Episode 19

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Published on:

6th Mar 2026

Episode 19: aesthetic

Ancient philosophical thought retains an enormous influence on our own contemporary worldview. Today's word—"aesthetic"—draws from that very tradition. We might think of "aesthetics" as a branch of philosophy concerned with the evaluation of art, and even more fundamentally, the word itself raises important questions about what we know anything and how we can know it. To help us think through these difficult philosophical problems, we consider a passage from Albert Murray's The Omni-Americans and its criticism of twentieth-century social scientists.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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About the Podcast

Original Public Meaning
Exploring the ancient roots of modern words
Where do our modern English words come from? And what do their long histories tell us about our own ideas and the wider world? On Original Public Meaning, we unearth the ancient foundations of our language and consider how its vast, rich literature—fiction, essays, science, and more—can help us savor our words today.
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Charles McNamara

Director of Greek and Latin Language, University of Minnesota