Dr. Peter Weller
speaker
668 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Dr. Peter Weller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah. Yeah. Because I can talk about Cicero forever. Absolutely. Because Cicero. Who can't? No, but the great ego trip of Cicero, the great arc of him, like stepping in his own crap. I mean, he started off as a voice for the people and then. you know, winning with, you know, the hubris of fame and fortune.
And unbelievable stuff. And then people tell him to shut up about my game. No, no, no, no, man. The guy went after his dad. I'm going to go after him. Big mistake. Can you shut up? Yeah. Can you just shut up? No. He's going to go down. And all of a sudden, he gets a phone call. Hey, guess what? Mark Antony made a deal with Octavian, and they're both coming into Rome looking for your ass.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But then you got us walking through your own history, which is about as weird as it gets. Yeah. And the best thing I could do is sort of go to mom in my mind and dad in my mind and say, love you, forgive you.
Please forgive me for being an idiot.
No, it isn't. It's not. Especially when your dad calls you out. And you think it's all your dad. And your dad hates you. Does this ring a bell with your weirdness? Your own... fucking hysterical weird history? And you go, oh, really? Yeah, it's pretty weird. Yeah, my history with you is pretty weird, Dad. Thanks.
I should shut up then. No, no, please. No, no, keep going. I love it. You're a psychotherapist? Yes, yeah. Of what intelligence group or what gender or what?
Yeah. Trauma therapy, man.
Like physical trauma therapy.
My brother was sadly a victim of that.
Well, you know, my brother was a member of Mensa and the Genius and the Phi Beta Kappa and the Five Books in a Week and way ahead of his jam, man. And he did tours as a LERP, which is Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, at night, four guys, carry your own gun and do your own deal. And he went through many, many jobs when he got out, Agent Orange, all that stuff.
But the thing is, he never sought that. He was too smart, you know, too smart for therapy, too smart for sobriety. That's tough. Too smart for God, too smart for – and that runs in the family, by the way, with certain people.
If you've got – you know, everybody can't be Einstein.
Who essentially said – and I'm paraphrasing Einstein because I would like to have had a lunch with him, you know. So what's the difference between God and science? Basically, it's totally jamming on me. There is no difference, man. Science is just an attempt to explain God. Wow. Why are you guys dichotomizing this? Somebody's parables about when the earth was built, that's a parable.
That's a lesson about building. Get off it.
And like the great Leo Steinberg, I'm going to get back to this in a second, but Leo Steinberg, arguably my mentor and arguably the greatest art historian in the 20th century, the guy that defended the iconography of the greatest Baroque church in Rome and defended Picasso's formalism and, I don't know, the first guy to defend the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel and wrote on everything.
And I couldn't meet him. It was like meeting Marlon Brando. Finally, I met him. And finally, I sat down because he smoked cigars, I smoked cigars. We'd go to the Grand Event in New York. I pumped this guy through dinner's form. Leo Steinberg. His father was Trotsky's secretary.
And he escaped Stalinist Russia and went to Germany, changed his name, and then had to escape Germany.
Because of the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis and fascism. And he said his father was a rabbi. I asked him about, like, okay, in psychology or in art history or in anything,
like Einstein trying to rationalize or tell people who are a lot dumber than him you know the intersection of science and God you know and that the books about God are just you know parables and attempts to explain you know their stories their life stories about right and how do you how do you rationalize that with you know your rabbinical background your dad's and
talking about art you don't meet many religious people talking about art and he said this thing that seared me which a lot of people are going to like throw stones about but he said we got into Einstein and he basically was saying yeah Einstein had a great point about the parables of books and he said listen my father would probably roll in his grave because he was a rabbi but I have to say this
Showing 201–220 of 668 · page 11 of 34
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