Past Present Future

David talks to philosopher and author Nikhil Krishnan about the life and times of a little known but highly influential twentieth-century philosopher: J. L. Austin, who believed that the deepest truths lay in understanding how ordinary language worked. Why was Austin so opposed to the ideas of A. J. Ayer? How were his experiences in planning D-Day in 1944 an extension of his approach to philosophy? What made people so frightened of him? And how did such a conventional man have such an unconventional influence on thinkers from California to Cambridge?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre
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In our series about how twentieth-century philosophy and biography intersect, David talks to philosopher Alex Carter about the life of Albert Camus, novelist, playwright, journalist, celebrity and public intellectual. What makes Camus a philosopher as well? How was he shaped by his Algerian background? Does it make sense to call him an absurdist? How did he try to reconcile the very different parts of his extraordinary life?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: J. L. Austin

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The second life we explore in our series about the twentieth-century philosophers could not be more different from the first: David talks to philosopher Alex Carter about Simone Weil, who died aged just thirty-four and lived through much political and personal hardship, some of it self-inflicted. How did her asceticism inform her philosophical outlook? Why did she believe she needed to work in a factory and fight in the Spanish civil war to be true to her beliefs? When and how does her philosophy morph into theology? Was she a saint?



You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com



Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Albert Camus
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Today we begin a new series exploring twentieth-century philosophy through the lives of the people behind the ideas. First up David talks to philosopher Nikhil Krishnan about A. J. Ayer, the man who helped inspire the rise and fall of logical positivism. What did Ayer discover about the nature of truth when he went to Vienna on his honeymoon? How did he manage to popularise such a technical approach to his subject? What was left of philosophy when he had finished with it? And what does Ayer’s taste for football, sex and celebrity tell us about his attitude to the life of the mind?

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time in The Lives of the Philosophers: Simone Weil
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In today’s episode David talks to forensic anthropologist Sue Black about what happens when forensic science and forensic expertise end up on trial in the courtroom. When and how did scientists get involved in the business of criminal prosecution? What changed with the advent of DNA testing? Is the adversarial system the best way of testing scientific evidence? Can a jury distinguish between good science, bad science and junk science? And what might have gone wrong in the case of Lucy Letby?

Sue Black’s An Expert Witness is available now wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/45hcTge

Out now on PPF+: a final bad ideas bonus episode in which geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford explains what’s wrong with genealogy: why does wanting to know where we come from lead us down so many blind alleys? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus upcoming events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next time a brand-new series: The Lives of the Philosophers
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