Patreon/Tip Jar: ⁠https://patreon.com/c/HemlockPatreon⁠

Table of Contents Below >>>

Original Course Listing on YouTube:

⁠https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEA18FAF1AD9047B0⁠

Buy Prof. Kagan's Book on Death:

https://a.co/d/8FnPcW1

About the Course (Yale)

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Link to Syllabus/Readings and Course Description:

https://oyc.yale.edu/death/phil-176

This course has 26 lectures - these (169a) are the first 13, in order. The forthcoming 169b will contain the back half. Shelly says 1-13 are about metaphysics of death, and 14-26 are about value theory of death.

Chapters

(00:00:00) Intro

(00:01:57) Course Introduction

(00:45:47) The Nature of Persons

(01:23:52) Arguments for the Existence of the Soul I

(02:05:09) Arguments for the Existence of the Soul II: Plato's Phaedo

(02:47:38) Arguments for the Existence of the Soul III: Free Will and Near-Death Experiences

(03:30:56) Arguments for the Existence of the Soul IV: Plato Part 1

(04:03:00) Plato Part II

(04:44:30) Plato Part III

(05:26:55) Plato Part IV

(06:09:08) Personal Identity Part I: Identity Across Space and Time and the Soul Theory

(06:49:07) Personal Identity Part II: Body and Personality Theory

(07:33:58) Personal Identity Part III: Objections to the Personality Theory

(08:17:42) Personal Identity Part IV: What Matters?

(08:58:21) Schubert Impromptu No. 3 in G-Flat Major performed by Max John, CC License, YouTube

-//-

Support the Rebel Alliance: https://patreon.com/c/HemlockPatreon

People Mentioned:

Mahmoud Khalil

Maria Lugones

Byung-Chul Han

Lars von Trier (dir. Melancholia, 2011)

Hannah Arendt

Tyson Yunkaporta

Concepts:

Kenosis (self-emptying)

Books:

Putnam, Bowling Alone

News/References:

Zinc Mine in Georgia/https://thecurrentga.org/2025/06/20/okefenokee-mine-sale-conservation-fund/

Minister of Loneliness UK

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/minister-loneliness-appointed-united-kingdom-180967883/

Guy dies in ICE Facility

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/us-ice-detention-deaths

Finger Shot Off (graphic)

https://www.resetera.com/threads/los-angeles-police-blew-off-my-finger-for-protesting-ice-content-warning-amputation.1233627/

ChatGPT Datacenter Depletes Groundwater

https://energytheory.com/chatgpts-thirsty-data-centers-are-draining-water-resources/

Peter Thiel/Greta Thunberg Interview

https://archive.ph/HTIF6

Palestinian Youth Movement and Mask off Maersk

https://www.maskoffmaersk.com/

Andrew Callaghan Channel Five Uranium Mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcPsy8734Vg&pp=ygUlYW5kcmV3IGNhbGxhZ2hhbiBjaGFubmVsIGZpdmUgdXJhbml1bQ%3D%3D

Patreon: https://patreon.com/c/HemlockPatreon

Photo Credit:

Morning Tai Chi by Shuolong Ma

Music Credit:

Music Copyright Kevin MacLeod

https://youtu.be/qGAcClayOqk

Coconut Tree Meme Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_5nHIbsjo

Books/Sources

Hans-Georg Moeller Daoism Explained

https://www.amazon.com/Daoism-Explained-Butterfly-Fishnet-Allegory/dp/0812695631

Oliver Sacks, the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Iain McGilchrist, the Master and His Emissary

Jean Piaget, Concrete Operational/Formal Operational

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development#Concrete_operational_stage

Buy Sarah's Book:

https://a.co/d/6zROOvV

Sarah's Socials:

Website: https://www.sarahscoles.com/books.html

Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahscoles.bsky.social

Patreon:

https://patreon.com/c/HemlockPatreon

REFERENCES:

Trump Golden Dome Cost Projection

SDI / Star Wars in the 1980s with Reagan

Costs associated with SENTINEL and ICBM Upgrades

Fallout and Downwinders, Thyroid Cancer, Nevada Test Site

Contact: A Novel by Carl Sagan

Beethoven's 13th String Quartet

Year Zero - Rob Reid

Hegemony or Survival - Noam Chomsky

Russell-Einstein Manifesto on Abolition of War/Nukes

Kellogg/Briand Pact 1928 Abolishing War

Operation Able Archer 83

CHROMEDOME/Goldsboro B-52 Crash in NC

Palomares Incident in Spain

Carnegie Corporation Psychologists:

-Moran Cerf

-Paul Slovic

At long last, Book 4 of the 5-book masterpiece, De Consolatione de Philosophiae by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. Translated by W. V. Cooper, critical edition by Goins and Wyman.

I would describe this one as "a comfy doozy slightly too close to home."

Enjoy~

Patreon: https://patreon.com/c/hemlockpatreon

Breaking News.....

America has bombed 3 Iranian nuclear reactors.

Happy summer solstice.

References

Iraq 1981 Nuclear Reactor Bombing by Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera?wprov=sfla1

Kissinger's Flip-Flop on the Iran Deal
"Today, the standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power, so it must be pursuing a secret weapons program: "For an oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources," Henry Kissinger explains. When the shah was in charge, Kissinger, as Secretary of State, held that " introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export Or conversion to petrochemicals." Washington acted to assist these efforts, with Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld also playing significant roles. US universities (my own, MIT, for one, despite overwhelming student opposition) were arranging to train Iranian nuclear engineers, doubtless with Washington's approval, if not initiative. Asked about his reversal, Kissinger responded with his usual engaging frankness: "They were an allied country" before 1 979, so therefore they had a genuine need for nuclear energy."

-Noam Chomsky, Failed States, 2006, page 73.

Blowback Podcast about Iraq
https://blowback.show/Season-1

Adam Becker's New Book

Sarah Scoles' New Book

Horror and Terror Theory (The Italian Philosopher I Cite)

Adriana Cavarero, Horrorism

Section on AI and Effective Altruism and Mars

Sam Bankman-Fried and Will MacAskill

Interstellar Astronaut Fight Scene

Come check out the Patreon, where this episode was held in special quarantine for a few months...

https://patreon.com/hemlockpatreon

Nuclear weapons in Iran, Middle East environmental crisis, Israeli grand strategy, US covert action skullduggery, and a healthy reminder that it's all just oil at the end of the day.

References

FDR and Saudi King Abdul Aziz

https://www.history.com/articles/fdr-saudi-arabia-king-oil

Nuclear Blackmail at Conference of Ministers

Byrnes, on the eve of the first postwar foreign ministers conference to be held in London, remained adamant in opposition to any attempt to cooperate with the Soviets on atomic energy and viewed the bomb as a diplomatic asset that would make the Soviets more amenable. As Stimson observed in his diary, Byrnes went to London fully set on having "the implied threat of the bomb in his pocket during the conference."...

In a telling innuendo at the Conference of Foreign Ministers in London in 1945, Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov asked U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes whether he carried the atomic bomb in his side pocket. Byrnes warned, “If you don’t cut out all this stalling and let us get down to work, I am going to pull an atomic bomb out of my hip pocket and let you have it.” Molotov is recorded as having “laughed” at this blatant atomic blackmail. “The Allies are pressing on you to break your will and force you to make concessions,” Stalin coached him from Moscow.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/moscow-musings-on-brinksmanship-from-stalin-to-putin/

Operation AJAX and the CIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Stephen Kinzer's Books:

All the Shah's Men (Iran 53 and the CIA)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men

Overthrow America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90540.Overthrow

Sabrina is back for the second installment of the Documentary Doctors!

As a reminder, you can sign up for her class on Palestine here. If you can't attend you can also donate! And if you can't donate you can still attend!

This time we are watching (and curling up in a ball after viewing) The Act of Killing, a 2012 documentary about the massacre of the Indonesian PKI (communist party) in 1965 by Western-backed fascist paramilitaries in Indonesia. The events described occurred following the ouster of Indonesia's last (at least until the 90s) democratically-elected president, Achmed Sukarno and was, according to the CIA, "one of the worst mass-murders of the 20th century" and claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives. Vincent Bevins wrote the definitive book on the subject, "The Jakarta Method".

Also there's singing, dancing, stage makeup, women in dresses dancing out of the mouth of a 20 foot tall fish building, karaoke, market stall shakedowns, rape discourse in front of stuffed animal dioramas, glass Swarovski elephants, and a whole host of unspeakable murder-kitsch that you have to see to believe.

Viewer discretion (and listener discretion) is advised.