Breaking Down Philosophy: Seth Paskin's Journey with Partially Examined Life

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (0:10)
Hey, welcome to the Dr. Drew Podcast. Everybody, appreciate you all being here. Today is an exciting day for me, because one of my, well, we're here to promote one of my favorite podcasts, and there's now a book attached to it. And I've had the great privilege of being on this podcast, and it's something I'm always excited to talk about. And I believe we've at least once other time had a member of this illustrious panel that does the Partially Examined Life. Partially Examined Life is a podcast about philosophy, and it's a, when I found it, it was still doing the greatest hits. It was still talking about the Nick and McKee and ethics and things like that, and slogging through Hegel.
But they've managed to continue to put out extraordinary podcasts, mostly based on their training, their current life experience, and their extraordinary ability to penetrate impenetrable literature, which is what I've always admired.
So today, one member of the team, Seth Paskin, joins me. We're gonna talk about the podcast and the book. Seth, welcome.

**Seth Paskin** (1:14)
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (1:16)
So let's push the book out there first. Where is the book? Where can they get it? Why would they get it?

**Seth Paskin** (1:21)
Okay, so the book is called The Partially Examined Life, 15 Years with Your Favorite Podcasters. The 15 is crossed out, or the 15 is written above a crossed out 10, because it's been taking us that long to try to actually publish a book.
I guess you could describe us as kind of a panel style. So there's four of us who do the podcast on a regular basis and we could just never agree on what we wanted to do for a book.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (1:49)
And describe the four members. Were there four principle members? Because some people have moved in and out and you have guests. So there's four principles.

**Seth Paskin** (1:56)
Talk about it. Sure, there's four principles. So there's me, Mark Linsenmeyer and Wes Alwyn, all of whom went to the University of Texas at Austin and got our master's degrees in philosophy.
And then Mark's brother-in-law.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:12)
But now Wes is essentially such a psychoanalyst, really, is what he is, and a mental health professional.

**Seth Paskin** (2:19)
Correct.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:19)
And then Mark is a musician at heart, as I understand Mark's passions.

**Seth Paskin** (2:23)
That's correct.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:24)
I don't know what Mark's daily life is about. What does he do day in and day out, I don't think?

**Seth Paskin** (2:28)
Well, Mark actually has a number of different podcasts. So at this point, originally he and West both worked for his father-in-law, and his father-in-law had a company that did, they would read research papers on road surfacing and building roads, and then would consult with state governments and city governments and all that stuff on the type of roads they should build.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:53)
Sounds like exciting territory.

**Seth Paskin** (2:55)
Yeah, yeah, I don't think he loved it.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:57)
The fourth from the fourth member? I'll show you what smart minds can do. They can do anything.

**Seth Paskin** (3:03)
Yes. And the fourth member is Dylan Casey, who is Mark's brother-in-law, and Dylan is actually a PhD in physics, and he works for a company that makes MRI machines.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (3:17)
And I'm gonna try to know Dylan's philosophy background. Is he more the dilettante in the group? Is he actually formally trained?

**Seth Paskin** (3:23)
No, he's formally trained in the sense that he went to, he was a teacher or a docent, I think they call him at St. John's College. So there's the two St. John's Colleges, one in Annapolis and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And they do a great books program, including learning ancient Greek and French.
And so that's primarily where his, we'll call it philosophy background came from.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (3:44)
I thought Wes did something like that too.

**Seth Paskin** (3:46)
Wes also went to St. John's, yes. So Wes actually went there, Dylan taught there.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (3:53)
So again, I think about both of their experience at St. John's and I, anyone who's got young kids, please pay attention to these styles of education. And I believe now University of Austin is trying to come up with something like this. And there's another international program, wish I can remember the name of it, that's extremely small, extremely selective, but you literally, it's one of these, I wouldn't call it great books, but great thoughts probably, great ideas series. But it includes math, it includes everything, includes physics, and under the, you know, when people think about great ideas, sometimes they think just about philosophy, just about political science, but it can be everything.