Thales’ Well

Introducing Byung-Chul Han with Austin Hayden Smidt

This week I am talking to Austin Hayden Smidt about the German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han is not well know in the Anglophone world, so we took this opportunity to try and introduce some of the key themes of his philosophy. This interview in El Pais offers a useful starting point to Han's thought and work. Also, Han writes relatively accessible and pithy texts. The books this podcast are based on are Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, The Burnout Society, and Agony and Eros.

Austin Hayden Smidt is a philosopher, producer, and performer. He is currently a Researcher in Political Economy at the University of Sydney working on a "Prolegomena to Any Future Political Economy." He also co-hosts the Owls at Dawn and Show Me The Meaning podcasts, as well as produces content for the Wisecrack YouTube channel. He tweets at: @austin_hayden 

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Jessica Jones, Sexual Violence and Overcoming Trauma with Anna Dawson

Anna Dawson is an award winning teacher and lecturer in Film and TV studies at Nottingham Trent University. She has worked in the film industry, as a film journalist, and  written study guides about the Lord of the Rings and The Matrix. She researches genre, gender, the British film industry and British cinema. We talked about our mutual admiration for the Netflix streaming series Jessica Jones (2015).  Jessica Jones offers a very strong depiction of sexual violence, and Anna spoke about how Jessica Jones shows how survivors cope with the aftermath of trauma, violence and psychological abuse. You can find out more about Anna here. 

BONUS - Nietzsche and Dr Who with David Deamer

 Dave and I like to talk. And we did. Here we are talking about Nietzsche, and Dr Who.

Deleuze and Cinema with David Deamer

Here I talked with my friend Dr David Deamer about French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Dave explains to me what Deleuze was about, and then we go on to talk about how Deleuze is important for understanding cinema, and what Deleuze teach us about film, or what film can do for philosophy. Dave is the author of Deleuze, Japanese Cinema, and the Atom Bomb: The Spectre of Impossibility [Bloombsury, 2014], as well as Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images [Edinburgh, 2016]. You can find out more about Dave here. 

Will Large teaches Patrick about Heidegger

Here Dr William Large from the University of Gloucestershire talks about one book, Martin Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time. Here we try to get to the bottom of this endlessly fascinating book, looking at some of the key moments from the text such as death, anxiety, authenticity and how we are beings in the world. Will is the author of, among other things Heidegger's Being and Time: A Philosophical Guide. You can find out more about Will here.

Social Justice and Cooperation with Cilla Ross

In 1844 the Rochadale Pioneers established the principles of the cooperative movement. This was the spark that created the development and growth of the cooperative movement. Coops can be found in all parts of the world today, from business to housing, from education to transport,  from credit unions to workers cooperatives. Dr Cilla Ross is Vice-Principal of the Manchester Co-operative College, we spoke about her background, the relevance of the co-operative movement, the meaning of social justice, the different projects she works on, technology in education, equality, what solidarity means,  and how to make things better through cooperation. You can find out more about Cilla and the work she does at the college here.

The name of the book which escaped me during our conversation was Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild.

 

Vitalism and Bergson with Mark Sinclair

Mark Sinclair is a philosopher and scholar at Roehampton University. He specialises in the history of modern philosophy, especially in it's French incarnation. We spoke about about the history of vitalism in Philosophy, looking at some of it's key figures: de Biran, Ravaisson and Bergson. You can find out more about Mark here. 

 

Trump, Lyotard and_Education with Keith_Crome

Keith Crome is scholar of ancient philosophy, postmodernism and education. He is a Philosophy lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan Univeristy.  He is a specialist in the 20th Century thinker Jean Francois Lyotard, and has composed a monograph on this topic entitled Lyotard and the Greeks. I spoke with Keith about why he thinks Lyotard is still important, the nature of language, rhetoric in the age of Trump, and his reflections on the philosophy of education.

You can find out more about Keith here.

Transhumanism, Technology and Apocalypse with Mark O'Connell

I spoke with Mark O'Connell about the impact of the philosophy of transhumanism. Mark is the author of a lovely book called To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers -which I reccommend you all read. This book blends philosophy, literature, travelogue in order to look at one of the most influential but least discussed trends in Philosophy: Transhumanism. Transhumanism is basically the idea that consiousness is not restricted to our physical or material body, and we can synthesise our minds with emerging technologies. As outlandish as that might sound, there is a lot of money being spent on this. 

Mark has written for The New Yorker, Slate, The Guardian, and The New York Times Magazine 

You can find out more about Mark here and on Twitter: @mrkocnnll

 

 

 

 

Consciousness, Humanism and the NHS with Raymond Tallis

I had this conversation with Raymond Tallis before Christmas. Raymond Tallis is one of Britain's leading philosophers. His career was in medicine, which he studied at Oxford Univeristy. He became a Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester.  His primary research was in clinical  neuroscience. As well as being a philosopher, doctor, poet and novelist, Raymond is a campaigning activist for the National Health Service, as well as a strong advocate for Assisted Dying. He retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full time writer, thinker and cultural critic. We spoke about his life, the nature of consiousness, time, on assisted dying and his love for the NHS. We recorded our chat in a pub, so unfortunately the audio is not as clear as I would like. Ray promised to come back another time. 

Raymond is the author of countless books, articles and novels. You can find a full bibliography here.