Episode 100: Plato’s Symposium Live Celebration!

Summary: Mark, Seth, Wes, Dylan, and Philosophy Bro walk a live audience through Plato's dialogue about love, sex, self-improvement, and ancient Greek pederasty. You can also choose to <a href="http://youtu.be/UmA0yG2Am5A" target="_blank">watch this on video</a>.<br> Is love just a feeling, or does it make the world go 'round? Does love make you better, or make you weak? What's the difference between good love and bad love (and is any love bad)? Plato gives us a whole panel of related but conflicting opinions through the mouths of his characters here, including not only Socrates and his predictable "when you love in the right way, you're really loving the good itself," but comedic playwright Aristophanes (love completes us, literally!), mooning Athenian statesman Alcibiades, and a bunch of other historical figures who are to varying degrees fixated on teenage boys.<br> The big show, recorded 7/20/14 in Middleton, WI, in front of an audience of PEL fans who traveled in to see us, starts off with a tune from <a href="http://marklint.com/samples.html" target="_blank">Mark Lint</a> featuring Rei Tangko, followed by <a href="http://www.philosophybro.com/" target="_blank">Philosophy Bro</a> doing his magic thing to give you background on Plato's "Apology" (which you should recall from <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2009/05/12/part-1-of-episode-1-the-unexamined-life-is-not-worth-living/" target="_blank">our first episode</a>), then the main event, followed by some Q&amp;A from audience members and Daniel Horne reading webcam viewer comments. <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/07/18/topics-for-97-100/" target="_blank">Read more about the topic and get the book</a>.<br> The Mark Lint tunes here are "Nothing in This World But You," then (bumped to the end of this recording), "Feeling Time," "Find You Out," "Adds Up to Nothing," "Granted," and a brand new one, "I Demand It."<br> This picture of Plato is by Genevieve Arnold for PEL.<br> <br><br> Video by Glenn Loos-Austin. Watch on YouTube<a href="http://youtu.be/UmA0yG2Am5A" target="_blank">. </a><a href="http://youtu.be/UmA0yG2Am5A?t=30m7s" target="_blank">Jump to Symposium part of the video</a>.<br>