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Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .
Episodes
254 episodes
Wickedness and Suffering
Getting ready for bed, I thought of this vast sea of suffering. I prayed to see it clear – to be shown its inner features and the size of it — relative to humanity as a whole. In what world do we live?Read this epi...
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Season 1
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Episode 230
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12:29
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Evil is Really Not Banal
Was “evil” trying to find out if I really meant what I wrote?Read this episode on my blog HEREConfessions of a Young P...
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Season 1
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Episode 229
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10:55
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Nibbles from the Tree of Knowledge
On my night table for last read of the evening is a book with the title, Forbidden Knowledge. It concerns a topic that I’d never considered as such: whether there are, or ought to be, built-in limits to what we as human beings sh...
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Season 1
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Episode 228
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12:02
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Jewish Time
Lately, I’ve had a growing sense of living my life on something I call “Jewish Time.” Have I anything concrete in view?Read this episode on my blog ...
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Season 1
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Episode 227
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9:48
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The Big City and Me
It is the town where my mother captured the Nazi spy ring being run out of the basement of the walkup apartment on 86th and Park where our family lived during the War years. My mother wondered why our superintendent did not allow suitcase...
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Season 1
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Episode 226
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12:58
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I Was Politically Correct for 15 Minutes
It happened like this. I was remembering a case I know of, where a young woman, who had her whole life before her, was being forced into the sealed back of a truck. Uniformed Nazis were turning a hose filled with carbon monoxide int...
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Season 1
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Episode 225
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13:22
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Feminism without Contradictions
Even to suggest that feminism’s theoretical foundations need reworking might seem a tad risky. Well, gee, that’s tough. As I sometimes said when I taught Philosophic Foundations of Feminism: “If I wanna be pushed around, I don’t need other femi...
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Season 1
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Episode 224
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14:08
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Economic Life
So what’s it all about, economic life? People will kill and die for their economic theories, but the theories never quite square with the way things are – behind the theorizing.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at ...
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Season 1
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Episode 223
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11:59
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The Horse Knows
Facebook had an advertisement for something called Equine Gestalt Coaching Method. I consider horses to be good for you, with or without the “Gestalt” part. But I hadn’t found any safe way of being around them since I was last in the saddle. I ...
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Season 1
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Episode 222
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10:16
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What About the Jews?
When you think of it, the anti-semite’s belief pays a sort of inverted tribute to the claim God makes for the descendants of Father Abraham:In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.It’s God’s very promise to...
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Season 1
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Episode 221
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9:11
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Competitive Friendships
I have just been reading the youthful correspondence between my future father, Henry M. Rosenthal, and his best friend in college and for some years thereafter, Lionel Trilling. Trilling went on to make for himself the most brilliant care...
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Season 1
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Episode 220
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11:19
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Admiration
In the claims and counter-claims of real life, what is to count as evidence?Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosophe...
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Season 1
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Episode 219
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13:04
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What’s Your Evidence?
So how does one stay real, and stay in real life, at times of utter frustration? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Y...
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Season 1
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Episode 218
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10:00
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Are People Really Good at Heart?
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”These words — set down as a belief, not a question — are among the last lines in the diary of Ann...
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Season 1
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Episode 217
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8:04
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Beatrice in Modern Gear
Of course, many a woman has tried to save a man to her own detriment and without succeeding. There are excellent reasons to warn a girl against embracing such an ideal.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brook...
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Season 1
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Episode 216
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9:27
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Delusions of Intellection
“People live and die by ideas!” “You are what you think – much more than what you eat!”With encouraging words like these, I would try to persuade students in an intro course to see the study of ph...
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Season 1
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Episode 215
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12:48
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Private Matters
If you think we weren’t scared, think again. We each have a long list of very realistic reasons to believe that we can’t – without extreme diminishment – survive the loss of the other.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor ...
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Season 1
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Episode 214
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11:22
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Persecution and the Art of Writing
Why should truth-seekers hide their findings? It sounded like a Conspiracy Theory without conspirators, a drama without Dramatis Personae, a tempest in an émigré philosopher’s teapot.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emeri...
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Season 1
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Episode 213
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8:23
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Walking Into The Fire: The Politically Incorrect Phyllis Chesler
Do men and women now treat each other better than they once did? The feminist revolution peeled off the conventions that used to govern relations between the sexes. Yet man-woman relations seem never to have been in worse shape, the exaggeratio...
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Season 1
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Episode 212
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12:43
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Nudnikerie: My Album of Antisemites
Nudnik: “A nudnik is not just a nuisance; to merit the status of nudnik, a nuisance must be the most persistent, talkative, obnoxious, indomitable, and indefatigable nag.” The Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten.As for “Nudn...
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Season 1
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Episode 211
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16:40
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Homage To Milbridge
There people know you in the round. If you want to do something you don’t want the whole town to know, don’t do it in Milbridge. By the same token, if you want to make up a damaging story about someone of whom the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 210
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12:20
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Wingeing, Death and Debility
What’s the best way to live? What’s the best way to die? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (fo...
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Season 1
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Episode 209
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11:44
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Paradigm Shifts
We live under the sheltering umbrellas of our worldviews. To the point where we would feel naked if we were caught in the street without them.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City Un...
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Season 1
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Episode 208
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11:13
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