If we are natural beings who evolved with everything else, why have we had such a hugely detrimental impact on that biosphere, which also happens to be our home? (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy ask what autonomy really is. What does it mean to be “free”? Are drug addicts free? And what is unique about human beings? (more...)

How far does our responsibility extend? What can we rightly be regarded as responsible for? (more...)

Gratefulness has been proposed as a way to increase one’s happiness in life. But does it work? We look at the science of gratitude diaries to find out whether gratefulness has a positive effect on happiness. (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy ask how technology affects our freedom. Are we free to choose particular technologies? Are we free to reject them? And is democracy powerful enough to deal with technology? (more...)

Computers have a long history of being associated with evilness. Machine minds without emotions suggest cruelty, unflinching execution of inhuman orders. (more...)

Brother David-Steindl-Rast is one of the most prominent advocates of gratefulness as a way of life. In his famous TED talk, he explains how gratefulness and attention lead to a happier life. (more...)

Luis de Miranda lives in Sweden and is a philosophical practitioner, founder of the Philosophical Health movement. (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy continue their discussion of E. F. Schumacher’s famous 1973 book “Small is Beautiful,” and particularly the role of work in human life. (more...)

It seems that we should only be grateful for something good done to us. But already the Stoics had seen that sometimes benefits come disguised as burdens. (more...)

The creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds great promise, but with it also comes existential risk. (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy discuss E. F. Schumacher’s famous 1973 book “Small is Beautiful”. We unpack the main theses of the book and look whether they are still valid 50 years later. (more...)

Should we legalise recreational drug use? This article explains seven arguments against legalising recreational drugs. (more...)

One could also say that gratitude is always gratitude to someone, while gratefulness emphasises what we are grateful for, even if there is nobody to be grateful to for that thing. (more...)

I’m not gonna lie to you: when I finally received the cybermail notification that my purchase was approved and I could pick it up from the Companions ‘R’ Us warehouse in Manchester, I was literally electrified. (more...)

The rhetoric or metaphor of refuge from the world has largely disappeared from religious, social and ethical debate. The contrast with the past is striking. (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy discuss Deep Ecology, a philosophy of respecting the rights of nature as equal to our own. But does this really work? Can we make sense of treating nature with just the same consideration that we give ourselves? (more...)

So has Epicurean living become so expensive today as to exclude most of us from practising it? Does one need to be rich in order to be able to afford the simple life? (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy discuss nudges - small incentives designed to push us to make particular choices. Can we ever act in a truly free way, or do we have to resign ourselves to being nudged around? (more...)

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who, because of his Jewish descent, spent the last six months of World War II in a German concentration camp, which he barely survived. (more...)

Can artificial intelligence discover new laws of physics? Possibly. An article in Technology Review suggests that data from a swinging pendulum experiment allowed a neural network to discover some of the laws of motion. (more...)