TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Philosophy Takes On The News

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26 episodes
2022 to 2023
Median: 70 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast brings philosophers into conversation with the week’s headlines, using current events as prompts for ethical, political, and social analysis. Hosted by Simon Kirchin, the format is a roundtable discussion with recurring academic guests and occasional special panels. The tone varies from serious to humorous, with frequent digressions that still tend to circle back to philosophical questions about what people owe one another, what institutions are for, and how public debate should work.

Across the episodes, politics is a central through-line: elections in the UK, US, and elsewhere; leadership and legitimacy; constitutional questions around monarchy, republicanism, and political reform; and the health of democratic culture, including trust in media, misinformation, and the possibilities and limits of compromise. The discussions often connect immediate controversies to broader issues such as mandates, negotiation, and the moral responsibilities of citizens and officials.

War and international affairs also feature prominently, especially the invasion of Ukraine. Here the show leans into questions about sanctions, permissible resistance, duties in wartime, cultural and economic boycotts, and how media framing shapes moral understanding. Other recurring public-policy topics include climate change (including reparations and sacrifice), public health and living with Covid, and education and university admissions.

The podcast also explores disputes about speech, identity, and social harm: hate and hate crime, misogyny, trans-related policy debates, and the role of religion in politics. Comedy appears as both a subject and a lens for philosophy, including debates about free speech in comedy, whether comedians’ moral failings affect audiences’ responses, and whether comedy can itself do philosophical work.

Alongside these major themes, the show regularly pulls in lighter or culturally anchored stories—sporting scandals, major entertainment moments, and technology topics such as AI, sentient chatbots, crypto, and the metaverse—using them to test intuitions about wrongdoing, hypocrisy, responsibility, and the boundaries of acceptable conduct.