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What is mental health? Can we make sense of psychosis? What’s the connection between mental health and concepts including race & evolution?Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophical lectures on memory/forgetting, trauma, identity, commemoration • mental health, psychiatry critiques, madness, ethics • empathy, second-person relations • race, decolonisation • technology’s effects on memory • law, medicine, spirituality • cross-cultural philosophy, emotions, aesthetics, finance/climateThis podcast presents recorded public lectures that use philosophy to examine contemporary and historical questions about human life, society, and the mind. Across the series, speakers engage with core philosophical methods—conceptual analysis, argument, and reflection on lived experience—while drawing on resources from ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of medicine and psychiatry.
A major thread concerns mental health and “madness”: how psychiatric concepts such as disorder, diagnosis, and dysfunction should be understood; what alternative frameworks might better capture distress and difference; and how social, cultural, developmental, and existential factors shape mental suffering. Related discussions address agency and communication in clinical contexts, the ethical and legal implications of mental disorder (including criminal responsibility), and contested issues such as suicide and assisted dying. Attention is also given to inequality and power, including debates about ethnic disparities in mental health outcomes and the role of structural racism.
Another prominent theme is remembering and forgetting. Talks explore how personal memory contributes to identity and relationships, how trauma and emotion shape recollection and recovery, and how stereotypes can distort memory in ways that carry moral consequences. The podcast also considers public forms of remembrance—commemoration, memorialization, and conservation—and the ethical problems involved in deciding what should be preserved, celebrated, or allowed to fade. Several lectures examine how digital technologies and social media influence personal histories, privacy, and the integrity of records of the past.
Alongside these applied topics, the podcast includes broader reflections on philosophy itself: its public role, the relationship between empathy and ethics, the nature of second-person (“I–you”) awareness, and debates about doubt and knowledge in the history of philosophy. A cross-cultural and global perspective appears in discussions of Buddhist accounts of the self, Confucian approaches to emotion, Chinese metaphysics of change, and comparative work on Plato, as well as in lectures on decolonising philosophy, race, and cultural value. The range extends to questions about aesthetics, spirituality and mental health, moral emotions such as anger and shame, and practical ethical domains like pregnancy, hospitality, and green finance.
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The You Turn, Naomi Eilan 2025-Nov-28 91 minutes |
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Empathy and Ethics: A Complicated Relation?, Rowan Williams 2025-Nov-21 90 minutes |
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Avicennan and Cartesian Doubt, Peter Adamson 2025-Nov-07 93 minutes |
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The Most Permanent Interests of the Human Spirit, John Haldane 2025-Oct-31 95 minutes |
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Why philosophers need to think about pregnancy, Fiona Woollard 2025-Oct-24 88 minutes |
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What became of the public philosopher?, Regina Rini 2025-Oct-17 91 minutes |
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The Problematic and the Unproblematic, Nikhil Krishnan 2025-Oct-10 89 minutes |
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Choosing how we Represent the Past; Derek Matravers 2025-Jun-05 87 minutes |
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Proust’s Theory of Memory and Knowledge; Tom Stern 2025-May-29 89 minutes |
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Who should we remember, and for how long? A theory of justice for public commemoration; James Wilson 2025-May-22 84 minutes |
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Can memories be unjust?; Katherine Puddifoot 2025-May-15 77 minutes |
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Remembering the dead; Kathleen Higgins 2025-May-08 87 minutes |
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Trauma, emotion, and memory; Michael Brady 2025-May-01 88 minutes |
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On Being Emotionally Haunted by One’s Past, Matthew Ratcliffe 2025-Apr-24 87 minutes |
Insta-Worthy Memories and Filtered Truth: The Effects of Technology on Our Personal Histories and Records of the Past2025-Apr-17 89 minutes |
Conservation as a Method of Remembering (and forgetting) - Erich Hatala Matthes2025-Mar-20 87 minutes |
Forgiveness: Do we need it? - Lucy Allais2025-Mar-12 88 minutes |
How We Remember and Forget Online; Alessandra Tanesini2025-Feb-24 88 minutes |
Remember Who You Are: Personal Identity and Memory; Presented by Marya Schechtman2025-Jan-15 88 minutes |
Trauma, Emotion, and Memory; Presented by James Dawes2024-Dec-06 85 minutes |
The Importance of Forgetting; Presented by Rima Basu2024-Nov-25 81 minutes |
Rethinking Disenchantment and the Immanent Frame; Presented by Camilia Kong2024-Jul-03 92 minutes |
Beyond Psychiatry: Rethinking Madness Outside Medicine; Presented by Justin Garson2024-Jul-03 86 minutes |
Mad Knowledge and Relations; Presented by Jasna Russo and Erick Fabris2024-Jul-03 87 minutes |
Ethnic Inequalities in Experience of Mental Distress; Presented by Kam Bhui2024-Jul-03 91 minutes |
The Person in Psychiatry; Presented by Sanneke de Haan2024-Jul-03 86 minutes |
How Can we Make Progress in Mental Healthcare Research?; Presented by Neil Armstrong and Nicola Byrom2024-Jul-03 87 minutes |
Communicating to Increase Agency in Youth Mental Health; Presented by Rose McCabe, Lisa Bortolotti, and Michele Lim2024-Jul-03 68 minutes |
Mental Disorder and the Criminal Law; Presented by Claire Hogg2024-Jul-03 87 minutes |
Health and Disease: Experimental Philosophy of Medicine; Presented by Somogy Varga and Andrew J. Latham2024-Jul-03 85 minutes |
Who Gets to Call Whom Mad?; Presented by Richard Gipps2024-Jul-03 85 minutes |
Understanding Suicide and Assisted Dying; Presented by Mona Gupta2024-Jul-03 86 minutes |
Beyond Psychiatric Diagnosis: Presented by Lucy Johnstone and Mary Boyle2024-Jul-03 79 minutes |
A Flaw in the Great Diamond of the World; Presented by Louis Sass2024-Jul-03 74 minutes |
Against Speaking Up; Presented by Havi Carel and Dan Degerman2024-Jun-28 76 minutes |
Rendering Trauma Audible with María del Rosario Acosta López2022-Jul-01 83 minutes |
Fernando Pessoa: The Poet as Philosopher with Jonardon Ganeri2022-Jun-24 69 minutes |
A New Name for an Old Way of Thinking with Roger Ames2022-Jun-17 74 minutes |
Decolonising Philosophy with Lewis Gordon2022-Jun-10 86 minutes |
Culture and Value in Du Bois’ The Gift of Black Folk with Chike Jeffers2022-Jun-03 88 minutes |
Getting Good at Bad Emotions with Amy Olberding2022-May-27 77 minutes |
Mutual Guardianship and Hospitality with Tamara Albertini2022-May-20 79 minutes |
The Ethics of Anger and Shame with Owen Flanagan2022-May-13 70 minutes |
The Possibility of Global Aesthetics with Eileen John2022-May-06 70 minutes |
The First Person in Buddhism with Nilanjan Das2022-Apr-29 78 minutes |
Japanese Philosophers on Plato’s Ideas with Noburu Notomi2022-Apr-22 64 minutes |
How to Change Your Mind with Leah Kalmanson2022-Apr-15 70 minutes |
Philosophical Storytelling with Helen de Cruz2022-Apr-15 71 minutes |
The Philosophy of Green Finance with Joanna Burch-Brown2022-Apr-15 55 minutes |