Authenticity, vulnerability and empathy are all positive character traits - but is there something in the modern ritual performance of these traits that can actually be detrimental to public life? Are we forsaking reason for the sugar rush of cheap emotion? The tension between what Jane Austen called "sense and sensibility" goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, and this week we're exploring the philosophical history of toxic touchy-feeliness.
Nov 27, 2024•35 min
Mysticism is a phenomenon commonly associated with religion and the kind of experience that bypasses the rational, critical mind - which is probably why modern philosophers have tended to treat it with suspicion. But this week we're asking if contemporary philosophy can learn something from the mystics.
Nov 21, 2024•38 min
In ethical terms, health care systems are supposed to be "blind" to culture, offering the same level of care and respect to all patients regardless of background. Programs promoting diversity and inclusivity in health care are designed to further this aim - and yet for immigrants and other minorities, the practice can fall far from the ideal.
Nov 13, 2024•28 min
Sentience is a puzzle - and an increasingly important one. The question of exactly what constitutes sentience, and which organisms possess it, is hotly contested. But with scientific evidence emerging in support of the theory that octopuses, bees and other invertebrates may be sentience candidates, moral questions of how we should treat them become more and more pressing. And then there's AI - could sentient robots be on the horizon?
Nov 07, 2024•31 min
Nationalism is often associated with rightwing politics and anti-immigration sentiment - but is that a necessary connection? This week we're looking at various forms of nationalism, and asking if there's something about the structure of the nation-state itself that fosters an exclusionary attitude to outsiders.
Oct 30, 2024•33 min
With the launch this week of a new Centre for the History of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, we're talking about the value of philosophical insights from the past – particularly insights from a time when philosophy and theology were close cousins.
Oct 24, 2024•41 min
Maori philosopher Krushil Watene is an outstanding scholar and part of a global leadership network working toward a sustainable future and a healthier planet. This week, delivering the 2024 Alan Saunders Lecture, she presents "Indigenous Philosophy and Intergenerational Justice".
Oct 17, 2024•42 min
To many people, the notion that the universe has consciousness and purpose belongs back in the pre-scientific era. This week we're exploring the possibility that cosmic purpose is defensible not only philosophically, but also scientifically.
Oct 10, 2024•37 min
Is freedom the primary goal of feminism? It's popular these days to define feminism as something that frees women - from traditional gender roles, from social expectations and other restrictions. But the question remains as to whether or not "freedom feminism" is up to the task of helping - or even noticing - the most vulnerable and oppressed.
Oct 03, 2024•40 min
As an academic discipline, Australian literature has been a largely white affair, with the canon of "great Australian authors" dominated by Anglo-European men. Indigenous writers are working to change this, and Australian indigenous literature is flourishing. But how comfortably does it sit within the traditional university structure?
Sep 25, 2024•28 min
With the climate heating up and our planetary support systems breaking down, how does an eco-philosopher manage to stay cheerful? This week's guest has been living and breathing these issues for many decades, which you'd think might make it difficult for him to get out of bed in the morning. But get out of bed he did, for a surprisingly upbeat conversation about optimism, pessimism and ecological identity.
Sep 18, 2024•28 min
AI is like all new technology, insofar as many people are afraid of it. When it comes to AI and education, scare stories abound of students using ChatGPT to write their essays, and a possible future where teachers are replaced by bots. But according to this week's guest, there's much to be excited about.
Sep 11, 2024•28 min
Ancient China seems like a place and a time far removed from our own - but when we look at how ancient and medieval Chinese scholars thought about the role and practice of history, we find some striking modern parallels.
Sep 04, 2024•34 min
Extremists used to be easy to spot: they were seen as irrational, unstable and... well, extreme. But in recent years, we've seen extremists on the political right laying claim to traditional Enlightenment values - reason, free speech, autonomy, human rights - that were traditionally used as bulwarks against extremism.
Aug 28, 2024•28 min
Few English language writers enjoy the position of authority, even reverence, that the journalist, essayist, novelist George Orwell does. While Orwell is best known for his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, he can also be read as developing a provocative moral sensibility — perhaps even an ethical system — in dialogue with the exigencies of war that framed his life, as well as the philosophical traditions that were “in the air” in English culture in the first half of the twentieth century....
Aug 23, 2024•29 min
Ever since Plato’s cave, the darkness has been considered something to be left behind. This is the founding myth of philosophy, the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition. But how might philosophy be different if it had, from the beginning, learned to see in the dark? If it had embraced, rather than sought to tame, the emotions that sometimes overwhelm us when we experience the too-muchness of life?
Aug 16, 2024•29 min
Over the last decade, liberalism has found itself on the ropes. Even many liberals seem to regard it as too soft a political disposition for hard times. This has led some of its most passionate advocates to make the case for its importance with a degree of desperation commensurate with their sense of the existential threat it faces from resurgent forms of authoritarianism, intolerance, populism and political violence. But there is another way of making the case for liberalism — and that is to po...
Aug 09, 2024•29 min
Whatever else artificial intelligence is, according to Professor Shannon Vallor, it is first and foremost a projection of the human. And so whatever threat it poses, is a threat from within our humanity.
Aug 02, 2024•29 min
The project of bringing extinct animals back into being is sexy, hi-tech and could confer significant environmental benefits - but at what cost? Some argue that resurrecting extinct species could actually work against the conservation of threatened species that currently exist. Why worry about their possible extinction, if we can just bring them back?
Jul 24, 2024•28 min
Gene technology has brought us to the point where it's theoretically possible to bring back extinct animals from the "species grave". But the science is not straightforward - and neither is the philosophy.
Jul 17, 2024•28 min
If you're like most people, you probably think about your life as a story - it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and the main character in the story is... you. But this seemingly "natural" main character thinking is deeply culturally determined, and it can limit us in the ways that we evaluate our own lives and the lives of others.
Jul 09, 2024•28 min
Historians are commonly thought of as being a little like archaeologists or scientists - they're in the business of uncovering facts, and then presenting those facts to the public as accurately as possible. But this week we're considering history as a species of narrative, and the historian as someone who doesn't "discover" the meaning of the past but constructs it.
Jul 02, 2024•34 min
Most of us aspire to achieve happiness in life, but is our understanding of happiness somewhat misguided? Could the wisdom of the ancient philosophers hold the key to modern happiness?
Jun 27, 2024•29 min
What moral judgements are made in philosophical thinking about fat bodies, and how does that culturally impact how we move through the world?
Jun 21, 2024•29 min
Philosophers have long debated how to define emotions and their relationship to our bodies. So, what are the different schools of thought? Why is there such a lack of consensus?
Jun 14, 2024•29 min
How should we engage with politics and protest? We explore the history of political engagement and ask what role civil disobedience plays in our lives today.
Jun 07, 2024•29 min
Most of us experience time as something that passes, or flows like a river - or at least we think we do. Could it be that the sense of time passing is just an illusion? This week we're getting to grips with a theory of time that denies the reality of "flow" - and we're asking why time seems to speed up or slow down in certain situations. Guest: Heather Dyke, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Otago NZ Producer: David Rutledge Experience of Passage in a Static World - Heather Dyke a...
May 30, 2024•29 min
Life is hard — disappointment, regret and suffering come with the territory — and if the projections of climate scientists and epidemiologists are correct, it's not going to get easier any time soon. But then, life has always been hard. What do philosophical traditions have to say about the incurable toughness of human existence?
May 24, 2024•29 min
When we think of 19th century German philosophy, we perhaps think first of Nietzsche, or Hegel, and then some other men - but Germany in the 1800s was also home to a number of women philosophers.
May 16, 2024•38 min
For many on the political left, the end of capitalism is a cherished ideal - but what if capitalism ended and we found ourselves with something worse? This week we're exploring the possibility that Western liberal democracies could be sliding in the direction of "neofeudalism" and devolving into a much nastier set of economic and social structures than the ones we presently have.
May 08, 2024•39 min
