What does it mean to want?
Desire animates everything: our choices, our relationships, and our pursuit of meaning. But it also unsettles us. Maybe something that's both the pulse of life and the source of our restlessness deserves a little examination.
In this episode, we explore the philosophy and psychology of desire, or why we want what we want, and what our wanting reveals about who we are.
Is desire meant to be satisfied, or to sustain us? What can our longings teach us about the unconscious? And how do we distinguish between the desires that expand us and those that quietly undo us?
Because desire isn’t just about having — it’s about becoming. And when we learn to hold it with awareness, it transforms from a source of suffering into a map toward self-understanding.
00:00 Opening
01:22 What is desire?
02:29 Motion and mirror: the two sides of desire
03:17 Hannah Arendt and Saint Augustine on love and longing
05:09 Love as possession vs love as participation
05:50 Restlessness is a sign of vitality
06:05 Freud and the desire drive
06:52 Lacan and the desire of the Other
08:10 Repetition compulsion
08:43 Stoicism and desire bondage
10:35 Epicureanism and the three categories of desire
13:17 Desire shapes the outline of our becoming
14:46 Five steps to actually learn from desire
16:52 Closing
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