Philosopher's Zone
Where it charts
Today’s combined position on our country charts.
Ranking history
About the show
Latest episodes
-
01 | Unsteady State | Politics and the good life
September 30, 2026 · 1 hr 10 minWhat if your government decided what 'the good life' looks like, then rewarded you for living it and penalised you for straying? In a growing number of countries, that's already happening. Liberal democratic theory has long held that the…
-
Technology and the lure of ancient Athens
September 23, 2026 · 45 minOne of the more utopian promises of technology has always been that it will free us from the necessity of work - but not having to work poses its own problems. What will we do instead? how will we make money? and what might a…
-
Sympathy, himpathy and feminism
September 16, 2026 · 38 minAustralian feminist philosopher Kate Manne memorably coined the term "himpathy" to describe what happens when a man commits a crime against a woman and finds himself the object of disproportionate sympathy. But as useful as this…
-
Signal, noise and interpersonal conflict
September 9, 2026 · 31 minIf someone's behaving badly, it can be hard to know how much of their behaviour stems from a deep character flaw, and how much of it is incidental - the stuff we might charitably filter out as unreflective of their true self. And the same…
-
Feminism, generosity and cross-cultural support
September 2, 2026 · 38 minWestern feminists often express support for women in Muslim majority countries, but sometimes that support is couched in the language of pity, as though Muslim women were held captive by their religion and culture, and in need of 'rescue'…
-
Getting angry at the system
August 26, 2026 · 37 minIf I pick up a tree branch and smash your window with it, you're going to be angry, and your anger will rightly be directed at me. But if a tree branch smashes your windscreen during a cyclone whose intensity has been caused by global…
-
Who's afraid of Cultural Marxism?
August 19, 2026 · 46 minCultural Marxism is many things to many people — at one end of the political spectrum, it's the hidden force behind political correctness, identity politics and 'wokeness', while at the other end it's a shopworn conspiracy theory that…
-
Habermas and the retreat of reason
August 12, 2026 · 42 minThe great German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who died in March, wrote in his later works about what he called Unheimlichkeit — roughly translated as "the unease of the times" — to describe the global retreat of liberal democracy, the…