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PODCAST

Socratic State of Mind Podcast

Exploring the wisdom of history"s greatest men and women to help us live more productive, tranquil, and moral lives. andrewperlot.substack.com

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

10:44

The Barbarian Invasion Behind Your Statistics

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2026/01/22

See the original article: https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewperlot/p/alaric-called-your-statistics-are?r=1xulhu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Get full access to Socratic State of Mind at andrewperlot.substack.com/subscribe

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7:05

The Stoic Art of Deafness

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2026/01/08

See original article. Get full access to Socratic State of Mind at andrewperlot.substack.com/subscribe

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8:33

Thoughts For A Great 2026, Part 1

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2026/01/01

Original Article. Get full access to Socratic State of Mind at andrewperlot.substack.com/subscribe

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9:26

Leo Strauss's Intellectual Freedom Tool

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/12/22

Original article. Get full access to Socratic State of Mind at andrewperlot.substack.com/subscribe

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8:30

Leo Strauss: The Man Academics Love to Hate

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/12/15

Original article: https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewperlot/p/leo-strausss-despicable-project?r=1xulhu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Get full access to Socratic State of Mind at andrewperlot.substack.com/subscribe

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6:12

Stoics on the Trolley Tracks

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/12/04

You’ve agreed to put on mental handcuffs and won’t be thinking straight. That’s what you should conclude, first and foremost, if you choose to grapple with philosophy’s famous “Trolley Problem.”If you’re unfamiliar, it goes like this:The Setup: A runaway trolley is about to kill five people lying on its track. You can pull a lever to divert it onto another track, where one person will be killed instead.The Question: Is it better to take an action that will kill one person in order to save five, or

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9:23

Do Good Philosophers Need to Be A******s?

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/11/13

Shall I be an a*****e?I could bring this question to every relationship; an entire branch of my philosophy can be built around it. I don’t mean “should I be intentionally offensive,” but rather, “should I ask virtuous questions that antagonize the masses, or bow to the foolishness that reigns?”Bring a truth-seeking, Socratic-style approach to any encounter and Eris, goddess of discord, appears, dropping her golden apples. Being polite while dragging bags of uncomfortable questions into a room isn’t

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10:12

Horse Stance as Philosophy Practice

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/11/10

You know what you should do. Horse stance can help. I’m not talking about your boss’s orders or meeting society’s expectations. You can summit those heights without horse stance. They offer carrots, sticks, and cheerleaders aplenty; godspeed. I’m talking about that other category of shoulds. The ones that feel more important and less lucrative and practical. The ones we can’t muster enough willpower for. Some shoulds are worthless psyops we’ve been duped into, some are unachievable, and some are

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9:47

The Oracle in Our Books

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/10/30

We’re locked in.Our habitual thoughts wear on the brain like wheels on a dirt road, creating hard-to-escape ruts we might feel doomed to follow. Sometimes we’re stuck traversing these rutted tracks year after year, and when emergencies or uncertainties arise, we’re ill-equipped to escape them and find solutions. The feeling is ancient, and our progenitors created a variety of solutions. When beset by personal or geopolitical troubles that seemed inescapable with their normal cognitive toolboxes, the

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12:54

How to Shoot at Better Targets

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/10/27

I draw my bow and let the arrow fly. Does it strike the target? Does it split my last arrow down the middle, quivering amid concentric circles? Does the audience gasp and break into applause?Not the right questions. They will, in fact, drive us to madness and ruin.There’s often an audience in the stands, but it would be better if the stadium were deserted or if the crowd roared in inscrutable silence. Better if bullseyes earned no prizes. Better if targets existed for calibrating future efforts

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10:30

When They Come For Our Unintuitive Ideas

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/10/23

The Enlightenment is limping across the world stage. Classical liberalism — if not the “liberalism” invective hurled across the halls of Congress like a curse — appears to be on its back foot. Some cheer this reversal while others bemoan the downfall of something great.But for a moment, let’s put aside the rightness or wrongness of the Enlightenment’s “fixes,” to mankind’s ancient problems and ask — do they seem intuitively correct?You’d think they would after all this time. Some — like natural law

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8:32

Why Stoics Are Cool With Your Orgasms

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/10/13

In a recent subscriber chat I was asked how I deal with the Stoics’ sex-negative approach to life. Which confused me, because I wouldn’t characterize Stoics as disliking sex or finding it morally problematic. Or at least they don’t find it more problematic than our drives for food, resource accrual, prestige, and pain avoidance, which also have the potential to lead to bad outcomes. So I’m going to expand on my reply here, but first, we need to cover some basics:* Stoicism is not a religion (though

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5:51

You're Probably Not Stuck If You're Doing This

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/10/06

“Heraclitus says somewhere that ‘all things move and nothing stays,’ and likening beings to the flow of a river, says, ‘you can not step in the same river twice.’” — Plato, Cratylus, 402aWe want to be better — it’s only natural. Moving closer to our values and learning to live them out has many benefits, and this transformation is at the heart of good philosophy. People start down the path and quickly observe their practice and inner discourse improving them in ways obvious and invisible.First

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5:26

Philosophy's Joyful Secret Weapon

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/29

Nothing can replace the right inner discourse. Genius will not; the world is full of tortured geniuses encased in hells of their own making. Wealth will not; those who don’t squander their wealth often live in terror of losing it. Luck will not; luck turns on us all eventually. The wrong inner discourse transforms blessings to ash and problems into catastrophe. We’ll always be slaves to externals if we can’t talk to ourselves about it the right way.At its best, philosophy improves inner discourse by

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11:06

This Is How You Escape Your Funk

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/18

The duldrums, we might call it. Or malaise. Maybe we can’t put our finger on what’s wrong, but something’s not right. We’re unsatisfied, vaguely anxious, and unsure what to do. This is the complaint the Roman knight Annaeus Serenus brought to his teacher, the philosopher Seneca, in On Tranquility of the Mind. Serenus had a lot going for him. He held considerable power as the prefect of the Vigiles Urbani , Rome’s night watch and fire brigade. This implies that he was trusted by the emperor Nero, and

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9:19

The Hidden Greatness of Misfits and Outcasts

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/15

“Overly Cerebral” — it’s an accusation frequently hurled against philosophy, the pursuit of excellence (arete/virtue), or even modern ideas of success. “Mancoded” was how one acquaintance described the writing of Marcus Aurelius to me. Others consider excellence capitalistic, unempathetic, or not set up for those with different cognitive abilities or impoverished circumstances. Maybe they’ve tried stepping up in traditional ways and can’t or won’t make them work, and so they decide the game is

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7:18

What Gandalf & The Stoics Got Right About Temptation

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/11

You’ll take the chocolate treats home from the store and only eat them on special occasions in very moderate portions. This is what you tell yourself in the aisle, eyes gleaming.There are people who do this. It sounds wise and moderate. But it’s a roll of the dice many people are better off not making. When we try, we often lose. Our society is full of people failing to eat moderately in our taste utopia, who can’t exercise moderately in our sedentary world. Moderate social media use and screen

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9:42

How Humanity Can Escape Its Last Delusion

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/08

Prior generations were overwhelmed by new mediums, so they were duped in strange ways. Today we’re so deeply sunk in another medium that we’re also easily fooled. Think about it. * Orson Welles caused mass hysteria with his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Listeners really thought Martians were invading.* When Shakespeare filled the Globe Theater with his stories, people rushed the stage to save actors pretending to be murdered.* Robinson Crusoe was one of the earliest mass-produced fiction

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4:38

Plato Haters Still Like This About His Philosophy

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/04

What if Plato is deluded? Most people said they enjoyed reading Gorgias as part of our readalong, but the feeling wasn’t universal. One subscriber said this:“…I like your articles so I gave [Gorgias] a try, but I was disappointed. I don’t get why Plato and Socrates are held up as philisophical paragons. Some of their claims are ridiculous. As you say, I don’t buy that it’s better to be punished than to get off scot-free. Prison terms aren’t some magic moral cleansing agent for sin.”Let’s run with

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12:19

This Will Keep You Fat

Socratic State of Mind Podcast ·

2025/09/01

We’ve covered popular misconceptions about obesity, and found that people placing moral judgments on food choices are slimmer and healthier. But during a recent subscriber chat, someone argued I’d only demonstrated that food moralizers are slimmer while failing to prove that pleasure itself was a primary driver of obesity — isn’t it just an innocent byproduct? So I’ll take another crack at it and clarify what I mean. Many factors contribute to obesity, but if I could choose only one principle to

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