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
244 episodes
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Shunning
We are social beings, so nobody likes to be shunned.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 (forthcoming),...
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Season 1
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Episode 207
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12:33
Sacrificial Acts
It’s occurred to me that, several times in the past, I succeeded better at an effort when I didn’t do it for me. I don’t mean that I got “ego” out of the way, whatever that means. What’s ego? What’s necessary life fo...
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Season 1
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Episode 206
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11:19
My Identity Crisis
The task of A Good Look at Evil is to make clear the shape of a good life and the role of evil in trying to destroy what is good in a life.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City Univer...
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Season 1
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Episode 204
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12:36
Philosophy
As a little girl, I would set the lunch table extra slowly so that I could overhear the philosophic conversations between my father, Henry M. Rosenthal, and
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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11:46
Revisiting Country Gospel
Being born and raised a Jewish girl from Manhattan’s old-rent, upper east side, the last thing I’m expected to like is country gospel. Or so I’m often told. People shake their heads. Here comes the dog walking on its hind legs. It’s not done we...
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Season 1
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Episode 204
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5:35
I Dreamed I Saw Grandpa
Let me explain who and what he was, a little. He was tall, white-bearded when I knew him, and had the sad, seen-it-all-at-least-two-times-over Jewish eyes, as well as tremendous personal vibrancy and humorous resilience. His name is...
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Season 1
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Episode 203
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10:11
What's With The Nothing?
Well, I always write about what most concerns me, and beggars can’t be choosers, so – nothing for it – I’d better plunge headfirst into The Nothing. Hey, what does that feel like? Be the first kid on your block to find out.<...
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Season 1
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Episode 202
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13:02
Before Feminism – and After!
Say what you will about the costs (and they were many and steep) women today are freer and happier than they were back then. You can see the change in the documentaries about feminism. The early combats were grim and the combatants ...
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Season 1
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Episode 201
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15:19
“Evil? What Do You Mean, ‘Evil’”?
Aside from my personal encounters with it, and study of some of the cases that made history, what do I know about it?Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. ...
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Season 1
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Episode 200
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11:39
How I Got to be a Person Whose Whole Life is Lived in Cliches
The Rabbis inveigh against gossip. Since a lost reputation is almost as hard to recover as a lost life, they deem it equivalent to a capital crime.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City U...
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Season 1
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Episode 200
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11:36
Therapy For The Jews
Have the Jews anything to offer the world today in their capacity as Jews? The remarkable plasticity and resilience of anti-semitism doesn’t answer my question about being a Jew: what the hell good is it?...
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Season 1
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Episode 199
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13:15
The Deep and the Shallow
I like happy endings, where hopes long denied get fulfilled, where the apparent pointlessness of someone’s particular experience resolves itself into retrieved significance, where the lead character’s imperiled identity returns from his or her ...
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Season 1
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Episode 199
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9:36