Showing results by narrator "Seth Thompson" in All Categories

Jack London’s White Fang is an impactful examination of the harsh realities of nature and the damage humans can cause, but also of the will to survive that is common between humans and wild animals alike. The story follows White Fang, a feisty wolf pup that becomes a vicious wolf due to his interactions with harsh human masters. He is shuffled between masters throughout his life and taught to be destructive but is eventually shown love and compassion by a human and learns gentleness as an adult wolf.

In one of the most well-known works of satire, Jonathan Swift puts forth a “modest proposal”. Swift begins by outlining the suffering that the starving beggars in Ireland experience daily. He paints a grim picture of the plight these people face to help the listener relate to the situation before turning the tables and suggesting that to alleviate the economic troubles of the poor, their children could be sold as food to the upper class. The shock from this sudden change is expounded by Swift’s continued explanation of the proposal.

An instant best-seller when it was released in 1885, King Solomon’s Mines is regarded as one of the earliest works of “lost world” fiction in which explorers discover an unknown world full of adventure and mystery. In King Solomon’s Mines, adventurer Allan Quatermain sets out on an expedition to find a friend’s brother who was lost while searching for the mines of the biblical King Solomon. The mines are said to hold the riches and treasures of Solomon’s kingdom, a temptation that Quatermain cannot deny.

Gulliver’s Travels takes listeners on an adventure to fictional and real places in the world, with fantastical elements such as a society of tiny people, flying cities, and the ghosts of ancient world leaders. Gulliver’s adventure takes him all over, and each location is uniquely themed and satirizes themes from our real world.

In The Prince, it is asserted that a good ruler is one who works for the benefit of the state at all times, even when this requires acting immorally or unethically. Basically, the ends justify the means, even if the means are killing innocent people, blackmailing, and being deceitful. This idea was contentious then and now - many people believe that rulers should act with kindness and lawfulness above all, rather than bending ethics to achieve the ends they want.

NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic-Programming and this is used to model successful people, managers and leaders. And if you model successful people correctly, you’ll get the same results as they have, for example: a higher productivity and income.

Did you know that a lot of the videos, pieces of training and books from today's famous productivity and self-help gurus like Tony Robbins and Tim Ferris are based on the practical advice of the ancient stoics? Both gurus credit their current success on embracing stoic principles in their life and business. It's safe to say that Stoicism survived the test of time.