microphilosophy

This special edition comes from Puebla, Mexico, at the Ciudad de las Ideas (City of Ideas) festival. The guests are Randy Cohen, writer of The New York Times’s The Ethicist column; Bad Thoughts author Jamie Whyte; and “new atheist” Sam Harris.

In the last Philosophy Monthly of 2009, I’m featuring previously unreleased extracts salvaged from the cutting room floor from six of the best interviews of the year: Michael Frayn, AC Grayling, Jonathan Sacks, Peter Singer, Timothy Williamson and Tony Wright MP

In the latest Philosophy Monthly, I'm talking to the playwright, novelist, screenwriter and sometime philosopher, Michael Frayn, and John Armstrong, philosopher-in-residence at Melbourne Business School and the author of Civilisation: Remaking a Tarnished Ideal.

In the latest Philosophy Monthly, I’m talking to Timothy Williamson about the virtues of rigour, Simon Blackburn about ethics and emotion, and Nina Power about new and forthcoming books. All the books we’ve discussed in the programme are listed here. Click here to listen or download now, or download from BPM is produced by Julian Baggini in association with The Philosophers’ Magazine.

It’s an all-atheist edition of Baggini’s Philosophy Monthly, with novelist Christopher Brookmyer and psychologist Susan Blackmore discussing the alleged aggression of the new atheists and a universe without meaning. The ethicist Peter Singer also defends his brand of utilitarianism.

Suffering is the unifying theme of the latest edition of Baggini's Philosophy Monthly. Is it all bad or do we need at least some it? Mark Vernon and Havi Carel argue that suffering can be part of the good life, while transhumanist Nick Bostrom makes the moral case for a future when death and disease will be conquered. Janet Radcliffe Richards also talks about suffering as a manifestly bad thing in her incisive critique of muddled morality.