The Wisdom Of

They discuss the connection between Hamlet and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. The underground man challenges conventional notions of happiness and success. This chapter explores the theme of perfection. They examine the presence of madness in the human spirit.

The Handmaid’s Tale was written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It’s a dystopian novel, set in a patriarchal, religious totalitarian state known as the Gilead Republic. The protagonist is a woman named Offred, who’s belongs to the group of handmaids, a group of women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the ruling class of men.

Lord of the Flies is a novel by the English author William Golding, published in 1954. It’s a book about a group of boys whose airplane crashes on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific ocean. The story is about their attempt to govern themselves without any adults around.

William Shakespeare was an English playwright born in 1564. Some of his most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet. His plays, which include tragedies, comedies and histories, have been translated into nearly every language and they’re performed more than any other playwright. He’s often considered to be the greatest writer in the English language. The play we look at today is Hamlet. 

The Possessed, or Demons, is a novel written by the Russian writer Dostoevsky and it was first published in 1871. It’s a story concerned with the catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming more prevalent in Russia in the 1860s. 

In this episode we compare modern versus ancient conceptions of happiness.

Emily Dickinson was an American poet, born in Massachusetts, in 1830. In this episode, we explore her views on death, nature, the senses, and the affirmation of life. 

Moby Dick was written by the American writer Herman Melville, and it was published in 1851

Civilization and its Discontents is a book by the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, published in 1930.