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This podcast collection is now unavailable. To continue listening, search for and follow the main In Our Time podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you find your podcasts. New episodes arrive weekly.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophers and classic texts • ethics and virtue • political philosophy: justice, sovereignty, democracy • economics: markets, planning, consumption • mind, consciousness, perception, phenomenology • religion, theology, reason • education, law, power, rhetoric • history, time, selfhoodThis podcast explores major philosophers, classic texts, and recurring problems in philosophy by placing them in their historical contexts and tracing their later influence. Across discussions that range from ancient Greece and Rome through the Enlightenment to twentieth-century thought, the episodes focus on how philosophical ideas emerge from particular political, scientific, and cultural conditions, and how they continue to shape debates today.
A consistent theme is ethics and moral psychology: what it means to live well, whether morality can be objective, how intention relates to responsibility, and how traditions such as virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, and utilitarianism answer these questions differently. Related to this are inquiries into selfhood and human experience, including perception, embodiment, consciousness, time, and authenticity, often through movements such as phenomenology and through figures associated with existentialism and modern European philosophy.
Political philosophy and social thought also feature prominently. The podcast examines theories of justice, freedom, sovereignty, democracy, and authority, alongside critiques of rhetoric, tyranny, and charismatic leadership. Economic ideas are treated as part of intellectual history too, including debates about markets, planning, mercantilism, and consumption, and how these arguments intersect with moral and political concerns.
The scope is not confined to one tradition: along with canonical European thinkers, it includes major texts from Islamic and South Asian philosophy and influential works of Chinese strategic thought. Throughout, conversations connect foundational concepts—such as mind and body, law and power, rights and duties, progress and history—to concrete human practices like governing, educating, making art, and forming societies.
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New Series2026-Oct-14 less than a minute |
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A Message from Misha 2026-Oct-12 less than a minute |