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The Philosopher & The News

Alexis Papazoglou

50 episodes

1 month ago

There is a lot of violence in politics right now. Israel’s war on Gaza has resulted in thousands of children and innocent civilians being killed, Russia is continuing to pound Ukraine with impunity, while the United States has experienced the return of political assassinations. The far right is no stranger to actual political violence, but Jacob Abolafia argued in a recent essay in The Point magazine that the left has been guilty of intellectualising violence in ways divorced from real politi...

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Society & Culture,

News Commentary

All content for The Philosopher & The News is the property of Alexis Papazoglou 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.

There is a lot of violence in politics right now. Israel’s war on Gaza has resulted in thousands of children and innocent civilians being killed, Russia is continuing to pound Ukraine with impunity, while the United States has experienced the return of political assassinations. The far right is no stranger to actual political violence, but Jacob Abolafia argued in a recent essay in The Point magazine that the left has been guilty of intellectualising violence in ways divorced from real politi...

Show more...

Society & Culture,

News Commentary

Episodes (20/50)

The Philosopher & The News

Does the left have a problem with political violence?

There is a lot of violence in politics right now. Israel’s war on Gaza has resulted in thousands of children and innocent civilians being killed, Russia is continuing to pound Ukraine with impunity, while the United States has experienced the return of political assassinations. The far right is no stranger to actual political violence, but Jacob Abolafia argued in a recent essay in The Point magazine that the left has been guilty of intellectualising violence in ways divorced from real politi...

1 month ago

48 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

The Moral Paradox of Regime Change in Iran - Patrick Hassan and Hossein Dabbagh

Soon after the US bombing of Iran's nuclear sites in June, following Israel’s bombings of the country, there was talk of the military operation going further: full war with Iran with the aim of regime change. But some, including critics of Teheran's theocratic and authoritarian government, warned against such a move. Can a county ever really be freed from an oppressive government through the violent intervention of an external power? Is such a move ever morally justified, ev...

3 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Trump vs Musk: a rift in the MAGA alliance - Yascha Mounk

At the end of May, Elon Musk quit his role as Special Government Employee and his leadership of the the infamous DOGE. The official departure was relatively amicable, if a little awkward, in the Oval Office with Musk sporting a black eye, in which Trump thanked him for his service. But things quickly turned ugly, with personal attacks from both men. But aside from the egos clash, what does this divorce between Musk and Trump signify for the MAGA coalition? Does it point to a deep ideolo...

3 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

The Open Society As An Enemy - Jason Alexander McKenzie

This podcast series started in January 2021. The first episode was on the Insurrection at the Capitol, instigated by Trump on the basis of his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. This episode was recorded just shy of a week away from Trump’s second inauguration as President of the United States. Trump’s signature policy proposals during his campaign had to do with deporting millions of illegal immigrants, closing the boarders, imposing tariffs on international trade, and returning to a k...

3 months ago

46 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Are progressives to blame for Trump’s attack on universities? - Sasha Mudd

On June 4, Donald Trump issued a 6 month ban on foreign students entering the US who seek to study at Harvard University, citing national security concerns. That ban came after a court had already blocked the decision of the Department of Homeland Security to stop issuing visas to foreign students who were admitted at Harvard University. Harvard is not the only university under attack by the Trump administration – many have had their federal funding axed or bullied into submission, like Colum...

4 months ago

41 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

A philosophy of crisis - Miguel de Beistegui

After a pause, The Philosopher & The News is back! In fact, we have been back since last September of 2024, in the form of a series of live online events in partnership with The Philosopher journal that have then featured in The Philosopher's YouTube Channel. But we thought it's about time we updated our usual podcast channel too. The term "crisis" gets banded about with ease these days, in fact some have argues that we are living through an era of polycrisis, with more than o...

5 months ago

55 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

The philosophy of de-extinction - Jay Odenbaugh

In April Time magazine published a story entitled The Return of The Dire Wolf. Having roamed America's continent for thousands of years, the dire wolf had gone extinct around 10,000 years ago. Until, that is, a company called Colossal Biosciences claims that it has managed to bring the species back to life in the form of two wolf pups: Romulus and Remus. But despite the scientific wonders of gene editing, can we be sure that these pups are genetically identical to the dire wolfs o...

5 months ago

1 hour 3 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Did the power of rhetoric elect Donald Trump? - Robin Reames

After a pause, The Philosopher & The News is back! In fact, we have been back since last September of 2024, in the form of a series of live online events in partnership with The Philosopher journal that have then featured in The Philosopher's YouTube Channel. But we thought it's about time we updated our usual podcast channel too. In this episode I spoke with Robin Reams about The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times less than a month before the US election. Did Trump manage t...

5 months ago

54 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Chat GPT Understands & Reuben Cohn- Gordon

Chat GPT, an AI powered chat-bot, has become the world’s fastest growing application, with over 100 million users in the first month of its launch. Even its harshest critics concede that when interacting with Chat GPT, it can seem as if one is talking to an intelligent machine. But, the standard critique goes, that’s just an illusion. Chat GPT isn’t in fact intelligent. It doesn’t understand the questions it’s asked, or the answers it gives. But, what if this critique is wrong? What if o...

2 years ago

1 hour 5 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Alex O'Conor (Cosmic Sceptic) & The Absurdity of the Monarchy

On May 6th, the coronation of King Charles III took place in Westminster Abbey in London, making him officially the head of state of the United Kingdom, the head of the Church of England, and of the UK’s Armed Forces. It also made him head of Nation of sever other counties, including Canada and Australia. According to polls, more than half the British citizens seem to approve of the monarchy and the pomp and pageantry that goes with it. But can a monarch ever really have democratic legit...

2 years ago

50 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

John Naughton & The AI Hype

On March 22nd, the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization focussed on reducing existential risks facing humanity, and in particular existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI), published an open letter entitled Pause Giant AI Experiments. Its signatories included tech luminaries such as Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Its opening sentences read:“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as s...

2 years ago

58 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Josephine von Zitzewitz & The Myth of the Russian Soul

February 24th marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some still blame the expansion of NATO in Russia’s neighbourhood as the deeper cause of this war. Others see it as Putin’s mad personal plan to go down in the history books. But some are pointing the finger to something much deeper than any of that: the Russian soul. A concept that originated in Russia’s literary tradition of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and other great authors, is seen as animating today’s nat...

2 years ago

50 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Suzanne Schneider & The Ideology Behind Gun Ownership in America

On January 21, 11 people were killed in a mass shooting in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles, California. Two days later, 7 people were killed in another shooting in Half Moon Bay, a small city on the coast south of San Francisco. It was the 37th mass shooting in the United States in 2023, only 24 days since the year began. So why is it that despite these repeated incidents, gun laws in the United States are becoming less rather than more restrictive? What is the ideology that is driving A...

2 years ago

1 hour 4 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Toby Buckle & Freedom According to the Right

On June 24, the US Supreme court overruled a landmark decision: Roe v Wade. For nearly 50 years, abortion was a constitutional right in the Unites States. No more. “The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” Read the decision. But quite apart from the legal argument, everyone knew this was at heart deeply political decision. Three of the judges in the majority opinion were appointed by the previous presiden...

3 years ago

1 hour 17 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Elizabeth Harman & The Ethics of Abortion

On May 2nd, Politico leaked a draft opinion of the US Supreme Court that suggested the court had voted to overrule Roe v Wade, the previous high court decision from 1973 that guaranteed the right to early term abortion in all of the US. This ruling by the Supreme Court seemingly passes the power to decide on the legality of abortion to individual States, though this essentially amounts to an immediate ban on abortions in several states. So was the Supreme Court right in allowing individu...

3 years ago

1 hour 15 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Lori Gruen & Animal Ethics in War and Peace

We don’t often think of animals as war casualties, but animals die in large numbers in every war. Sometimes as specific targets, to deprive the enemy of a food source, sometimes trapped in zoos and shelters, and other times as wildlife. But their deaths are never officially counted, and the senseless killing animals, unlike the killing of innocent civilians, is not considered a war crime. So do we have special moral duties towards animals in war, given that they have no conception of wha...

3 years ago

1 hour 21 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Samuel Moyn & The Legal Constraints on War

On March 16th the UN’s International Court of Justice asked Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine. It had found no evidence to support Russia’s claim that Ukraine was conducting genocide against Russia Speakers in the East of the country, which has been Russia’s justification for the war. A day later Russia rejected the ruling. So, is international law completely impotent in preventing countries from going to war? And why has the law been more effective in constraining the way tha...

3 years ago

53 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Stathis Kalyvas & Making Sense of Putin

On February 24th, Russia invaded the country of Ukraine, in an unexpected escalation of a conflict that began in 2014. It is the largest conventional military attack in Europe since World War II.According to an influential analysis of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, this is all down to NATO’s overreach in the region, and Russia is simply defending itself from being encircled by Western power. But, pay closer attention to what Putin is actually saying, and a very different explanation eme...

3 years ago

48 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Stephen John & Vaccine Mandates

On February 1st a national vaccine mandate took effect in Austria. Those over the age of 18 who haven’t been vaccinated could face fines of over €3,000. Several other countries have introduced similar mandates for the elderly, medical staff and care home workers. Those resisting vaccination say it should be their choice whether to get the jab, not the state’s. Others argue that in liberal societies, it’s the state’s a right to limit the freedom of individuals when their behaviour harms others...

3 years ago

56 minutes

The Philosopher & The News

Robert Talisse & America's Real Polarization Problem

It’s been a year since the end Trump’s presidency, and the beginning of Biden’s. And while Biden pleaded for unity, and the healing of bitter political divisions in his inaugural speech, the country remains as divided as ever. 40% of Americans say in polls that they don’t believe Joe Biden is the legitimate president, and the International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report now classifies the United States a “backsliding democracy” sighting “runaway polarization” as one of the key threat...

3 years ago

1 hour 19 minutes