The Examined Life

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The Examined Life

Kenneth Primrose

28 episodes

3 weeks ago

Send us a text Technology is taking on a mythic mantle as we look to our creations to supply us with a sense of belonging and purpose, but this is a category error because tech cannot honestly deliver on these promises. In this podcast Tom Chatfield explores some of the issues bound up with the ways we are thinking about technology. • Technology is not a bolt-on or optional extra, but has been integral to human existence since before our species evolved • The delusion of neutrality allows us...

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Religion & Spirituality,

Society & Culture,

Self-Improvement

All content for The Examined Life is the property of Kenneth Primrose and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Send us a text Technology is taking on a mythic mantle as we look to our creations to supply us with a sense of belonging and purpose, but this is a category error because tech cannot honestly deliver on these promises. In this podcast Tom Chatfield explores some of the issues bound up with the ways we are thinking about technology. • Technology is not a bolt-on or optional extra, but has been integral to human existence since before our species evolved • The delusion of neutrality allows us...

Show more...

Religion & Spirituality,

Society & Culture,

Self-Improvement

Episodes (20/28)

The Examined Life

Tom Chatfield - What myths are we telling ourselves about technology?

Send us a text Technology is taking on a mythic mantle as we look to our creations to supply us with a sense of belonging and purpose, but this is a category error because tech cannot honestly deliver on these promises. In this podcast Tom Chatfield explores some of the issues bound up with the ways we are thinking about technology. • Technology is not a bolt-on or optional extra, but has been integral to human existence since before our species evolved • The delusion of neutrality allows us...

4 months ago

56 minutes

The Examined Life

Rosie Spinks - What Do We Do Now That We're Here?

Send us a text Rosie Spinks Substack - https://rojospinks.substack.com/about Kenny Primrose Substack - https://positivelymaladjusted.substack.com/ Moby Gratis Music - https://mobygratis.com/ Writer and journalist Rosie Spinks joins us to explore her powerful question: "What do we do now that we're here?" Drawing from her journey from ambitious journalist to burnout victim to advocate for a different way of living, Rosie offers a surprisingly hopeful perspective on navigating a world where tra...

4 months ago

52 minutes

The Examined Life

Ruth Taylor - How do we develop better cultural values?

Send us a text Ruth Taylor explores how our cultural conditions shape our values and beliefs, revealing how we can build futures where humans and other life forms flourish together on our planet. She illuminates the often invisible narratives that guide our thinking and behavior, showing how these shape everything from our personal happiness to our collective response to global challenges. • The "values perception gap" - most people prioritize intrinsic values like community and equality, bu...

5 months ago

59 minutes

The Examined Life

William Damon - Am I serving a bigger purpose than myself?

Send us a text What does it mean to live a purposeful life? Is the way you're spending your time truly reflective of your deepest values and aspirations? These questions stand at the heart of my enlightening conversation with William Damon, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and a world-renowned expert on purpose and moral development. Damon brings decades of research to bear on understanding how purpose shapes our lives, offering a compelling definition that transcends simple pe...

5 months ago

54 minutes

The Examined Life

Katharine Birbalsingh - Why are we ignoring our future?

Send us a text What shapes our children's future? Who are they becoming? And why aren't we talking about it more? Katharine Birbalsingh, known as "Britain's strictest headteacher," has a clear vision for the role of school's in shaping the future of Britain. "Children are the future and families and schools influence who they will become, and we seem to care about neither," she observes with passion that's impossible to ignore. While politicians debate net-zero targets and immigration polici...

5 months ago

53 minutes

The Examined Life

Peter Gray - What do children need to develop psychologically?

Send us a text If you’re a parent or a teacher, you’ve probably wondered about what the best conditions are for psychological development in children, and where we might have gone so wrong as a society. This week, we talk with psychologist Peter Gray about the developmental needs of children, and why long school days, risk free environments, and too much supervision are wreaking havoc with their psychological development. Other episodes on parenting/teaching: Michaeleen Doucleff on the univer...

5 months ago

55 minutes

The Examined Life

Michael Sacasas - what should we be doing for ourselves, even if a machine can do it for us?

Send us a text Michael Sacasas writes about technology and human flourishing through his wildly popular newsletter The Convivial Society. I have been reading his work for a number of years and find it both winsome and wise. It was delight to have the opportunity to speak to him about a question he thinks we should be asking ourselves. In this conversation we explore the question of what humans should still do for themselves even when technology can do it better or more efficiently. This conve...

6 months ago

1 hour

The Examined Life

Michaeleen Doucleff - what are the universals of childhood?

Send us a text What if the Western approach to parenting is based on spurious cultural assumptions, not human nature? In this episode, science writer Michaeleen Doucleff takes us inside indigenous communities around the world to reveal what Western parenting gets backwards, as we explore her question - what are the universals of childhood? From the origins of modern parenting in orphanage manuals to the power of kids contributing to real family life, we explore what children actually need to ...

6 months ago

1 hour 5 minutes

The Examined Life

Season II summary: it's all about attention

In this summary episode, we take the theme of attention which runs through most of conversations in the second season. In the episode you'll hear fragments of conversation from Iain McGilchrist, Dacher Keltner, Dougald Hine, Phoebe Tickell, Alex Evans, Elizabeth Oldfield, Jill Bolte-Taylor, Eve Poole and Todd Kashdan. Over this short episode, you'll hear discussion of a wide range of topics, from religion, AI and smartphones, to the role of awe and imagination. Click here to access any...

11 months ago

27 minutes

The Examined Life

Oliver Burkeman - How can I more fully embrace my finitude?

This is a distilled version of last year's conversation with the writer Oliver Burkeman. In it, you'll hear Oliver talk about our troubled relationship with time and how to more fully inhabit it. Oliver believes our obsession with productivity and efficiency is no route to happiness, quite the opposite. In order to inhabit time more fully, we need to embrace our limitations. This will mean admitting that however many worthwhile ways there are to spend our time, we can't do them all. This is ...

1 year ago

20 minutes

The Examined Life

Phoebe Tickell - Is the root of our problems found in the way we see the world?

Phoebe Tickell is a biologist, systems thinker, and 'imagination activist'. Phoebe works across multiple contexts applying a complexity and systems thinking lens and engaging people in how to think differently about the planet and its problems. In 2020 Phoebe created 'Moral Imaginations', which researches and implements collective imagination exercises and training to inspire change and find new solutions in an era of unprecedented disruption and potential for transformation. In this episode ...

1 year ago

55 minutes

The Examined Life

Alex Evans - What do we do about the religion shaped hole?

What do we lack when we lack religion? In this episode Alex Evans explores the role that religion has historically played in both collective and individual life, and the shape it leaves behind when it disappears. The stories that we locate ourselves within and the rituals they enshrine, are formative in the way we attend to the world. Religion has historically provided the structure for this work, and its absence leaves a vacuum. The conversation explores the various pretenders to the religio...

1 year ago

53 minutes

The Examined Life

Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor - Who are we, and what are we doing here?

Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor was a neuroanatomist at Harvard when she suffered a severe stroke on the left hemisphere of her brain. It was an experience which profoundly changed her life, and opened her up to the agency we all have in choosing our attention. She explores this in her TED talk back in 2008, which became one of the most popular TED talks ever. In this conversation we explore Jill's question 'who are we, and what are we doing here?', doing so through the lens of neuroanatomy, as well as ...

1 year ago

53 minutes

The Examined Life

Todd Kashdan - What are the best ways to be influential when lacking power and status?

Show links: Todd's website - https://toddkashdan.com/ Todd's Substack - https://toddkashdan.substack.com/ Kenny's Substack - https://positivelymaladjusted.substack.com/ Examined Life youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpKC6L_IJ2zvL6E6M8Ly1AA What if the most influential voices in our society are those often left unheard? In this episode, I sit down with Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University and the mind behind "The Art of Insubordination," to unravel...

1 year ago

55 minutes

The Examined Life

Iain McGilchrist - What is my culture preventing me from seeing?

Iain McGilchrist is a rare polymath who draws on his background in literature, philosophy, medicine and the sciences to make a profound argument that the kind of attention we pay to the world determines not only the kind of people we become, but also the world we create. He argues that the brains left hemisphere has a disenchanted and mechanical view of the world, and it is this that has come to dominate the Western World. A consequence of this is that we've lost a sense of the sacred, of bel...

1 year ago

57 minutes

The Examined Life

Eve Poole - What is distinctive about being human?

As AI evolves and replaces different human functions, it raises questions about what it is that makes us distinctively human, and whether that distinctiveness can and should be programmed into AI. This is a question that Dr Eve Poole has thought and written a great deal about. Her recent book Robot Souls takes this question seriously, and explores possible trajectories for our future with AI. In this episode we discuss the necessity of human 'junk code', the increasing importance of the human...

1 year ago

56 minutes

The Examined Life

Dougald Hine - How do we make good ruins?

Are you optimistic about the future? Do you think we're heading in the right direction as a species? If not, you're in good company. In this episode the writer and speaker Dougald Hine explores what's gone wrong with 'modernity', and what it might mean to think generative thoughts about the future. Dougald speaks with wisdom and clarity about our current predicament, and what kind of thinking and acting we are being called to in this moment.

1 year ago

59 minutes

The Examined Life

Elizabeth Oldfield - Who is it that I want to be becoming?

In this episode the writer and podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield explores the question ‘who is it that I want to be becoming?’ We discuss the pernicious forces that are shaping us, and what it means to be intentional about structuring our time attention around those practices that can deepen and shape our character.

1 year ago

54 minutes

The Examined Life

Dacher Keltner - How can awe help us to find more meaning in life?

How can we find meaning in life? In this episode we are joined by the celebrated psychologist Dacher Keltner where we explore where meaning comes from, and how the emotion of awe can help us find it. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UCLA Berkley, where he teaches and researches in the area of positive psychology, and researches the emotion of awe. Dacher is a wonderful communicator and offers much that is fascinating, helpful and uplifting for anyone who craves a greater sense o...

1 year ago

1 hour

The Examined Life

Seasonal Reflections for the Year Ahead

This is a special summary episode with reflection points from 2023 to take forward into the year ahead. The episode pulls together one key idea from each conversation, accompanied by some thoughts on why I found it particularly helpful and interesting. In this episode you will hear extracts from Oliver Burkeman, Anna Lembke, Lisa Miller, Tim Ingold, Will Storr, Helena Norberg Hodge, Sir Terry Waite, and Madeleine Bunting. Each of these people has a perspective which is worth attending to - on...

1 year ago

32 minutes