Shows / Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City…
Episodes
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Self-Acceptance
This is the season of deck-swabbing and deck-clearing, if you are Jewish. I tend to say that, at best, I am “Jewish in the head.” By that I mean: having tried…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Being Brave
Nobody wants to think of herself as a whining, sniveling, cowering coward. At the same time, one of the advantages of the female sex is that (forgive me…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Mystical Merging
In my teen years, I used often to thumb through a book my parents owned — a collection of one-page essays about holy persons, East and West, who had managed to…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Political Correctness and Sex Appeal
First, about this Political Correctness mania. It is starting to act like a cumulonimbus cloud, soaked in its own heavy humidity, making us land dwellers…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Close Friends
This is one I keep revisiting. But friendship is one of life’s prime supports – almost the axis on which the whole thing turns – so one post hardly exhausts…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
How to Pick Your Fights
I pay great mind to words and the power of words. Therefore I have to care when words believed by the speaker to be true are spoken in honesty and then…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Wordliness
My father, the late Henry M. Rosenthal, was the antithesis of a worldly man. “He never made a useful friend,” as someone said who was well placed to know…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Quakers: Another Round
We met again with the small group of Quakers that’s been holding anti-Israel placards in the town square once a week all year. . . Abigail L. Rosenthal is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Confessions of a Young Philosopher
My book tells the story of a young woman philosopher looking for truth and prepared to pay in the coin of her future for what is found or lost. Abigail L…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Cynicism
Why do I think cynicism a state of mind to be feared? Especially since it’s pretty widespread and most people think it’s fairly normal. Abigail L. Rosenthal is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Delicacy of Women
For Sartre, we have here an object lesson in “bad faith,” mauvaise foi. What would good faith look like? Women all over the world wanted to know. Abigail L…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Being Torn Apart — as a Method
Rene Descartes, the reputed “founder of modern philosophy,” held that the most important thing in life and thought – the thing without which nothing of…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Conversations With My Foot
“Hello foot? Can you hear me? Have you got anything to say to me? What’s wrong with you?” Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Dialogues with Local Quakers
A small group of Quakers has held what they call a “vigil” once a week in the central square of our small town. They hold up placards that demand “Justice for”…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Theism, Philosophy and Me
Could I (given the power) do a better job than God, faced with some spectacle that pains me utterly? Or do I agree with God that we human beings have to live…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
It’s Not Enough to be Intelligent
Fran, my therapeutic riding teacher, told me I have “a beautiful physique” on a horse and could qualify for the International competitions in “para-dressage”…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Victims
The underdog has flipped the script and become — however briefly or protractedly — top dog. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Tenderness
Most of us feel that we can’t allow tenderness to visit us for more than a few moments at a time. After that, we let it translate into diatribe and…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Beyond Recovery
I’ve been reading a book with the rather haunting title, Beyond the Ashes: Cases of Reincarnation from the Holocaust. The author, Yonassan Gershom, is a rabbi…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Hyper-Idealism and Primitivity
Some will think I am kidding or being sarcastic, but it is a fact that I have the greatest sympathy for anti-Semites. I believe that there is something wrong…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Dante's Lovers
What is this power – of attraction without an object? Why does it seem almost more powerful than a nourishing reality? As if people are not seduced by a…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
My Inner French Girl
Lately I’ve been reading a book with the charming title, Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl. The author, Debra Ollivier, was married…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Things in Their Right Places
A fair amount of living-and-learning may have that character, of things getting released to the habitats where they belong. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Absolutely Normal
During one of our nights in California, I had a vivid dream. A guru-like figure, sitting very still, illuminated from within, said to me in a voice one did not…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Intellectual Women
Ugh. What a subject! I guess I’m one, but it doesn’t sound like a fun topic. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Valentine's Day
The twin polarities of yearning and nostalgia have vanished out of my life. My whole past swims into view – I could see where I’d been and why – under the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Places
“There are no places anymore.” Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Peace
Peace! Who doesn’t want it? (Well, lots of people, apparently.) Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Peer Pressure
No one can resist peer pressure. Such is the judgment of Peter Berger, sociologist of knowledge. To this generalization, I am no exception. For that reason…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Combat
I’ve been in a number of fights in my life – to keep my job, to save the college’s core curriculum, to have legal access to my father’s papers, for instance –…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Brokenness
We know when a shattered vase is reparable and what sort of glue repairs it. We also pretty much know when the vase is beyond repair and must be discarded. In…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Learning to Ride
If we are put here on earth to learn, what else in my life exhibits that process of putting the pieces together? Did I ever put together the pieces of the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Imperfections
I always wanted to grow up to be a great lover, a famous saint or – if it could be arranged – both. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Healing
Life shakes us up frequently. If you wear a lot of armor, you won’t feel it as often as I do, but the seismic shake-ups have a way of breaking through any…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Rest
Rest, as I’ve said before in these columns, is hard for me. I don’t know when it got to be so hard. It seems one of the downsides of growing up but, since I’m…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Dream Lessons
When I was a small child, I had a recurrent nightmare in which someone was attacking me. I needed to scream for help but couldn’t, because no sound came out. I…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Male Stare
The other day, a young woman walked for ten hours through the streets of New York while her associate, walking in front, managed somehow to film her…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Gettysburg
It was only when we drew up alongside the sloping, green fields that I realized where we were. A cloud of suffering still wafts up from the terrain. You can…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Blue Jeans
I may be wrong, but it’s my sincere belief that I was the first woman north of Greenwich Village to put on blue jeans for daily wear in Manhattan. At least…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Intimacy
A few months ago, a malicious third party made a comment about my mother, whom she had never actually known, that created distance between my mother and me. It…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Keeping Promises
As a little girl, one of my vivid memories of being caught in the wrong belongs to the gift a camp counselor once gave me. This gift-giving happened the last…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Chronology
From precognitive dreams, where the future is recognizably predicted before it happens, we can infer that time is other than what ordinarily we think it is.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Comparative Lightness of Being
Except for the dentistry, this old world seems to be going from bad to worse. It’s been downhill for decades. Neighborhoods going to hell. Small businesses and…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Seizing the Narrative
Long ago, I waited in New York City for a promised letter from Paris that never came. My first love, not a good correspondent, nor a good keeper of promises…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Woman’s Standing
What is standing, for a woman, and what is to be done about it? It’s a sign, ladies, of something we all know about: the unfairness of life.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The House in Maine
Having grown up in city apartments, owning a home had never been high on my list of desirables. In fact, co-inheriting one, when my parents died, felt like the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Country Gospel
Being born and raised a Jewish girl from Manhattan’s old-rent, upper east side, the last thing I’m expected to like is country gospel. Or so I’m often told.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Women Friends
The Ariadne’s Thread that connects one episode of one’s life to the next is provided by our women friends – the ones to whom our stories can be told.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Burnout
I am suffering from burnout. Until the other day, I hadn’t noticed it as a specific complaint.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Losers
The Loser is the epitome, the spittin’ image, of what we don’t want to be.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Conversions
It’s been “conversion” after “conversion,” each one carrying the pains and costs itemized above. I regret none of it. . .
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Friendly Fire
In my life, the most painful ruptures were those that, for years, I wanted desperately to repair in the first instance, and prevent in the second.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Cowboy Up!
Like many girls, I’ve always loved horses. What does that mean? I don’t know if it has to mean anything. When there were still dray horses on Madison Avenue…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Integrity
What is integrity? Is it a dull thing that you get by means of conformism and conventional thinking? Or is it interesting? It’s really, I think, neither…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Jane Austen
What is Jane Austen's secret? How does she manage to be so wonderful?
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Victories
Although never in my grownup life would I again see cheering supporters run across the green to shout the news, sometimes – even now — I win a few.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Forgiveness
I suppose the opposite of forgiveness is holding a grudge – waiting and watching the person who wronged you till you can get your own back. If so, I must be a…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Men!
For some years I had a brilliant friend, male, with whom I used to talk far into the night about the most sublime and transcendent matters. . . .
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Atheism
I’m not an atheist at present, but I’ve been one. So, why did I go there and why, eventually, did I turn back?
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Health
I have never, never trusted doctors. It is not because my current medical support team is unskillful or uncaring. Of course, earlier white-coated cohorts…