EPISODE · Jul 7, 2026 · 45 MIN
#156: Stuck: Why Modern Life Feels Empty, and the Story Buried Inside You | The Hero with a Thousand Faces, part 1
from Intellectual Freedom Podcast · host David D. Hopkins, PhD
You wake up. You scroll. You go to work. You come home. You do it again. Somewhere underneath all of it is a quiet feeling that this cannot be what a life is for, and modern culture has trained you to keep moving so you never sit with it. In this episode of the Intellectual Freedom Podcast, Dr. David Hopkins opens a new series on Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and names the feeling out loud. You are stuck. You know you are stuck. And there is a reason.Over the next several episodes we will read Campbell chapter by chapter. This is serious literature analysis of one of the twentieth century's landmark works of wisdom literature, the book that first mapped the monomyth. The one story every human civilization has independently told about the shape of a meaningful life. The Call. The Threshold. The Trials. The Abyss. The Return. Campbell studied every culture we have ever found and came back with the same architecture. Carl Jung, working from the dreams of the living, found the same thing. This series lays that map down over your actual, ordinary, modern life and asks where you are standing on it right now.The Intellectual Freedom Podcast exists for listeners who want philosophy explained without jargon, critical thinking that has teeth, and honest truth seeking about what a life is for. We do not worship the text. We argue with it. Challenging authority, including the authorities we admire most, is the whole point. If you are done being told who to be by algorithms, ad copy, and cultural noise, and you are ready for independent thinking rooted in the oldest and most tested ideas we have, start here.Do not file this one.Next episode, we begin the journey.Send us Fan MailFollow the Intellectual Freedom Podcast on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61581532813468 X : https://x.com/Int_Freedom_podLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intellectual-freedom-podcast
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You wake up. You scroll. You go to work. You come home. You do it again. Somewhere underneath all of it is a quiet feeling that this cannot be what a life is for, and modern culture has trained you to keep moving so you never sit with it. In this episode of the Intellectual Freedom Podcast, Dr. David Hopkins opens a new series on Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and names the feeling out loud. You are stuck. You know you are stuck. And there is a reason. Over the next several ...
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#156: Stuck: Why Modern Life Feels Empty, and the Story Buried Inside You | The Hero with a Thousand Faces, part 1
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