Brendan Graham Dempsey: Matters Over Time

About this episode

Ethan Hsieh interviews Brendan Graham Dempsey about the evolution of meaning-making in individuals and society.

What if the question is not simply whether life has meaning, but how our capacity for meaning develops? In this Lectern conversation, Ethan Hsieh speaks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about his upcoming course, Matters Over Time: How the Sacred and Significant Evolve in Self and Society . Brendan introduces the course through his own experience of a meaning crisis, which led him to ask how meaning-making frames are constructed, lost, reconstructed, and developed. The conversation begins at the personal level. Brendan explains why studying meaning-making can help us understand our own minds, other people's worlds, and the recurring patterns by which human beings organize significance. Ethan presses him from two sides: the person who feels life is already meaningful enough, and the person who has searched for meaning for years without finding it. Brendan's answer is careful: the course is not meant to force existential confrontation, but to invite a wider and deeper participation in reality. From there, the discussion turns toward relativism, nihilism, and pluralism. Brendan argues that once an inherited worldview breaks open, people often either double down on a single frame or…

People in this episode

Host: Ethan Hsieh

Guest: Brendan Graham Dempsey

Topics covered

• meaning-making
• existential inquiry
• relativism
• nihilism
• pluralism
• personal development

Keywords

• meaning
• meaning crisis
• self
• society
• developmental patterns
• worldview
• significance

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Matters Over Time: How the Sacred and Significant Evolve in Self and Society

More episodes of Dr. John Vervaeke

• Ish Peregrino: Pilgrimage Is More Than Travel. It Changes How You See Reality · June 5, 2026 · 1h 19m
• William Desmond and John Vervaeke: Strong Transcendence, Plato, and the Between · May 28, 2026 · 1h 37m
• Reconnect to the Real: John Vervaeke, Guy Sengstock, and Kyle Koch Announce the Whistler Retreat · May 21, 2026 · 1h 5m
• From Flow to Mystical Experience · May 15, 2026 · 1h 27m
• Who is Ethan Hsieh? | Teaching, Play & What TIAMAT is For · May 8, 2026 · 1h 13m
• Silk Road Seminar: John Vervaeke with Edward Slingerland · May 8, 2026 · 1h 29m