Philosophy For Our Times29 Apr 2025

The power and the pitfalls of narrative | Matthew Beaumont, Ruth Padel, and Theodore Dalrymple

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.

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

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(557)

The world after liberalism | Maurice Glasman & Sohrab Amari

Is this the end of liberalism, or just another temporary crisis? If it is the end, what will follow it? And where did it all go wrong?Since the end of WWII, the Western world has been governed by libe...

30 Jun 32min

Why artists shouldn't fear AI | Jaron Lanier

What does originality mean in the age of AI? Why should artists resist the temptation to fear AI? What role will human creativity play in the future we're building?Jaron Lanier, a visionary computer s...

23 Jun 30min

Copying consciousness: the future of mind uploading | Anders Sandberg

What makes you 'you'? If scientists made a digital replica of your mind, would this new 'you' be conscious? And what does this all mean for what it means to exist?Whole-brain emulation (often called “...

16 Jun 37min

The return of idealism | James Tartaglia

Is materialism mistaken in its understanding of consciousness? How can dividing experience into the phenomenal and the transcendent provide a new angle from which to view consciousness? Have you ever ...

9 Jun 28min

Reimagining the right | Richard Tice

Is this the end of Britain's two-party system? How has Reform brought together seemingly contradictory left- and right-wing ideas? Why do they think that we should get used to climate change instead o...

2 Jun 29min

Is philosophy becoming irrelevant? | Mary Midgley

Does philosophy still matter in today's world? If so, why are students less and less interested in studying in it?In a special episode from the IAI archives, Mary Midgley addresses the declining inter...

26 Mai 27min

Who's afraid of gender? | Judith Butler

Why has gender identity become such a controversial talking point in modern politics?Judith Butler, pioneering gender theorist whose changed the way we think about gender and sexuality, explores the t...

19 Mai 40min

Human perception is imagination | Nadine Dijkstra

Nadine Dijkstra is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Neurology at UCL. Her research in Imaging Neuroscience explores how the brain generates mental images and differentiates them from actua...

12 Mai 14min