This program provides contextual history behind various conceptions of progress and surfaces testimony regarding these ideas operate in the real world.
Recent Episodes
June 1, 2026
Interview with Matt Ehret Pt. 2: The Allegory of the Cave
What if the most cited passage in Western philosophy has been deliberately misread — by both its critics and its supposed followers? In Part 2 of his conversation with Matt Ehret, Marshall examines the Allegory of the Cave, t...
May 18, 2026
Interview with Matt Ehret - Plato vs. Aristotle: The Flame, the Vessel, and the Fate of Human Progress
Matt Ehret argues that the divide between Plato and Aristotle is not a historical curiosity confined to the ancient world — it is a living fault line that continues to shape how civilizations understand learning, discovery, a...
May 4, 2026
Aristotle vs. Plato: Two Theories of Progress — and the Institution That Produced Both
The Academy was built on a wager: that philosophy could be institutionalized, accumulated, and transmitted across generations. Episode 10 asks whether the bet paid off — and finds the answer in the man Plato trained himself. ...
April 20, 2026
How Did Plato’s Academy Teach What Could Not Be Taught?
Plato named philosophy. But naming it was only the first move. The harder question was whether an institution could be built to make the progress he was wagering on actually work. Episode 9 examines the Academy — not as an id...
April 6, 2026
The Word and the Wager: How Plato Named and Claimed Philosophy | Ep. 8 pt 1
About This Episode Where did the word “philosopher” come from — and who got to decide what it meant? In Episode 8, Part 1 of Notions of Progress , we trace the moment Plato took a word that had begun as a mocking label and tr...
March 23, 2026
Plato vs. the Sophists: Rhetoric, Power, and the Making of Callicles | Ep. 7 pt 2
About This Episode Can rhetoric make better citizens — or does it simply make better manipulators through the art of persuasion? In Part 2 of the Plato vs. the Sophists arc, Notions of Progress follows Plato’s argument from t...
Join the Email List
Listen On
Recent Blog Posts
May 20, 2026
The word progress has become contested in many ways. It is invoked by its proponents as self-evident and dismissed by critics as a cover for inequality, environmental damage, or cultural loss. What both sides tend to share is an assumption that the …
May 2, 2026
When the best student an institution ever produced decides to leave — does that prove the institution worked, or that it failed?We live in a moment where institutional trust is called into question. The organizations built to accumulate and …
About the Host
Marshall Madow
