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Philosophy podcast aimed at school students. Fun, informative, engaging. Philosophers at universities and schools talk about loads of questions and topics that come up in Philosophy, Ethics and Political Theory - A-Levels / IB / Highers and even GCSE. Hosted by Simon Kirchin, University of Leeds and Director of the British Philosophical Association. Timetable of topics: https://stkirchin.wixsite.com/mysite/schools-podcast (Music by Alex Grohl)Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ A-level/IB philosophy revision • metaphysics of mind: dualism, physicalism, functionalism, qualia, zombies, AI • epistemology: scepticism, perception, reason, Gettier, reliabilism • philosophy of religion: arguments, attributes, evil, religious language • ethics: normative, metaethics, applied topics (abortion, business, animals, war, sex)This podcast introduces philosophy as it is commonly taught in school and pre-university courses, with university philosophers and school teachers discussing core topics in a structured, syllabus-friendly way. Across the episodes, much of the focus falls on philosophy of mind, asking how mental states relate to the physical brain. Listeners are guided through major positions such as substance and property dualism, different forms of physicalism, behaviourism, functionalism, and more radical views like eliminative materialism, with attention to classic thought experiments and objections (for example, zombies, inverted qualia, the Chinese room, and worries about introspection and mental causation).
A second major theme is epistemology: what knowledge is, how it can be defined and justified, and whether sceptical challenges can be answered. The discussions cover familiar debates about perception (direct and indirect realism and idealism), the role of reason and innateness, and responses to Gettier-style problems, including reliabilist and virtue-theoretic approaches. There is also explicit support for students learning philosophical method, including careful explanation of key terms in argumentation and logic.
The podcast also devotes substantial time to philosophy of religion, examining traditional arguments about God’s existence (cosmological, teleological, ontological), the nature of divine attributes, the problem of evil, and questions about whether religious language is meaningful.
In ethics, the episodes combine normative theory—utilitarianism, deontology, and Aristotelian virtue ethics—with applied issues such as abortion, euthanasia, business ethics, sexual ethics, animal ethics and eating animals, and war and peace, often framing these topics through distinctions and principles used in exam specifications.