
Eardstepa's Courses
By Paul Cady
This is a series of college level lectures free to anyone who is curious. They will cover writing, philosophy, and literature.

Eardstepa's CoursesAug 06, 2023
00:00
46:46

The Daodejing Part 3
The episode covers the first half of book 2.
Aug 06, 202346:46

The Daodejing Part 2
This episode finishes book one of the Daodejing.
Jul 23, 202339:20

Daodejing Part 1
The episode starts the first part of the Daodejing.
Jul 16, 202345:23

The Odes part 2
This episode takes about two poems that deal with the foundation of the Zhou kingdom and of the people's move from nomads to settlers.
Apr 02, 202326:04

The Odes (Shijing) Part one
This episode looks at two poems dealing with the common people. One deals with their everyday concerns, and the other, their view of war.
Feb 11, 202322:42

Poetry and translation
This episode discusses some of the elements of poetry and the difficulty of translation.
Dec 12, 202233:51

Confucius books 12, 13, and 16
This episode covers these books and recaps some of his main ideas. It also looks a little to the contemporary world.
Oct 01, 202250:46

Confucius books 5-8
This episode dives more into the Analects.
Sep 01, 202255:58

Confucius and the Analects books 1-4
This episode starts the season and the series of episodes about Confucius.
Jul 23, 202256:13

Barthes and Carse
This episode rounds out season two and introduces season three.
May 05, 202231:18

Politics and Fiction
This episode discusses how politicians use the various media through the 20th century to spread their ideologies.
Apr 28, 202220:32

Capitalism and Communism in theory and practice
This episode discusses how the two systems did what their founders warned against.
Mar 20, 202224:47

Social Media and Fiction
This episode looks at social media and the pressures to fictionalize our lives for the world.
Feb 14, 202218:16

Camus and Absurdism
This episode looks at Camus' philosophy and his rejection of nihilism.
Jan 24, 202223:22

Ray Bradbury and The Veldt
This episode looks at science fiction and it's predictions and sometimes warnings about where the world is heading.
Jan 10, 202217:06

Peter Singer and ethics
This episode looks at Singer as someone who brings philosophy to the non philosopher.
Jan 07, 202223:02

Rodriguez and Modern poetry
This episode looks at two of his poems and discusses how poetry is able to engage a wide rage of topics relevant to modern life.
Dec 28, 202125:39

Hannah Arendt
This episode looks at her essay The Perplexities of the Rights of Man and how her ideas are grounded in realities then and now.
Dec 20, 202120:32

American Psycho by Ellis
This episode looks at the post modern novel American Psycho, and examines how it exposes the dark side of the 1980s glitter.
Dec 15, 202118:07

John Dewey
This episode briefly talks about education and democracy.
Dec 06, 202113:55

The Matrix, philosophy and post modernism
This episode goes into how the film both covers ideas in philosophy and in post modernism.
Nov 29, 202116:54

Ludwig Wittgenstein
This episode introduces his early and late works.
Nov 25, 202127:04

Brave New World
Thus episode looks at the predictions of the novel and compares them to the world today.
Nov 18, 202120:38

Heidegger and being
This episode gives a brief introduction to Heidegger and also raises the question of his murky past.
Nov 16, 202116:44

Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse Five
This episode discusses the book not only as an anti war novel but also as a post modern and psychological work.
Nov 11, 202124:50

William James and Pragmatism
This episode gets into a little of James' ideas in psychology, philosophy, and literature.
Nov 08, 202127:14

Langston Hughes Let America be America Again
This episode covers the poem by Hughes and talks about how poetry and politics are often intertwined and at odds.
Oct 27, 202121:57

Russell and an introduction to Analytic Philosophy
This episode talks about Analytic Philosophy and its focus on logic.
Oct 18, 202124:52

Literature and music and the counterculture.
This episode traces the rise of the counterculture through literature and music from the 20s to the 60s and beyond.
Oct 16, 202120:25

Husserl and Existentialism
This episode starts to introduce a little more the foundations of Existentialism.
Oct 11, 202114:29

Dostoevsky and his influences on philosophy and literature.
This episode talks about how Dostoevsky was influential in both fields and how multiple fields influence and borrow from each other.
Sep 18, 202128:59

Analytic, Continental, and Pragmatism in philosophy
This episode looks at the three main branches of philosophy in the 20th century.
Aug 22, 202122:15

Comics and social issues
This episode looks at the influence of comics and other popular literature on social issues.
Aug 11, 202115:11

Nietzsche and his influence on later philosophies.
This episode covers a few of Nietzsche's ideas and their relevance to later philosophy and history.
Aug 08, 202131:26

Anais Nin and the Diaries
This episode covers Nin and some of the shifts made by writers like her in the 20th century.
Jul 28, 202130:39

Schopenhauer
This episode discusses Schopenhauer and his connection to both western and eastern philosophy.
Jul 12, 202124:21

Metropolis
This episode talks about the connections of the film to both political events of the time and the reduction of women to plot devices in that era.
Jul 06, 202128:57

Marx and his critique of capitalism
This episode touches on some of the criticisms of Marx about capitalism.
Jul 01, 202136:53

The Sound and the Fury
This episode discusses the novel and its connections with modernism.
Jun 24, 202148:55

Hegel
This episode talks about Hegel's ideas and how he connects to both literature and philosophy.
Jun 22, 202119:08

Modernist poetry and the Waste Land
This episode discusses modernist poetry through Eliot's Waste Land.
Jun 15, 202132:40

Kant
This episode talks about Kant and his view of the problems of philosophy in his time and his influences on the future thinkers.
Jun 14, 202123:18

Naturalism
This episode outlines the differences and continuities between realism and naturalism. It also talks about the direction that the podcast will be taking.
Jun 07, 202116:01

Hume
This episode deals with Hume and his empiricism and skepticism.
Jun 03, 202116:33

Realism in literature
This episode looks at a couple of American realist and give a brief look at Flaubert. It also talks about historical and cultural shifts.
Jun 01, 202125:49

The Social Contract
This episode talks about Rousseau's Social Contract and some of the ways it influenced political thinkers after him.
May 24, 202124:57

Victorian literature and social issues.
This episode talks about the shift in Victorian literature from the individual of Romanticism to the social connection and critique of the Victorian writers Browning and Dickens.
May 13, 202118:24

Locke and Empiricism
This episode shifts from Locke's importance as a political philosopher to his foundation of Empiricism in the British tradition of philosophy.
May 03, 202121:07

From Romantics to Realists
This episode discusses the transition from Romanticism to Realism in English, French, Russian, and American literatures.
Apr 12, 202133:42

Locke and Hobbes
This episode talks about the influence of Descartes on the two and how even though they take the same position as a foundation, they come up with different ideas about the ideal system.
Apr 05, 202125:52