Philosopher's Zone ABC listen

What moral judgements are made in philosophical thinking about fat bodies, and how does that culturally impact how we move through the world?

Philosophers have long debated how to define emotions and their relationship to our bodies. So, what are the different schools of thought? Why is there such a lack of consensus?

How should we engage with politics and protest? We explore the history of political engagement and ask what role civil disobedience plays in our lives today. 

Most of us experience time as something that passes, or flows like a river - or at least we think we do. Could it be that the sense of time passing is just an illusion? This week we're getting to grips with a theory of time that denies the reality of "flow" - and we're asking why time seems to speed up or slow down in certain situations.

Guest: Heather Dyke, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Otago NZ

Producer: David Rutledge

Experience of Passage in a Static World - Heather Dyke at the London School of Economics, June 2017

This episode was first broadcast on July 30, 2023.

Life is hard — disappointment, regret and suffering come with the territory — and if the projections of climate scientists and epidemiologists are correct, it's not going to get easier any time soon. But then, life has always been hard. What do philosophical traditions have to say about the incurable toughness of human existence?

When we think of 19th century German philosophy, we perhaps think first of Nietzsche, or Hegel, and then some other men - but Germany in the 1800s was also home to a number of women philosophers.