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From Altruism to Wittgenstein, philosophers, theories and key themes.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ philosophy survey • ancient/modern thinkers • ethics: virtue, duty, utilitarianism • political theory: justice, sovereignty, democracy • economics: markets, planning, consumption • mind: perception, consciousness • history, education, religionThis podcast is a wide-ranging series of discussions on philosophers, major works, and recurring problems in philosophy, presented through conversations with academic specialists. Across the episodes, it returns to foundational questions about how humans know the world, what it is to be a self, and how experience is shaped by the body, perception, and time. It explores influential strands of modern European thought such as phenomenology and examines debates about consciousness, including proposals that mind might be a basic feature of reality.
A major emphasis is moral philosophy: what grounds moral obligation, whether values can be objective, and how to evaluate action and responsibility. The discussions often connect ethical theory to practical dilemmas and to the analysis of intention, duty, virtue, and consequences. Alongside this are treatments of personal ideals and character—how to live well, what happiness and flourishing might mean, and the place of hope, authenticity, and self-understanding in a human life.
Political philosophy and the history of ideas also feature strongly. The podcast traces concepts such as justice, liberty, sovereignty, and charismatic authority, and examines how thinkers have understood power, law, democracy, and the risks of tyranny. It engages with Enlightenment and revolutionary-era arguments about progress, rights, education, religion, and the separation of powers, as well as twentieth-century reflections on totalitarianism and mass politics.
The scope regularly widens beyond philosophy narrowly defined into adjacent intellectual history, including the development of economic thought (markets, planning, consumption, and trade policy), classical and early modern political counsel, and the relationship between culture, art, and modern media. Ancient Greek and Roman texts and figures appear frequently, not only as historical subjects but as sources for enduring arguments about rhetoric, citizenship, virtue, and the best form of life. Overall, the podcast presents philosophy as an evolving conversation spanning antiquity to the present, grounded in close attention to texts while linking ideas to wider social, scientific, and cultural contexts.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty 2025-Apr-24 59 minutes |
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Socrates in Prison 2025-Feb-20 50 minutes |
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Hayek's The Road to Serfdom 2024-Nov-14 53 minutes |
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Philippa Foot 2024-Jun-13 58 minutes |
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Panpsychism 2024-Feb-22 53 minutes |
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Condorcet 2024-Feb-08 50 minutes |
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The Theory of the Leisure Class 2023-Dec-14 55 minutes |
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Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 2023-Nov-30 52 minutes |
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Elizabeth Anscombe 2023-Jul-20 54 minutes |
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Solon the Lawgiver 2023-Apr-20 51 minutes |
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Mercantilism 2023-Apr-13 57 minutes |
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Tycho Brahe 2023-Mar-02 53 minutes |
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Rawls' Theory of Justice 2023-Feb-16 60 minutes |
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Plato's Atlantis 2022-Oct-20 54 minutes |
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Hegel's Philosophy of History 2022-Jun-23 52 minutes |
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Comenius 2022-Jun-16 56 minutes |
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Charisma 2022-Apr-14 52 minutes |
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The Arthashastra 2022-Mar-31 56 minutes |
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Walter Benjamin 2022-Feb-10 50 minutes |
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Plato's Gorgias 2021-Nov-25 50 minutes |
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Iris Murdoch 2021-Oct-21 54 minutes |
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Kant's Copernican Revolution 2021-Jun-03 53 minutes |
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Marcus Aurelius 2021-Feb-25 52 minutes |
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Mary Astell 2020-Nov-05 51 minutes |
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Deism 2020-Oct-08 48 minutes |
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Rousseau on Education 2019-Oct-10 51 minutes |
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Bergson and Time 2019-May-09 51 minutes |
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Authenticity 2019-Mar-14 50 minutes |
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Aristotle's Biology 2019-Feb-07 50 minutes |
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Hope 2018-Nov-22 53 minutes |
The Fable of the Bees2018-Oct-25 50 minutes |
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Montesquieu 2018-Jun-14 49 minutes |
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Tocqueville: Democracy in America 2018-Mar-22 50 minutes |
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Augustine's Confessions 2018-Mar-15 47 minutes |
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Sun Tzu and The Art of War 2018-Mar-01 48 minutes |
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Cicero 2018-Jan-25 49 minutes |
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Kant's Categorical Imperative 2017-Sep-21 49 minutes |
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Plato's Republic 2017-Jun-29 48 minutes |
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Roger Bacon 2017-Apr-20 50 minutes |
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Seneca the Younger 2017-Feb-23 51 minutes |
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Hannah Arendt 2017-Feb-02 47 minutes |
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Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality 2017-Jan-12 48 minutes |
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Zeno's Paradoxes 2016-Sep-22 46 minutes |
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Sovereignty 2016-Jun-30 47 minutes |
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The Muses 2016-May-19 45 minutes |
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Simone de Beauvoir 2015-Oct-22 46 minutes |
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Utilitarianism 2015-Jun-11 43 minutes |
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Al-Ghazali 2015-Mar-19 44 minutes |
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The Wealth of Nations 2015-Feb-19 46 minutes |
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Phenomenology 2015-Jan-22 46 minutes |
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Truth 2014-Dec-18 42 minutes |
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Zen 2014-Dec-04 45 minutes |
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The Philosophy of Solitude 2014-Jun-19 47 minutes |
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Weber's The Protestant Ethic 2014-Mar-27 50 minutes |
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Bishop Berkeley 2014-Mar-20 47 minutes |
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Plato's Symposium 2014-Jan-02 42 minutes |
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Ordinary Language Philosophy 2013-Nov-07 41 minutes |
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Pascal 2013-Sep-19 41 minutes |
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Epicureanism 2013-Feb-07 42 minutes |
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Bertrand Russell 2012-Dec-06 42 minutes |
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Simone Weil 2012-Nov-15 42 minutes |
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The Ontological Argument 2012-Sep-27 42 minutes |
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Scepticism 2012-Jul-05 42 minutes |
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Al-Kindi 2012-Jun-28 41 minutes |
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Neoplatonism 2012-Apr-19 41 minutes |
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Moses Mendelssohn 2012-Mar-22 42 minutes |
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Heraclitus 2011-Dec-08 41 minutes |
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The Continental-Analytic Split 2011-Nov-10 42 minutes |
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David Hume 2011-Oct-06 42 minutes |
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Malthusianism 2011-Jun-22 42 minutes |
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Cogito Ergo Sum 2011-Apr-28 42 minutes |
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Free Will 2011-Mar-10 42 minutes |
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Maimonides 2011-Feb-15 42 minutes |
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Aristotle's Poetics 2011-Jan-27 42 minutes |
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Daoism 2010-Dec-15 42 minutes |
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Logic 2010-Oct-21 42 minutes |
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Edmund Burke 2010-Jun-03 42 minutes |
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William James's 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' 2010-May-13 42 minutes |
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William Hazlitt 2010-Apr-08 41 minutes |
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Ibn Khaldun 2010-Feb-04 42 minutes |
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The Frankfurt School 2010-Jan-14 42 minutes |
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Mary Wollstonecraft 2009-Dec-31 41 minutes |
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Pythagoras 2009-Dec-10 41 minutes |
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Schopenhauer 2009-Oct-29 42 minutes |
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St Thomas Aquinas 2009-Sep-17 42 minutes |
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Logical Positivism 2009-Jul-02 42 minutes |
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Baconian Science 2009-Apr-02 42 minutes |
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The School of Athens 2009-Mar-26 42 minutes |
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Thoreau and the American Idyll 2009-Jan-15 42 minutes |
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The Consolations of Philosophy 2009-Jan-01 42 minutes |
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Aristotle's Politics 2008-Nov-06 42 minutes |
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Godel's Incompleteness Theorems 2008-Oct-09 42 minutes |
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The Translation Movement 2008-Oct-02 42 minutes |
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Miracles 2008-Sep-25 42 minutes |
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Materialism 2008-Apr-24 42 minutes |
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Kierkegaard 2008-Mar-20 42 minutes |
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The Social Contract 2008-Feb-07 41 minutes |
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Camus 2008-Jan-03 42 minutes |
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Avicenna 2007-Nov-08 41 minutes |
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Guilt 2007-Nov-01 42 minutes |
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Socrates 2007-Sep-27 42 minutes |
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Common Sense Philosophy 2007-Jun-21 42 minutes |
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Ockham's Razor 2007-May-31 42 minutes |
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Spinoza 2007-May-03 28 minutes |
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Popper 2007-Feb-08 42 minutes |
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Anarchism 2006-Dec-07 42 minutes |
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Altruism 2006-Nov-23 42 minutes |
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Averroes 2006-Oct-05 42 minutes |
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Mill 2006-May-18 42 minutes |
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Friendship 2006-Mar-02 41 minutes |
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Relativism 2006-Jan-19 28 minutes |
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The Oath 2006-Jan-05 42 minutes |
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Hobbes 2005-Dec-01 28 minutes |
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Pragmatism 2005-Nov-17 42 minutes |
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Cynicism 2005-Oct-20 28 minutes |
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Marx 2005-Jul-14 42 minutes |
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Beauty 2005-May-19 28 minutes |
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Abelard and Heloise 2005-May-05 41 minutes |
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Stoicism 2005-Mar-04 28 minutes |
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The Mind/Body Problem 2005-Jan-13 42 minutes |
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Machiavelli and the Italian City States 2004-Dec-09 42 minutes |
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Jung 2004-Dec-02 28 minutes |
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Rhetoric 2004-Oct-14 42 minutes |
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The Han Synthesis 2004-Oct-14 27 minutes |
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Sartre 2004-Oct-07 42 minutes |
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Politeness 2004-Sep-30 28 minutes |
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Empiricism 2004-Jun-10 28 minutes |
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Heroism 2004-May-06 42 minutes |
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Wittgenstein 2003-Dec-04 42 minutes |
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Duty 2003-Nov-13 28 minutes |
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Bohemianism 2003-Oct-09 42 minutes |
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The Art of War 2003-Jun-12 42 minutes |
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Originality 2003-Mar-20 41 minutes |
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Redemption 2003-Mar-13 28 minutes |
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The Enlightenment in Scotland 2002-Dec-05 27 minutes |
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Freedom 2002-Jul-04 28 minutes |
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The Soul 2002-Jun-06 28 minutes |
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The Examined Life 2002-May-09 42 minutes |
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Virtue 2002-Feb-28 42 minutes |
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Happiness 2002-Jan-24 28 minutes |
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Confucius 2001-Nov-01 28 minutes |
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Democracy 2001-Oct-18 28 minutes |
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Existentialism 2001-Jun-28 27 minutes |
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Evil 2001-May-03 28 minutes |
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The Philosophy of Love 2001-Mar-29 28 minutes |
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Humanism 2001-Feb-08 28 minutes |
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Nihilism 2000-Nov-16 28 minutes |
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Laws of Nature 2000-Oct-19 28 minutes |
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Economic Rights 2000-Jan-27 27 minutes |
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Consciousness 1999-Nov-25 27 minutes |
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Progress 1999-Nov-18 28 minutes |
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The Individual 1999-Oct-21 28 minutes |
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Utopia 1999-Oct-07 28 minutes |
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Just War 1999-Jun-03 28 minutes |
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Good and Evil 1999-Apr-01 28 minutes |
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Feminism 1999-Jan-07 28 minutes |
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Cultural Rights in the 20th Century 1998-Dec-10 28 minutes |