Mind & Desire

Today is the two-year anniversary of the death of an animal companion who was very close to me. She was a cat, and her name was Sassy, but like many beloved animals she wound up with a whole bunch of other names instead. But this isn't really about that! What I wanted to talk about were some reflections from Seneca, the great Stoic philosopher, about grieving and memory and friendship.And this may seem a little incongruous to some, the fact that I'm going to use a cat as a prime example here,

In this second Episode of the Mind & Desire podcast, I kick things off by looking at one of the places philosophy can begin its activity. Epictetus the Stoic philosopher in his Discourses book 2, chapter 11, tells us two things about the beginning of philosophy."The beginning of philosophy with those who take it up as they should, and enter in, as it were, by the gate, is a consciousness of a man's own weakness and impotence with reference to the things of real consequence in life.""Behold the

This is the very first episode of a new podcast that I’m starting. I’ve chose the title Mind & Desire for reasons discussed in the episode. This podcast will in general air first for paid subscribers of this Substack, and then episodes will become available to all readers later on down the like. That isn’t the case for this first episode, though, since I’d like everyone to know what I’m up to with it! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to