320. Massimo Pigliucci — How to Live a Good Life and Create a Just Society

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2023

⏱️ 127 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode Michael Shermer speaks with the stoic philosopher and evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci on how to apply the ancient wisdom of stoicism to our personal lives and to our society.

Shermer and Pigluicci discuss: his journey from Rome to New York • evolutionary biology • stoic philosophy • can there be a science of meaning and morality? • ultimate questions • desire, action, depression, suicide, anger, anxiety, love, and friendship • practical spiritual exercises • how to react to situations • teaching virtue to politicians • philosophy and politics • character and leadership • the nature of evil.

Massimo Pigliucci is the K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. The author or editor of sixteen books, he has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Salon, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. His books include: Making Sense of Evolution; Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk; Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem; Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life; A Field Guide to a Happy Life; A Handbook for New Stoics; How to Be a Stoic; The Quest for Character.

Transcript

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1:00.4	That is you subscribe for a year and you get an extra year for free. Why would you not do that a great deal?
1:05.5	Go to one dream.com slash shermer that's w n-d r-r-i-u-m.
1:09.9	Com slash shirmer yes h-h-e-r- me r as you know like here's a new one of course that they just
1:15.9	uploaded that I'm going to listen to how the Nazis lost the war it said victors right
1:22.2	history but in this case the focus is on losing Nazi regime
1:26.4	who did more to undermine their own war effort than the Allies did in fighting them.
1:30.7	I'd have to agree with that. I know quite a bit about that. Or here's just
1:35.8	six thirty, six forty-five minute lectures. Nice. And oh well military blunders, yes there's a bunch of those wonder weapons and wonder
1:45.9	less weapons drugs delusion and demise yeah there's a bunch of interesting research
1:50.5	about how the Nazis were taking a lot of crazy drugs.
1:55.0	And the enemy within, yes, it was a very dysfunctional regime and so on.
2:00.0	Could they have won the war, had they not done these things?
2:02.0	Who knows? Anyway, that's an example of what and so on could they have won the war had they not done these things who knows
2:03.2	anyway that's an example of one of
	...

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