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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of key philosophers and their theories.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ History of philosophy and big questions • Knowledge, perception, consciousness, identity • Love, altruism, morality, conscience • Justice, law, toleration, politics • Science, falsification • Technology and humanity • Religion, origins, creation mythsThis podcast explores major philosophical questions by combining historical thinkers with present-day perspectives from across disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, law, theology, history, economics, physics, medicine, archaeology and technology. Episodes tend to take a broad, foundational question—about knowledge, love, justice, the self, morality, human nature, origins, or life in society—and trace how influential ideas developed, why they mattered in their own time, and how they shape contemporary debates.
A recurring theme is how we can justify what we claim to know. The podcast considers problems of perception and reality, the difficulty of understanding other minds, and the relationship between language and thought. It also examines how scientific knowledge advances through methods like testability and falsification, and how evidence and human fallibility matter in settings such as the courtroom, where eyewitness testimony and bias can affect judgments.
Another central strand is ethics and social life: what love involves (from parenting to erotic desire to altruism), what justice requires (from detention and punishment to civil disobedience and legal protections against arbitrary imprisonment), and what principles might guide fair institutions. Classical and modern frameworks appear side by side, including virtue ethics, utilitarian approaches to law and policy, and thought experiments designed to test intuitions about right and wrong.
The podcast also returns frequently to questions of identity and what it means to be human. It engages with theories of consciousness, memory and personal identity, the unconscious, existential freedom, and the role of language, mortality, and moral recognition in defining humanity. Alongside this, it investigates how technology—from early tools to medical innovation and digital systems—extends human capacities while raising concerns about dependence, enhancement, and unintended consequences.
Finally, it looks outward to origins stories and worldviews, placing scientific accounts of the universe alongside theological arguments and global creation myths, to show how different traditions have tried to explain beginnings and meaning.