Mark Vernon has just brought out a book on wellbeing in a new series of which he’s general editor. But this isn’t a run-of-the-mill self-help series.
The series is called The Art of LivingĀ and it’s published by independent philosophy specialist, Acumen. Their stated aim is to “open up philosophy’s riches to a wider public once […]
Entries Tagged as 'science and philosophy'
19. What is wellbeing?
October 3rd, 2008 · No Comments
Tags: religion and belief · science and philosophy
18. Mistrust the lucky duck
September 19th, 2008 · 1 Comment
“In marketing and in politics people have got more sophisticated in their manipulation techniques, so more than ever we need to know what they are, so that we can spot the truth when we see it.”
Julian Baggini is the first guest to pay a return visit to the Podularity studio. I last interviewed him back […]
Tags: history and politics · podcasts · science and philosophy
17. “Unstitching the carefully tailored suit”
August 30th, 2008 · No Comments
“The book is written against the view that a philosopher’s biography is of no importance and that philosophy can be reduced to a series of systems of thought.
It’s really an attempt to rewrite the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers. That was the way that philosophy was taught until the eighteenth century.
“So in […]
Tags: podcasts · religion and belief · science and philosophy
16. “Our sweaty ape hands on the thermostat”
August 3rd, 2008 · No Comments
“The chemistry of this is more than a century old… The basic physics of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has been known for a very long time. In fact some back-of-the-envelope calculations were made then which more or less stand the test of time a century later.”
A few weeks back I met Mark Lynas […]
Tags: history and politics · podcasts · science and philosophy · technology and communication
What’s the big idea?
July 4th, 2008 · No Comments
In May I made a number of recordings for this year’s Bristol Festival of Ideas, a series of very popular events which brought some high-powered thinkers to the city to stimulate discussion on subjects as diverse as the legacy of ‘68 to why the human brain is not quite ‘fit for purpose’.
I’m editing my interviews […]
Tags: history and politics · podcasts · religion and belief · science and philosophy · technology and communication
‘Places can’t stand open’
June 9th, 2008 · No Comments
“In politics there’s a constant endeavour to expose hypocrisy. Because people don’t like hypocrisy, it’s a very useful weapon to attack an opponent.
But the exposure of hypocrisy - the anti-hypocritical movement - doesn’t drive hypocrisy out of politics. It doesn’t even diminish the amount of hypocrisy that there is. If anything it […]
Tags: history and politics · podcasts · science and philosophy
9. Talking about animals
March 20th, 2008 · No Comments
‘As soon as humans make images, they make them about humans and they make them about animals and the relationship between them.’
My guest on this week’s programme is Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art at Oxford, whose latest book, The Human Animal is a rich and thought-provoking study of the relationship between the […]
Tags: art and music · history and politics · podcasts · science and philosophy
8. A Philosopher in Everytown
March 14th, 2008 · 2 Comments
Philosophy can seem the most cerebral and abstract of disciplines. So what would happen if a philosopher stepped out of his study and ‘embedded’ himself in an ordinary (but unfamiliar) community in his own country and tried to work out whether the English people have anything which could reasonably be called a philosophy?
Tags: history and politics · podcasts · science and philosophy
6. Discovering Our Inner Ape
January 10th, 2008 · 1 Comment
What aspects of our human character do we inherit from our fellow primates? Until recently, the answer would have been ‘all the bad bits’. Footage of chimpanzees killing their own kind influenced the view in the popular imagination that ‘killer’ and ‘ape’ were virtual synonyms.
Tags: podcasts · science and philosophy
1. Lost Continents, Deep Space… and Lasagne
October 31st, 2007 · No Comments
Tags: podcasts · science and philosophy


