Thales’ Well

On Socrates with Agnes Callard

On this episode I talk to the Agnes Callard about the great Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. We discuss Agnes' new book Open Socrates: The Case for A Philosophical Life [Penguin, 2025]. Agnes and I discuss the themes of Open Socrates, focusing on philosophy as a public, outward-looking practice, Socrates’ call to examine life is framed not just as introspection but as active engagement and testing of the self through dialogue. We also discuss the role of Socrates as both a provocateur (gadfly) and a guide (midwife), emphasizing his commitment to universal, non-exclusive inquiry. Philosophy is portrayed as a response to “savage commands” -the urgent demands of body, society, and mortality - challenging us to become more resolute and reflective. We also discuss free speech, equality, justice, loneliness, the death of Socrates and lots more!

Agnes is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Chicago. She received her BA from the University of Chicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy and Ethics.  She is the author of Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming [Oxford U.P, 2017]. She has authored essays for numerous publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Point, and co-hosts the podcast Minds Almost Meeting. You can view her university profile here.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Remaking Science with Evan Thompson

In this episode, I am joined for a fascinating conversation with philosopher Evan Thompson as we delve into his thought-provoking book The Blind Spot. We discuss this collaboration with scientists Marcelo Gleiser and Adam Frank, his insights on reconciling the “scientific image” and the “manifest image” of the world, and the interplay between subjective experience and objective inquiry. Thompson explains what he means by the "blind spot" of scientific materialism—challenging assumptions about objectivity, reductionism, and the relationship between lived experience, forms of life and scientific knowledge. Thompson offers a compelling critique of reductionist views, proposing instead a vision of science grounded in human experience. We also discuss the cultural and ethical stakes of scientific inquiry in an age of scepticism and misinformation, with a thought-provoking look at climate change, subjectivity, and the unity of life itself. Other thinkers like Wilfred Sellers, Henri Bergson, G.W.F. Hegel and A.N. Whitehead all crop up.

Evan is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. You can view his website and profile here. The Blind Spot is available at all the usual outlets. Evan is also available on Bluesky: @evanthompson.bsky.social.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Secular Gurus with Chris Kavanagh

I talk to psychologist Dr Christopher Kavanagh about the phenomenon of secular gurus. We discussed the secularism of latter day gurus, how they differ and compare to traditional cult leaders, what traits it takes to be a secular guru (galaxy brainedness, cultishness, anti-establishmentarianism), psychopathy/sociopathy, narcissism and techniques for avoiding manipulation.

Here is a link to the "Gurometer" where you can find out more about how to spot your latter day gurus.

Chris is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Rikkyo University and works in the intersection of Cognitive Anthropology and Social Psychology with a research focus on emotions, group and ritual psychology. Chris is also one half of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, a podcast that studies, discusses and examines contemporary  'secular gurus', iconoclasts, and heterodox thinkers such as Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, The Weinstein brothers, Russell Brand, Sam Harris, Noam Chomsky,  Ibram Kendi, Robin D’Angelo etc. You can view Chris's research profile here and also follow him on X (Twitter) here.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Writing with Lars Iyer

Lars Iyer is back! On this episode I talk to novelist Lars Iyer about the fiction, the writing process, the relation between literature and the world, a writers compulsion to write. We speak about a whole range of writers like Plato, Samuel Beckett,  Maurice Blanchot, Paul Celan, Margaret Duras, Thomas Bernhard. One of the things Lars suggests is that the value of literature is it utter uselessness. Like all good things!

Lars is a  Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. He is the author of several academic articles and two monographs on Blanchot -  Blanchot’s Vigilance: Literature, Phenomenology and the Ethical  and Blanchot’s Communism: Art, Philosophy and the Political.(Palgrave Macmillan 2004, 2005). He is the author of The Spurious Trilogy (Spurious, Dogma and Exodus), Nietzsche and the Burbs (2020) and now My Weil (2023) with Melville House Publishing. You can find out more about Lars here, you can follow him on Twitter @utterlyspurious.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Richard Rorty with Chris Voparil

On this episode I talk with Chris Voparil from Union Institute & University about American philosopher Richard Rorty. We discuss Rorty’s biography, his complicated relation with American Pragmatist philosophy and both analytic and continental philosophy, how Rorty dealt with accusations of relativism, his epistemological and moral pluralism, what Rorty has to say about solidarity and community building, how the academic left neglected economics  and forgot to talk about poor people, and what hope Rorty offers the  contemporary world.

Christopher J. Voparil is the author of two books Richard Rorty: Politics and Vision, (2006) and Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists (2022). He is also co-editor of The Rorty Reader (2010), Richard Rorty: On Philosophy and Philosophers: Unpublished Papers, 1960–2000 (2020), What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics (2023). He is the founding President of the Richard Rorty Society. You can find out more about Chris here.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Spiritual Freedom with Martin Hägglund

On this episode of the podcast, I talk to Swedish philosopher Prof. Martin Hägglund from Yale University about his book This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free. The dominant theme of our conversation was  the meaning of freedom. Martin has a distinct notion of the demands of being free and we got into a detailed discussion about what freedom really means, how to think about it, how freedom is tied up with our social activities and just why our mortality is exactly the thing that makes us free. As well we talked about how human beings are a distinct kind of animal, a critique of posthumanism, Aristotle and living the good life, Kant’s theory of freedom, how freedom is a form of sustained activity, and also why being free is just plain hard! Enjoy!

Martin Hägglund is the Birgit Baldwin Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of four books – Kronofobi: Essäer om tid och ändlighet (Chronophobia: Essays on Time and Finitude (Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 2002), Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford U.P., 2008), Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov (Harvard U.P., 2012), This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free (Pantheon, 2019) – as well as several articles, interviews and podcasts. You can find out more about Martin here at his university webpage or here on his personal webpage. You can also follow him on Twitter: @martinhaegglund

 

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Bruno Latour with Joost van Loon

On this episode I talk to Prof. Joost van Loon about French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour. We talked about a lot! Joost taught me about Latour’s actor network theory and while we were doing that we ended up chatting about the importance of concrete controversies, how objectivity works, the production of science, conspiracy theories, vaccine science, relativism, new materialism and Latour’s late turn to politics and ecology.

Joost van Loon is the Chair of General Sociology and Sociological Theory at Katholische Universität Eichstätt. He is the author of numerous books and articles. You can find out more about Joost via his university webpage here. Here is a link to Joost’s book Discussing New Materialism which we mentioned on the show. Latour’s book We Have Never Been Modern can be found here, and his late book on ecology can be found here.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

 

 

On Alexandre Kojève with Hager Weslati

On this podcast I talk to Dr Hager Weslati about the philosopher Alexandre Kojève. Kojève is a hugely influential but not very well-known philosophers. Here Hager and I talk about his life, his philosophy, and his famous lectures on Hegel. Kojève was a philosopher,  entrepreneur, diplomat, architect of the European Union and possible spy!

Hager Weslati is a lecturer in media philosophy and political PR at Kingston University. She translated Alexandre Kojève’s Notion of Authority (2014) and his early 1950s manuscript on Kant (2024). Her current work is aligned with recent critical attempts, across a wide range of disciplinary areas, to engage Kojeve's mysterious system of knowledge and its strong resonances with contemporary thought and politics in a global context. You can find out more via Hager’s university webpage. Also, Hager has made some  writings available via her academia.edu page.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On the Truth of Snuff with Mark McKenna

A podcast with my colleague Dr Mark McKenna who is an Associate Professor at Staffordshire University. We talked about horror films. Specifically, we talked about the the snuff movie as a form of horror. We also talked about the cultural mythologies that have grown up around the concept of snuff, how this mythology transformed in the technological age as well issues pertaining to distribution, marketing and desensitization. Please note we discuss extreme violence and sexual violence in this podcast.

You can find out more about Mark via his personal website and his university webpage. Dr Mark McKenna is an Associate Professor in the Film and Media Industries and Director of the Centre for Research in the Digital Entertainment and Media Industries at Staffordshire University. Mark’s research is largely centered on cult and horror cinema, he is the author of Nasty Business: The Marketing and Distribution of the Video Nasties  (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) and Snuff (Liverpool University Press, 2023), and is co-editor of the Routledge collection Horror Franchise Cinema (2021), and author of the report Silicon Stoke 2023: Developing Film, TV and Other Content Production in North Staffordshire and is he is currently working on his third monograph, a study of the John Milius surf film Big Wednesday (1978) for the Routledge series Cinema and Youth Cultures.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

 

On the Embrace of Capital with Don Milligan

Don Milligan is back to discuss his new book The Embrace of Capital  (Zero Books: 2022). In this , Don recounts and analyses his history of social and political activism interrogating the reasons he thinks working people have a love-hate relationship with capitalism but ultimately embrace it. But equally, Don tells us how working people hate insecurity, inequality, greed and love civic and political freedom. In our discussion, we chatted about royal weddings, royal funerals, rule of law, egalitarianism, the diversity of working class experience, exploitation, fairness, gentrification, technology and lots more!

You can buy a copy of the book here and here. Dr Don Milligan taught a course on the theory and practice of anti-capitalism at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research examines how commercial society gives rise to political movements. He campaigned for the gay liberation movement for many years. Don writes regular columns for his website “Off the Cuff”. You can find a collection of his writings here. You can also listen to Don’s cultural history of gay rights in Britain on Thales Well here. He tweets at: @Don Milligan2020

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.