- Brad Skow

I mentioned a few newsletters ago that I have recently become more fascinated by questions related to aesthetics:

What exactly makes something--a painting, a piece of music, a film, a sunset--beautiful?

Part of the reason for my interest, which goes back to college when I took a course on the topic from one of my favorite teachers, is because I'm a metaphysics guy.

Aesthetics properties of a thing don't seem at all like they can be reduced to the physical properties of something.

Beauty can't be reduced to just symmetry, or colors, or technical skill. Like language, so much about how it "works" is a complete mystery, yet it's all around us as an undeniable, fundamental part of the human experience.

So who better to ask than an MIT philosophy professor who is also a poet. Dr. Bradford Skow works on issues in aesthetics, as well as topics in metaphysics, like the philosophy of time and change.

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He's also the Co-organizer of the MIT Civil Discourse Project, hosting discussions on the Covid lab leak, monogamy, even "gender-affirming care". For one of the most elite institutions in the world, it's encouraging to see civil discussions happen on such controversial topics.

He has also written against anti-natalism on his Substack called "Mostly Aesthetics". In our episode, he revealed he is currently writing a book in the Why It's OK to... series called Why It's OK to Raise a Family; something I can get fully behind.

It's a wide-ranging conversation on academic freedom, beauty, time, and whether he still runs marathons.

Until next time.

Jared

P.S. You may have noticed a couple changes recently. First, I killed my TikTok account. I hate everything about that platform, but it was one of those platforms that I was told I "should" post clips on "if I wanted to grow". But the comments were about 98% negative and ignorant, no exaggeration, including even the most non-controversial clips. A few of them got tens of thousands of views, but there was no apparent reason for that exposure and the lack for other clips, and for a couple videos the algorithm decided to show the clip to only 2 or 3 people. I learned that world is mostly a cesspool, so good riddance.

Second, I found that the name "Selling Plato" didn't land the way I wanted. So the podcast is now just "The Jared Oliphint Show", sacrificing creativity for accuracy and maybe a little clarity. So you'll see some rebranding across the different platforms.

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