The Universe Is Still in the Making | A Complete William James for Sleep
He insisted to his last breath that the universe is unfinished, and that our own small efforts help decide how it turns out. As a young man William James was so ill in body and mind that he could barely leave his room, and one spring evening he made a private decision that would shape everything after it. This episode follows the whole arc of his life and thought, from a wandering childhood in the most gifted family in America, through the collapse that nearly ended him, to the years when he founded a new science of the mind and taught the world to picture consciousness as a flowing stream. We move with him from psychology into philosophy, through his defense of the right to believe, his tender study of the religious experience of ordinary people, and the practical theory of truth that made him famous and infamous at once. And we follow him to the end, a public conscience in a warring age. The full episode is on YouTube and Spotify. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.
