Today we are issuing our fifth Philosophy Smack advice column.

Are you having problems at school? Do you need advice from a group of learned philosophers who can answer questions while also sharing their personal approaches to life? Well, in our advice column your questions are answered by some of the most brilliant thinkers of their time. Isaac Newton, Cato the Elder, and Thomas Hobbes give you their practical insights into your life and help you with your problems. Are you wondering how we got them to write for our paper, since each of them is dead? Have you read Frankenstein? Well, it wasn’t like that at all.

Question From Ursula Ellison: I’m having some problems talking with my Trump supporting cousins. We used to be really close, but now every conversation steers towards politics. I’m having a lot of trouble reconciling the people who I’ve known since childhood with their political beliefs.

Isaac Newton: Like all other problems, this can be solved through the marvelous science of alchemy. I suggest a concoction of the mercurial elements mixed together with black bile and the urine of a man before he is led to the gallows. Er, wait, maybe that turns them into gold...

Cato The Elder: I understand that you feel guilt about being unable to separate your cousins’ political beliefs from what you believe to be their personalities. Recent years have tried even the strongest of relationships. Try to see this from their point of view. They probably have the same reservations about you. I suggest clearing the air and starting conversations with topics that you agree on. In closing, Carthage must be destroyed.

Thomas Hobbes: Familial political disputes are nasty, brutish, and short.