Malcolm Keating

Sutras & Stuff: A Philosophy Podcast

Education EN ↓ 31 episodes

In this informal bite-sized podcast, we'll talk about a range of ideas found in Indian philosophy, along with their connections to the modern day. Your host is a philosopher who reads Sanskrit texts and thinks about how the modern and premodern are intertwined.

Author

Malcolm Keating

Episodes

Episode 5: Contagion (part two) 17.04.2020 15:10

Love, happiness, and disease. These are a few things that today we call  "contagious." But how did thinkers in the Indian subcontinent, before  the discovery of viruses, understand diseases and their treatment? This  podcast is part two of a two-part interview with Patricia Sauthoff, an  expert in the history of alchemy and medicine in India.  Sources and links   Domi...

Episode 4: Contagion (part one) 03.04.2020 16:37

Love, happiness, and disease. These are a few things that today we call  "contagious." But how did thinkers in the Indian subcontinent, before  the discovery of viruses, understand diseases and their treatment? This  podcast is part one of a two-part interview with Patricia Sauthoff, an  expert in the history of alchemy and medicine in India.  Sources and links  A Pla...

Announcement: Opening up the "phone lines" 28.03.2020 1:07

I want to hear from you. Send me a voice message through Anchor or email me at sutrasandstuff@gmail.com and I might use your messages on an upcoming episode. Be well, everyone.

Episode 3: Reclining 27.03.2020 16:05

If you’re going to recline your seat on an airplane, you should do it  gently. And if you’re going to kill your enemy with the shyena ritual,  you should build a brick altar. But should we do either of these things? Mimamsa and the logic of troubling commands. Sources and Links BBC clip from “ Corona Virus: What is social distancing ?” Kei Kataoka (2011), Kumarila on Truth, Omniscience,...

Episode 2.1: Disease and debate 20.03.2020 13:22

What does an ancient Sanskrit text have to tell us about reasoning about the coronavirus and debating with people about its treatment? Caraka’s Compendium, a medical treatise, gives some guidelines for when to bother debating with people, and whom we should trust with our health. Sources & links Online Searchable Caraka Samhita Translation of Caraka Samhita from the episode Philosophy and Medic...

Episode 2: The Man 13.03.2020 15:37

Taylor Swift does it, and so does Kalidasa. How does figurative speech work and why do we enjoy it so much? In this episode, I talk about how figurative language from Sanskrit poetry to William Shakespeare to Taylor Swift. Sources and Links Taylor Swift, “The Man” music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqAJLh9wuZ0 Yigal Bronner, Extreme Poetry http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-po...