A long view on the sense of Russian history that Vladimir Putin has inherited and draws from culturally. Looking at the roots of Russian anti-westernism, its response to Europe during the Enlightenment and Peter and Catherine the Great's modernizing projects. From Rousseau and the influence of the Romanitics through to Dostoevsky, Carl Schmitt's influence, and Ivan Illyin today. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
Nuclear Weapons changed us. One author said we have a ‘nuclear consciousness’ If so, how specifically did it develop? What shapes did it take? I’ll look at some surprising consequences of the discovery of Nuclear power, how it changed our ideas about fear and irrationalism, about world government and philosophy, how it changed literature and cinema and comics, religion, science, and our idea of progress. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
A look at the darker side of MrBeast’s philanthropy and the wider philanthrocapitalist model it's a part of. Looking specifically at #teamseas and a partnership with Jennie-O, I attempt to untangle how corporations and conglomerates like Coca-Cola, chemical and oil companies, and big meat monopolies all have a vested interest in financing certain ‘philanthropic’ projects while side-lining others. This is a story that takes some surprising twists and turns, from whitewashing, greenwashing & ‘funwashing’ sponsorships, to illegal price-fixing, an endemic of farmer suicides, and leaked corporate emails to influence charities. Examining the roots and consequences of ‘philanthrocapitalism’ tells us a lot about how lobbying works under modern capitalism. This is a long video, but it’ll be worth it to tell this story properly. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
Let's think difference. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
Anger, rage, fury: it seems like everywhere we look right now, we see rising temperatures, smoldering resentment, blood boiling, floods of emotion. From Trump to Brexit, Hindu Nationalism to Black Lives Matter, from Hollywood me too to Pandemic Protestors, ISIS to white nationalists, Ukraine to Fox News, to my ongoing conflict with my unreasonably slow computer, it seems, as the historian Pankaj Mishra has argued, like we’re living in an age of anger. I look at the history and philosophy of anger. What is it? What triggers it? Is it ever good? I look at the Stoics – including Epictetus and Seneca – Aristotle, Christianity, Enlightenment figures like Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith, through to modern day anger management psychology. I make some surprising findings about the usefulness of a misunderstood emotion. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
Robotics, automation, and the information age are going in a strange direction. We look at extended selves, farming drones, Tesla sensors, Facebook and Twitter feeds, Amazon, Tinder, and Deleuze and Guattari's bodies without organs. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
If you’ve ever wanted a complete scientific roadmap for how to live, a modern philosophy to go by, a lens through which to understand a complex world, a foundation, the 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza is as good as you'll find. He asked questions like: why are we so dogmatic? What makes us irrational? Why do we live as slaves to our emotions and others opinions. He was one of the first Enlightenment advocates for real democracy, and was the first to really criticise the bible as just a text. He was vilified for his perceived atheism and excommunicated from the Jewish community where he lived. I look at Spinoza’s most influential text, The Ethics, look at what his ideas about god were and why he was a Pantheist, ask what substances, modes, and attributes are, and why he argues that the ‘many is one’. We look at the affects, the idea of conatus, the ‘free person’, rationalism, his stocism, and ideas of morality and benevolence.
Why Hasn't the Internet Fixed Democracy? How can we fix it? I use the latest 'drama' with Ethan Klein, Joe Rogan, Tom Pool, Vaush etc to see if we can find out... Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
The nature-nurture debates inform almost every area of human life – from biology and botany to economics, literature, and history. To simplify, thinkers on the nature side have, in varying ways, argued that at least parts of your body and mind are behind an impenetrable skin, cannot be gotten to by upbringing, education, politics, or culture. Imagine a one-way street. For example, you have an innate eye color or a creativity that comes out of your DNA – nothing gets to it, its just in you. On the other hand we have empiricists. They believe in a two way street instead of a one way street. This video looks at some complicated sounding things: DNA, genetics, epigenetics, methylation, phenotypes, stress, twin studies, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, and early intervention programs. But I want to avoid being technical, as much as possible, because most fundamentally, most simply, this box is about a fundamentally philosophical idea: freedom. The idea that we have a nature has been approached in countless ways – philosophically, psychologically, theologically – but the most persuasive, through the 19th and 20th centuries, the best place to start, is biology: the study of DNA and our genes. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018
What does 'meta' really mean? What can we make of Facebook's change to 'Meta'? Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote about the decline of metanarratives in 1979's 'The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'. Can we learn anything about Zuckerberg's aspirations from this classic postmodern text? Lyotard was prescient. He noticed in the 70s that quote ‘the miniaturization and commercialization of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited.’ He also that ‘Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.’