231 | Sarah Bakewell on the History of Humanism

231 | Sarah Bakewell on the History of Humanism

Human beings are small compared to the universe, but we're very important to ourselves. Humanism can be thought of as the idea that human beings are themselves the source of meaningfulness and mattering in our lives, rather than those being granted to us by some higher power. In today's episode, Sarah Bakewell discusses the origin and evolution of this dramatic idea. Humanism turns out to be a complex thing; there are religious humanists and atheistic anti-humanists. Her new book is Humanly Possible: 700 Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope.

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Sarah Bakewell did postgraduate work in philosophy and artificial intelligence before becoming a full-time author. Among her previous books are How to Live: a life of Montaigne, and At the Existentialist Cafe. She has been awarded the National Book Critics Circle award in biography, as well as the Windham-Campbell Prize in non-fiction.


Jaksot(423)

14 | Alta Charo on Bioethics and the Law

14 | Alta Charo on Bioethics and the Law

To paraphrase Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, scientists tend to focus on whether they can do something, not whether they should. Questions of what we should do tend to wander away from the pristine bea...

8 Syys 20181h 8min

13 | Neha Narula on Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the Future of the Internet

13 | Neha Narula on Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the Future of the Internet

For something of such obvious importance, money is kind of mysterious. It can, as Homer Simpson once memorably noted, be exchanged for goods and services. But who decides exactly how many goods/servic...

8 Syys 20181h 6min

12 | Wynton Marsalis on Jazz, Time, and America

12 | Wynton Marsalis on Jazz, Time, and America

Jazz occupies a special place in the American cultural landscape. It's played in elegant concert halls and run-down bars, and can feature esoteric harmonic experimentation or good old-fashioned foot-s...

4 Syys 20181h 1min

11 | Mike Brown on Killing Pluto and Replacing It with Planet 9

11 | Mike Brown on Killing Pluto and Replacing It with Planet 9

Few events in recent astronomical history have had the worldwide emotional resonance as the 2006 announcement that Pluto was no longer considered a planet, at least as far as the International Astrono...

27 Elo 20181h 17min

10 | Megan Rosenbloom on the Death Positive Movement

10 | Megan Rosenbloom on the Death Positive Movement

We're all going to die. But while we are alive, it's up to us how we understand and deal with that fact. In the United States especially, there is a tendency to not face up to the reality of death, an...

20 Elo 20181h 9min

9 | Solo -- Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

9 | Solo -- Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

It's fun to be in the exciting, chaotic, youthful days of the podcast, when anything goes and experimentation is the order of the day. So today's show is something different: a solo effort, featuring ...

13 Elo 20181h 21min

8 | Carl Zimmer on Heredity, DNA, and Editing Genes

8 | Carl Zimmer on Heredity, DNA, and Editing Genes

Our understanding of heredity and genetics is improving at blinding speed. It was only in the year 2000 that scientists obtained the first rough map of the human genome: 3 billion base pairs of DNA wi...

6 Elo 20181h 31min

7 | Yascha Mounk on Threats to Liberal Democracy

7 | Yascha Mounk on Threats to Liberal Democracy

Both words in the phrase "liberal democracy" carry meaning, and both concepts are under attack around the world. "Democracy" means that they people rule, while "liberal" (in this sense) means that the...

30 Heinä 20181h 5min

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