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
229 episodes since 2021
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...
September 14, 2024
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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
September 05, 2024
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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...
August 29, 2024
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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...
August 22, 2024
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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.<...
August 15, 2024
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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 ...
August 08, 2024
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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. ...
August 01, 2024
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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...
July 26, 2024
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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?...
July 19, 2024
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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 ...
July 11, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 199
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9:36
Do Miracles Happen?
Occasionally something occurs that you or I might be tempted to call “a miracle.” But: what follows when you try to talk about a “miracle” that you think might have happened to you? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Eme...
July 04, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 198
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13:29
Recognition
Of course, there are times when one needs to be alone, but not indefinitely. Even solitude has its touchstones of homecoming, of reunion – with memory, with aspiration, with nature and wild creatures.Abigail L. Rosenthal is ...
June 27, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 197
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10:28
Who is the Suffering Servant?
If the Suffering Servant does not fit neatly into mainstream Jewish traditions about the messiah, who is he?Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author ...
June 20, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 196
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14:43
A Misremembered Woman
I found a book to read for the flight from Philadelphia to Ontario, California, this past week. It was about a woman named Sabina Spielrein. I’d never heard of her, but she’s an important figure in the recent history of our culture — a woman wh...
June 13, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 195
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15:45
How Can I Tell If It’s God?
I knew the miracles could be regarded as chance happenings. Onlookers would take them that way. Academics don’t talk about miracles. But the string of personal history didn’t pull taut till I took them as God-sent.Abig...
June 06, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 194
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12:09
I Believed Juanita Back When
When I watched Lisa Meyers’ NBC interview with Juanita Broaddrick, back when President Bill Clinton had just survived an impeachment vote in the Senate, I called myself a “Clinton Democrat.” Why then would I bother to watch a TV program where, ...
May 30, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 193
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12:24
Betrayal
My private concern is betrayal. I want to be myself, the one who – very precisely – I am. That identity, that authenticity, turns out to have a Jewish thread running through it. At the same time, it’s God I care about, it’s truth I care for, mo...
May 23, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 192
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12:39
Anger
It did not fall out that way. I did not feel resentful of those who had put me through seven years of professional hell. I rather felt sorry for them. In my view, they’d picked the wrong parts to play in the movie we’d shared.
May 17, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 191
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9:32
Jesus
Today the talk turned to Jesus. In the politics of religion, that’s a sensitive subject. With us, it’s not. We’re interested in the question of how to relate to God. That’s very different from the question of whose religion is “best” or (what c...
May 09, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 190
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11:27
A Good Look at Evil
I’ve now reread A Good Look at Evil, the first edition. It was my first book. It talks about “narrative” before anyone else that I know of did, if the term is applied to an individual’s life experience. By now, “narrative” is much talk...
May 02, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 189
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12:02
A Steeper Cliff
So here I am in this intermarriage and my man is having conversations with God that occur outside the Jewish project. So what do I do? Nothing. I do nothing. I keep the two worlds separate.Abigail L. Rosenthal is Profess...
April 25, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 188
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10:40
The Most Complex Trip Imaginable
So fifty seconds with an airline dispatcher?What are the odds?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 ...
April 18, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 187
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10:50
Rocky Mountain Lowdown
In sum, it’s not true that everything has changed since the Shoah. Sadly, very little has changed. . .Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confess...
April 11, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 186
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13:11
Moses and Me
The reason I have trouble with Moses is that his basic task seems to me different. God is not just asking him to bring himself into being. The Lord is asking Moses to bring a people into being!Abigail L. Rosenthal is Pr...
April 04, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 185
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10:51
World History and Me
Last night I watched a documentary about the “discovery” by Europeans of the Western Hemisphere – that vast tract of land between Europe and the India that the spice-hunters sought.In my childhood, that discovery was chronicled without s...
March 28, 2024
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Season 1
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Episode 184
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16:15