Podcast
The Ralston College Podcast
Hosted by Ralston College · EN
The Ralston College Podcast delivers a series of conversations and lectures aimed at fostering a deeper, livelier, and freer intellectual culture for us all.
26episodes
Episodes
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AI and the Battle for the Soul with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 2: True Freedom in an Artificial World
5d ago01:10:20Tap to summarizeGenerously sponsored by the Ben Delo Foundation. The final lecture of Ralston College's symposium, AI and the Battle for the Soul, asks a question that turns from the future of artificial intelligence to something far older and more enduring: What does freedom require? Weaving together neuroscience, philosophy, physics, and literature, Dr Iain McGilchrist examines free will, consciousness, and the forms of attention that compose our engagement with the world. Over several decades at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience, Dr McGilchrist's contributions have transformed contemporary discussions of consciousness, attention, and meaning. At a moment so often dominated by mechanical explanations and computational models, he emphasizes the indispensable role of openness, receptivity, and participation in understanding, arguing that reality exceeds reductionist accounts. If you would like to support us in this work, please visit ralston.ac/donate. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Henry Stapp Pierre-Simon Laplace Benjamin Libet Immanuel Kant Plato Socrates Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound Charles Darwin William Blake Carl Jung Albrecht Altdorfer Daniel Phillips
Transcribe →AI and the Battle for the Soul with Stephen Wolfram and Iain McGilchrist - Conversation: What is Artificial Intelligence?
1w ago01:09:07Tap to summarizeGenerously sponsored by the Ben Delo Foundation. Ralston College welcomed Iain McGilchrist and Stephen Wolfram in May of 2026 for a public conversation during our symposium, AI and the Battle for the Soul. Beginning with the promises and implications of this technology, the discussion opens onto a deeper inquiry concerning consciousness, computation, purpose, and the irreducible constitution of reality itself. Setting out from seemingly distant philosophical commitments, these thinkers demonstrate an uncommon willingness to follow first principles wherever they lead. After decades in physics, computer science, and the study of complex systems, Wolfram shares his vision through the lens of computation, looking for the simple rules underlying complexity in the natural world. Drawing upon decades studying philosophy, literature, and neuropsychiatry, McGilchrist makes the case that reality exceeds computation, suggesting that consciousness is grounded in embodiment, receptivity, and participation. The two thinkers do not remain at the level of disagreement, but examine one another's fundamental assumptions with a rare seriousness and intellectual charity. If you would like to support us in this work, please visit ralston.ac/donate. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Alan Turing Isaac Newton Albert Einstein Charles Darwin Aristotle René Descartes Ludwig Wittgenstein John von Neumann Roger Penrose
Transcribe →AI and the Battle for the Soul with Jonathan Pageau Lecture: Whom Does AI Serve? Sacrifice in the Digital Age
2w ago01:12:33Tap to summarizeGenerously sponsored by the Ben Delo Foundation. In this second lecture from our recent symposium, AI and the Battle for the Soul, theologian and iconographer Jonathan Pageau asks: Who, or what, does AI serve? By drawing on mythology, scripture, symbolism, and poetry, he argues that the questions raised by AI directly concern human purpose and meaning. Through the stories of Prometheus, the Holy Grail, Moloch, and the Tower of Babel, Pageau unpacks the deepest questions raised by AI, calling on us to recognize what technology reveals about ourselves and the civilization we are building. Recorded at Ralston College in May 2026, this event brought together leading thinkers including Iain McGilchrist, Jonathan Pageau, and Stephen Wolfram for a day-long engagement with some of the most pressing questions facing technological advancement, the meaning crisis, and ultimately, civilization itself. If you would like to support us in this work, please visit ralston.ac/donate. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy The Holy Grail (Arthurian Legend) Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene Scott Alexander's Meditations on Moloch Allen Ginsberg's Howl Alfred North Whitehead Simone Weil Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound Yuval Noah Harari Viktor Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning
Transcribe →AI and the Battle for the Soul with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 1: Information is Not Understanding
2w ago00:51:52Tap to summarizeGenerously sponsored by the Ben Delo Foundation. In this opening lecture from Ralston College's symposium, AI and the Battle for the Soul, Dr Iain McGilchrist traces a line of questions concerning the nature of intelligence, embodiment, wisdom, and the soul in an age increasingly defined by mechanistic thinking and the rise of large language models. Drawing on neuroscience, literature, theology, music, and myth, he explores what it means to understand beyond the constraints of reductionist accounts that view the human being as a computational information processor. In this wide-ranging and dynamic talk, he invites us to consider, as deeply as we can, the essence of our humanity. Recorded at Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, this event brought together leading thinkers including Jonathan Pageau and Stephen Wolfram for a day-long engagement with some of the most pressing questions facing technological advancement, the meaning crisis, and ultimately, civilization itself. . If you would like to support us in this work, please visit ralston.ac/donate. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: E. M. Forster: The Machine Stops Isaiah Berlin Plato David Bohm Ludwig Wittgenstein Gabriel Marcel Homer William Shakespeare: Othello William Ernest Henley: Invictus Nelson Mandela William Wordsworth: Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey Thomas Tallis Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Tomás Luis de Victoria William Byrd Emil Cioran Johann Sebastian Bach Eugene Gendlin George Gaylord Simpson Galileo Galilei Peter Medawar Niels Bohr Joseph Pieper V. S. Ramachandran D. H. Lawrence Laozi: Tao Te Ching George Steiner Martin Heidegger Hannah Arendt John Milton: Paradise Lost Saint Paul: Epistle to the Ephesians Onondaga Nation Yuval Noah Harari Viktor Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning
Transcribe →Memory, Tradition, and the Unity of the Classical Mind: Dr Armand D'Angour on the Lyrical Poetry of Horace
Apr 2801:14:32Tap to summarizeDr Armand D'Angour turns our attention to the lyrical poetry of Horace, as it is placed within the Greek musical and poetic inheritance. With close readings of key odes, he shows us how Horace uses Greek lyric meters to achieve something both rhythmic and aural. Constructed around the themes of love, time, and political life, these poems can be seen as carefully constructed personnae, rather than autobiographical confession. This lyric poetry is shown to be a disciplined artform that carries inherited Greek forms into something distinctly Roman, without disturbing the musical intelligence beneath them. These poems were not written to be read silently, but were deeply connected to music, rhythm, and memory. By recovering this dimension, Professor D'Angour illuminates Horace not just as a literary figure, but as a poet working within a living tradition of song in which meaning is brought about through the interplay of sound, structure, and voice. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Horace's Odes Homer's Iliad and Odyssey Sappho Alcaeus Anacreon Pindar Catullus Virgil Aristotle Plato Epicurus Augustus Maecenas
Transcribe →How Dante Can Save Your Life with Rod Dreher
Mar 2601:15:57Tap to summarizeGreat works of literature are often regarded with admiration and even intimidation for their role as the lofty subject of scholarly analysis, but these books were not written for the halls of the university alone. These works were composed to be used: insofar as they are able to challenge, guide, and transform the lives of those who come into their possession. The redemptive power of philosophy and literature is something we focus on often at the college, but few people today model this power as well as Rod Dreher. In this lecture, we find a potent example of the enduring vitality that exists in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. The resulting expanse is an account of literature as something spiritually operative. Dante's poem becomes, in Dreher's telling, a work not only to be interpreted but to be inhabited, as a means by which grace can possess the imagination and heal what argument alone cannot. Subscribe for updates at www.ralston.ac/subscribe Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Inferno Purgatorio Paradiso Augustine's Confessions Julian of Norwich Benedict XVI Thomas Aquinas Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue
Transcribe →The Practice of Loving Wisdom | A Conversation with Spencer Klavan and Connor Livingston
Feb 1701:09:30Tap to summarizeThe great books have never been more accessible, yet we live in a moment increasingly drawn away from them. Their value and transformative power are immediate, but many lack the patience and desire to become truly acquainted with the great minds of antiquity. In this installment of the Career and Life Conversation series, Dr Spencer Klavan joins Ralston College Fellow Connor Livingston for a discussion on the utility of the classics, the confluence of religion and philosophy, and the role of embodiment in human reason, along with what this reveals about artificial intelligence. From Athens to Jerusalem, from Plato to Paul, this exchange offers lofty reflections alongside practical insights for those seeking wisdom in an age that does not make it a priority. If you have found these conversations meaningful, please consider supporting our work at www.ralston.ac/donate. Subscribe for updates at: www.ralston.ac/subscribe Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Athanasius's On the Incarnation C.S. Lewis Plato's Republic Aristotle's De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics Socrates St. Paul Augustine's Confessions Disputation of the Holy Sacrament by Raphael T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets Dante Aquinas Shakespeare Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Owen Barfield
Transcribe →Blood Guilt and Ballot Boxes: The Oresteia in America | A Lecture by Spencer Klavan
Feb 1001:03:09Tap to summarizeIn his first lecture at Ralston College, Spencer Klavan offers a reading of Aeschylus' Oresteia that seeks to make sense of the American political landscape. The Furies exemplify the impersonal arithmetic of blood and counter-blood, while the younger gods introduce personal claims, partiality, and the integrity of the individual. When these powers collide with a single human being, we enter into a tragic cycle that demands a payment which only deepens the debt. Resolution is brought about by Athena and the city that bears her name. Deliberative justice creates a forum in which opposing claims can be weighed without the need for more bloodshed. Vengeance and wrath are transmuted into law that enable the city to live with its past, rather than being ruled by it. Klavan reminds us that scapegoating increases when deliberation is foregone, leaving us prone to ritual violence. Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply Subscribe for updates at: www.ralston.ac/subscribe Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Plato's Euthyphro Homer's Iliad Aeschylus' Oresteia The Code of Hammurabi Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Herodotus Aristotle's Poetics The Book of Exodus Shakespeare's Hamlet Abraham Lincoln Ken Burns' The Civil War Palace of Knossos The Acropolis and Parthenon of Athens The Theatre of Dionysus Barbara Fields Eddie Izzard Neil Gaiman's the Sandman
Transcribe →Founding an Empire: Lessons from Augustus with Dr Barry Strauss
Jan 2801:35:08Tap to summarizeIn this lecture, historian Dr Barry Strauss examines Augustus as the architect of Rome's imperial settlement, tracing how a young heir of extraordinary ambition transformed a republic struggling with civil war into an enduring political order. Tracing events from the turmoil following Julius Caesar's assassination to the victory at Actium, the creation of the Pax Romana, and Augustus's claim to rule as Rome's "first citizen," Strauss highlights how Augustus secured power by building trust, managing rivals, and reshaping public life through law, ritual, architecture, and art. The talk concludes by asking what is preserved and what is lost when a society exchanges republican freedom for imperial stability, and what the study of ancient leadership can still teach us about prudence, courage, and political responsibility today. Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Winston Churchill William Shakespeare Herod the Great Homer Virgil's Aeneid Cicero Mark Antony Julius Caesar Cleopatra
Transcribe →Universities and the Future of Civilization: In Conversation with Iain McGilchrist
Jan 2001:24:16Tap to summarizeRalston College Dr President Stephen Blackwood speaks with newly appointed Chancellor Dr Iain McGilchrist about the fate of the universities and their role in the future of civilization. Reflecting on education, tradition, and the conditions necessary for genuine understanding, Dr McGilchrist shares his hope that we can restore places of truth, beauty, and wisdom despite the pressures of reductionism, instrumentality, and mechanistic thought. The conversation also traces prevailing academic narratives such as reduction and computation, which risk a flattening of human life into utility, data, and procedure. McGilchrist distinguishes information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, arguing that wisdom depends on lived experience, sustained attention, and a cultivated disposition toward reality itself. Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Plato's Seventh Letter Aristotle's Political Animals Johann Sebastian Bach Isaac Newton Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Simon Conway Morris The Matter with Things The Cathedral Builders of the Middle Ages - Alain Erlande-Brandenburg Margaret Mead
Transcribe →