The Imperfect Buddha Podcast explores the world of contemporary western Buddhism in all its facets, mixing in banter with analysis. Now living @NewBooksNetwork
You, dear follower, can find all our past episodes by heading down this digital rabbit hole: newbooksnetwork.com/category/aca... We've been less active of late but there are plans for a new season of more radical content.
You, dear follower, can find all our past episodes by heading down this digital rabbit hole: newbooksnetwork.com/category/aca... We've been less active of late but there are plans for a new season of more radical content.
“Men will learn eventually, and if they insist on rejecting the received wisdom of generations past, they do not thereby succeed at invalidating it; they merely condemn themselves to learning it, time and again, by ever grimmer experience.” Hilaire Belloc
September 19, 2026 at 10:17 PM
“Men will learn eventually, and if they insist on rejecting the received wisdom of generations past, they do not thereby succeed at invalidating it; they merely condemn themselves to learning it, time and again, by ever grimmer experience.” Hilaire Belloc
In an age of intolerable stupidity, there's opportunity for genius & creativity to emerge: it cannot do so by parroting the message of in-groups or mimicking the behavior of conformists. Whether in artistic or intellectual culture, we need creative genius as much as we ever have.
September 17, 2026 at 10:26 AM
In an age of intolerable stupidity, there's opportunity for genius & creativity to emerge: it cannot do so by parroting the message of in-groups or mimicking the behavior of conformists. Whether in artistic or intellectual culture, we need creative genius as much as we ever have.
Ideas matter. This guy's ideas are all over the shop and out there and have landed in the lap of America's most unstable president and his main influences. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
Ideas matter. This guy's ideas are all over the shop and out there and have landed in the lap of America's most unstable president and his main influences. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
Unfashionable idea 537: For Searle, knowledge is most likely to be advanced through free inquiry, and claims to knowledge can only be validated (as opposed to dogma or speculation) as knowledge by being subject to the tests of free inquiry. 🧐🤔🎆
February 17, 2026 at 6:31 PM
Unfashionable idea 537: For Searle, knowledge is most likely to be advanced through free inquiry, and claims to knowledge can only be validated (as opposed to dogma or speculation) as knowledge by being subject to the tests of free inquiry. 🧐🤔🎆
To politicize everything is to exhibit pure hubris: "I am so confident in my partisan beliefs that I believe the world should be remade in accordance with them." You're one step removed from primates; you're not a god. Learn the meaning, explore the depths, of 'humility'.
February 15, 2026 at 8:00 PM
To politicize everything is to exhibit pure hubris: "I am so confident in my partisan beliefs that I believe the world should be remade in accordance with them." You're one step removed from primates; you're not a god. Learn the meaning, explore the depths, of 'humility'.
"The first thing to do is not to provide a 'practical' solution. Don't act. Just think. The biggest danger today is to be dragged into 'doing'—to act, to intervene—to avoid the confrontation with the fact that we don’t really know what is going on." Žižek
January 29, 2026 at 9:20 AM
"The first thing to do is not to provide a 'practical' solution. Don't act. Just think. The biggest danger today is to be dragged into 'doing'—to act, to intervene—to avoid the confrontation with the fact that we don’t really know what is going on." Žižek
We use to be the tools of the powerful; now, we're the tools, or useful idiots, of algorithms and collective infantilism. A motto for our age might be: "Anything but have to think, carefully!"
January 29, 2026 at 9:20 AM
We use to be the tools of the powerful; now, we're the tools, or useful idiots, of algorithms and collective infantilism. A motto for our age might be: "Anything but have to think, carefully!"
We always start with ourselves. We are not a problem to be fixed with endless techniques, but a living being that must bring practices into its own life and personalize them so they become real, and not the performance of an ideal person we hope to become.
January 22, 2026 at 8:35 PM
We always start with ourselves. We are not a problem to be fixed with endless techniques, but a living being that must bring practices into its own life and personalize them so they become real, and not the performance of an ideal person we hope to become.
Thank you to @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social and Miranda Melcher for the chat about my How To Recognize the Mafia Abroad Episodes wherever you get your podcast
Thank you to @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social and Miranda Melcher for the chat about my How To Recognize the Mafia Abroad Episodes wherever you get your podcast
(1) The concept of a hyper-ideologization of existence describes a state where every facet of human life—from the coffee you drink to the words you use in private—becomes a political or ideological statement. It is the collapse of the "private sphere" into the "political sphere."
January 13, 2026 at 6:49 AM
(1) The concept of a hyper-ideologization of existence describes a state where every facet of human life—from the coffee you drink to the words you use in private—becomes a political or ideological statement. It is the collapse of the "private sphere" into the "political sphere."
You, dear follower, can find all our past episodes by heading down this digital rabbit hole: newbooksnetwork.com/category/aca... We've been less active of late but there are plans for a new season of more radical content.
You, dear follower, can find all our past episodes by heading down this digital rabbit hole: newbooksnetwork.com/category/aca... We've been less active of late but there are plans for a new season of more radical content.
Emotional self-restraint is key to reducing suffering in this world. Emotional determination is mostly the product of ignorance. What stories about emotions and feelings have our dominant ideologies been telling? Do they have anything to say about self-restraint?
August 22, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Emotional self-restraint is key to reducing suffering in this world. Emotional determination is mostly the product of ignorance. What stories about emotions and feelings have our dominant ideologies been telling? Do they have anything to say about self-restraint?
My friend Franco likes to argue that dividing the world between left and right is no longer a valuable means for making sense of the world we inhabit. Far better to divide it between the unthinking and ignorant, and those capable of thinking beyond their ideological obsessions. What do you think?
December 24, 2025 at 6:21 PM
My friend Franco likes to argue that dividing the world between left and right is no longer a valuable means for making sense of the world we inhabit. Far better to divide it between the unthinking and ignorant, and those capable of thinking beyond their ideological obsessions. What do you think?
When an ideology repeatedly intrudes into people’s life uninvited, through bloodshed and intimidation, lies and deception indifference ceases to be a neutral position.
December 29, 2025 at 4:43 PM
When an ideology repeatedly intrudes into people’s life uninvited, through bloodshed and intimidation, lies and deception indifference ceases to be a neutral position.