Excellent and timely piece. Just how toxic the smoke is from all those burning buildings is underreported.

Exactly. Thanks for reading! Looking forward to following you.

I post a short weekly note on Substack called How We Help. If you like this one, you can subscribe for free at garyborjesson.substack.com.

I know her...she might lay a little guilt trip, but she'll also understand (and you'll be taking her with you!)

Looking forward to listening! Now that you're at Johns Hopkins, you're at a leading institution for psychedelic research.

Nice. I know what you mean about maybe needing more mad hubris. Or maybe we could say, philosophers need a little of the Dionysian spirit that encourages free (not publish-or-perish) exploration.

On this point, Thoreau offers a good corrective to academic tendencies: "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust."

Couldn't agree more. Having spent years teaching philosophy before turning to other work, I came to believe that the best place for a true philosopher like Socrates to hide from his persecutors would be in a philosophy department. No one would think to look there!