Most of our media are owned by a handful of tech billionaires, but there's one place that still operates like the internet was never invented.

On the new season of the divided dial from On the Media, we're exploring shortwave radio, where prayer and propaganda coexist with news and conspiracy theories, and where an existential battle

for the public airwaves is playing out right now.

Listen to On the Media, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome back to practical stoicism. I am your host, Tanner Campbell, and today there's no meditation. Instead, we're going to have a conversation about masculinity. And moving forward, while I'm on the topic of format changes, one day a week is going to be spent reflecting on something topical and relevant,

though I am going to stay away from hot button political issues of the day. I'm not looking to

ostracize any of you or take political sides in this or that current event. Alternatively,

perhaps I'll spend an episode answering questions from listeners. Another day of the week is

going to feature a segment at least

once hosted by my very, very good friend Eric DeMott. It's going to be called practical

cynicism. Cynicism is like very hard-line stoicism, but without the social responsibility element of it.

In fact, Eric has described cynicism as like the monk version of stoicism, where

stoicism is this very practical, day-to-day application of philosophy, and cynicism is almost exactly

the same as stoicism, but without the social responsibility element and you're the type of person

that goes into a monastery or a nunnery and all you do is

study text and devote yourself to God. Like it's that kind of difference. There's the practical

stoicism and then there's almost kind of like impractical cynicism. But I think Eric is going to try

to tease out some practical elements of cynicism that can be useful. And the cynics were incredibly

influential on the Stoics. It could be said that without cynicism, Stoicism would not exist. So it's a

philosophy, I think, is worth talking about. Now, the truth of this is that I want to test market

this. I want to see if some of you are interested in a full-fledged podcast that stands alone and is about cynicism.

So these couple of episodes that Eric does, we're going to see how they perform.

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