43. Michael Puett (Harvard Chinese Philosophy Scholar) – Freedom Through Ritual

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2016

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Puett teaches one of three most popular undergraduate courses at Harvard, on ancient Chinese philosophy and ethics: Daoism, Confucianism, Legalism, Moism, and more. What keeps students coming back year after year to this seemingly esoteric subject? Puett promises that if you take the ideas in his course seriously, they will change your life. He captures these ideas in his new book The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, co-authored with Christine Gross-Loh. On this week's episode of Think Again, Puett and host Jason Gots discuss free will, Western individualism, and more, with surprise prompts from interview clips with Jesse Ventura and Nobel Laureate physicist Frank Wilczek. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered what a sandwich sounds like?
0:03.0	Not much to it, is there?
0:06.0	Unless, of course, it's a Walker's sandwich.
0:10.0	Mmm, that is good.
0:13.0	Now that's what Asani should sound like.
0:15.0	Go all crisp in with walkers.
0:18.0	Delicious.
0:20.0	Today's episode of Think Again is brought to you by The Great Courses Plus.
0:23.5	It's an incredible video learning service that gives you unlimited access at any time on any device to lectures on just about anything that baffles or fascinates you.
0:32.9	From cooking to finance to the ancient Etruscans.
0:36.7	Right now, Think Again listeners can stream Neil deGrasse Tyson's The Inexplicable Universe,
0:41.9	which demystified theoretical physics for me,
0:44.3	and hundreds of other eye-opening courses for a full month absolutely free.
0:48.7	Just go to the greatcoursesplus.com slash think.
0:53.5	That's the greatcourses plus.com slash think. That's the great courses plus.com slash think.
0:58.6	Hey there. I'm Jason Gots and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.
1:08.3	Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from some of the most creative thinkers around.
1:13.6	On the Think Again podcast, we leave our comfort zone, surprising our guests and me, your host,
1:18.6	with unexpected conversation starters from Big Thinks interview archives, ideas we didn't come here prepared to discuss.
1:25.6	I'm very, very excited today to be joined by Michael Puit.
1:28.3	He's a Harvard professor of Chinese history and religion who teaches one of the university's
1:32.8	most popular undergraduate courses. It's called classical, Chinese, ethical, and political theory,
	...

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