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How do I live when I know I must die? Learning to Die is a show about exploring that question hosted by Ian Dunican and Ciaran O'Regan. They explore areas of philosophy, psychology, martial arts, culture, existential risk, and anything else that seems of interest and relevance to navigating a well-lived life. And, since Montaigne put it beautifully when he said "every man bears the whole form of the human condition," Ian and Ciaran can only hope that some of what they learn prior to returning their borrowed carbon to the Universe might be of benefit to you too. Namaste Sapiens.
Episodes
Saturday Jan 22, 2022
Saturday Jan 22, 2022
Jonny Dillon is from Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland. He works as an archivist at the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, is a research editor for the Collection’s online platform Dúchas.ie, produces and hosts the Collection’s podcast Blúiríní Béaloidis (Folklore Fragments) and is Honorary Treasurer to the Folklore of Ireland Society. He releases instrumental acoustic guitar music under his own name, and produces records of electronic music on analogue synthesisers and drum machines under the pseudonym of 'Automatic Tasty'."
In this episode, we discuss so many things including how Walt Disney visited the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin before he made Darby O'Gill and the Little People https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052722/ we discuss the Banshee, the Irish underworld, sweat lodges, the integration of science, the sacred and mythology, the changes in Irish culture, philosophy, conflict, psychedelics, fairy forts, music, Irish language and much more......
Links to pursue
Short videos
Fairy Forts: A great insight into Fairy Forts in Ireland. This place is not far from where I grew up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyuXi_jsPvg This video is entertaining and highly recommended.
Owneygat Cave Ireland https://youtu.be/ZB0vottAVWw
In Honour of Tradition - Jonny Dillon
The past may be forgotten but it does not die, for the voice of the past is present, and speaks to us today. In the disordered confusion of the modern age this voice is often lost to us, but those who are still and who strain to listen, will hear it as it echoes to us through Time, for the voice of Tradition is never silent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBI97Z0iud4
Additional audio material we discussed
Uberboyo YouTube channel with a series of lectures on Aion https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvohnwo84dIluwLTzNB9xncnfg5SiadB0
The Almanac of Ireland Podcast https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32164-the-almanac-of-ireland/
Folklore Fragments podcast on fairy forts: In fields, valleys, and quiet places the country over can be found countless earthwork mounds, cairns, tumuli, and other signs of early human habitation in Ireland. These sites often garnered supernatural associations in the folk tradition, is commonly understood as the abodes of 'Na Daoine Maithe' (The Good People) or fairies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2OjysP7ids
A Week in Darkness: The Purest Medicine, Aubrey Marcus Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewq7r1s535c
People we discussed
René Descartes 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650 was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who invented analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
Heraclitus: A Greek philosopher who was active around 500 BCE, Heraclitus propounded a distinctive theory which he expressed in oracular language. He is best known for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire is the basic material of the world. The exact interpretation of these doctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictory propositions must be true. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/
Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co http://www.gordonwasson.com/
Books
The Matter with Things ~ Iain McGilchrist Volume I and II here https://channelmcgilchrist.com/the-matter-with-things/
The Banshee The Irish Supernatural Death-messenger https://www.bookdepository.com/Banshee-Patricia-Lysaght/9780862784904
Irish Wake Amusementshttps://www.amazon.com/Irish-Wake-Amusements-Sean-Suilleabhain/dp/1856351734
Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age https://www.amazon.com.au/Nihilism-Root-Revolution-Modern-Age/dp/1887904069
Finite and Infinite Games https://www.amazon.com.au/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1476731713>
The Crisis of the Modern World https://www.amazon.com.au/Crisis-Modern-World-Rene-Guenon/dp/0900588241>
The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-reign-of-quantity-and-the-signs-of-the-times-rene-guenon/book/9780900588686.html>
Places or items we discussed
Newgrange is a Stone Age (Neolithic) monument in the Boyne Valley, County Meath, it is the jewel in the crown of Ireland's Ancient East. Newgrange was constructed about 5,200 years ago (3,200 B.C.) which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza. https://www.newgrange.com/
Axial Age (also Axis Age) is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers in the sense of a “pivotal age”, characterizing the period of ancient history from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE.
Irish Sweathouses are small, rare, beehive-shaped, corbelled structures of fieldstones, rarely more than 2 metres in external height and diameter, with very small "creep" entrances which may have been blocked by clothing, or by temporary doors of peat-turves, or whatever came to hand. Most of those which survive could not have accommodated more than three or four sweaters. They resemble the small 'caves', built into banks, in which many Irish natives were reported to live in the seventeenth century http://irishmegaliths.org.uk/sweathouses.htm
Contact Jonny and follow his work
The Folklore of Ireland Society https://www.ucd.ie/irishfolklore/en/folkloresociety/ and at
nationalfolklorecollection on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nationalfolklorecollection/
Bluiríní Béaloidis is the podcast from The National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, and is a platform to explore Irish and wider European folk tradition across an array of subject areas and topics. Host Jonny Dillon hopes this tour through the folklore furrow will appeal to those who wish to learn about the richness and depth of their traditional cultural inheritance; that knowledge and understanding of our past might inform our present and guide our future.
https://soundcloud.com/folklore_podcast
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
In this episode we are joined by Professor Seamus O’Mahony. Seamus is a doctor and prize-winning author. He worked for many years in the NHS, returning to his native city of Cork in 2001, where he was a gastroenterologist and clinical professor until February 2020. His first book The Way We Die Now won the British Medical Association’s council chair’s choice award in 2017. His second book Can Medicine be Cured? was published in 2019, and his latest book The Ministry of Bodies was published by Head of Zeus in March 2021. He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books and the Medical Independent. He has written also for The Observer, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Saturday Evening Post. He is a member of the Lancet commission on “The Value of Death” and is visiting professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London.
In this episode, we discuss Seamus’s work around academia in science and medicine and aspects of death in our culture.
Here are some links to items or people we discussed
Robert Maxwell and academic journals https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell
The Lancet Commission on death https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(18)32388-2.pdf
The McNamara fallacy https://mcnamarafallacy.com/
Documentary, The Fog of War https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/ watch here for free https://vimeo.com/434235852
Inverse care law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_care_law
The book called “To be a machine” https://granta.com/products/to-be-a-machine/
The Peril of Politicizing Science – A Scientist’s Take http://iopenshell.usc.edu/pubs/pdf/jpcl_opinion_2021.pdf?ref=brianlovin.com
What is medical humanities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_humanities
Ivan Dominic Illich was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic.[1] His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticizes modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that constrains learning to narrow situations in a fairly short period of the human lifespan. His 1975 book Medical Nemesis, importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, argues that industrialized society widely impairs quality of life by over medicalizing life, pathologizing normal conditions, creating false dependency, and limiting other more healthful solutions. https://journals.psu.edu/illichstudies/about
Free article on his work medical nemesis https://jech.bmj.com/content/57/12/919
Books by Seamus
The way we die https://seamusomahony.com/books/the-way-we-die-now/
Can medicine be cured? https://seamusomahony.com/books/can-medicine-be-cured/
Seamus will be coming back in February or March to discuss the Lancet report on the value of death.
Contact Seamus or find out more at https://seamusomahony.com/
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Thursday Dec 09, 2021
Thursday Dec 09, 2021
This week we bring you an external interview. In this episode, I was interviewed by Niall from the Mind Manifest Podcast on the Relationship of Sleep and Psychedelics.
Full episode show notes over at https://www.mindmanifestpodcast.com/news/iandunican
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Tuesday Nov 30, 2021
Tuesday Nov 30, 2021
In this episode, we have a chat with Dr Chris Letheby. Chris is a philosopher working on issues related to the therapeutic and transformative potential of classic psychedelic drugs.
Book: Philosophy of Psychedelics https://oxfordmedicine.com/view/10.1093/med/9780198843122.001.0001/med-9780198843122
Lecture: Dr Chris Letheby - Psychedelics and Meditation: A Neurophilosophical Perspective (Altered States Seminar 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTVKGS1M3Js
Connect with Chris at his website http://www.chrisletheby.com/
Items we discuss in this episode
Who is Heraclitus? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/
Who is Spinoza? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
What is Naturalism? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/
The Free Energy Principle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI
What is structural realism? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/
The four main branches of philosophy and more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_philosophy
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Wednesday Nov 24, 2021
Wednesday Nov 24, 2021
In this episode, we discuss climate change in the context of existential threats to our world. But before we do I go on a ramble about Irish folklore and the Irish language.
The Irish National Folklore Collection https://www.ucd.ie/irishfolklore/en/
Bluiríní Béaloidis is the podcast from The National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, and is a platform to explore Irish and wider European folk tradition across an array of subject areas and topics https://soundcloud.com/folklore_podcast
Sacred Cow book and documentary https://www.sacredcow.info/
The Great Barrington declaration https://gbdeclaration.org/
What is marine snow? https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/marinesnow.html
The Precipice by Toby Ord https://theprecipice.com/
Alan Robuck on Climate Consequences of Nuclear War
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/
Future of Life Podcast
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Wednesday Nov 17, 2021
Wednesday Nov 17, 2021
In this episode we start discussing the great text by Leo Tolstoy
Read the book here: The Death of Ivan Ilyich http://www.classicallibrary.org/tolstoy/ivan/index.htm
Listen to Stephen Blackwood reading Leo Tolstoy’s classic novella, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlaXnWk_mYY
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Tuesday Nov 09, 2021
Tuesday Nov 09, 2021
In this episode, we discuss Ciaran's world of boxing. We look back at the recent fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder 3 . This was an unplanned podcast, just us discussing our viewpoints on boxing and the physiology of Fury.
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Wednesday Nov 03, 2021
Wednesday Nov 03, 2021
In this episode, Ciaran and Ian discuss Thich Quang Duc who was a Buddhist monk protesting in South Vietnam, when his image captivated the world. Malcolm Browne won the World Press Photo of the Year in 1963 photographing Duc committing an act of self-immolation, burning to death. Central to our discussion today is the excellent scientific paper by (2019) Monk on fire: The meditative mind of a burning monk, Cogent Psychology, 6:1, DOI: 10.1080/23311908.2019.1678556
You can read the full paper here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311908.2019.1678556
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Thursday Oct 21, 2021
Thursday Oct 21, 2021
Gordon Marino earned his PhD from the University of Chicago, M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and B.A. from Columbia University. His areas of specialization include History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Kierkegaard. He teaches philosophy and related courses as a professor at St. Olaf College and holds a position as the curator of the Kierkegaard Library. In 2018, Marino published his most recent book, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide. He has authored and co-authored numerous works, including Kierkegaard in the Present Age. His articles have appeared in internationally acclaimed news sources and periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the American Poetry Review. Follow Gordon here https://www.existentialistscorner.com/
Links from discussions in the episode
Jake La Mottahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_LaMotta
Gay Talese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Talese
Who is Soren? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
What is Terror Management Theory https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0058.xml
The sickness unto death https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-sickness-unto-death-9780140445336
Leo Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" http://www.classicallibrary.org/tolstoy/ivan/index.htm
The Philosophy of William James
Order Gordon's book here “The Existentialist's Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age”https://www.amazon.com.au/Existentialists-Survival-Guide-Authentically-Inauthentic/dp/0062435981
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
In this episode, we discuss a few crazy events in the world before we delve into more nuclear near misses and the man who is responsible for us still alive today.
Eurythmics, Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart - I Saved the World Today (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf052uxFF58
Future of Life https://futureoflife.org/
Stanislav Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
The man who saved the world https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au