The 1920s - Philosophy's Golden Age

Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI, to living through war, to the joys of reading, what makes children’s perspectives so distinctive? With writer Katherine Rundell, psychotherapist Josh Cohen, nature writer and novelist Elizabeth-Jane ...  Show more

How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric has been used to explore English culture, history, politics, and our relationship with nature and the countryside? Matthew Sweet discusses, including a re-reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1926 novel Lolly Willowes, in which a mid ...  Show more

In Oxford during the Second World War four women philosophers came to prominence. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgley were friends and met to discuss their ideas, particulary about ethics. Benjamin Lipscomb, author of a recent book about them, The Wo ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. With its roots in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language Philosophy is concerned with the meanings of words as used in ev ...  Show more

Sean Illing talks with Cornel West about the American philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. They talk about what makes pragmatism so distinctly American, how pragmatists understand the connection between knowledge and action, and how the pragmatist mindset can invigorate o ...  Show more

Sean Illing talks with author and professor Robert Zaretsky about the French philosopher, novelist, and journalist Albert Camus (1913–1960). Though Camus might be best known for his novel The Stranger, Sean and Prof. Zaretsky explore the ideas contained in his philosophical essay ...  Show more