TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

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75 episodes
2021 to 2026
Median: 112 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast centers on close reading and discussion of Plato’s dialogues, treating them not as historical artifacts but as living texts that can illuminate contemporary questions. Across the conversations, listeners encounter sustained engagement with core Platonic concerns: what it means to know something, how reason differs from opinion, and how the soul relates to motion, memory, perception, and change over time. The show frequently draws out Plato’s distinctions between Being and Becoming, unity and multiplicity, and the limits that language and convention impose on thought.

A major thread is political philosophy. The discussions repeatedly return to constitutions, leadership, civic education, and the conditions for social harmony, often by examining how laws aim (or fail) to cultivate virtue. Attention is given to institutional design—how to guard those who govern, how oversight can avoid regress, and how justice is administered—alongside Plato’s recurring worry that rulers without philosophy drift toward tyranny. The podcast also explores how word meanings shape legal and political outcomes, highlighting tensions between stable principles and evolving usage.

Ethics and moral psychology appear through recurring questions about virtue: whether it can be taught, whether it is a unified kind of knowledge or a cluster of traits, and how humans weigh pleasure and pain in practical reasoning. Related discussions take up love as a motivating force in the pursuit of wisdom and as a bridge between the human and the enduring.

Another prominent theme is the interface between ancient philosophy and modern technology. Plato’s accounts of naming, measurement, intelligence, and truth are applied to issues like machine language, algorithmic “intelligence,” and the social effects of technologically amplified images and judgments. Alongside this, episodes delve into Plato’s cosmology and philosophical geometry—time, proportion, elemental structure, and the role of reason as a causal principle—often using these topics to frame broader questions about perception and agency.

The overall approach is dialogical and interpretive, emphasizing careful argument, conceptual definitions, and the relevance of Platonic frameworks to present-day civic and technological life.

Episodes:

Why Artificial Intelligence is Impossible 2026-Jan-05 41 minutes

Justice in Plato’s Time and Our Time: Words that Shape Constitutions, Justice, and Governments 2025-Nov-15 27 minutes

On Modern Platonist Alain Badiou:"Thinking the Event" to Distinguish the Real from Images on the Wall 2025-Sep-22 112 minutes

Plato’s Letters VI and VIII: Good Kings are Servants of the Laws and Justice 2025-May-09 90 minutes

Plato's Seventh Letter, Part 2: Can Virtue Be Taught? 2025-Apr-07 93 minutes

Plato's Seventh Letter: On Tyrants Who are Blind to Philosophy 2025-Mar-03 77 minutes

Bringing Plato into the 21st Century: a Discussion on Political and Social Principles Spanning 2,400 Years 2024-Dec-29 101 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book XII, Part 2: The Nocturnal Council Guarding Virtue 2024-Oct-28 121 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book XII, Part 1: Who Guards the Guardians? 2024-Sep-27 111 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book XI: Property and Punishment in Magnesia 2024-Sep-02 112 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book IX: Legislating the Good for Unjust Acts Committed 2024-Aug-05 119 minutes

Plato’s Laws – Book VII: Teaching and Legislating for Harmony 2024-Jul-23 116 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book VI: Founding and Governing a Virtuous Society 2024-Jul-04 119 minutes

Plato’s Laws – Book V: The Soul in Communal Harmony 2024-Jun-18 104 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book IV: Leadership by Reason 2024-May-26 124 minutes

Plato’s Laws – Book III: Finding Unity and Reason in the Balance of Reason 2024-May-12 126 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book II: Learning the Pleasure of the Good and Beautiful 2024-Apr-14 132 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book I, Part 2: Mastering Pain and Pleasure in a Virtuous Society 2024-Mar-16 113 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book I, Part 1: A Constitution for Peace and Virtue 2024-Mar-03 117 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book X, Part 2: Reason as the Cause in the Middle of It All 2024-Feb-16 113 minutes

Plato's Laws - Book X, Part 1: Universal Patterns 2024-Feb-02 123 minutes

Plato's Critias Revisited: The Tale of Atlantis and the Harmonics of Memory 2023-Dec-18 113 minutes

Plato's Timaeus Revisited: Part IV - The Soul's Perceptions in the Universal Middle 2023-Dec-03 112 minutes

Plato’s Timaeus Revisited, Part III: Perceiving Imitations of Being as they Become 2023-Nov-17 119 minutes

Plato's Timaeus Revisited: Part II - A Universe Centered on the Soul 2023-Nov-03 110 minutes

Plato's Timaeus Revisited: Part I – Cities in Motion for both Observer and Observed 2023-Oct-15 114 minutes

What Would Socrates Say About ChatGPT? 2023-Sep-25 41 minutes

Plato's Crito: The Constitution of Souls 2023-Jul-18 120 minutes

Plato’s Ion: The Stories That Souls Trade 2023-Jul-04 111 minutes

Platio's Symposium, Part 3: Knowledge Versus Mastery, and Love's Light in The Cave 2023-Jun-15 108 minutes

Plato's Symposium, Part 2: Love and the Immortal Good 2023-May-31 112 minutes

Plato's Symposium, Part 1: Love's Poetry, Bearing Individual and Universal Truths 2023-May-12 106 minutes

Plato’s Hippias Minor: Truth, Lies, and Feedback Loops 2023-May-05 92 minutes

Plato's Protagoras, Part 3: In Virtue of What Does Good Outweigh Bad? 2023-Apr-09 111 minutes

Plato's Protagoras, Part 2: Is Virtue One Thing or Many? 2023-Mar-24 112 minutes

Plato's Protagoras, Part 1: Can Virtue Be Taught? 2023-Mar-10 113 minutes

Plato's Philebus, Part 3: The Philosopher's Arithmetic 2023-Feb-23 112 minutes

Plato’s Philebus, Part 2: Does the Universe Have a Soul and Reason? 2023-Feb-08 99 minutes

Dialogue on the Philebus, Part 1: The Universe of Memory, Knowledge, and Limits 2023-Jan-25 111 minutes

Plato's Greater Hippias: The Measure of Intelligence 2022-Dec-21 106 minutes

Dialogue on the Cratylus, Part 3: Things Good, True, and Beautiful 2022-Dec-08 100 minutes

Dialogue on The Cratylus, Part 2: Being, Becoming, and Limits 2022-Nov-22 102 minutes

Dialogue on The Cratylus, Part 1: Distinguishing One Thing From Another 2022-Nov-07 94 minutes

Plato's Cratylus and the Forms: Our Perception in Time 2022-Oct-22 35 minutes

Modern Technology and Ancient Philosophy: Building the Bridge With Science 2022-Jul-29 97 minutes

Dialogue on The Parmenides, Session 2: If the One is Not, then Nothing Is 2022-Jun-26 97 minutes

Dialogue on The Parmenides, Session 1: The One and the Many 2022-Jun-11 111 minutes

Dialogue on The Statesman, Session 3: Harmony in Time 2022-May-28 103 minutes

Dialogue on The Statesman, Session 2: The Mean and The Extremes 2022-May-14 112 minutes

Dialogue on The Statesman, Session 1: Ripple of Hope 2022-Apr-30 123 minutes

Dialogue On The Sophist, Session 3: The Forms In A Harmony Of Difference 2022-Apr-09 122 minutes

Dialogue On The Sophist, Session 2: The Forms Whole And One 2022-Mar-26 123 minutes

Dialogue On The Sophist, Session 1: Continuous Division 2022-Mar-12 120 minutes

Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 3: Form And Cause 2022-Feb-26 120 minutes

Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 2: Infinite Potential 2022-Feb-12 114 minutes

Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 1: Logic Of The Equal 2022-Jan-29 120 minutes

Dialogue On Philebus: The One And The Many 2022-Jan-15 124 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 6: The Immortal Soul 2021-Dec-18 113 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 5: Knowledge of Philosophers 2021-Dec-14 118 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 4: Philosopher Rulers 2021-Nov-20 115 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 3: The Guardians, The Virtues, and The Soul 2021-Nov-06 116 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 2: Social Constitution 2021-Oct-23 114 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 1: Allegory of the Cave, Simile of the Sun, Nature of Good, and the Divided Line 2021-Oct-07 117 minutes

Welcome to Plato's Pod! - Season 2 Trailer 2021-Aug-09 2 minutes

Dialogue on The Theaetetus, Part 2: Transmission of Knowledge in Two Types of Motion 2021-Jun-13 117 minutes

Dialogue on The Theaetetus, Part I: Knowledge, memory, and their measure 2021-Jun-02 115 minutes

Dialogue on The Euthyphro: The nature of piety and our relationship with the eternal 2021-May-24 110 minutes

Dialogue on The Critias: The Legend of Atlantis and the Quest for Divine Harmony 2021-May-08 112 minutes

Dialogue on The Phaedrus (Part II): The Purpose of Speech, and its Powers in Particular 2021-Apr-15 119 minutes

Dialogue on The Republic, Session 5: Knowledge of Philosophers 2021-Dec-04 118 minutes

Dialogue on The Phaedrus: The Soul and General Forms of Understanding 2021-Mar-29 less than a minute

Dialogue on The Charmides: The “Science of Self” in the Intelligent Universe 2021-Mar-26 114 minutes

Dialogue on The Meno: Virtue and Knowledge in the Intelligent Universe 2021-Mar-26 119 minutes

Dialogue on The Timaeus: Creation of the Observable, Visible, Physical Universe 2021-Mar-26 108 minutes

Dialogue on The Timaeus: Creation of the Intelligent Universe 2021-Mar-25 110 minutes