This program provides contextual history behind various conceptions of progress and surfaces testimony regarding these ideas operate in the real world.
Recent Episodes
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...
March 9, 2026
Plato vs. the Sophists: The Allegory of the Cave As His Answer On Progress | Ep. 6 pt 1
In this episode of Notions of Progress — the first of a two-part examination of Plato — we ask what happens to the Sophists’ theory of progress once Plato is done with it. The Sophists had argued that human beings advance thr...
Feb. 23, 2026
The Sophists: Fifth Century Enlightenment? | Ep. 5 Pt.1
About This Episode In this episode of Notions of Progress — the first of a two-part solo series — we ask a deceptively simple question: were the ancient Greek Sophists the original enlightenment-like thinkers of human progres...
Feb. 9, 2026
Five Faces of Progress: The Road to Anti-Progress |Prof. Tyson Retz Pt.2 | Ep. 4
About This Episode In this episode of Notions of Progress - Part Two, we continue exploring the fascinating evolution of progress thinking with Professor Tyson Retz, author of "Progress in the Scale of History" (Cambridge Uni...
Jan. 26, 2026
Five Faces of Progress: A Conceptual Framework for Historical Change |Prof. Tyson Retz | Ep. 3 Pt.1
About This Episode In this episode of Notions of Progress, we explore the fascinating evolution of progress thinking with Professor Tyson Retz, an intellectual historian at the University of Stavanger in Norway and author of ...
Join the Email List
Listen On
Recent Blog Posts
April 7, 2026
What does it cost to found an institution on the claim that genuine knowledge belongs only to the few? The word "philosopher" arrives today with the weight of a long tradition behind it — a field, a canon, a set of institutions that cla…
March 23, 2026
Plato vs. the Sophists: Rhetoric, Power, and the Making of CalliclesWho is Callicles, and why does he still matter?He appears only once in the whole of Western philosophy — in a single Platonic dialogue written around 380 BCE. In 1959, the…
About the Host
Marshall Madow