Stephen Blackwood is the founding President of Ralston College, a new university in Savannah, Georgia, dedicated to freedom of thought and enquiry. He grew up on a small farm in Canada, was educated in Classics (BA, MA) and Religion (PhD), and has held visiting positions at Harvard University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Cambridge. His book on the Roman poet-philosopher-statesman, Boethius, was published by Oxford University Press. Find out more about Ralston College: https://www.ralston.ac/ Check out Stephen's website: https://www.stephenjblackwood.com/ Follow Stephen on X: https://x.com/stephenblackwd SPONSOR: Discover the foundations of Western civilization with 321—a free online course on God, the world, and your place in it. Explore at https://321course.com/trigger SPONSOR: Protect your home with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Go to https://SIMPLISAFE.COM/TRIGGER #life #education #podcast OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: marketing@triggerpod.co.uk Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Trailer 00:39 We’re living in a meaning crisis 02:36 What is meaning? 04:38 Ideological nihilism 06:37 Losing our religion 09:15 Architecture betrays ideology 11:08 People no longer sacrifice for higher causes 14:41 Importance of beautiful buildings 18:26 How city living affects us 22:14 SPONSOR: 321 Course 23:24 Will decadence inevitably lead to our demise? 25:53 Ravenous for meaning 27:31 Transcendence through selflessness 32:27 What is Western civilization? 37:11 Upholding the sanctity of the individual creates successful societies 40:45 Freedom also creates instability 43:08 We’ve knocked out our own load-bearing structures 45:15 Malicious iconoclasm 47:42 SPONSOR: SimpliSafe 48:51 We must call evil by its name 51:52 The psychological brokenness behind woke rebellion 54:20 We’ve failed our young people 56:03 Modernisation has led to dislocation 59:12 We are not adapted to handle this technology 1:00:58 Why people turn to Marxism & other ideologies 1:05:53 What’s the one thing we’re not talking about? Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/