Philosophy For Our Times

Philosophers cannot stop talking about consciousness - what are its limits? What is it made of? What does it allow us? This podcast is part of that conversation, but from a more experimental perspective.

Join biologist and researcher Rupert Sheldrake as he discusses consciousness with philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes from the lens of psychedelics. Once on the fringes of academic and popular interest, psychedelics have recently moved towards the mainstream as their potential in expanding our awareness and connecting us to others is progressively revealed. Both Rupert and Peter have much intimacy with the topic at hand, and creatively draw lessons from it to muse on the inner workings of our mind.

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Why we worship without knowing it

What should be included within the remit of philosophy? Religion? Love? Hair?

Join well-known public speakers and writers Alain de Botton and Alex O'Connor as they talk through what philosophy can offer us, why we should study love, and what the role of religion is in philosophy and in our lives.

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Over the past decades, neuroscience has blossomed, positioning itself as a kind of master discipline over everything else. For who understands the brain surely understands all of human activity and creation? Or not?

Neuroscience's reach has extended past its scientific remit and into the world of philosophy and its major questions. What is a human? What is consciousness? Are we free? And so on. Yet its utility in this field, and in general, is still being fiercely debated, with its proponents and detractors arguing on the one side that it is the key to the universe, and on the other that it is a bunch of garbage.

Join this engaging conversation from 2011 where Iain McGilchrist, famous psychologist and researcher of the brain, the late neuroscientist and neurobiologist Colin Blakemore, and journalist Bryan Appleyard delve into the nitty-gritty of neuroscience and what it has to say on major philosophical questions. Post-realist philosopher Hilary Lawson hosts.

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What is nothing? Can it be defined, either philosophically or scientifically? Or will the exploration of nothing bring, ultimately, to nothing?

The philosophical exploration of nothingness is an ancient one, from the mysterious number zero through theological understandings of the absence of God right to modern physics and ideas of the void.

Join leading theoretical physicists David Deutsch and Lee Smolin, alongside science writer Amanda Gefter, as they discuss the edges of their understanding of nothing, including what something is, what physics tells us, and the extent to which we require esotericism to comprehend it.

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Why are we fascinated by apocalyptic stories?

Join the team at the IAI for a reading of four Halloween-themed articles, written by historian and philosopher Natalie Lawrence, professor of political philosophy Matthew Festenstein, and professor of comparative literature Florian Mussgnug. From the allure of the end times to the symbolic value of monsters, this episode is a spooky journey through all things macabre.

Natalie Lawrence is a researcher in history and the philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge, specialising in the natural histories of exotic monsters. Matthew Festenstein is a professor of political philosophy at the University of York where he is the former director of the Morrell Centre for Toleration and head of the politics department. Florian Mussgnug is professor of comparative literature and Vice Dean International for Arts and Humanities at University College London. 

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