Carpe All Over the Place

25 April 2025

Episode 5.13 – Carpe All Over the Place

How far away are we from the original meaning of carpe diem? And does it matter?

Looking back across our wanderings so far, it seems that our literature and culture has gotten fairly sloppy (or cavalier?) in its popular imagination of philosophy, perhaps dangerously so. We investigate those understandings, capturing several modern approaches to carpe diem and contrasting them dramatically to where Epicurus and friends began.

Along the way, we visit Thoreau, Rilke, and contemporary thinker/philosopher Roman Krznaric.

Key Terms:

Eudaimonia (a deep well-being)
Ataraxia (peace of mind)
Aponia (freedom from pain)

Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/andrew-marvell-coy-mistress/

CHAPTERS

00:00 Thoreau vs Pop Culture
05:45 Opening Theme
06:17 Recap: Seize the Day, We Barely Knew You
12:03 Poly-Carpes
19:13 An Epicurean Ideal?
28:47 Krznaric’s Carpe
31:46 Outro and Credits

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Transcript: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/transcript-5-13-carpe-all-over-the-place

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What are your thoughts on our discussion? Email me: [email protected]

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Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.

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CREDITS:

Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski

USING THIS WORK:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.

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