Life From Plato's Cave

Episode 10 - Social Media & Infinite Distraction with Dominic Pettman

"It's almost as if Plato saw Media Studies coming and invented this allegory for us to sort of set the stage from the beginning of western modernity. It's kind of uncanny how appropriate it remains. It's like it becomes more and more relevant as time passes."

Today I speak with Dominic Pettman about social media, distraction and libido.

About Dominic Pettman: 

Dominic is University Professor of Media and New Humanities at The New School in New York, where he teaches courses on posthumanism, animal studies, critical theories of technology, environmental humanities, attention ecologies, popular media forms, and philosophies of desire. He is the author of numerous books, including a loose trilogy exploring the relationship between Eros and ecology - Sonic Intimacy, Creaturely Love, and Peak Libido. In this episode, we focus primarily on the last part of this trilogy and Infinite Distraction: Paying Attention to Social Media. Dominic himself is also on social media: https://twitter.com/DominicPettman 

What's YOUR interpretation of Plato's allegory? I would love to hear! Leave me a voicemail. It's really easy. You click the record button, speak, and hit send. I might play your message in a future episode and respond.

Support me through patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave 

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Mario

http://lifefromplatoscave.com/ 

 

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 
Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/ 

Episode 11 - Biology, Technology & Human Evolution with Pieter Lemmens

The prisoners in Plato's Cave have their eyes fixed on the the cave wall. Their attention is literally captured by the shadows. They cannot turn their head so they cannot see each other. Since they have been there all their lives that means they have never seen a human being!

 

In this conversation we will take a journey through Plato's Cave by following Pieter Lemmens' intellectual journey, his thinking path. We will start with in biology, that sees human beings as an organism. Then we discuss Heidegger's book Being and Time where he asks the question of being - what is the being of human being? Then we focus on the work of Bernard Stiegler, a philosopher of technology who thought about the relation between technology, biology and evolution. Finally, we focus on how technological evolution got us into the climate crisis and on Bernard Stiegler's idea of what needs to happen for us to turn the Anthropocene into what he calls the Neganthropocene. The Neganthropocene could be the next stage in human evolution - if we can get there.

 

About Pieter Lemmens

Pieter Lemmens teaches philosophy and ethics at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published on themes in the philosophy of technology, innovation, digital technologies, cognitive enhancement, on the work of Martin Heidegger, Peter Sloterdijk and Bernard Stiegler.

 

Sources

Pieter has published widely on these topics, but some of the articles that I recommend in light of this episode are Thinking Technology Big Again(2020), Rethinking Technology in the Anthropocene (2021) and Other Turnings (2020). He is the co-author of the forthcoming book The Technical Condition: The Entanglement of Technology, Culture and Society (2022) which is an accessible introduction to philosophy of technology.

The Ister (2004) - a philosophical road movie https://icarusfilms.com/if-ist 

Bernard Stiegler (2017). Philosophizing by Accident: Interviews with Elie During

Clive Hamilton (2017). Defiant Earth: the Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene

 

What's YOUR interpretation of Plato's allegory? I would love to hear! Leave me a voicemail. It's really easy. You click the record button, speak, and hit send. I might play your message in a future episode and respond.

Support me through patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave 

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Mario

http://lifefromplatoscave.com/ 

 

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 
Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/ 

 

Episode 12A - Travelling through Plato’s Cave

Welcome (or welcome Back) to Life From Plato's Cave. This is a course in interdisciplinary philosophy in which we look at life - the part of life that interests you - from a new perspective in every episode. In each of the other episodes, I will interview a guest about their intepretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave: philosophers, artists, literary scholars, phycisists, actors, psychologists, geologists and many more.

In this first part of this episode, I'm speaking about how you could work with this podcast. I give a summary of Plato's allegory at the end. In the next part, I will give an overview of the eleven episodes so far and speak about what's coming in 2022.

One of those things is that I opened a Patreon account! Support Life From Plato's Cave at https://patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Mario

http://lifefromplatoscave.com/ 

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 
Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/ 

Episode 12B - Plato’s Cave is Getting Hotter (discussing episodes 1-11)

Welcome (or welcome Back) to Life From Plato's Cave. This is a course in interdisciplinary philosophy in which we look at life - the part of life that interests you - from a new perspective in every episode. In each of the other episodes, I will interview a guest about their intepretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave: philosophers, artists, literary scholars, phycisists, actors, psychologists, geologists and many more.

In this second part of this episode, I give an overview of the eleven episodes so far using the climate crisis as an example. I also speak about what's coming in 2022 and what you can do.

One of those things is that I opened a Patreon account! Support Life From Plato's Cave at https://patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Mario

http://lifefromplatoscave.com/ 

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 
Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/ 

Episode 13 - Flat Earth & Science Communication with I Can Science That

Imagine you descended from the surface into Plato's Cave and told them "you're in Plato's Cave!" And they responded "No, YOU'RE in Plato's Cave!"

 

In this episode, we will speak about how to deal with science denial. To learn about science communication in general, we focus on one particular extreme case of science denial, which is the idea that we live on a Flat Earth.

 

Our guide is the creator of the youtube channel I Can Science That, which you can find here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_FH_YLAQjG4ZiKisRSK5iA

I Can Science That engages in conversations with Flat Earthers and other types of science denial. Unlike other channels, he focuses on having discussions in which both parties listen to each other and try to understand each others' viewpoint, rather than debates in which each party tries to win.

 

Sources

The Flat Earthers are a peculiar group. For an introduction, check out the 2008 Netflix documentary "Behind The Curve". We also discuss the book and documentary Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes and Conway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ii9zGFDtc 

Some youtube links:

Vsauce on "Is Earth Actually Flat?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs  

Richard Feynman's talk on "Why?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA 

And Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjTTS-KMupo 

 

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Mario

http://lifefromplatoscave.com/ 

 

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave 

 

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 
Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/ 

 

Episode 14 - Food & Spirituality with Ilanta Sa

What keeps Plato's prisoners chained in the cave? What keeps us grounded to our reality? Food is definitely one of those things. How can we develop a more conscious relationship to food, how can we turn our entire being (like Plato says) rather than just our intellect, and how can we integrate spiritual experiences in our daily life?

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave

Our guide for this episode is Ilanta Sa. Ilanta is a beauty and wellness consultant, breath coach and business owner. She is passionate about sharing the benefits of conscious living and how it affects our physical, emotional and mental well-being. Ilanta started the first superfood company in Switzerland in 2007, she worked as a consultant in the superfood and supplements industry, and in various detox retreats. Now she has a natural skin care company called Radiant Beauty. She has been studying and working in the fields of holistic nutrition, detox protocols, superfoods and supplementation, and in her own life has focused on creating a sustainable way of living, natural beauty care and a plant-based lifestyle. Ilanta is a certified Breath Coach and she gives individual food coaching in which she works with you to find out which simple steps you can take for a more conscious relationship with food and a diet that supports your lifestyle.

If you're interested in a wellness consultation, you can connect to Ilanta through her instagram https://www.instagram.com/ilanta_claudia/ or her website https://radiantbeauty.ch/  

What's YOUR interpretation of Plato's allegory? I would love to hear! Leave me a voicemail. It's really easy. You click the record button, speak, and hit send. I might play your message in a future episode and respond.

Support me through patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave 

I hope you enjoy the episode!
Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/   

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 

Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/

Episode 15 - Bernard Stiegler’s Philosophy with Daniel Ross

The returning soul in Plato's allegory of the Cave is not heard by the prisoners, who are too occupied with the shadows on the wall. In the most literal sense, Plato was probably speaking about how the people do not appreciate the philosophy of, for instance, his teacher Socrates, at the time when this philosopher is most needed.

This is an independent educational podcast and I appreciate any support you can give me me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave) or in other ways.

Which philosophers are not heard enough in our time? Today, we discuss the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. Stiegler is known most for his magnus opus Technics and Time, but many of his works have not yet been translated into English, and the ones that have are not read enough. Daniel Ross, our guide through Stiegler's philosophy, is trying to change that.

Daniel Ross obtained his doctorate from Monash University in 2002. He is the author of Violent Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis: Steps Towards a Metacosmics (Open Humanities Press, 2021 -free to download). He is also the co-director with David Barison of the feature documentary The Ister (rent or buy on Vimeo), which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2004, and which won awards in Montreal and Marseille. Through that film, he met the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, and has subsequently published eleven volumes of translation of Stiegler’s work, most recently The Age of Disruption: Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism (Polity Press, 2019) and Nanjing Lectures 2016–2019 (Open Humanities Press, 2020 - free to download), along with the collective volume by Stiegler and the Internation Collective entitled Bifurcate: ‘There Is No Alternative’ (Open Humanities Press, 2022 - free to download).

What's YOUR interpretation of Plato's allegory? I would love to hear! Leave me a voicemail. It's really easy. You click the record button, speak, and hit send. I might play your message in a future episode and respond.

I hope you enjoy the episode!
Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/   

 

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 

Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/

Episode 16 - Visual Politics with Mark Reinhardt

We've been looking at what Plato's allegory means. But what happens when we examine what it does? We'll discuss political scientist Mark Reinhardt's article "The Cave of Images: Understanding Visual Politics in and through Plato’s Republic" and what we can learn from it for the visual in contemporary politics, such as images of racism and violence. The article appears in the April issue of Theory & Event.

What's YOUR interpretation of Plato's allegory? I would love to hear! Leave me a voicemail. It's really easy. You click the record button, speak, and hit send. I might play your message in a future episode and respond.

Professor Mark Reinhardt teaches in both Political Science and American Studies.  His teaching interests range from ancient to contemporary political theory, as well as problems of democracy, public space, cultural analysis, race and slavery, and visual politics. His current research is shaped by a commitment to showing how political theory and political science can engage more fully with the visual domain.  Among the areas of particular interest are the ethics and politics of images and the place of visuality within the history of political thought (ancient and modern); a related strand of work concerns the relations between politics and aesthetics.

This is an independent educational podcast and I appreciate any support you can give me me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave) or in other ways.

Reinhardt, Mark. "The Cave of Images: Understanding Visual Politics in and Through Plato's Republic." Theory & Event, vol. 25 no. 2, 2022, p. 238-274. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/852385.

I hope you enjoy the episode!
Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/   

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

Leave me a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/LifeFromPlatosCave  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 

Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/

Episode 17 - Racism & Blackness with Ian Partman

Ian Partman (he/they) is a 19-year old student, writer, activist, and artist based in New York City. He is the founder of Ignite Collective, a national organization of young activists who work to resist police violence through mutual aid and direct action. He currently works at the Brennan Center for Justice in the Office of the President. Their academic research explores how histories of exclusion within everyday institutions shape contemporary forms of racial violence, especially within spaces of higher education. Ian is also working on a forthcoming monograph that explores Black childhood in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. You can find him, and more of his work, at ianpartman.com.

This is an independent educational podcast and I appreciate any support you can give me me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave) or in other ways.

I hope you enjoy the episode!
Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/   

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

Leave me a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/LifeFromPlatosCave  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 

Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/

Episode 18 - How Doctors Think with Camillo Coccia

Camillo is a medical doctor from South Africa. Currently he works as a senior house officer at Letterkenny University Hospital department of Hematology. He has a special interests in existentialist philosophy, German idealism and phenomenology. We published a paper together called "Because We Care: a philosophical investigation into the spirit of medical education". We discuss that paper at length in another podcast, [link will appear here when it is out]. Camillo also published a book chapter with Sven Schaepkens, called "In Pursuit of Time: An Inquiry into kairos and reflection in medical practice and health professions education"

 

This is an independent educational podcast and I appreciate any support you can give me me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscave) or in other ways.

Sources:
Camillo Coccia & Mario Veen (2022) Because We Care: A Philosophical Investigation into the Spirit of Medical Education, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, DOI: 10.1080/10401334.2022.2056744

Schaepkens, S.P.C., Coccia, C.Q.H. (2022). In Pursuit of Time: An Inquiry into Kairos and Reflection in Medical Practice and Health Professions Education. In: Brown, M.E.L., Veen, M., Finn, G.M. (eds) Applied Philosophy for Health Professions Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1512-3_21 

Veen, M., Skelton, J. & de la Croix, A. Knowledge, skills and beetles: respecting the privacy of private experiences in medical education. Perspect Med Educ 9, 111–116 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-020-00565-5 

Hannah Arendt (2021) film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt_(film)

I hope you enjoy the episode!
Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/   

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

Leave me a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/LifeFromPlatosCave  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeplatoscave 
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lifefromplatoscave/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifefromplatoscave 

Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/