Jun 28, 2024
The conversation after this week's episode on demons and psychology has been so fascinating that I wanted to add one more thing. If on Tuesdays we wear pink, on Fridays we talk about language--so in this episode I'm exploring what it means to think about the transition from soul-talk to therapy-talk as an...
Jun 26, 2024
Untranslatable...that's what you are...and forevermore...that's how you'll...stay? This week, prompted by a listener who's working on a very cool coding project, I'm talking a little bit about famously untranslatable words like logos, ruach, and my personal favorite, aphiēmi. It's an ancient problem, debated and fussed...
Jun 25, 2024
Is Anxiety a demon? It's a question raised, weirdly, by the most popular kids' movie in America right now--and by the entire practice of modern psycotherapy. Typically, when we try to understand mental illness, we refer to natural causes like brain chemistry or personal and family history. But are there some forms of...
Jun 18, 2024
Is AI taking on a life of its own? Or is it just a mindless machine? Sly grin why can't we have both?
Some of our earliest Western literature is fraught with the suggestion that one day we might make a machine so complex, it would think for itself. But what would that say about us? Our new, allegregorical way of talking...
Jun 14, 2024
Next time you want to get everyone's attention for a speech at a party, try this: stand up on a table, pound your mead-chalice on a hard surface (you've got a mead-chalice, right?) and shout HWÆT! No one will have any idea what you're saying, but they'll have no choice but to listen. That's the power of Old English....