26 episodi
Searching For It Lewis Williams
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- Cultura e società
Our search for 'it' will explore the most insightful thoughts from philosophy, literature, and elsewhere that provide a meaning or purpose to our lives. Each episode will uncover a new idea or way of life that brings us closer to transcendence. You don't need to have a degree in philosophy to listen to this podcast - just an open mind and a desire to learn more about the meaning behind human existence.
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Thanks for Listening
This is the last episode of Searching For It that I will be releasing for the foreseeable future.
Thank you to those of you who have listened to the show, and I hope that you are able to find "it".
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Find out more at http://www.searchingforit.org -
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
Today, most scientists agree that the universe began with the "Big Bang". But why did the Big Bang occur in the first place? What gave rise to the conditions required for the Big Bang to kickstart our universe? Why is there something rather than nothing?
When compared with the possibility of a silent, empty, nothingness, the existence of a universe as rich and expansive as ours seems staggering. Surely it would have been much simpler for there to have just been nothingness.
In this episode, we'll look at the best theories put forward by scientists, religious thinkers, and philosophers, as to why anything exists at all.
Like the show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/searchingforitpodcast
Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/searchingforitpodcast
Follow Lewis on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/99lewiswilliams
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/searchingforit
Find out more at http://www.searchingforit.org -
GUEST: Sam Rickless on Philosophy and the Meaning of Life
Sam Rickless is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, where he’s created a brand new course entitled ‘The Meaning of Life’. In many ways, Sam's course gets right to the heart of what Searching For It is all about: Sam teaches his students about Schopenhauer, Sartre, Buddhist philosophy, and much more.
In this episode, Sam and I will discuss the lessons he's learned from thinking about the meaning of life, the results of his students' "experiments in living", as well as his thoughts on Camus, Nagel, and Wolf.
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Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/searchingforit
Find out more at http://www.searchingforit.org -
Wolf: Meaningful Lives in a World Devoid of Meaning
Philosophers have spent millennia pondering the question of life's meaning. Kierkegaard grounded the meaning of life in a passionate belief in God, Sartre declared that we're each free to create our own meaning, while Camus and Nagel deny that we could ever come to know life's meaning.
But, if you ask Susan Wolf, each of these philosophers are beating a dead horse. Life has no meaning and that's that. But so what? In Meaning in Life and Why it Matters, Wolf argues that we should abandon our quest for the meaning of life, and refocus our efforts on living meaningful lives. Tune into this month's episode to find out how we can continue to live meaningful lives in a world devoid of meaning.
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Find out more at http://www.searchingforit.org -
Nagel and the Absurd
According to Albert Camus, the absurd is the "one truly serious philosophical problem". In fact, Camus was so concerned by the notion of the absurd that he wrote an essay investigating whether or not we should commit suicide in the face of it. But in the words of Thomas Nagel, Camus' attitude towards the absurd is "romantic and slightly self-pitying". According to Nagel, all we need in order to respond to the absurdity of human life is irony and a good sense of humour.
Tune in to this episode of Searching For It to learn why Nagel describes human existence as absurd, and despite the dramatics of Camus, why it doesn't really matter.
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Find out more at http://www.searchingforit.org -
The Philosophy of Time Travel
Back to the Future, Interstellar, The Terminator - we've all been guilty of enjoying a good time travel flick at one point or another. But more recently, time travel has been taken out of Hollywood and placed under the inquisitive philosophers' lens. Stepping beyond science fiction and fantasy, philosophers have uncovered a hidden trove of tantalising thought experiments and mind-bending paradoxes.
Tune into this episode to learn about causal loops, the Grandfather Paradox, closed timelike curves, and to investigate whether time travel really is a possibility.
Like the show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/searchingforitpodcast
Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/searchingforitpodcast
Follow Lewis on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/99lewiswilliams
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/searchingforit
Find out more at http://www.searchingforit.org