The Existential Files: chapter guide
Matthew Smith and I turned more than sixty conversations into a book, The Existential Files (PDF | EPUB). This guide goes through it chapter by chapter and points to the moments in the recordings each one draws on: 93 of them, from 21 episodes. The times open the video at that point; the episode numbers lead to the Conversations page, where you can also search everything that was said.
- Introduction: Zero Viewers and the Only Way Is Up
- 1 The Universe Is Absurd
- 2 What Is Nihilism, Really?
- 3 The Laughing Nihilist
- 4 The Hard Problem of Being Alive
- 5 Pain, Happiness, and the Cult of Positivity
- 6 Death: The Elephant in the Room
- 7 What Are We, Anyway?
- 8 So What Do We Do?
- 9 The Only Way Is Up
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Intro
Introduction: Zero Viewers and the Only Way Is Up
Who we are, why science can’t answer existential questions, and what this book is.
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1
The Universe Is Absurd
The universe doesn’t care, existence is a nonsense story, and science is the wrong tool for the question of what to do about it.
- 2:03 Existence as a nonsense story · #1 Louie and Matthew
- 4:46 Science can’t pick the best pop song · #1 Louie and Matthew
- 14:12 The universe walks down the street naked · #1 Louie and Matthew
- 0:44 Paley’s watch, and a watch with no watchmaker · #3 Louie and Matthew
- 11:10 What do we do with each day? · #2 Louie and Matthew
- 5:17 Sartre: no excuses · #39 Louie and Matthew
- 16:03 Matthew: no meaning we’ve yet discovered · #43 John Marmysz
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2
What Is Nihilism, Really?
Nihilism as frustrated idealism rather than apathy, how it differs from atheism, and why it can be freeing.
- 18:52 When calling yourself a nihilist was unacceptable · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 15:58 Running for governor, and 240 votes for president · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 1:37 John Marmysz: the nihilist as frustrated idealist · #43 John Marmysz
- 17:54 Kinds of nihilism · #43 John Marmysz
- 22:16 Nihilists, atheists, Sartre and Camus · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 25:32 The self is as made up as God · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 41:50 How freeing it is · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 10:20 The Nihilist Olympics · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 21:09 Nihilism opens a space for something to happen · #43 John Marmysz
- 35:40 A noble podcast · #43 John Marmysz
- 22:07 Pessimism and grief · #57 Kate Sweeny
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3
The Laughing Nihilist
Laugh at the absurd or be the butt of the joke: humour, incongruity, the uses of pessimism, and nihilism as play.
- 32:32 Larry David on a desert island · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 33:49 Any sense of normality is provisional · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 3:50 Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce and the wind-up merchant · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 17:40 The Monster Raving Loony Party · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 7:24 Humour and incongruity · #43 John Marmysz
- 9:41 Laughing down at the universe · #43 John Marmysz
- 2:58 Kate Sweeny’s “negative psychology” · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 6:21 The benefits of worry · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 8:07 The empathy blind spot · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 32:21 Not depressed · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 27:59 Yannick Jacob: you make your own rules · #35 Yannick Jacob
- 16:48 Not laughing all the time · #43 John Marmysz
- 41:30 Play, not service · #62 Elisha Shapiro
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4
The Hard Problem of Being Alive
Consciousness, the self as a projection, the silicon brain, and when human beings became existential creatures.
- 0:49 Peter Hankins: consciousness in an afternoon · #23 Peter Hankins
- 2:06 Consciousness is where we live · #23 Peter Hankins
- 5:01 The easy problem and the hard problem · #23 Peter Hankins
- 5:53 Mary the colour scientist · #23 Peter Hankins
- 7:19 Philosophical zombies · #23 Peter Hankins
- 10:34 The hard problem is really about reality · #23 Peter Hankins
- 4:58 Not in 140 characters · #2 Louie and Matthew
- 5:45 The Necker cube · #2 Louie and Matthew
- 25:44 Identity as ancestor worship · #62 Elisha Shapiro
- 3:28 The silicon brain · #13 Louie and Matthew
- 6:44 Ten copies, all called Matthew Smith · #13 Louie and Matthew
- 24:13 Heidegger: animals don’t die, they expire · #43 John Marmysz
- 27:26 Schopenhauer: consciousness as a curse · #43 John Marmysz
- 29:27 Cave paintings and Neanderthals · #43 John Marmysz
- 30:27 Infant amnesia · #43 John Marmysz
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5
Pain, Happiness, and the Cult of Positivity
Why over-valuing happiness makes people unhappy, why pain isn’t harm, and why love and grief come together.
- 2:31 Brock Bastian on happiness culture · #61 Brock Bastian
- 3:38 When feeling bad feels like failure · #61 Brock Bastian
- 16:32 The marathon that doesn’t hurt · #61 Brock Bastian
- 18:09 To wish away the pain is to wish away the love · #61 Brock Bastian
- 39:39 Pleasure needs contrast · #61 Brock Bastian
- 42:06 Is happiness overrated? · #61 Brock Bastian
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6
Death: The Elephant in the Room
How we have hidden death away, what a hospice taught Louie, waiting, grief, and Ecclesiastes.
- 34:07 Fight Club and the origins of soap · #43 John Marmysz
- 33:06 Further and further from death · #43 John Marmysz
- 50:31 The jolliest person in the hospice · #58 Matt Colborn
- 38:58 Grief nobody was ready for · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 32:28 Life as one long wait · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 24:22 Staying present while you wait · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 20:44 Louie’s Amazon review of life · #57 Kate Sweeny
- 16:01 A. A. Gill, and what we’ll be remembered for · #2 Louie and Matthew
- 6:52 Imagine, at Eddie’s funeral · #1 Louie and Matthew
- 5:21 Pipe smoke and Wellington boots · #52 Cal Cooper
- 8:30 Do these experiences help the bereaved? · #52 Cal Cooper
- 20:19 Truth or comfort? · #52 Cal Cooper
- 19:05 Ecclesiastes: all is vanity · #45 Louie and Matthew
- 47:21 Memento mori · #47 Arthur Witherall
- 16:52 A hand on the cave wall · #39 Louie and Matthew
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7
What Are We, Anyway?
Memes, the narrative self, evolution as a ratchet, language as the spark, and a species that selected itself.
- 16:29 A virus with shoes · #39 Louie and Matthew
- 2:13 Mould behind God’s toilet · #3 Louie and Matthew
- 13:35 A narrative structure of mental molecules · #3 Louie and Matthew
- 3:15 Susan Blackmore on memes · #34 Susan Blackmore
- 3:31 Brains as hardware, memes as software · #4 Louie and Matthew
- 15:19 Matthew refills the water for a rose · #4 Louie and Matthew
- 16:21 Helen Keller and the arrival of language · #4 Louie and Matthew
- 18:38 We artificially selected ourselves · #4 Louie and Matthew
- 22:24 Evolution is a ratchet · #4 Louie and Matthew
- 23:52 Brains didn’t evolve to think · #4 Louie and Matthew
- 9:30 We all pass the Turing test · #13 Louie and Matthew
- 8:29 Wolves into chihuahuas · #41 Elizabeth Grant
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8
So What Do We Do?
Monday mornings, the right to be lazy, passions put in storage, and being condemned to be free.
- 0:09 A Monday-morning episode · #14 Louie and Matthew
- 6:23 Paul Lafargue’s The Right to Be Lazy · #9 Louie and Matthew
- 25:25 Nobody asks a tree why it isn’t surfing · #36 Yannick Jacob
- 4:42 Putting your passion in storage · #9 Louie and Matthew
- 5:17 Work little, want little · #9 Louie and Matthew
- 28:25 The freest thing in the universe · #35 Yannick Jacob
- 21:11 You still choose how you do today · #14 Louie and Matthew
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9
The Only Way Is Up
What we believe, as much as either of us believes anything, and why the conversation is the point.