Sleepy Philosophy Radio

02:12:48

Let Go of God to Find God | Meister Eckhart's...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/10/02

Fall asleep to the medieval mystic who taught ordinary people to pray to be rid of God.At the summit of the medieval Church, a Dominican master who governed dozens of religious houses did something no one of his rank had dared. He carried the deepest theology out of the Latin schools and preached it, in plain German, to nuns and weavers and widows. We follow him from an uncertain village in Germany to the heights of the University of Paris, and into the heart of what he taught, a God beyond all

en

02:10:49

Montaigne | He Locked Himself in a Tower and...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/09/27

Fall asleep to Montaigne, who locked himself in a tower to study one man and quietly described us all.In fifteen seventy-one a French nobleman withdrew from public life to a round library at the top of a stone tower, and there, to tame his own restless mind, he began the strangest and most intimate book of its age. This is the story of Michel de Montaigne and the work he modestly called his attempts, the essays that invented a whole way of writing. We begin with his unusual life, the strange

en

02:12:47

How to Stay Calm When Fortune Takes Everything |...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/09/23

Fall asleep to the story of Boethius, the Roman philosopher who faced execution and answered it with reason alone.In a prison cell in the north of Italy, fifteen centuries ago, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom sat condemned to death and did something no one expected. He wrote a long conversation with Philosophy herself. Tonight we follow the whole of that life and that book. We trace Boethius from the heights of Roman honor to his fall on a false charge, through the vast project by which

en

02:23:17

Life Is Worth Living | William James and the Sick Soul

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/09/18

Fall asleep to the life of William James, the invalid who became America's great philosopher of hope and belief.As a young man William James was so ill in body and mind that he could barely leave his room, and one spring evening he made a private decision that would shape everything after it. This episode follows the whole arc of his life and thought, from a wandering childhood in the most gifted family in America, through the collapse that nearly ended him, to the years when he founded a new

en

02:17:52

Is Change Real? | Heraclitus vs Parmenides |...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/09/13

Fall asleep to the oldest quarrel in philosophy, whether all things flow or nothing ever moves at all.Twenty-five centuries ago, two Greek thinkers gave opposite answers to the same question, and nearly every philosopher since has stood somewhere between them. This episode follows the quarrel from its beginning. We meet Heraclitus, the lonely riddler of Ephesus who hid his one book in a temple and taught that everything flows, that the world is a river and a living fire held in tune by a hidden

en

02:17:58

No One Is Free Alone | Hegel and the Need to Be Seen

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/09/09

Fall asleep to Hegel, who watched an old world end and swore reason was moving through the ruin.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born into a modest world and rose, against long odds, to become the most commanding philosopher of his age, the last great thinker who dared to explain nearly everything as a single unfolding whole. This episode opens in a burning town, with an unknown lecturer carrying the only copy of his first masterpiece, and from there it traces the long climb of his life and his

en

02:17:15

Those Who Know Do Not Speak | The Hidden Teachings of...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/09/04

Fall asleep to the ancient Chinese way of yielding, water, and the wisdom of doing without forcing.More than two thousand years ago, in a China torn apart by endless war, an old man rode west on an ox, handed a gatekeeper a small book of verses, and disappeared into the mountains. That book, and the tradition it founded, is the subject of this long, slow episode. We begin with its legendary author and the strange little classic he left behind, then move into the heart of his teaching, the nameless

en

02:22:46

The Most Reluctant Convert | C.S. Lewis for Deep Sleep

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/08/29

Fall asleep to the life and mind of C.S. Lewis, the atheist who became Christianity's most beloved modern voice.Over more than two hours, this longform episode traces the whole arc of a remarkable life and mind. We begin in a cold Belfast childhood and a wartime trench, follow a brilliant young atheist through the long, reluctant argument that led him back to belief, and settle in among the Oxford friendships that shaped him. From there we move slowly through the great works, the stab of longing he

en

02:07:44

The Sword Was Never the Point | Miyamoto Musashi for...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/08/23

Fall asleep to the story of Miyamoto Musashi, the undefeated swordsman who laid down his blade to write.Born into the last years of Japan's long civil wars, a rough, motherless boy killed his first opponent in a duel at the age of thirteen and walked out onto the open road to test himself against the finest swordsmen in the land. This is the story of what he was really looking for. We follow him through the two duels that made him a legend, a broken dynasty of sword teachers in the old capital and a

en

02:28:03

Why We Fear Death | Ernest Becker’s The Denial of...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/08/19

Fall asleep to the story of Ernest Becker, who traced all human striving back to the fear of death.In a hospital bed on the Canadian coast, a dying man agreed to be recorded talking about death, the subject he had spent his whole life studying. This episode follows Ernest Becker, the anthropologist and outsider who was pushed from one university to the next and died at forty-nine, only weeks before his masterwork won the Pulitzer Prize. We trace his single great argument, that human beings are the

en

02:18:58

Man Is Not a Piano Key | Dostoevsky's Notes from...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/08/13

Fall asleep to the story of literature's first anti-hero, the sick and spiteful man who spoke the modern mind's secret.In the winter of a year that would take almost everyone he loved, a broke and grieving writer set loose the strangest voice in Russian literature, a nameless man in a rented corner who declares himself sick, spiteful, and free. This episode stays inside that single short book, Notes from Underground, and follows its narrator all the way down. We begin at the desk where it was

en

02:17:52

Is Life Worth Living? | Nietzsche vs Schopenhauer |...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/08/07

Fall asleep to the story of the young Nietzsche, who worshipped Schopenhauer and spent his life trying to prove him wrong.As a lonely student, Friedrich Nietzsche found a dead philosopher's book on a bookshop table and fell under a spell that would shape everything he became. This episode follows the long, strange bond between Nietzsche and his first master, Arthur Schopenhauer, from devotion to open war. We meet the bitter, solitary Schopenhauer and his vision of a blind striving world where life

en

02:27:27

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind | Joseph Murphy...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/08/01

An Irish boy left the priesthood, crossed an ocean, and built a new faith out of the human mind.This is the story of Joseph Murphy, the Irish-born minister whose single book on the subconscious mind has sold in the millions and has never left print. We begin with the boy who trained for the priesthood and lost his faith, the chemist who crossed an ocean, and the quiet preacher who found in a New York congregation a new American religion of the mind. From there we trace the tradition he inherited,

en

02:25:59

The Odyssey Explained: The Full Story and What It...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/07/24

Fall asleep to Homer's Odyssey, a voyage through mortality, memory, identity, and the difficult meaning of home.Beginning with a man who refuses immortality, then entering the mystery of Homer and the firelit halls where singers carried the poem in memory, this longform episode follows Odysseus through the great trials of his return. It explores the dangerous power of names, the guest law, the cost of knowledge, the voices of the dead, and the fragile line between justice and revenge. Along the way,

en

03:27:13

If You Gaze Long Into an Abyss | A Complete...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/07/18

Why do people who have everything still wake at three in the morning certain that none of it means anything?This is a long, unhurried history of the moment the floor of ordinary life gives way. It begins with a celebrated novelist who, at the height of his fame and fortune, quietly hid a rope from himself, and from that single human crisis it opens outward across the centuries. We follow the confrontation with meaninglessness through the oldest scriptures and the calm arguments of antiquity, through

en

03:13:44

The Librarian Who Wrote the Unspeakable | Georges...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/07/16

Vote on what comes next: ⁠https://www.sleepyphilosophyradio.com/vote⁠Becoming a member keeps these episodes coming and unlocks the members only library of exclusive book summary episodes, a growing shelf of great books read closely and explained in plain language.Subscribe: ⁠https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/sleepyphilo/subscribe⁠By day a mild librarian, by night the philosopher of excess, eroticism, and the sacred where reason ends.Georges Bataille kept one of the strangest double lives in

en

03:10:23

Best of All Is Never to Be Born | Antinatalism, a...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/07/08

The oldest, strangest verdict in philosophy, that it might be better never to have been born.Long before the word existed, the wisest voices of the ancient world kept arriving at the same strange verdict, that it might be better never to have been born at all. This episode follows that thought across the centuries, from a captured satyr and the chorus of a Greek tragedy to the systematic pessimism of Schopenhauer, who made suffering the ground note of existence. From there it moves through the

en

02:39:52

Heidegger Betrayed Him. Arendt Never Left. | Karl...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/07/03

A boy told he would die by thirty built a philosophy of openness that outlived two death sentences.Karl Jaspers trained as a doctor under the shadow of an early death, reinvented the study of the troubled mind, and then crossed quietly into philosophy to ask the largest questions a person can face. This episode follows his whole arc, from the cold northern coast where he was born, through the Heidelberg years and the marriage that shaped everything, to the ideas that made him one of the deepest

en

03:27:55

"Led by an Invisible Hand" | Adam Smith Complete...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/06/26

He wrote the book that built the modern world, then spent his last days making sure most of the rest was burned.Adam Smith was the gentle, absent-minded son of a Scottish customs official, and he became the most misread thinker in the history of economics.This episode follows the whole arc: the quiet port town of Kirkcaldy and the mother he never left, the miserable years at Oxford, the Glasgow lecture rooms where he was happiest, and the long silent decade by the sea in which he wrote the Wealth of

en

03:34:27

Why the World Called Her Mad | Emily Dickinson...

Sleepy Philosophy Radio ·

2026/06/23

She died unknown, leaving eighteen hundred poems in a locked box. This is the mind that hid them.In May of 1886, a woman almost nobody knew died in a brick house in Amherst, Massachusetts, and her sister found a locked box holding the largest secret in American literature.This episode begins inside that discovery and follows the whole life that produced it, the girl who would not stand for Christ at Mount Holyoke, the white-dressed woman who chose a locked door as a vocation, the letters that built

en

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

The Morning Hustle Podcast

Urban One Podcast Network

Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

J.G.

Chicks in the Office

Barstool Sports

Um Espião no Kremlin

Observador