Reading Our Times
Episode Archive
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How Can You Truly Know A Person? In conversation with David Brooks
This series of Reading our Times has looked at a number of scientific issues that have cast questions of, and sometimes shadows on, human personhood. So, in our final episode this series, we are...
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What is a Life Worth? In conversation with Jenny Kleeman
The question 'what is a life worth?' feels wrong; heretical even. Humans are infinitely valuable, we say. You can't put a price on a life. And yet we do, every day: for healthcare, for philanthr...
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Why is Mental Health so Bad Among the Young? In conversation with Abigail Shrier
Pretty much every index for the mental health of young people in Britain and the US in particular is pointing in the wrong direction. More anxiety, more depression, more therapy, more medication...
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Can Animals be Persons? In conversation with Mark Rowlands
The idea that non-human animals should be recognised as legal persons has gained traction over recent years, and is the subject of numerous court cases. But underlying the legal and indeed empir...
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Should You Choose to Live Forever? In conversation with Stephen Cave
Once upon a time, it was religions that promised eternal life. Now its science, with the possibility of immortality - whether bionic, cellular, genetic, or virtual - being the subject of big Sil...
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When will AI evolve a soul? In conversation with Eve Poole
AI is taking over the planet - or at least the news agenda! For hardly a day goes by without some AI story in the headlines. Should we believe what we read? Or is it all hype?
In particu...
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What would it mean to discover alien life (or them us)? In conversation with Andrew Davison
Little green men were once a complete fantasy - but the numbers appear to be on their side. The sheer size of the universe, the number of stars and, it seems, the number of potentially inhabitab...
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Should we really be playing God? In conversation with Nick Spencer
Every century is different - but the 21st may be seriously different, with our ability to understand, modify and re-create humanity having come on light years in recent decades.
Should w...
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Will technology liberate or enslave us? Live in conversation with Robert Skidelsky
In this week's episode, recorded live at the UnHerd cafe in London, Nick Spencer speaks to Robert Skidelsky about his book The Machine Age: An Idea, a History, a Warning.
Once upon a tim...