Philosophy For Our Times

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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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?

To witness such topics discussed live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/

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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?

To witness such topics discussed live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/

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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?

To witness such topics discussed live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/

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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.

And don't hesitate to email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode!

To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/

And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/

You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes

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