Philosophy For Our Times

Latest Episodes:

The power and the pitfalls of narrative | Matthew Beaumont, Ruth Padel, and Theodore Dalrymple Apr 29, 2025

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Lost in stories

Is life a story or a sequence of events?

Our narratives enable us to make sense of the complex, often confusing, world that we live in. And yet there is a risk that rather than helping us to truly understand this world, narratives can hide reality from us, providing delusional states of mind in its place. From witch hunts to cults, from war propaganda to religious honour killings, people are prepared to kill and die for stories they believe in, while others see these narratives as wildly false illusions.

Matthew Beaumont is Professor of English at University College London, UK and the author of several books, including two on the topic of late nineteenth-century utopianism. He has also edited several essay collections and published numerous articles in scholarly journals.

Ruth Padel is a poet, broadcaster, and critic whose engagement with the natural world infuses her volumes of poetry, nature writing, biography, and criticism.

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen-name for Anthony Malcolm Daniels, an English cultural critic, prolific writer, satirist, prison physician, and psychiatrist.

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Reflections on mental health today | Interview | Susie Orbach Apr 22, 2025

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The dark side of 'mental health' with Susie Orbach

Why are psychotherapy, psychology, psychoanalysis, therapy so popular today? Do these respond to a new need in our society or are they evolutions of age-old human approaches to resolution and knowing oneself?

Join psychotherapist and psychoanalyst (famously Princess Diana's therapist!) Susie Orbach as she delves into her relationship with her profession and why it so necessary for humans to sit, talk, and explore body and mind.

And please email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode! What do you think about the state of mental health today?

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The life and philosophy of Peter Singer | In conversation with Myriam François Apr 16, 2025

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Peter Singer is one of the world's leading philosophers, renowned for his challenging and often controversial views. From animal ethics to effective altruism, Singer has shaped the philosophical landscape. In this episode we uncover the key events in his life that led to his ideas, and hear him answer his critics and defend the convictions that have made him the force that he is today.

"The Dangerous Philosopher." - The New Yorker

Peter Singer is the most prominent figure in contemporary ethics. He has made groundbreaking contributions to animal welfare, bioethics, effective altruism and practical ethics more broadly.

He is a founder of both Animals Australia and The Life You Can Save, and has been a key figure in the Effective Altruism movement - an initiative that uses evidence and careful analysis to find the very best way for individuals to do good. Singer has received multiple accolades for his work, including a nomination as one of Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals and the $1 million Berggruen Prize in 2021.

And please email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode! What do you think about effective altruism?

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The price of everything, value of nothing | Politics series | Daniel Susskind, Abby Innes, Will Hutton, Richard Kibble Apr 11, 2025

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Under capitalism, it can be hard to disentangle an idea of 'value' from that which the market sets as 'valuable' - that is to say, expensive items. Is the price mechanism in any way a useful or accurate way of representing value, or are we unable to measure what we really value through it?

Join our panel of four diverse social scientists to make sense of this question: Abby Innes is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the LSE; Daniel Susskind is a Research Professor in Economics at King's College; Will Hutton is a political economist and journalist; and Richard Kibble is a Partner at Deloitte. The question of whether we should keep or scrap our current economic model obviously enters the picture.

And please email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode! Do you believe the GDP and the price mechanism are good ways of approximating value?

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The crisis of the new | Stanley Fish, Claire Hynes, and Martin Puchner Apr 08, 2025

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Is genuine originality a realistic goal for artists?

From fashion to fantasy, entertainment to enterprise, we seek the 'new' as the means to originality, change, and creativity. And for the most part, we imagine the new is always identifiable as a radical break from the past. But the nature of the new is more elusive and unknown than it first appears. Is the new an illusion, and the search for originality a mistake? Should creative endeavour be focussed on other goals, such as the timeless, the provocative, and the beautiful? Or is the new an essential part of life, creativity and action, without which we would have mere passive re-orderings of the known?

Martin Puchner is a literary critic and philosopher. He is the Byron and Anita Wien Chair of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Claire Hynes is Associate Professor in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and an author of fiction and creative non-fiction. Stanley Fish is a literary critic, legal scholar, and public intellectual. Renowned for his role in developing reader-response theory in literary studies, Fish has written on a wide range of topics including the poetry of John Milton, the distinction between free speech and academic freedom, and the doctrine of liberalism.

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Sartre vs Baldwin | Joanna Kavenna, Jonathan Webber, and Marie-Elsa Bragg Apr 01, 2025

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We take it for granted that through language and communication we can learn about the experience of others. But it remains unknown whether we can fully know what it is like to be another human being. James Baldwin and Jean-Paul Sartre take radically different approaches. For Sartre, the experience of others is unknown to us. Fundamentally, we are alone with our own subjectivity. While for Baldwin, "to encounter oneself is to encounter the other; and this is love". Summing up his disagreement with Sartre he remarked: "it has always seemed to me that ideas were somewhat more real to him than people.”

Was Baldwin right that to be alive is to be socially connected to others? Or is Sartre's insight that the only thing we can know is our own experience more telling? Should we conclude that we cannot understand the experience of another unless we have had the same experience? Or is language capable of bridging the seemingly impossible gap between us?

Jonathan Webber is a professor at Cardiff University specializing in moral philosophy and the philosophy of psychology. Marie-Elsa Roche Bragg is an author, teacher, and priest. Her first novel, Towards Mellbreak is about four generations of a quiet hill farming family on the North Western fells of Cumbria. Joanna Kavenna is an award-winning writer. She was born in the UK but as a seasoned traveller, she was led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which details her experience travelling in the remote North. Hosted by presenter, writer and professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at Oxford, Rana Mitter

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The philosophy of geopolitics SPECIAL | Donald Trump, Homer's Odyssey, and Korean Web Novels Mar 28, 2025

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What do Friedrich Nietzsche, the Korean War, and Homer's Odyssey have in common?

Join the team at the IAI for four articles about the history and philosophy of geopolitics, ranging from Nietzsche's impact on Russia's imperialist strategies to the importance of Ancient Greek tragedies during the decline of the West. Written by Slavoj Žižek, John Milbank, Stathis Kalyvas, and Andy Owen, these four articles offer a deep and wide-ranging analysis of the philosophies that are shaping the modern world of politics.

Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is the author of 'Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist'. John Milbank is a theologian and founder of Radical Orthodoxy. His books include 'The Monstrosity of Christ', co-authored with Slavoj Žižek. Stathis Kalyvas is Gladstone Professor of government and fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. Andy Owen is an author and former intelligence officer in the British Army.

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The philosophy of dehumanisation | David Livingstone Smith Mar 25, 2025

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The philosophy of dehumanisation with David Livingstone Smith

In this exclusive interview, philosopher David Livingstone Smith explores the history, nature, and evolution of dehumanisation. As what is 'acceptable' in society changes, so do the tactics of undercover dehumanisation. How can we identify these, and how might we progress? Smith's solutions vary from holding up the mirror to reveal there are no 'monsters', to his more radical suggestion: getting rid of dehumanisation's prelude, racialisation. Smith presents us with a candid but unique outlook on this topic, touching on everything from deferring to the expert and symbols of hate, to having hope without optimism.

David Livingstone Smith is a philosopher and author, most recently of Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization. His research interests include self-deception, dehumanization, human nature, ideology, race and moral psychology. His book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

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Consciousness is quantum mechanical | Stuart Hameroff Mar 18, 2025

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Consciousness is one of the most fundamental aspects of our existence, but it remains barely understood, even defined. Across the world scholars of many disciplines - philosophy, science, social science, theology - are joined on a quest to understand this phenomenon.

Tune into one of the more original and controversial thinkers at the forefront of consciousness research, Stuart Hameroff, as he presents his ideas. Hameroff is an anaesthesiologist who, alongside Roger Penrose, proposes that the source of consciousness is structural, produced from a certain shape in our brain. He expands on this, and much more (such as evolution), in this talk. Have a listen!

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Defending panpsychism | Philosophers Philip Goff and Hilary Lawson Mar 14, 2025

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Metaphysics vs consciousness

Panpsychism has recently become something of a household term in philosophical and scientific conversations alike. Deceivingly simple, it defends the view that consciousness is the primary 'stuff' of reality, and that all things have mind-like qualities.

Join philosopher Philip Goff, one of the world's leading defenders of panpsychism, in this conversation with philosopher Hilary Lawson, a post-realist. Goff is humble in his approach, open to scientific progress and discovery, but also philosophically committed to finding purpose and meaning in the world around him.

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