Philosopher's Zone
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Philosopher's Zone
The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
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280 episodi
Communication in an age of crisis
Collins Dictionary made "permacrisis" their word of the year in 2022 - a prescient choice because since then, the crises have just kept coming. Permac...
Can sport survive AI?
Elite sport is traditionally a celebration of the human, but for how much longer? We watch in awe as athletes perform feats of skill, strength and end...
Purity, filth and 'promiscuous defecators': why we're weird about poo
Why are we so repelled yet fascinated by bodily waste? Today we're talking purity, pollution, colonial sanitation regimes, medicine and public health,...
Bad faith and 'just asking questions'
There's a certain kind of question that raises suspicion as to the motives of the person asking it. 'Was the Holocaust really as bad as historians hav...
'Natural' disasters and climate justice
To call the effects of a fire, flood or cyclone these days a 'natural' disaster only tells part of the story, as climate change makes us realise that...
Where am I? Buddhist philosophy and the self
Behind the familiar Buddhist doctrine that "there is no self" lies a centuries-long tradition of dispute and disagreement. Reductionists believe that...
Common sense vs reason: when philosophy gets weird
There are certain things about the world that we think we know for sure, and yet philosophical reason tells us cannot be true. Can you fly? are you re...
Adam Smith, economics and moral philosophy
Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) is often described as an arch capitalist, the "father of modern economics" - and at a glance it's easy to...
Can AIs be friends?
Artificial intelligence is beginning to revolutionise many aspects of human existence - but how does it rate on friendship? The question is less theor...
Kant and religion
It's often claimed that the Enlightenment was a time when Europeans awoke from their superstitious slumber, discovered rationality, got started on sci...
Speech acts and AI
Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workplac...
'Being a burden' and assisted dying
Caring for a terminally ill person can place huge pressure - financial, emotional, physical - on the caregivers, who are often family members. And it'...
Sincerity, irony and metamodernism
The supposed evils of postmodern culture have been endlessly catalogued: moral relativism, the loss of shared values, ironic detachment, a pathologica...
Is it time to get rid of legal gender status?
Most of us have Male or Female registered on our birth certificates - but what does this certification mean, in terms of its effect on our lives? Ther...
Medieval Jewish philosophy and the lessons of history
We secular moderns sometimes make the assumption that philosophy is what you do when you're interested in the Big Questions of human existence, but no...
The reluctant feminist: Clara Zetkin and International Women's Day
Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) is widely celebrated as the founder of International Women's Day, yet she saw herself first and foremost as a socialist revol...
Move fast, break everything: Nick Land and accelerationism
Nick Land is one of the more interesting contemporary philosophers, and one of the most disturbing. This week we're talking with the author of a new b...
Can 'planetary civics' save us from techno-catastrophe?
Most of us are a little anxious these days - and for good reason, as advances in technology and the rising intensity of climate change are set to caus...
Racism and racial regimes
It's a well-rehearsed argument that systemic, structural racism has more significant bearing on the lives and opportunities of racialised minorities t...
Do we still love art?
There has never been as much art around as there is today - digital tools are incredibly cheap, artistic production and distribution can bypass the tr...
Who am I? Individual and collective identity
The question of identity, and whether each of us is best understood as an individual or a member of a collective, has vexed philosophers for centuries...
What's the point of education?
Of course, education has a point - but establishing exactly what that point is, can be a surprisingly difficult task. Do we educate children in order...
Albert Camus, fascism and America
Living and writing through the years before, during and after the Second World War, French author and philosopher Albert Camus witnessed the rise of f...
How feminism changed primatology
For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist scie...
What's the time? Indigenous temporalities and the 'Everywhen'
We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem stran...
Buddhism and nationalism
Buddhism in the West is often thought of as an ethical or philosophical system first and foremost, based on principles of non-self and impermanence, a...
Innocence and 'child rescue' in the colonial imagination
The forced removal of First Nations children from their families was active government policy in Australia between the 1910s and the 1970s, and still...
Distributed intelligence and the problem with 'doing your own research'
Conspiracy theorists are turning out to be a resilient bunch, and no amount of refutation or mockery will make them go away. It's a problem, because a...
Can atheists be virtuous? The moral philosophy of Catharine Trotter Cockburn
Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749) is best known as a contemporary and defender of John Locke - but she was also a fascinating philosopher in her...
What are we doing when we read?
Reading seems like a simple, uncomplicated activity that most of us enjoy without thinking too much about it - but how simple is it really? Literary t...
Love, compassion and gloom: the contradictions of Arthur Schopenhauer
It's been said that the work of the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer should come with a health warning, so stark and pessimistic wa...
Poverty and punishment
The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme exposed a system that unfairly (and illegally) subjected vulnerable people to stress and trauma - b...
Knowledge, culture and parenting apps
There's an app for everything these days, including parenting and childrearing - but at what cost? Women in the Global South are increasingly using pa...
The contradictions of democracy
Democracy is a powerful force for progress, but it's also vulnerable and beset by its own internal contradictions. Plato thought that democracy was a...
Environmental techno-utopias: building nature better
Conservation is the name of the game in most ecological thinking - but in the eyes of some environmental philosophers, conservation is a backward-look...
Slopaganda
Are you troubled by the way that social media has enabled the spread of propaganda? Well, get ready for slopaganda, which is propaganda that's AI-powe...
Indigenous literature and the academy in Australia
As an academic discipline, Australian literature has been a largely white affair, with the canon of "great Australian authors" dominated by Anglo-Euro...
Albert Camus, fascism and America
Living and writing through the years before, during and after the Second World War, French author and philosopher Albert Camus witnessed the rise of f...
What beauty apps are doing to us
Beauty apps are becoming more and more miraculously high-tech, but also more and more invasive. You might feel OK about an app that gives your face a...
Are babies conscious?
Babies cry, smile, laugh and react to their environment - so it seems odd to look at a baby and wonder whether or not it's conscious. But consciousnes...