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
Guilt
If anyone wants to control us, whether we’re women or men, short of violence the quickest way to get hold of us is by the guilt we carry. If we don’t want to…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Playfulness
Playfulness is a mode of living that always seemed to me stupendously desirable – almost the acme of experience! But if we want to know what it is, that’s…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Coincidence?
Clearly, "when you’re hot, you’re hot and when you’re not, you’re not", but coincidences don’t always foster a good outcome or discourage a bad one.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Courage
Courage, Plato said, is knowing what ought to scare you, and what ought not to.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Far Memory
Let’s suppose for a moment that we live many lives, as different personalities in a variety of circumstances. The TV documentaries on reincarnation, and the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Yenta
I’ll venture a definition: a busybody whose interest and advice is not really well-intentioned, though it purports to be.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Fun
Whenever I really had fun, I hadn’t sought it and never called it that. What times am I thinking of?
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Ambiguity
If the current era were to gain a label, it might be called “The Age of Ambiguity.” Whether in self-praise or regret, there is wide agreement that nothing is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
“Is ‘Right and Wrong’ … Wrong?”
When I catch myself silently repeating, everything’s fine, I pay attention. It’s my somewhat roundabout way of noticing, something’s wrong.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Heartbreak
So far as I’ve been able to see, this is a world of desire. If we no longer care to live, there’s a fair chance we won’t. Depending on how deep it goes, our…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
It's Cancer!
Years ago, Esquire magazine ran an article on the state of cancer research and treatment. It included this line: “When you’re playing against the Big Casino…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Anne Frank
Anne was one victim, among millions, of what is by all accounts the World’s Longest Hatred.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Women and Yoga
From about the age of twelve or thirteen, I have wanted to be the kind of saint who could merge her own consciousness with God’s. It was never clear to me…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Kid Stuff
It was during that interval that I first felt it. It was the thing grownups often warned about in a tone that said, you’ll see; the world is not as you think…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Woman's Honor
Mom was right. “You have the price you put on yourself.” Sooner or later (nowadays it’s generally later) we learn that, and we raise the price.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
All About My Mother
Unlike me, my mother would give advice, solicited and unsolicited. For example: “Never tell other people your sexual history or how much money you have. That’s…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Loyalty
For a good many years I had a close woman friend. She was also a colleague, thus for me among the most cherished of life’s treasures. We were very different…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
All About Love
But, to love is to … bring it about that the one you love will … suffer? Go figure.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
What Kind of a God?
I have been following, with a mixture of emotions — including curiosity and claustrophobia — C. S. Lewis’s account, in Surprised by Joy, of his conversion to…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Faith
What is the place of faith in a woman’s life or a man’s? In what should we have faith and when is it best to withhold it?
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Success
When I was about twenty-five, I said to a friend, “I thought, when I’d be twenty- five, I’d be at least wonderful. But I’m not.”
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Seduction
There are worlds in each of us that can’t be discovered if we are too wary.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
My Brilliant Career
Two roads diverge in a wood. The word was, you pick one or the other: love or work.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Materialism
Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly out of sorts, I imagine how my day or week would look to me if I were a materialist. That makes me feel better…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Romantic Love
Some years back I attended a wedding at a fashionable Manhattan club. Le tout New York was there. The bride was a long-stemmed American beauty, highly thought…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Cool
It is a fact of social life – perhaps a bizarre fact – that needful and strenuous efforts can be overshadowed by someone, anyone, who is dubbed “cool.”
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Sex Appeal
Is it a good thing? A subversive thing? A morally neutral thing?
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Evil
I know it sounds funny to say, in a “non-advice column” for and about women, but the most evil people I have known personally were women.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Clothes
Clothes are a much bigger subject than is generally supposed. I often say, “It doesn’t matter what happens, so long as you’re dressed for it.” I suspect more…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Aging
Aging is about stratagems plus the overview. My stratagems are Denial, Disguise and (to paraphrase Jefferson) “Eternal Hostility” against every form of aging…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Glass Ceiling
Years ago, when the feminist revolution was a new discovery for me, I telephoned a family friend who was the only woman engineer in an airplane factory. I…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Masculinity
Any woman still maintaining that the terms “masculinity” and “femininity” should be put between scare quotes, as mere social or grammatical constructs, is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The B Word
“Bitch” is an insult word, yet I doubt there is any living, adult, English-speaking woman who hasn’t applied it (at least in her mind) to another woman, in…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Submission
It's walking a tightrope, or anyway a delicate business. . .
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Autonomy
I see two ways to approach “need” and “fulfillment,” the political and the existential.
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Darkest Thoughts
The mention of male clients’ “darkest thoughts & feelings” brought to mind an incident I hadn’t thought of in many years. . .
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
There is a balance
When I first started full-time work as an assistant professor, philosophy was an overwhelmingly male profession. All my colleagues would be men. In my college…
Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice PodcastPreamble
What kind of hand have we been dealt as women today and how can we best play it? It's a large question that's always lurking in the background and since the…