Thales’ Well

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.

Buddhism, Atheism and Education with David Webster

This week I spoke to Dr David Webster from the Univeristy of Gloucstershire. Dave is a specialist in Buddhism, in particular the Pali canon. He talks about his life, religion, atheism and the future of education. He is the author of a brilliant little polemic called Dispiritied: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish and Unhappy. 

You can find out about Dave here and you can look at his work on education here.  Dave tweets at @davidwebster

 

 

Technology, Capitalism, The Common with Andreas Wittell

Andreas Wittell is a colleague of mine, and a person I love to talk to. Andreas is  a lecturer in Communications. We chatted mainly about the changing nature of technology, equality, sharing, and how the Internet can be sometimes even be good!

You can find out more about Andreas here: https://goo.gl/D9wmcx

 

On Safe Spaces, No-Platforming and Neo-liberalism in the University with Liz Morrish

 

This week Dr Liz Morrish is talking with us about all things university.  Liz is an Associate Fellow at York St John university who works in the emerging discipline of critical university studies. We discussed what neo-liberalism is, how it changes the nature of the university. We also talked about safe spaces, no-platforming, micro-aggressions and the political stakes of university discourse. 

You can find her more recent work on her blog: https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/ 

She is also on twitter at @Lizmorrish 

Erratum: During the podcast Liz referred to Wendy Davis, when in fact she meant Wendy Brown.

 

 

Trump's Intellectual Origins with Timothy Shenk

Timothy Shenk speaks with me about the history of the ideas that directly led to the rise of Trumpism. Looking at figures like James Burnham and Samuel Francis, Tim discusses how there has been a long-standing dissenting conservatism defined by economic nationalism which sowed the seeds for the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the US Presidency. 

Tim is a national fellow at New America. He is the author of Maurice Dobb: Political Economist (Palgrave Macmillan 2013).  His work appears in Nation, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Dissent. The article which the podcast was based on appears here in The Guardian. You can also find the article podcasted here.

Tim is on Twitter: @Tim_Shenk

On Idiots, Drones and Wonder Woman with Neal Curtis

 

 

Neal Curtis from the University of Auckland stopped by one morning to talk about his book Idiotism: Capitalism and the Privitization of Life.  He also talked about sovereignty and superheroes, and the ethics and politics of drone warfare, and his great love of Wonder Woman.

You can find out more about Neal here: http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/ncur286

But if you want to get live updates, he is lots of fun on Twitter: @nealcurtis