Twitter: @
Site: anchor.fm/malcolm-keating
39 episodes
2020 to 2023
Average episode: 14 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Life Philosophy • Monologue (Non-Course)
Podcaster's summary: 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. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/support
| Episodes |
| 2023-Dec-11 • 30 minutes S4 E3: Mantra It seems like everyone, from companies to online influencers | to fitness coaches, talk about having mantras. But what are mantras, | anyway? In this episode, we'll talk about how they compare to birdsong, Tibetan | singing bowls, and spells at Hogwarts, as well as some ancient debates about | whether they mean anything, and why that matters. | | Listen to more episodes of Sutras & Stuff at www.sutrasandstuff.com. | | | Sounds and Music | All music excerpts and soundbites used with an understanding... |
| 2023-Mar-03 • 2 minutes Announcement - Season 4 Episode 3 Just keep swimming! | | --- | | Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/message... | Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/support... |
| 2023-Feb-03 • 35 minutes S4 E2: Avatar What do the Metaverse, blue aliens, and airbenders have in common? They’re all based on the idea of the avatar, which goes back thousands of years to the Sanskrit term avatāra. In this episode, we’ll explore what an avatar is and how thinking about these ideas in ancient Hindu and Buddhist contexts can help us think about reality, the divine, and even our survival after death. | Sounds and Music All music excerpts and soundbites used with an understanding of fair use modification for educational purposes.&n... |
| 2023-Jan-06 • 35 minutes S4 E1: Karma Does what goes around always come around? And is instant karma gonna get you? In the first episode of a season devoted to Sanskrit-to-English loanwords, we’ll examine how three groups of Indian philosophers understand karma: Jains, Buddhists, and Naiyayikas (or Nyaya philosophers). | Sounds and Music | All music excerpts and soundbites used with an understanding of fair use modification for educational purposes. | Drake featuring Bryson Tiller, “Bad Karma” | Alicia Keys, “Karma” | John Lennon and Yoko Ono w... |
| 2022-Dec-16 • 2 minutes S4 Teaser Taylor Swift says karma is her boyfriend, and Boy George sings about karma chameleons. In addition to “karma,” there are lots of other Sanskrit terms which have made their way into English: yoga, dharma, mantra, guru, Buddha, swastika, and more. In this season, we’ll focus on one word an episode to get a deeper understanding of what they meant in their original contexts, and how these meanings resonate today. | Episodes of Season Four will air the first Friday of every month, beginning January 6, 2023. Subs... |
| 2022-Jun-16 • 15 minutes S3 E10: Tom Davies In this episode, I talk with Tom Davies, Seymour Reader in Ancient History and Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, about how understanding Indian philosophy in relationship with the rest of the ancient world helps us reflect on what philosophy is, as a human activity, in different cultural contexts. | Note: This is the final episode of the regular season, concluding the series of interviews with philosophers who taught Philosophy and Political Thought at Yale-NUS. Not every philosopher participated, ... |
| 2022-Jun-01 • 15 minutes S3 E9: Robin Zheng In this episode, I talk with Robin Zheng, Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, about connections between social practices and knowing in premodern Indian philosophy and contemporary feminist philosophy. | Further Resources: | Robin Zheng’s website: https://www.robin-zheng.me/ | Helen Longino: https://philosophy.stanford.edu/people/helen-longino... | Miranda Fricker: https://www.mirandafricker.com/ | Christy Dotson: https://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/people/faculty/kldotson.html... | Debating: https:/... |
| 2022-May-15 • 15 minutes S3 E8: Cathay Liu In this episode, I talk with Cathay Liu, Senior Lecturer at the National University of Singapore, about philosophical systems and both Indian and European philosophy in the 17th century. | Further Resources | Rene Descartes https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/... | The Tarkasamgraha at https://archive.org/details/tarka-samgraha-ramkrishna-mission/mode/2up... | How to Think Like a Nyāya Philosopher, Annambhatta's Primer on Reasoning (Part 1 of 4) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L14Q87r24Is... | Th... |
| 2022-May-01 • 17 minutes S3 E7: Neil Mehta In this episode, I talk with Neil Mehta, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS, about what exists and what we can say about it. | Further Resources | Neil Mehta’s website: http://www.profneilmehta.com/ | Theory of Two Truths in India: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/twotruths-india/... | Graham Priest’s website: https://grahampriest.net | Metaphysics of grounding: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grounding/... | Nagarjuna: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/... | Music Credits: | Brit... |
| 2022-Apr-14 • 16 minutes S3 E6: Matt Walker In this episode, I talk with Matthew Walker, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS, about ancient philosophy, therapeutic arguments, reading practices, and the Bhagavad Gita. | Further Resources | Matt Walker’s website: https://sites.google.com/site/mattwalker2000/home... | Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/aristotle-on-the-uses-of-contemplation/1496... | Aristotle https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/... | Zhu Xi https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/... |
| 2022-Apr-01 • 15 minutes S3 E5: Jay Garfield In this episode, I talk with Jay Garfield, Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, about the Buddhist philosopher Candrakirti and how teaching Indian philosophy at Yale-NUS impacted his understanding of Western philosophers like Hume. | Further Resources | Jay Garfield’s website: https://jaygarfield.org/ | David Hume: | https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ | The Concealed Influence of Custom (Jay Garfield): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-concealed-influence-of-custom-978019... | Can... |
| 2022-Mar-16 • 17 minutes S3 E4: Christine Tan In this episode, I talk with Christine Tan, Philosophy Lecturer at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, about Indian materialism, skepticism, and overlaps with Chinese Philosophy. | Further Resources | Christine Tan’s website: https://tanchristineabigail.com/ | Guo Xiang: https://iep.utm.edu/guoxiang/ | Cārvāka: https://iep.utm.edu/indmat | Podcast Episodes on Jayanta Bhatta’s play: | Part 1: https://anchor.fm/malcolm-keating/episodes/Episode-9-Much-Ado-about-Religion--Pa... | Part 2: https://anchor.fm/malcolm-ke... |
| 2022-Mar-01 • 15 minutes S3 E3: Kathryn Muyskens In this episode, I talk with Kathryn Muyskens, Philosophy Lecturer at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, about the Buddhist philosopher Shantideva and bioethics, health care, and compassion. | Further Resources | Kathryn Muyskens’ papers on Philpapers: https://philpeople.org/profiles/kathryn-muyskens... | Shantideva: | https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shantideva/... | https://iep.utm.edu/santideva/ | YouTube video on Shantideva with Connie Kassor and Stephen Harris: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQVLrbk0y... |
| 2022-Feb-14 • 17 minutes S3 E2: Andrew Bailey Content note: There's one instance of the "F-word" in English towards the end of the interview. | In this episode, I talk with Andrew Bailey, Associate Professor of philosophy at Yale-NUS College in Singapore about the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna and analytic metaphysics, Gandhi on technology, and Nyaya philosophers on inference. | Further Resources | Andrew Bailey’s website: https://www.andrewmbailey.com/ | Nagarjuna: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/... | David Lewis: https://plato.stanford... |
| 2022-Jan-30 • 16 minutes S3 E1: Bryan Van Norden In this episode, I talk with Bryan Van Norden, Professor of philosophy at Vassar College in the United States about how he came to Indian philosophy, what he enjoys about teaching it, as well as connections between ideas about knowing in Indian and Chinese philosophy. | Further Resources | Bryan Van Norden’s website: http://www.bryanvannorden.com/ | “Less Commonly Taught Philosophies” bibliography: http://www.bryanvannorden.com/suggestions-for-further-reading... | The Questions of King Milinda: | My YouTube... |
| 2021-Jan-31 • 17 minutes Much Ado about Religion: Part 2 How does a 9th century Nyaya philosopher addresses the intersection of religious conflict and ruling power in India? Are feelings of offense reason to exclude certain religious practices? What lessons can we take from Nyaya philosophers on religious toleration, and are they internally consistent here? | To read the whole play, get the Clay Sanskrit Library translation of Much Ado about Religion by Csaba Dezsö, published 2005 by NYU Press. https://nyupress.org/9780814719794/much-ado-about-religion/... | Mani... |
| 2021-Jan-15 • 12 minutes Episode 9: Much Ado about Religion, Part 1 Join our hero Sankarshana as he travels around the kingdom, vanquishing foes...with reason. Part 1 of 2. | To read the whole play, get the Clay Sanskrit Library translation of Much Ado about Religion by Csaba Dezsö, published 2005 by NYU Press. https://nyupress.org/9780814719794/much-ado-about-religion/... | | --- | | Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/message... | Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/support... |
| 2021-Jan-01 • 13 minutes Episode 8: Equivocating and other ways to lose When is a door not really a door? When it's ajar! That old joke equivocates on two meanings of "ajar" In this episode we look at how equivocation can impact our reasoning, like when we ask, When is a doctor not really a doctor? We explore a few other ways that reasoning can go wrong and force us to lose in a debate. And listen until the end to hear what's planned for Episode 9. | Sources: | Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips, The Nyaya-sutra: Selections with Early Commentaries, Hackett Publishing, 2017. htt... |
| 2020-Dec-30 • 1 minutes Season 2 Announcement Quick announcement about Episodes 8 through 10. | | --- | | Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/message... | Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/support... |
| 2020-Dec-15 • 12 minutes Counterfeit Reasons When is a reason not a reason? According to Nyaya philosophers, when it's all smoke and no fire. In this episode we'll talk about how reasoning can go wrong when people use "counterfeit reasons," which don't actually support their claims. | Music: | Brittle Rille by Kevin MacLeod | Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3460-brittle-rille... | License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/... | Sources: | Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips, The Nyaya-sutra: Selections with Early Commentaries, Hac... |
| 2020-Nov-23 • 16 minutes Debating If you've ever watched a political debate on TV, you may wonder what the point is. After all, aren't both participants committed to their own viewpoints, and just aiming to win? Why would we ever think that debate is a useful activity. Nyaya philosophers were big proponents of debate, but not the kind of debate you see on network TV. In this episode we'll explore why they think arguments between two opposing parties aren't just a spectacular waste of time. | Music: | Brittle Rille by Kevin MacLeod | Link: h... |
| 2020-Nov-06 • 16 minutes Doubting Doubts can feel paralyzing, but according to the early Nyaya philosopher Uddyotakara, the right kind of doubt is actually useful. In this episode we'll apply his thinking about doubt to the 2020 US presidential election. | Music: | Brittle Rille by Kevin MacLeod | Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3460-brittle-rille... | License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/... | Sources: | Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips, The Nyaya-sutra: Selections with Early Commentaries, Hackett Publishing, 2... |
| 2020-Oct-23 • 15 minutes Testify! In this increasingly partisan world, many of us are listening only to people we already agree with. But can we learn things from the speech of people on the "other side"? In this episode, we learn how Nyaya philosophers think testimony can be a powerful tool for conveying knowledge, regardless of religion or political affiliation. | Music: | Brittle Rille by Kevin MacLeod | Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3460-brittle-rille... | License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/... | Sources: ... |
| 2020-Oct-16 • 3 minutes Announcement about Episode 4 Sutras (and stuff) will return next week for a new episode. Apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience! | | --- | | Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/message... | Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/support... |
| 2020-Oct-01 • 16 minutes Inferring The climate is changing due to human activity. Scientists today are arguing for this crucial claim, warning us that it has dire consequences. But how can we know that the past has an effect on the present? How can we draw connections between unseen things and what we observe? In this episode, we’ll see how Nyaya philosophers could help science communicators like Bill Nye in their mission to demonstrate the reality of climate change. And we’ll see if climate change deniers have a snowball’s chance in Oklahom... |
| 2020-Sep-18 • 15 minutes Knowing We can’t directly see it but we know it exists by extending our vision with special tools. We can reason about when it’s present based on associations. We can share facts about it with each other. And we can learn its name by comparing it to other similar kinds of things. I’m talking about the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, and in this episode we’ll focus on how early Nyāya philosophers might explain our knowledge about this disease, and how they think all human beings have the ability to know using a spec... |
| 2020-Sep-04 • 11 minutes Introduction to Season 2 How can we become better thinkers and better human beings? What’s the connection between critical thinking and reducing suffering? In this intro episode to Season 2, we’ll learn about the Indian tradition known as “Nyaya,” who says these things are very closely related, and whose ideas we’ll be focusing on in detail this coming season. | | Music: | Brittle Rille by Kevin MacLeod | Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3460-brittle-rille... | License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/... | S... |
| 2020-Jun-04 • 2 minutes Announcement: Season One Ending When I started this podcast in February 2020, I envisioned a first season of ten episodes. I wrote, recorded, and scheduled the most recent episode (Episode 8) before the nationwide protests against police brutality began in the United States, which is my country of origin and my current home while I am on leave from my college. Given current events, even though I strongly believe that philosophy, and even premodern Sanskrit philosophy, has an important role to play in shaping a more just and equitabl... |
| 2020-May-29 • 14 minutes Episode 8: Binging Binge-watching. You sit down, popcorn and soda at the ready, and before you know it, three hours have gone by and Netflix pops up with a message: “Are you still watching?” While binge-watching is a fairly new English phrase (attested by the OED back to 1998 in verb form) in the sense of “overindulgence,” binging goes back to the 19th century, associated with gluttony. While binging on television may be a particularly modern phenomenon, the connection between gluttony and aesthetic taste is not. Today ... |
| 2020-May-15 • 17 minutes Episode 7: Craving Do you wish things were different right now? Is there some experience you used to have that you miss? Are you having unpleasant feelings? If so, you've got a lot in common with Buddhist practitioners and philosophers from the 4th century CE. In this episode, I speak with Bryce Huebner, Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. We talk about how some Buddhist philosophers think our mental lives are interrelated with our emotions, how this idea rela... |
| 2020-May-01 • 16 minutes Episode 6: Expertise Who should you listen to? Now, more than ever before, we have access to advice from a range of self-proclaimed experts. Anyone with a webcam and an Internet connection can dole out advice. But how do we tell if someone is trustworthy? In this episode, I test some so-called experts based on the requirements from Nyaya philosophers. Let's see who makes the cut... | Sources and Links | Quotes from Caraka’s Compendium are from | Domink Wujastyk’s The Roots of Ayurveda and the Caraka Samhita Online | Quotes from... |
| 2020-Apr-24 • 1 minutes Teaser: Episode 6 Who should you listen to? Now, more than ever before, we have access to advice from a range of self-proclaimed experts. Anyone with a webcam and an Internet connection can dole out advice. But how do we tell if someone is trustworthy? In the next episode, I test some so-called experts based on the requirements from Nyaya philosophers, with a litle help from Caraka. Let's see who makes the cut... | Background music by junkfood2121 on freesound, used under Creative Commons Attribution License. | *Oops! This i... |
| 2020-Apr-17 • 15 minutes Episode 5: Contagion (part two) 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 | Dominik Wujastyk, The Roots of Ayurveda | Caraka Samhita online | Patricia Sauthoff is a postdoctoral researcher ... |
| 2020-Apr-03 • 17 minutes Episode 4: Contagion (part one) 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 Planet of Viruses, Carl Zimmer | Patricia Sauthoff is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Albe... |
| 2020-Mar-28 • 1 minutes Announcement: Opening up the "phone lines" I want to hear from you. Send me a voice message through Anchor or email me at [email protected] and I might use your messages on an upcoming episode. Be well, everyone. | | --- | | Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/message... | Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malcolm-keating/support... |
| 2020-Mar-27 • 16 minutes Episode 3: Reclining 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, and Killing. | Elisa Freschi, Andrew Ollett & Matteo Pascucci (2019), "Duty and Sacrifice: A Logical Ana... |
| 2020-Mar-20 • 13 minutes Episode 2.1: Disease and debate 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 Medicine in Classical India Project | BBC Interview with Prof. Robin Shattock, Imperial College London | The ... |
| 2020-Mar-13 • 16 minutes Episode 2: The Man 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... Yigal Bronner, Extreme Poetry http://cup.columbia.edu/book... Kālidāsa, Raghuvaṃśa https://archive.org/deta... Malcolm Keating, Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy https:... |
| 2020-Feb-29 • 13 minutes S1 E1: Threads (This is an audio remastered version of an episode which first aired February 29, 2020.) | Introduction to the podcast and, what do sutras and Twitter have in common? What do ancient Sanskrit aphorisms have in common with modern Internet communication? In this episode, Malcolm talks about sutras and Twitter, bedbugs and textual interpretation. | Sources & Links | | Reply All: Bedbugs & Aliens: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/kwh23r/148-bedbugs-and-aliens... | | English translation of the... |