Shows
sleepyphilosophyradioHermeticism | The Ancient Wisdom of Hermes TrismegistusIn ancient Egypt, a figure known as Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice Greatest, was said to hold the deepest secrets of the cosmos. The Greeks merged their god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth, and from that union a philosophy was born, one that would quietly shape Western thought for two thousand years.This exploration traces the complete story of Hermeticism, from its origins in Hellenistic Alexandria through the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet, through the Renaissance revival that captivated Ficino, Bruno, and Newton, and into its lasting legacy in Western esotericism and philosophy. We examine the...
2026-02-173h 51
sleepyphilosophyradio"Something in the World Forces Us to Think" | Deleuze's Complete Philosophy For SleepGilles Deleuze reimagined what philosophy could do. Where most philosophers tried to represent the world, Deleuze wanted to create something entirely new — concepts that make thought move differently. The rhizome. The body without organs. Deterritorialization. Becoming. These are not descriptions of how things are. They are tools for thinking in ways that escape identity, hierarchy, and transcendence.In this episode of Sleepy Philosophy Radio we trace Deleuze's entire philosophical project. How he transformed the way a generation read Nietzsche, Bergson, and Spinoza. How his collaboration with Félix Guattari produced two of the most provocative books of the...
2026-02-153h 59
sleepyphilosophyradioThe Philosopher of Pessimism | The Complete Philosophy of Arthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer believed that the capacity to be alone was the truest mark of intellectual and spiritual development. For him, solitude was not merely the absence of others but the presence of oneself. Only those who had cultivated a rich inner life could truly bear their own company.This three-hour exploration examines Schopenhauer's philosophy of solitude from the ground up. We trace his life from the merchant's son in Danzig, through his father's death, his failed academic career, and his decades as a solitary hermit in Frankfurt. Then we enter his philosophy: the blind Will that drives...
2026-02-072h 21
sleepyphilosophyradioDivine Hiddenness and Reasonable Nonbelief: The Problem of God's SilenceWhen someone prays and hears nothing back, when a sincere seeker finds only silence, what does that tell us about whether God exists? Divine hiddenness is one of philosophy's most emotionally charged problems. If a loving God exists and wants relationship with us, why doesn't he make himself known to those who genuinely seek him?This exploration traces the problem through scripture, mysticism, and contemporary philosophy. We start with the raw experience: the hospital room where prayers go unanswered, the missionary who loses faith, the philosopher who cannot believe despite wanting to. Then through Job crying out...
2026-02-012h 20
sleepyphilosophyradioExistential Nihilism: From Nietzsche to CamusNothing matters. These two words have haunted Western philosophy since the nineteenth century. This episode traces the complete history of existential nihilism from Schopenhauer's suffocating pessimism through Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, Nietzsche's death of God, and the existentialist responses of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus. We conclude with Viktor Frankl's will to meaning and the question as it remains today.Philosophy for the long night. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.Chapters00:00:00 Nothing Matters00:10:28 What Is Nihilism?00:21:04 The Cracks in Certainty00:31:42 Schopenhauer's Pessimism00:40:50 The Russian Nihilists00:46:45 Dostoevsky's Challenge00:58:48 Nietzsche and the Death of God01:08:35...
2026-01-252h 14
sleepyphilosophyradioThe Proof of Islam: Al-Ghazali's Search for Certainty | Complete PhilosophyIn 1095, the most famous scholar in the Islamic world could not speak. Al-Ghazali had mastered theology, law, and philosophy, yet standing before thousands in Baghdad, his tongue failed and his body refused food. This three-hour exploration follows his extraordinary journey from orphan in Persia to the heights of medieval intellectual life, through complete psychological collapse, to eleven years wandering as a seeker through Damascus, Jerusalem, and Mecca.We examine his devastating critique of the philosophers, his analysis of pride, envy, and the diseases that corrupt the human heart, and his transformation of Islamic spirituality through The Revival...
2026-01-182h 37
sleepyphilosophyradioWhy Does Evil Exist If God Is Good? | Augustine of Hippo | Complete PhilosophyWhy do we do what we know is wrong? Why does nothing ever satisfy us? Augustine of Hippo asked these questions sixteen centuries ago. We are still trying to answer them.This is the complete philosophy of the thinker who shaped Western thought more than almost any figure after Saint Paul. From his African childhood to the streets of Carthage, from nine years with the Manichaeans to the garden in Milan where everything changed.We explore his revolutionary ideas: evil as the absence of good, the will divided against itself, time existing only in the...
2026-01-102h 44
sleepyphilosophyradio"God is Dead" | Nietzsche's Complete PhilosophyGod is dead. But Friedrich Nietzsche did not proclaim this as triumph. He diagnosed it as catastrophe. For two thousand years, Western civilization rested on a foundation that has now collapsed: the God who guaranteed meaning, grounded morality, and promised redemption no longer commands belief. Nietzsche foresaw that the twentieth century would become an age of nihilism, when the highest values devalue themselves and nothing seems to matter anymore.This complete 3-hour exploration traces Nietzsche's life and philosophy from beginning to end. Born the son of a Lutheran pastor in 1844, Nietzsche became one of the most influential...
2026-01-033h 43
sleepyphilosophyradioWhat Happens When Workers Don't Become Revolutionary on Their Own? | Lenin's Complete PhilosophyThis episode examines the question that defined Lenin’s entire project: What is to be done? It was not merely an organizational question but a philosophical challenge that separated Lenin from every other socialist of his generation and transformed Marxism from a theory of historical development into a theory of revolutionary action.Listen as we trace Lenin’s intellectual evolution from his provincial childhood in Simbirsk through the execution of his brother in 1887, his radicalization and years in exile, and his emergence as the twentieth century’s most consequential political thinker. We explore his major...
2025-12-272h 28
sleepyphilosophyradio"What If I Slept A Little More?" | Kafka's Complete Philosophy For SleepWhat if we slept a little more and forgot all this nonsense? Gregor Samsa asked, waking transformed into something monstrous. But for Kafka, there is no escape from consciousness arriving to find everything already changed. This three-hour audio journey explores Franz Kafka's complete life and philosophy through calm, scholarly narration designed for sleep, study, or contemplative listening.Born in Prague in 1883, Kafka lived in the shadow of his dominating father Hermann, wrote through exhausted nights at his insurance job, and died of tuberculosis at forty. Through The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, he articulated...
2025-12-213h 19
sleepyphilosophyradioThe Saint Who Made Aristotle Christian | All of Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy ExplainedIn December 1273, Thomas Aquinas had a mystical experience so profound that he stopped writing entirely. When urged to finish his masterwork, the Summa Theologica, he refused: "All that I have written seems like straw compared to what I have seen." Three months later, he was dead at forty-nine, leaving one of history's most ambitious intellectual projects incomplete.This is the story of the Dumb Ox, a massive, silent student whose classmates mocked him until his teacher prophesied that his bellowing would fill the whole world. Eight centuries later, that prophecy continues to unfold. Thomas Aquinas remains perhaps...
2025-12-152h 33
sleepyphilosophyradioThe Complete Psychology of Carl Jung | Part 2This is part two of our exploration of Carl Gustav Jung's life and psychology. We continue with his method of active imagination, a technique for directly engaging the unconscious through waking fantasy and dialogue with inner figures. We examine his theory of psychological types, including introversion, extraversion, and the four functions of consciousness.We follow the individuation process from shadow work through the integration of anima and animus to the realization of the Self, understanding this journey as the psychological equivalent of the hero's quest. We explore synchronicity, his concept of meaningful coincidence operating beyond ordinary causality...
2025-12-133h 27
sleepyphilosophyradioThe Complete Psychology of Carl Jung | Part 1This is part one of a comprehensive exploration of Carl Gustav Jung's life and psychology. We begin with his haunted childhood in a Swiss parsonage, his psychiatric training at the Burghölzli hospital, and his intense collaboration and eventual break with Sigmund Freud. We follow his descent into the unconscious during the Red Book period, where he nearly lost himself to the visions that would shape his life's work.From there, we explore the architecture of his psychology: the ego, persona, and shadow; the personal unconscious and its complexes; the collective unconscious and archetypes; the anima and a...
2025-12-083h 24
sleepyphilosophyradioCarl Jung's Psychology for Sleep | Archetypes, Dreams, and the Unconscious | Part 1This is part one of a comprehensive exploration of Carl Gustav Jung's life and psychology. We begin with his haunted childhood in a Swiss parsonage, his psychiatric training at the Burghölzli hospital, and his intense collaboration and eventual break with Sigmund Freud. We follow his descent into the unconscious during the Red Book period, where he nearly lost himself to the visions that would shape his life's work.From there, we explore the architecture of his psychology: the ego, persona, and shadow; the personal unconscious and its complexes; the collective unconscious and archetypes; the anima and a...
2025-12-073h 40
sleepyphilosophyradioGod or Nature | Spinoza's Complete PhilosophyDeus sive Natura. God or Nature. Baruch Spinoza's revolutionary equation that shattered the distinction between Creator and creation made him the most dangerous philosopher of the seventeenth century. This three-hour exploration traces his journey from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community through excommunication, solitary lens grinding, and the development of a philosophical system that would influence Einstein, the Romantics, and contemporary thought.Discover the geometric arguments of the Ethics: substance monism that declares only one infinite reality exists, mind-body parallelism that dissolves Cartesian dualism, the doctrine of conatus as the striving at the heart of all existence, and the path...
2025-11-292h 58
sleepyphilosophyradioMan's Search for Meaning | Viktor Frankl's Complete PhilosophyMan's Search for Meaning | Viktor Frankl's Complete PhilosophyIn the autumn of 1942, Viktor Frankl stood in the barracks of Auschwitz and witnessed something extraordinary: prisoners giving away their last pieces of bread to help others. In that moment, he understood that everything can be taken from a human being except one thing—the freedom to choose one's attitude toward any circumstance.This comprehensive exploration takes you through Frankl's entire life and philosophy: his childhood in Vienna, his training under Freud and Adler, his fateful choice to stay with his family rather than escape to America, hi...
2025-11-212h 40
sleepyphilosophyradioOne Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy | Albert Camus's Complete PhilosophyThe Myth of Sisyphus: Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the AbsurdImagine a man condemned to push a boulder up a mountain for all eternity. The gods designed this as the cruelest punishment imaginable—utterly meaningless labor without end, without purpose, without hope of completion. But what if this man is happy?This question opens Albert Camus's philosophy of the Absurd, the confrontation between our human need for meaning and the universe's profound silence. Over four hours, we explore Camus's life in sun-drenched Algeria, his novels The Stranger and The Plague, his philosophical essays, an...
2025-11-104h 26
sleepyphilosophyradioBeauty Will Save The World | Dostoevsky's Philosophy For SleepA Deep Dive into the Mind of Fyodor DostoevskyA long, gentle exploration of the Russian novelist who understood human nature better than almost anyone. Designed for late-night listening, studying, or just letting your mind wander through some of the most profound questions ever asked.We start with his brutal years in Siberian prison, move through his masterpieces like Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and explore why his ideas about freedom, guilt, and redemption still matter today.No background noise, no music—just a steady, calm exploration of what it means to...
2025-11-063h 18
sleepyphilosophyradioLife Is Not A Problem To Be Solved | Kierkegaard's Philosophy To Sleep ToA Long, Gentle Exploration of Søren Kierkegaard's PhilosophyEver feel like everyone's trying to solve life like it's some kind of puzzle? Kierkegaard had a different take. This Danish philosopher spent his whole life exploring what it really means to exist, to choose, to believe in something when nothing makes sense.In this 3+ hour deep dive, we explore Kierkegaard's world, his thoughts on anxiety (which he called "the dizziness of freedom"), his stages of life, the whole leap of faith thing, and why he thought modern society was basically making us all lose ourselves i...
2025-11-053h 09
sleepyphilosophyradioFrom Logic to Ethics | Aristotle's Complete Philosophy for SleepExplore the life and revolutionary ideas of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who shaped how we think about logic, ethics, politics, and science. This comprehensive 2-hour audio journey makes complex philosophy accessible and soothing, perfect for sleep, study, or deep reflection.What You'll Discover:Aristotle's life: from Plato's student to Alexander the Great's tutorFoundational works explained: Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Poetics, and the OrganonLogic and reasoning that created the scientific methodVirtue ethics and the path to the good lifePolitical philosophy and ideal governmentThe soul, psychology, and human natureRhetoric, art, and the nature of knowledgeMedieval influence through...
2025-10-282h 04