Podcasts for June 16th

Here are the podcasts that I have been able to listen to this week. They give examples of applying objectivist, rational principles to issues of every day life.

Philosophy in Action – Each week Dr. Diana Hsieh and Greg Perkins spend an hour going in depth on applying rational principles to 2 or 3 (rarely 4) questions from every day life. This week the questions were:

  • Stand your ground laws
  • Advice for new objectivists – this is one was really interesting for me today and I wish I had been able to listen to a couple years ago when I was first learning. The take home that stood out for me was, “The purpose of the philosophy is to make your life better, to make you the best version of yourself you can be, not to use it as a weapon to beat other people with.”
  • Rapid fire questions – some weeks Diana is able to give more or less off the cuff answers to questions without the usual in depth preparation she does for the main questions.

Voices for Reason – This is a podcast from the Ayn Rand Institute and this week Tom Bowden talks with Edwin Rockefeller on the later’s book Religion of Anti-trust. Rockefeller was a long time anti-trust lawyer who came to see that, largely, those who support anti-trust are those who believe in the Standard Oil myth (i.e., a coercive monopoly that harmed consumers and competition, which was not the case). From the ARI description:

Foremost among the antitrust religion’s credos is the “Standard Oil legend,” a set of stories about monopolistic behavior that history shows never happened.

Sadly, no episode has been posted on peikoff.com as yet. If one is added later on, I will update the post.

I am still reading Harry Binswanger’s new book How We Know, which I am finding extremely interesting. I am up to the chapter 4, Higher Level Concepts, having just gotten to the section on concepts of characteristics. I am way behind on listening to the Objectivism Seminar podcasts covering this book. To give an idea of to what extent they “chew” the issues presented in the book, they are up to 8 roughly 1 hour sessions covering the preface and the first chapter, which deals with metaphysics.