sleepyphilosophyradio

Vote on what comes next: https://www.sleepyphilosophyradio.com/vote

There is a story that begins with a man who had everything, and who walked away from all of it on a single night. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of the Buddha.

Twenty-five centuries ago, a prince in the foothills of the Himalayas left three palaces, a wife, and a newborn son because he had seen three things on a road that made the comfort of his life intolerable. Six years later, sitting under a fig tree in what is now northern India, he claimed to have understood something that no accumulation of pleasure could reach, and he spent the next forty-five years explaining it to anyone who would listen. Over the next two and a half hours, we walk through ten chapters of his life and his thought, from the diagnosis that life is suffering, through the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, into the radical doctrines of no-self and impermanence, through the twelve links of dependent origination, and out into a comparison with Heraclitus, Hume, and Schopenhauer. This is not a devotional video. It is a careful, philosophical reading of the Buddha as one of the great systematic thinkers of any civilization, a physician of the mind whose prescription can still be tested today.

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

(0:00:00) Life Is Suffering
(0:16:02) The Prince Who Left
(0:31:27) The Night Under the Tree
(0:47:01) The Four Noble Truths
(1:02:23) The Eightfold Path
(1:18:35) No Self
(1:33:39) Everything Changes
(1:48:56) The Chain of Becoming
(2:05:13) The Buddha Among the Philosophers
(2:21:36) The Wheel Keeps Turning

The Dhammapada, translated by Gil Fronsdal, Shambhala Publications: https://amzn.to/4eCMf7l
In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications: https://amzn.to/4sNyxlC
The Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin, Oxford University Press: https://amzn.to/4tmE57C
The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Pariyatti Publishing: https://amzn.to/4ctgHiQ
Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction, Mark Siderits, Hackett Publishing Company: https://amzn.to/3QCgS2M
Buddha, Karen Armstrong, Penguin Lives: https://amzn.to/4u36dMW

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

All research and writing is done personally.

Vote on what comes next: https://www.slphilosophyradio.com/vote

He wrote twenty thousand letters and made half of Europe afraid of him. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of Voltaire.

Tonight we spend nearly two and a half hours with Francois Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, the most famous writer in eighteenth century Europe and the most devastating enemy of fanaticism, superstition, and cruelty that the French language has ever produced. We follow him from his birth in Paris in 1694, through two imprisonments in the Bastille, through his three year exile in England and his discovery of Newton and Locke, through the Lisbon earthquake that destroyed his patience with Leibnizian optimism, through the writing of Candide, through the Calas affair, through the founding of the town of Ferney, through the Philosophical Dictionary, and finally through his triumphant return to Paris in 1778, where he died surrounded by the city that had once exiled him. Settle in, lower the lights, and let the story carry you.

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

(0:00:00) The Most Dangerous Man in Europe
(0:14:11) The Making of Voltaire
(0:28:57) The English Lessons
(0:43:29) The Best of All Possible Worlds
(0:58:56) Candide
(1:14:23) Crush the Infamous Thing
(1:28:50) The Garden at Ferney
(1:43:14) Tolerance
(1:57:53) The Watchmaker and the Garden
(2:11:54) The Return to Paris

SUGGESTED READING
Candide by Voltaire (Penguin Classics, trans. Theo Cuffe): https://amzn.to/4u0PvOy
Treatise on Toleration by Voltaire (Penguin Classics, trans. Desmond Clarke): https://amzn.to/4cxpejr
Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire (Penguin Classics, trans. Theodore Besterman): https://amzn.to/4vEkdyr
Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom by Roger Pearson: https://amzn.to/4cRm1fY
Voltaire: A Life by Ian Davidson: https://amzn.to/3OOljqI

These are affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I earn a small commission if you purchase through them.

All research and writing is done personally.

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

Vote on what comes next: https://www.slphilosophyradio.com/vote

Almost everyone has Epicurus wrong. The word “epicurean” has come to mean indulgence, luxury, and fine dining, but the real philosophy of Epicurus is almost the opposite: a quiet life, simple food, trusted friends, and freedom from fear. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of Epicurus.

In this episode, we trace the full arc of Epicurus’s life and ideas, beginning with a displaced young man on the island of Samos and ending with a philosophical vision that twenty-three centuries of persecution could not destroy. We explore his radical atomism, the physics that made his ethics possible. We examine his argument that the gods do not care about human affairs, and his claim that death is nothing to us. We unpack the most misunderstood concept in the history of philosophy: Epicurean pleasure, which turns out to be not indulgence but tranquility, the state the Greeks called ataraxia. We walk through the tetrapharmakos, the four-part cure for the diseases of the human mind. We enter the Garden, the community that admitted women and slaves as philosophical equals. We follow the miraculous survival of his ideas through Lucretius’s poem On the Nature of Things and a manuscript rediscovered in a German monastery in 1417. And we ask the question Epicurus leaves behind: what would it actually look like to live without fear?

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

(0:00:00) The Garden
(0:16:31) Atoms and the Void
(0:33:06) The Gods Do Not Care
(0:49:22) Death Is Nothing to Us
(1:05:03) Pleasure Without Excess
(1:21:11) The Tetrapharmakos
(1:37:10) Friendship and the Garden
(1:53:23) The Poem That Saved the Philosophy
(2:09:05) Two Thousand Years of Enemies
(2:25:49) The Philosophy That Keeps Returning

SUGGESTED READING
Epicurus, “The Art of Happiness” (translated by George Strodach, Penguin Classics): https://amzn.to/41zguEv
Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things” (translated by A.E. Stallings, Penguin Classics): https://amzn.to/4entswF
Stephen Greenblatt, “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern”: https://amzn.to/4szpOmW
Emily Austin, “Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life”: https://amzn.to/4cIM74K
Catherine Wilson, “How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well”: https://amzn.to/4cbpXrJ
Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers” (translated by Pamela Mensch): https://amzn.to/48BAuu3

These are affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I earn a small commission if you purchase through them.

ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
Sleepy Philosophy Radio creates long-form philosophy content designed for rest and reflection. New episodes weekly. Subscribe and turn on notifications to never miss an episode.

All research and writing is done personally.

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

Vote on what comes next: https://www.slphilosophyradio.com/vote

There is a wall between you and reality. You did not build it. You cannot remove it. It is the structure of your own mind. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

In this three-hour episode, we trace the full arc of Kant's life and ideas, from his daily walk through the streets of Konigsberg, where neighbors set their clocks by his passing, to a philosophical vision that reshaped every discipline it touched. We explore the crisis that shattered his faith in rationalist metaphysics and the decade of silence that followed.

We unpack his Copernican revolution in thought: the claim that the mind does not passively receive the world but actively constructs it. We follow him through the Critique of Pure Reason and the architecture of transcendental idealism, through the thing in itself and the boundaries of human knowledge, through the categorical imperative and his account of morality as rational self-legislation, through the demolition of every classical proof of God's existence and the construction of a moral faith to take their place.

We examine his philosophy of beauty and the sublime. And we end where Kant ended: with the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

Whether Kant's name is new to you or a familiar landmark in your reading, this episode offers a calm and thorough passage through one of the most transformative philosophies in human history. Let it carry you through a quiet evening of rest or reflection.

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

(0:00:00) The Clockwork Man of Konigsberg
(0:16:01) The Dogmatic Slumber
(0:31:15) The Copernican Revolution
(0:46:46) The World Behind the World
(1:02:06) The Moral Law Within
(1:17:23) The Categorical Imperative
(1:32:56) Freedom and Duty
(1:48:47) The Limits of Reason
(2:03:47) The Beautiful and the Sublime
(2:19:14) The Starry Heavens Above

SUGGESTED READING
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge Edition, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood): https://amzn.to/4mjnCOZ
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge Edition, translated by Mary Gregor): https://amzn.to/3PYfmb5
Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography: https://amzn.to/4vp7XBY
Roger Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction: https://amzn.to/4mor7nq
Sebastian Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason: https://amzn.to/4c96y9C

These are affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I earn a small commission if you purchase through them.

All research and writing is done personally. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

If this helped you rest, consider subscribing to Sleepy Philosophy Radio for more gentle, longform philosophy.

Vote on what comes next: https://www.slphilosophyradio.com/vote

The universe is not hostile. It is indifferent. Which is worse. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft.

In this episode, we trace the full arc of Lovecraft’s life and ideas, beginning with a boy and a telescope on a hill in Providence, Rhode Island, and ending with a philosophical vision that science keeps confirming. We explore his materialism and his intellectual formation, from the ancient atomists through Schopenhauer and Haeckel.

We unpack the core claim of cosmicism: that the universe operates on scales and according to principles that are simply beyond human comprehension. We examine his major stories as philosophical texts, from “The Call of Cthulhu” to “At the Mountains of Madness” to “The Colour Out of Space.” We address his racism honestly and philosophically. And we ask the question his work leaves behind: what does it mean to live with dignity in a cosmos that does not know you are here?

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

(0:00:00) The Man from Providence
(0:15:32) The Mechanistic Universe
(0:31:52) Cosmic Indifference
(0:48:12) The Weird Tale as Philosophy
(1:04:14) The Call from the Abyss
(1:19:51) Mountains, Colours, Shadows
(1:35:41) The Limits of Knowledge
(1:51:52) The Philosopher’s Failures
(2:08:06) Cosmicism Among the Philosophies
(2:24:57) The Indifferent Stars

SUGGESTED READING
H.P. Lovecraft: Tales (Library of America): https://amzn.to/3PDDwYl
S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence: https://amzn.to/3PDPvoK
Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life: https://amzn.to/4dpgRZB
Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet: https://amzn.to/47BC2nr
Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: https://amzn.to/4uY4oCi

These are affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I earn a small commission if you purchase through them.

ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
Sleepy Philosophy Radio creates long-form philosophy content designed for rest and reflection. New episodes weekly. Follow and turn on notifications to never miss an episode.

All research and writing is done personally.

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.