Reading List Smart books for humans on artificial intelligence September 17, 2024 AI’s involvement in everyday life is ever-evolving, with significant implications for how we work, live, and traverse fields from education to healthcare. As this powerful technology is incorporated into more services and products that we rely upon, here are some books that can help us to embrace human agency and navigate this new digital age. Read More
Working and investing as an ancient Roman August 03, 2024 Encountering the Romans in the marketplace and observing how they made a living allows us to discover how they negotiated the central questions of civilization. Read More
What’s Joe Biden’s role in politics now? July 24, 2024 In April 2020, when Joe Biden had effectively won his party’s nomination to challenge incumbent US President Donald Trump in the coming election and political commentators had begun to fret about both candidates’ ages, I consulted Plutarch of Chaeronea to get his advice about old men engaging in politics. Read More
Ovid’s 38 recommendations for getting over a breakup July 10, 2024 Ever gone through a breakup? You’re not alone. In the year 1 CE, the Roman poet Ovid published a poem titled "Remedies for Love", and it suggests that relationships haven’t changed much in two thousand years. Read More
Liberalism may be the source of your soul June 14, 2024 The most obvious and important realities can sometimes be the hardest to think and talk about. Read More
How to Be Queer June 14, 2024 How to Be Queer is an infatuating collection of these writings about desire, love, and lust between men, between women, and between humans and gods, in lucid and lively new translations. Read More
Read with Pride June 03, 2024 Celebrate Pride throughout the year with this diverse collection of books exploring LGBTQ+ issues and perspectives. Read More
Why we practice magic April 11, 2024 Not many academic philosophers discuss magic, however, five centuries ago, prominent Renaissance philosophers wrote extensive treatises on the topic. Read More
Podcast Listen in: The Weirdness of the World January 22, 2024 Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? Read More
Podcast How to Be Healthy January 22, 2024 The second-century Greek physician Galen—the most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates—is a central figure in Western medicine. Read More
Essay New year, old problems January 10, 2024 The struggle against distraction might seem utterly specific to the twenty-first century, but it was in fact singled out as a crisis more than a millennium and a half ago. Read More
Podcast Chinese Cosmopolitanism January 08, 2024 Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. Read More
Essay Galen and health: Inspiration, caution, and some useful advice January 02, 2024 What use to today’s physicians is the writing of Galen, an educated but pompous and (we now see, in 2023) misguided healer who lived 1,800 years ago? Read More
Reading List Books for finding balance December 26, 2023 Research shows conclusively that overwork can be harmful to employees and humans at large, and yet it can be hard to find public examples of choices that support true balance, or guidance that puts health ahead of hustle. Read More
Essay Aristotle and ecology October 12, 2023 Aristotle urges us to study animals closely for what they reveal about the larger world around us, including ourselves. Read More