Let’s Discuss

The Prometheans
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Education
  • Weekly

A space where ideas ignite. In this podcast, we sit down with thinkers, creators, and experts to explore the questions that matter; from philosophy to politics to art and human nature. It’s a dialogue of reason, curiosity, and courage.

  1. 16h ago

    #91: Plato and Democracy: Did the Ancient Philosopher Predict the Death of Democracy? Angie Hobbs

    Did Plato predict the death of democracy, or did he diagnose something more useful? In The Republic, Plato argues that a free, tolerant democracy can slide into tyranny when citizens follow flatterers, resentment replaces reason, and freedom loses any sense of what it is for. But was this a timeless insight, or the bitterness of a man who watched Athens execute Socrates? In this episode of The Prometheans, I'm joined by Professor Angie Hobbs to discuss the democracy chapter of her book: “Why Plato Matters Now” (Bloomsbury, 2025). https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/why-plato-matters-now-9781399403412/ We cover: • Did Plato predict democracy's downfall? • What the ship of state is really saying • How far Socrates' trial shaped Plato's view of democracy • Why people surrender their freedom to demagogues • Should the wise rule, or the many? • Can too much freedom destroy democracy? • What Plato can teach us about defending democracy today About the guest: Angie Hobbs is emerita Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. She holds a degree in Classics and a PhD in Ancient Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Her books include Plato and the Hero, the Ladybird Expert introduction to Plato's Republic, and Why Plato Matters Now. She is a frequent contributor to In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 and has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Athens Democracy Forum. Subscribe to The Prometheans for rigorous conversations at the intersection of philosophy, religion, literature and the human condition. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  2. 4d ago

    #90: Shakespeare’s Spiritual Secret: Did His Plays Reveal Something Beyond the Human? | Ewan Fernie

    Did Shakespeare believe in God? Do his plays reveal a spiritual vision of reality—or do they expose the human struggle to find meaning in a universe that offers no clear answers? In this episode of The Prometheans, we sit down with Professor Ewan Fernie, Professor at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and editor of Spiritual Shakespeares, to explore one of literature’s most enduring philosophical questions: Is there a spiritual vision in Shakespeare’s plays? From the ghost-haunted world of Hamlet to the devastating suffering of King Lear, from the demonic temptations of Macbeth to the extraordinary possibility of forgiveness in The Winter’s Tale, we investigate Shakespeare’s treatment of God, transcendence, evil, grace, human freedom and the search for meaning. But this conversation goes beyond identifying religious references in Shakespeare. It asks whether spirituality can emerge from ordinary human experience, whether transcendence must involve a supernatural reality, and whether Shakespeare’s dramatic imagination challenges the boundaries between religious belief and secular thought. In this conversation, we explore: • Did Shakespeare have a coherent spiritual vision, or do his plays deliberately resist theological certainty? • Can spirituality exist without organised religion or belief in God? • What does the ghost in Hamlet reveal about the afterlife, human responsibility and the limits of knowledge? • Does King Lear present a cruel universe in which suffering has no divine justification? • Can evil itself become a disturbing encounter with transcendence? • Are forgiveness and reconciliation genuine forms of grace—or merely ways of restoring social order? • Can Shakespeare’s spiritual imagination challenge political oppression and inspire human liberation? • What can Shakespeare offer both religious believers and committed secular thinkers? Our guest: Professor Ewan Fernie is a leading Shakespeare scholar at the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute. His work includes Spiritual Shakespeares, The Demonic: Literature and Experience, and Shakespeare for Freedom: Why the Plays Matter. This is not simply a conversation about Shakespeare’s religious beliefs. It is an investigation into the philosophical possibilities of his plays—and whether literature can bring us face to face with questions that remain unresolved in both theology and philosophy. The central question: Do Shakespeare’s plays point beyond the human—or reveal just how desperately human beings reach beyond themselves? Subscribe to The Prometheans for rigorous conversations at the intersection of philosophy, religion, literature and the human condition. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  3. Oct 23

    #89: Does God’s Foreknowledge Destroy Human Freedom? | Katherin Rogers

    If God infallibly knows what you will do tomorrow, can you genuinely choose otherwise? This is one of the deepest problems in the philosophy of religion: if God cannot be wrong about our future choices, in what sense are those choices truly free? In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka speaks with philosopher Prof. Katherin “Kate” Rogers about her influential Anselmian approach to divine foreknowledge, eternity, and libertarian free will. Drawing on the thought of Anselm and Boethius, Rogers argues that God does not “foreknow” our choices in the ordinary temporal sense. Instead, God exists eternally and knows all of time at once. On this picture, God’s knowledge does not determine our choices; rather, our genuinely free choices are what ground God’s knowledge of them. But this raises an even more difficult question: Can God’s knowledge depend on human choices without compromising divine omniscience, immutability, aseity, or classical theism? We also explore: • What exactly is the classical foreknowledge/free-will problem? • What did Anselm add to Boethius? • Was Anselm really an early four-dimensionalist? • What does it mean to say that past, present and future are equally real? • Can “consequent necessity” preserve libertarian freedom? • Why does Rogers reject Molinism and Open Theism? • What is William Hasker’s objection to the Anselmian solution? • Can our choices genuinely be the source of God’s knowledge? • Does divine knowledge “depend” on creatures? • What would we have to surrender if foreknowledge and libertarian freedom really were incompatible? • And ultimately, can divine providence coexist with genuine human freedom? A conversation about God, time, freedom, responsibility, providence and the philosophical meaning of choice. Guest: Prof. Katherin “Kate” Rogers Host: Ali Zaka (AZD) The Prometheans Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the crossroads of philosophy, religion, and intellectual history. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  4. Oct 20

    #88: Rethinking Existentialism: Freedom, Meaning, and the Search for Authenticity | Jonathan Webber

    Was Jean-Paul Sartre wrong about freedom? Professor Jonathan Webber — Cardiff University philosopher and President of the UK Sartre Society — joins The Prometheans to argue that existentialism is not the vague literary mood most people think it is, but a rigorous ethical theory with a precise argument at its core: that human freedom is the foundation of all value. We trace the real philosophical drama behind the term "existentialism" — from Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's 1945 "existentialist offensive," through Beauvoir's rival theory of "sedimentation" (which Sartre himself would later come to accept), to Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and its place at the heart of the existentialist canon. Jonathan Webber is Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University and author of Rethinking Existentialism (Oxford University Press, 2018). Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the crossroads of philosophy, religion, and intellectual history. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  5. Oct 16

    #87: 500+ Theories of Mind, 9 Levels of Nothing: Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Reality's Last Mysteries

    Why is there something rather than nothing? What is consciousness? And could the deepest mystery of reality be that anything exists at all — including the experience of being you? In this special episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka (AZD) speaks with Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host of Closer To Truth, the long-running public television and digital series exploring the deepest questions in science, philosophy, and religion. Kuhn has spent more than 25 years bringing leading scientists, philosophers, and theologians into conversations about existence, consciousness, God, the mind, and the nature of reality. His work has explored two extraordinary questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? And what explains conscious experience? Drawing on his influential essay Levels of Nothing, his book The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All?, and his research on the Landscape of Consciousness, we explore what these mysteries reveal about the limits of scientific explanation and the possibilities that philosophy leaves open. IN THIS CONVERSATION • Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? — Is existence a brute fact, or does reality require a deeper explanation? • What Is Nothing? — Kuhn's nine levels of nothingness, from an empty universe to the absence of all concrete existence. • Can Physics Explain the Origin of Everything? — Does a quantum vacuum really explain why anything exists, or does the deeper philosophical question remain? • Does the Universe Require a Necessary Foundation? — God, fundamental physical laws, abstract truths, and other candidates for ultimate reality. • What Is Consciousness? — Why subjective experience remains such a difficult problem for neuroscience and philosophy. •500+ Theories of Consciousness — From materialism and physicalism to panpsychism, dualism, and idealism, what does the diversity of theories tell us? • Is Consciousness Fundamental or Produced by the Brain? — Could mind be more than a physical process? • Life After Death and Personal Identity — Could consciousness survive the death of the brain? What can philosophical theories establish, and what remains unknown? • Free Will, Immortality, and the Nature of the Self. This conversation does not assume that science has explained everything, nor that a religious explanation must be correct. Instead, we examine competing possibilities, challenge familiar assumptions, and ask what we can reasonably claim to know. ABOUT DR. ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Closer To Truth. He holds a PhD in anatomy and brain research from UCLA's Brain Research Institute and a master's degree in management from MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books and published the influential scholarly paper A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology in 2024. Here's a link to the website "Landscape of Consciousness" https://loc.closertotruth.com/ JOIN THE CONVERSATION Which is the greater mystery: why anything exists, or why anything is conscious? Is consciousness ultimately physical, or could it be a fundamental feature of reality? Share your thoughts in the comments. We welcome serious disagreement, thoughtful criticism, and open philosophical inquiry. Subscribe to The Prometheans for conversations on philosophy, theology, science, psychology, literature, and the questions that shape our understanding of reality. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  6. Oct 10

    #86: Viktor Frankl: Can Suffering Have Meaning? | Alexander Batthyány

    What makes life worth living when suffering, loss, death and uncertainty seem to strip everything away? In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka speaks with Prof. Alexander Batthyány, director of the Viktor Frankl Institute and Viktor Frankl Archives in Vienna and first editor of Viktor Frankl's 14-volume Collected Works, about one of the most important—and controversial—questions in modern psychology and philosophy: Can human beings find meaning even in suffering? Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and founder of logotherapy, argued that the deepest human motivation is not pleasure or power but the will to meaning. His ideas were developed before the Holocaust, tested under unimaginable circumstances, and later transformed into one of the most influential schools of existential psychotherapy. But Frankl's philosophy raises difficult questions. If suffering can have meaning, where do we draw the line between finding meaning in unavoidable suffering and romanticising suffering? If human beings are shaped by biology, psychology and society, in what sense are we actually free? Does meaning exist objectively, or do we simply create it for ourselves? And when Frankl speaks of an “unconscious God” and an ultimate meaning beyond human comprehension, does his philosophy ultimately require God? We also discuss the historical controversy surrounding Frankl's account of the Holocaust and the criticisms raised by historian Timothy Pytell. Batthyány's book Viktor Frankl and the Shoah: Advancing the Debate draws on archival material to challenge important aspects of that interpretation. The conversation then moves into Batthyány's own research on terminal lucidity—the mysterious phenomenon in which people with severe dementia, neurological disease or other profound cognitive impairment sometimes display an unexpected return of clarity and recognition shortly before death. What does terminal lucidity tell us about consciousness, the brain, the self and the possibility that human beings are more than their biology? In this episode: • Viktor Frankl and the origins of logotherapy • The “will to meaning” • Meaning versus pleasure and power • Can suffering have meaning? • Frankl's concept of tragic optimism • Freedom, determinism and responsibility • The existential vacuum and the modern crisis of meaning • Frankl's concept of the “unconscious God” • Does meaning require God? • Frankl, Auschwitz and the Holocaust controversy • Timothy Pytell's critique of Frankl • What the Frankl archives reveal • Terminal lucidity and consciousness • Death, dignity and the meaning of life • What Viktor Frankl can teach us about the human condition Guest: Prof. Alexander Batthyány Host: Ali Zaka (AZD) Podcast: The Prometheans Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the crossroads of philosophy, religion, and intellectual history. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  7. Oct 7

    #85: What Is Madness? Psychiatry, Power & the Human Mind — Andrew Scull

    What is madness? Is mental illness something medicine discovers—or something societies define? Who gets to decide what counts as abnormal? And what happens when institutions acquire the authority to define, diagnose and treat the human mind? In this episode of The Prometheans, I speak with Andrew Scull, one of the leading historians of psychiatry, about the long and troubled history of humanity's attempts to understand madness. From religious interpretations of possession and divine madness to the asylum, psychoanalysis, lobotomy, electroconvulsive therapy, psychopharmacology and modern neuroscience, Scull examines a recurring pattern in the history of psychiatry: extraordinary confidence in new theories and treatments, followed by the discovery of their limitations—and sometimes their devastating consequences. We discuss his monumental book Madness in Civilization, which traces changing understandings of madness from antiquity to modern medicine, and Desperate Remedies, his history of psychiatry's turbulent attempts to cure mental illness. We also confront one of the great intellectual debates in the history of psychiatry: Michel Foucault's interpretation of madness, confinement and power. What did Foucault get right? Where does the historical evidence challenge his account? And can we take the relationship between psychiatric authority and social power seriously without accepting Foucault's historical conclusions? The conversation also explores: • What exactly do we mean by "madness"? • Is madness a universal human phenomenon or a category constructed by societies? • Religion, possession, melancholy and "divine madness" • Why did psychiatric institutions acquire so much authority? • Henry Cotton and the terrifying confidence of "focal sepsis" • Lobotomy and the history of psychiatric treatment • The rise and fall of psychoanalysis • The transformation of psychiatry through psychopharmacology • Deinstitutionalization and the promises of community care • The DSM and the problem of psychiatric diagnosis • The biological turn in psychiatry • What the history of psychiatry tells us about scientific progress • Whether psychiatry has learned from its past • And what a genuinely humble psychiatry might look like Scull's critique is neither a simple rejection of psychiatry nor a romanticization of madness. His work asks a more difficult question: how can a profession devoted to alleviating profound human suffering exercise enormous power while remaining honest about the limits of what it knows? Andrew Scull is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Books discussed: Madness in Civilization Desperate Remedies Psychiatry and Its Discontents Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the crossroads of philosophy, religion, and intellectual history. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

  8. Oct 5

    #84: The Historical Muhammad ﷺ: Prophet, Politician, Warrior — Can Faith & Critical History Agree?

    What happens when the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is examined not only through the lens of faith, but through the methods of critical history? In this episode of The Prometheans, I sit down with Professor Joel Hayward, military historian, strategic-studies scholar, and author of The Leadership of Muhammad: A Historical Reconstruction and The Warrior Prophet: Muhammad and War. Hayward approaches the historical Muhammad ﷺ from a distinctive position: he is a committed Muslim, yet argues that devotion and historical methodology are not the same thing. His work attempts to bring together classical Islamic sources and source-critical historical analysis while placing Muhammad's ﷺ political and military decisions within the realities of seventh-century Arabia. We discuss: • What does it actually mean to study Muhammad ﷺ as a historian? • Can a believing Muslim critically examine the life of the Prophet ﷺ? • Does faith necessarily compromise historical objectivity? • Was Muhammad ﷺ primarily a reluctant defender—or an effective military strategist? • What can the earliest Arabic sources tell us about his political and military decisions? • How should we understand warfare in the context of seventh-century Arabia? • What does the controversial episode of Banu Qurayza reveal—and what are the limits of our sources? • How should historians distinguish historical reconstruction from later theological interpretation? • What does the Qur'an say about warfare, military deception, and civilian immunity? • Can the historical Muhammad ﷺ and the theological Muhammad ﷺ be studied together without collapsing one into the other? At the heart of the conversation is a difficult question: Can faith and critical history genuinely agree? This discussion does not attempt to settle every contested question surrounding early Islamic history. Instead, it asks what happens when we take the evidence, the historical context, and the methodological challenges seriously. Guest views on contested historical questions are presented for scholarly discussion and do not necessarily represent the views of The Prometheans. Subscribe to The Prometheans for more conversations at the crossroads of philosophy, religion, and intellectual history. If you enjoy The Prometheans and would like to support our work, you can buy us a coffee. Your support helps us continue researching, producing, and bringing scholars and thinkers to the channel. Thank you for helping us keep these conversations going. https://buymeacoffee.com/theprometheans

See All (90)

About

A space where ideas ignite. In this podcast, we sit down with thinkers, creators, and experts to explore the questions that matter; from philosophy to politics to art and human nature. It’s a dialogue of reason, curiosity, and courage.

Information

  • Creator
    The Prometheans
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    90
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Prometheans
  • Show Website
    Let’s Discuss

You Might Also Like