The Agora - The Marketplace of Ideas and Free Thinking

The Agora Ep. 9 - Should we work to live or live to work?

SHOW LESSWelcome: “Greetings and Salutations. Welcome to the Agora, a forum to examine the unexamined life.” Tagline: “The place where we talk about all the things you want to but are afraid to.” We believe that the questions of faith, ethics, morality, and society are to important to be solved through memes on Facebook, or celebrity rants on Instagram. We live in a world that makes it easier every day to avoid anybody who might disagree with your worldview, and as a result, many are losing the ability to articulate and defend their worldview First World Problem: When the timeshare you’re staying at doesn’t have in-room laundry Cliche of the Day: “People don’t care what you know until they know that you care”

The Agora Ep. 8 - How do we understand tolerance in a modern context?

What is tolerance? How do we truly tolerate someone? Is tolerance dangerous? Should we tolerate ideas that could be dangerous?  In this episode we seek to dissect the idea of tolerance with Dr. Mike Gurney, a professor of ethics, philosophy and theology at Multnomah University. The conversation starts off considering the nature of belief and how we want to seek out truth and believe things that we are convinced are indeed true. The nature of truth is a bit elusive and we spend alot of time trying to figure out if there is an objective truth or if truth is relative. There is much discussion on Nietzsche and other influential philosophers and all those guys and how they're ideas were passed on and are still being talked about today. We touch on the enlightenment and discuss the difference between tolerance of ideas and people. Eventually we discuss if we should take down the systems now or if we need to reform the system we have now. Toward the end we spend time discussing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and extrapolating from there the intent of the founding fathers.

The Agora Ep. 7 - Does the First Amendment cause more harm than good?

Joining us today is Linn-County Treasure and Budget Officer Michelle Hawkins to discuss local politics and how our freedoms affect everyone around us. The discussion centers around the pros and cons of free speech and the consequences of everyone being able to speak freely. We tend to categorize people based on shallow opinions and social media hasn't helped that, and we hold that in order to get a good understanding of who a person is, you have to have a meaningful conversation with them. We also discuss how we have replaced relationship with association, and in the moment, with cancel culture gaining momentum, we all seem to have this desire to distance ourselves from anything problematic, rather than having conversations about the issues. We think people can help each other without having to agree with each other. We discuss the egocentric-ism of how some people want to shut other people down and prevent further discussion from taking place.  Setup: Nikon Z6  Live Gamer Portable 2 PLUS  OBS studio Tonor Microphones Surface Pro 7  Recording with Adobe Audition

The Agora Ep. 6 - How does trauma affect the way we think and make decisions?

On this week's episode we have on the show Dr. David Manock, a local psychologist who has degrees in theology and psychology. We discuss trauma and how it affects us and our brains psychologically and neurologically. Dr. Manock discusses his experience with trauma and how he's searched philosophy, theology, and psychology for answers. He grew up in post ww2 Japan and came to the United States some time after that. Dr. Manock discusses that trauma is best dealt with in relationship. The discussion ranges from how trauma affects the brain and activates the amygdala while inhibiting the prefrontal cortex, to how we as humans are inherently social and the idea that we are completely individual is a myth.  Thanks for listening! If you can, consider supporting the podcast! You can find Dr. Manocks website here :http://www.salemici.com/ [http://www.salemici.com/] The podcast is produced by Daniel Pace at Refoqus Media  refoqusmedia.com Music by Flay studios : flayedstudios@gmail.com

The Agora Episode 5 - How do we help those in need without hurting?

Welcome: “Greetings and Salutations. Welcome to the Agora, a forum to examine the unexamined life, or whatever the heck we threw together on the drive in.”  Tagline: “The place where we talk about all the things you want to but are afraid to.”  We believe that the questions of faith, ethics, morality, and society are to important to be solved through memes on Facebook, or celebrity rants on Instagram.  We live in a world that makes it easier every day to avoid anybody who might disagree with your worldview, and as a result, many are losing the ability to articulate and defend their worldview  First World Problem: When you are transferring your cable to your new house, and it’s a pain to get all three T.V.s up and running  Cliche of the Day: “Never Judge a Book by it’s Cover”  Viral Exam: “The New Normal Memes”  Question of the week: “How Do We Help Without Hurting?”  In this episode we begin by asking the age old question, is it crime if you don't get caught? (As a joke, of course) The conversation turns to our first world problem dissection, as well as the cliche of the day "Never judge a book by it's cover". Garrett discusses his weird food preferences like only drinking coffee from a porcelain cup and needing chopsticks to each any kind of ethnic food, to which most of us give him weird looks in response. We discuss a range of things from dismantling institutions and the power vacuums that may come about because of that, to how giving away resources for free damages local economies, to how to look at people as human beings.   Produced by Refocus Media :  http://refoqusmedia.com/ Music By Flay Studios : flayedstudios@gmail.com  Setup:  Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens AverMedia 2Plus 4K PassThrough device Tonor Microphones Microsoft Surface Pro 7  Recording and Streaming through OBS software