Back in February I went to Roanoke, VA, to visit retired professor of philosophy Lawrence Becker, the author of A New Stoicism, on which I have commented a number of times before (use the “Becker” category on this site to read all previous posts). Larry was kind enough to allow me to interview him on tape (well, on iPhone, really), chatting with me about not just his book in particular but the project of modern Stoicism more broadly.

I have now (very slightly) edited the resulting files and I begin a series of posts presenting the interview to the broader public. Each post covers about half an hour of our conversation. I will not add any commentary of my own, since Larry’s words come through loud and clear — both in terms of audio quality and more importantly in terms of thought processes. Below I simply list a series of topics and the approximate times in the linked audio file where we discuss them. Enjoy, reflect, and comment.

The first file can be downloaded here. Thanks to my friend Greg Lopez for helping to craft some of the questions I posed to Larry.

Introduction (0:00 to 1:13)

How did you get into Stoicism to begin with? (1:14-09:44)

Do you do anything that could be called a Stoic practice? (9:46-14:21)

Do you feel that reading about Stoicism helped you in your personal life? (14:22-20:46)

Did your own theoretical work on Stoicism, particularly your book, further change the way you look at things? (20:48-26:30)