The Wes Cecil Podcast

The accumulated gap between our environment and our needs as primates have grown increasingly large over the last 100 years. As a result virtually every measure of health and well being have become shockingly negative. Yet we have little sense of why or what is happening because the systemic issues we face are difficult to identify in the sea of changes we experience in the world since the industrial revolution.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We continually tell ourselves stories about every aspect of our lives. Taking a little time to reflect on the stories we tell ourselves is often quite revelatory about how our thinking is directed and limited. Likely it is impossible for humans to live without a rich life filled with stories, but the stories are often under our control to a remarkable degree.Image attribution: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Explore the evolution of science as Wes discusses how industrial structures shaped empirical understanding. Delve into Francis Bacon's ideas on experimental knowledge and the tension between functional truth and traditional authority. Learn about the impact of technological advancements like Watt’s steam engine and Perkins’ mauve dye on the R&D landscape. The podcast examines how science adapts through markets and cultural shifts, illustrating that empirical testing can replace outdated authorities. Finally, witness the ongoing influence of empirical thought in modern policy and innovation.

While the industrial revolution is widely recognized as a turning point in human history, less well appreciated is why it has been so influential. Each of the developments were undoubtedly important, however I argue it has been the rate of change that has had a greater impact than any particular change. As primates we are simply incapable of adapting as quickly as we have been presented with change and the stress is definitely showing.  Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two famous works that critiqued the Moral structure of turn of the century French society did so in entirely different ways. While Gide is more known for his critique, I argue Proust’s critique is far, far more important and powerful. Both authors are worth reading, however, it is Proust who forces us to join him in his reconsideration of whether we are aware of the fact or not.Image attributions: See page for author, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A lively tour of the Enlightenment's rise from Renaissance, Reformation and war. Discussion covers Rousseau's social contract and Jefferson's radical political claims. Exploration of Voltaire's critique of dogma, Newtonian empiricism, and the boom in experiments and public debate. Ends by weighing Enlightenment optimism against revolution and the lasting institutions it spawned.

The combination of new crops, new outlooks, new technologies but, most importantly, the expansion of the primate intellectual and imaginative capacities led to the explosive growth in human population that created the world we live in today.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A tour of how classical texts, engineering feats, and new technologies reignited European learning. The episode traces Greek and Islamic influences, the rise of human-centered thinking, and the spread of ideas through printing and trade. It highlights shifting authority from scripture to experience and the cultural forces that produced modern science, finance, and political thought.

Despite the general acknowledgement of the importance of the printing press, I argue that why the press had such an impact is largely misunderstood. The printing press was the technology that most powerfully transitioned us from a face to face very personal experience of the world to one in which abstraction, distance, time and imagination slowly came to dominate our experience of the world. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A follow up to my lecture on America seen from France that explores in more detail some of the data behind American consumerism and how this translates into lived experience. In sum, while consumerism is a real issue everywhere, the comparisons between Europe and the US mask how utterly dedicated the US is to consumerism as a way of life.Image Attribution: Lionel Allorge, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.