our tech overlords are secretly remaking humankind on the level of desire. We chat about Chinese cars that know what you want to eat and why time travellers don’t get horny. Bown is the author of a new book called Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships Support the show…

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40 - Is Liberal Democracy the Best We Can Do? feat. The Morality of Everyday Things 1:14:37

3 years ago1:14:37

1:14:37

Is democracy the worst form of government except for all the others or is it just the worst? This is a crossover with the delightful Morality of Everyday Things podcast. Jake and Ant and I discuss what liberal democracy is, the arguments in its favour, and some big critiques. Episode includes Plato, Nazis and Lizards. Enjoy! Also, go listen to MOET pod ! References Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man Carl Schmitt The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies Support the show…

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39 - The Glorious History and Ugly Present of Rhetoric feat. Rob Goodman 1:13:12

3 years ago1:13:12

1:13:12

Rhetoric is supposed to inspire. Imagine Cicero exhorting the Roman people, Churchill vowing to “fight on the beaches.” Yet, when politicians speak today, it’s almost always boring or obnoxious. Why? Prof. Rob Goodman, author of Words on Fire: Eloquence and its Conditions comes by today to talk about the history of rhetoric, what Cicero knew that we don’t, and the political speech styles of Trudeau (boring), Trump (obnoxious), and X González (pretty great, actually). Support the show…

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38 - GiT Holiday Special with Sep 39:35

3 years ago39:35

39:35

It’s the holidays again! And Theory Elf Sep comes on to help celebrate them. We talk about the past year of working on the pod, where I've been for the past two months, how she makes the episode art and what we have planned for the coming year. We also call Rebecca! Support the show

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37 - Thought Lab 4: The Psychology of Horror 36:35

3 years ago36:35

36:35

Grizzly bears are scary. But what about zombie grizzly bears? What’s makes something horrifying rather than just frightening? Paul has a theory. It turns out that humans have a psychological way of organizing the world that also creates the possibility of getting really creeped-out. It helps explain the horror of the zombie grizzly why the old Dracula was creepier than Twilight and how war propaganda can turn enemies into monsters. References David Livingstone-Smith (philosopher where Paul’s getting his ideas about essentialism and dehumanization from) Credits Paul Sagar Clayton Tapp (intro) David Zikovitz (outro) Sep (art) Support the show…

1
36 - Moral Saints 2: Why Be a Saint? 33:36

3 years ago33:36

33:36

This episode is about Wolf’s “Moral Saints,” Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” and Larissa Macfarquhar’s Strangers Drowning . Susan Wolf thinks that devoting your life to helping others would be a real drag. It’d interfere with playing tennis and reading Tolstoy. True enough but some people might have philosophical and personal reasons to do it anyway. For example, Peter Singer argues that, if you think a child’s life is worth more than your shoes, then you’re morally obliged to give away all your money to charity. Larissa Macfarquhar helps out with the personal reasons. She’s written a book that profiles a whole bunch of real-life do-gooders. And it turns out that even though the saintly life is tough, the saints are getting something out of it. And from their perspective, a life of Tolstoy and tennis might not be a great as Wolf makes it out to be. References Macfarquhar, Strangers Drowning Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” Wolf, “Moral Saints” Support the show…

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35 - Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints” 26:00

3 years ago26:00

26:00

This episode is about Susan Wolf’s 1982 article “Moral Saints.” You’re probably a moral enough person. But have you ever had that nagging feeling that you should be even better? That if you were really good, you would devote your life to the cause, whatever cause that might be? That you should become some kind of moral saint? People who devote their entire lives to being as morally good as possible are held up as objects of admiration, as a kind of saintly standard that the rest of us feel vaguely guilty for not living up to. Susan Wolf says we shouldn’t feel bad about not being saints because no rational person should want to be a saint in the first place. In this episode, I explain her argument for why it makes more sense to be cool like Paul Newman than good like Mother Teresa. Support the show…

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34 - The Esoteric Plato feat. Earl Fontainelle 1:28:10

4 years ago1:28:10

1:28:10

Today I speak with Earl Fontainelle of the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast ( SHWEP ). I don’t understand Plato. Partly this is because he never writes in his own voice and partly it’s because I can’t even always tell when Socrates is joking or even what he’s talking about. The divided line? The Myth of Er? The tyrant being exactly 729 times less happy than the philosopher? These are all weird things in the Republic that are still mysterious to me. Earl suggests that perhaps the reason Plato is so difficult to understand is because he was writing esoterically. Perhaps the dialogues contain secret messages directed to an initiated few and the weird passages I complain about actually contain wisdom of a higher order. Perhaps. In this long and wide-ranging conversation, we talk about why so many readers of Plato believed he wrote esoterically, the secret meanings he may have been hiding, and a lot of the mysterious Plato math that I complained about in the Republic series. References: SHWEP episode on the Esoteric Plato SHWEP episode with Maya Alapin on mathematical structures in Plato’s republic Wiki on the divided line with diagram Maya Alapin The Philosophical Implications of Interpreting Plato through Musical Analysis James Adam The Nuptial Number of Plato Robert Brumbaugh Plato's mathematical imagination; the mathematical passages in the dialogues and their interpretation Francis Macdonald Cornford (trans.) The Republic of Plato Support the show…

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33 - The End of the End of History feat. Philip Cunliffe and George Hoare 1:05:12

4 years ago1:05:12

1:05:12

I talk to Phillip Cunliffe and George Hoare about their new book The End of the End of History . In 1989, Francis Fukuyama predicted a boring eternity of liberal capitalism and for nearly 30 years, it looked like he might be right. We had Clinton and Blair. Globalization and apathy. Kurt Cobain. According to my guests, the end of History wasn’t just about politics, it was a whole vibe. But since 2016, things have started happening that don't quite fit the pattern and the pundits are losing their minds. Do Brexit, Trump, and the new politicization signify the end of the end of History? We chat about how the political zeitgeist has changed in recent years and what that may hold for the future. Phillip Cunliffe and George Hoare are, along with Alex Hochuli, co-hosts of the Aufhebunga bunga podcast and co-authors of The End of the End of History: Politics in theTwenty-First Century. Support the show…

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32 - Fukuyama’s “The End of History?” 27:22

4 years ago27:22