History of Philosophy Audio Archive

Ladies and Gentlemen, comrades and compadres, narcs and Feds I proudly present: the only Michael Parenti lecture in existence with good quality audio. The gentlemen requires no introduction, but the book on imperialism in the Roman Republic he mentioned in the "E. Badian" quote is none other than Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic, which was less than simple to find. Repuloaded to fix some minor audio bugs/content. The original video can be found here, my thanks to AfroMarxist on YouTube for making this presentation available. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

“Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as death squads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps. The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity to established doctrine. In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.” -Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions In this interview, which was undertaken as source material for the incredible and highly recommended documentary Manufacturing Consent, Professor Noam Chomsky describes how the structure of the corporate media - its financial interests, its links to Washington's agenda, and its framing of issues - serves as a form of 'thought control in a democratic society'. Chomsky's critique of the media builds from the fact that media misleads its viewers primarily by omission rather than by outright deceit; it is not that the views presented are obviously false (although they often are) it is more the case that a debate on an issue will be staged between two people who appear to represent the 'entire spectrum' when in reality the Left is absent entirely. --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to Non-Corporate News for providing and maintaining this recording which first aired in 1990. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. This particular recording was especially rough, and if you listen to the original video and this audio, you will easily see how much work has gone into cleaning it up. Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

“Some studies actually showed that that Russian drinkers lived longer than non-drinkers. [Michelle Parsons] suggested an explanation for the apparent vodka paradox: for what it is worth, alcohol may help people adapt to realities that otherwise make them want to curl up and die. Parsons, who called her book "Dying Unneeded", argued that Russians were dying early because they had nothing and no one to live for.” -Masha Gessen, The Future is History Masha Gessen is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a scholar of Russian domestic politics, especially in regard to Vladimir Putin. In this discussion, she describes why and how a resurgent cultural right-wing in Russia helmed by Putin has singled out and criminalized the queer community in Russia and pushed standards of toleration back into Russia's illiberal past. She once described herself, accurately, it would seem, as "the only openly gay person in Russia." --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to Davidson College for providing and maintaining this recording which first aired in February 2018. The keynote itself is untitled, and so the title "Putin and the Political Uses of Homophobia" is my attribution. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

“The impoverished families of the long-term unemployed strained to the point of dysfunction, communities deprived of viable economies, interrupted educations, lost skills: these and many more results of capitalism’s crisis will put difficult demands on governments for years." -Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work Richard Wolff is an economist and political theorist associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the New Left. In this discussion, Wolff provides an unauthorized history of capitalism, discusses how corporate damages to society (or 'externalities' in the vernacular of the economics profession) are transferred to the population, how capitalist ideology drives zero-sum competition, and suggests practical policies that could lead to a more equitable distribution to wealth. --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to the ACLU of Southern California for providing and maintaining this recording, which first aired on February 2015. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

“There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.” -Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to the Oxford Union for providing and maintaining this recording. NB: I am not personally a conservative, but I can't pretend that they don't exist, and if I have to listen to one, let it be Roger Scruton. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

“When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and "whites only" signs. These images make it easy to forget that many wonderful, goodhearted white people who were generous to others, respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners, or shoe shiners--and wished them well--nevertheless went to the polls and voted for racial segregation... Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.” -Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow --- The link to the original video can be found here, my thanks to the University of Chicago (my alma mater, incidentally) for hosting this 2013 talk. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

On May 4th, 2016 journalist and political activist Naomi Klein delivered the Edward Said Lecture at the London Review of Books. She addressed the hierarchies implicit in who survives and who dies in a warming world, the role that transnational capitalism has played in subverting democracy, and the potential vectors for resistance that are available for averting an ecocidal collapse. Her aim in this talk is to describe "the role that systems that rank the value of human beings...have played in deepening that crisis." The original video can be found here, my gratitude to the London Review of Books for their hosting of the Edward Said Lectures. --- As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

"Bohr was the recipient of the Atoms for Peace Prize. None of us knew what the prize was for, but everyone knew that this was the right man to give it to." - J. Robert Oppenheimer, May 14th, 1964. In this talk, the father of the atom bomb explores the perils of the nuclear arms race, the weaponization of science, the tragedy of confrontational Cold War politics, and the loss of his friend and inspiration, Niels Bohr, who died just two years before. --- Original video found here, I've reduced the background noise, cut applause and distracting sounds, and minimized harmonic interference, although it was poorly mic'd and nonetheless has a few artifacts remaining. My gratitude to the UCLA Communication Archive for preserving this wonderful piece of history. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

Guest Professor Cornel R. West discusses the rich tradition of Black love and freedom in the face of catastrophic times. He explores the influences of influential figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison, the transformative power of music in connecting with audiences, and the role of education in intellectual and moral development. The podcast delves into themes of resilience, authenticity, and challenging white supremacy through cultural appreciation.

Cornel West explores the cultural and spiritual dynamics of the American empire through the works of T.S. Eliot and Eugene O’Neill. They delve into the human tragedy of their times and the profound impact these artists had on American philosophy and culture.