This episode is an interview/discussion with David Bather Woods. David is an assistant professor in the University of Warwick's philosophy department, and a previous guest of this podcast.   In this episode, we discuss various questions about evil and evil-doers, including: - Do you have to be free to be evil? - If we aim to understand evil-doers, do we risk forgiving them? - If our situations were different, could we all do evil things? - What makes an evil act evil, rather than just...

This episode is an interview with Miles Leeson. Miles is the director of research at the Iris Murdoch research centre at Chichester university, and the host of the Iris Murdoch society podcast.  In this episode we discuss the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, the links between her explicitly philosophical work and her literature, and her answer to the question “can fiction help us see the world as it really is?”.  It seems that fiction has a troubled place within our culture. If we...

For the first episode of the second season of Common Room Philosophy, I interview Professor Karen Simecek. Karen is currently writing a book on the use of the lyrical voice in poetry; for this podcast we discuss ideas from that work such as the role of voice in poetry and the ethical relationship between the performance poet and the audience member. We then apply these insights to the subject of philosophy, discussing how to make our conversations more kind and our practices more...

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosopher Adina Covaci. We discuss her route into philosophy, why ethics professors might not act ethically and her recent argument for the wrongness of regularly deferring to others on your moral opinions.  Listen to this podcast for an exploration of questions such as: What book would Adina send back to her 16 year old self? Why is it wrong to repeatedly engage in moral deference?  What is practical deliberation, and why is it important to our...

This episode is the second part of an interview with political philosopher Sameer Bajaj. (It can be listened to out of order) Listen to this podcast for an exploration of questions such as: What is the best theoretical challenge to democracy? Should we replace elected officials with citizens selected at random? Why should we vote when individually we are causally inconsequential? What justifies protest?  This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett Follow us on Twitter...

This bonus episode is an edited recording of a talk with Peter Singer and Josh Morrison, chaired by Alastair Fraser-Urqhart.  Listen to this episode to hear discussion of the ethics of human challenge trials, and how we might do advocacy effectively. The speakers are Josh Morrison, co-founder of 1Day Sooner, and Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University.  Advocating for human challenge trials might be one of the...

This episode is part 1 of an interview with political philosopher Sameer Bajaj. Sameer's research focuses on democracy and the duties of democratic citizens. In this part of the conversation, we discuss Sameer's path into philosophy, the books that every democratic citizen should read, and whether the US and the UK are actually democratic.  Come back next week for part 2 of our conversation, where we will discuss the best theoretical objections to democracy, the question of which protests...

This episode is an interview with public philosopher Roman Krznarik. Roman is a founding member of the school of life, and has previously published books on empathy (Empathy: why it matters and how to get it) and redefining existentialism for the modern world (carpe diem regained). We discuss issues of empathy in this episode, but the discussion is focused around the ideas and problems raised by Roman's new book: The Good Ancestor- how to think long-term in a short term world. Listen to this...

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosophy's Barney Walker. We discuss how his interest in philosophy began, what it is to be a good or even great philosopher, how the difference between knowledge and true belief matters and the subject matter of philosophy of mind.  Listen to this episode for an exploration of questions like: What is a great philosopher and who actually was one?  How should we approach the questions about the nature of inquiry that arise from Plato's Meno? What...

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosophy's Guy Longworth. We discuss how his interest in philosophy began and was maintained, his ideas around testimony and self knowledge, and how ambitious philosophers should be in the claims that they make.  Listen to this episode for an exploration of questions such as: What is philosophy for? What is at stake in research about testimony? Is there a tension between an interest in Austin, a philosopher who in many respects had quite a...

This episode is part two of an interview with Warwick Philosophy's senior teaching fellow David Bather Woods. David has written on Schopenhauer's views on boredom, solitude and loneliness as well as on the intersection of his political and moral philosophy. In this episode we discuss these topics as well as relevant facts and anecdotes from Schopenhauer's life which help to inform our interpretation of these lessons.  Below are some resources written by David for further reading on the...

This episode is part one of an interview with Warwick Philosophy's senior teaching fellow David Bather Woods. David has taught extensively on the history of philosophy as well as researching the work of Arthur Schopenhauer. In this first part of the interview we discuss David’s path into philosophy before moving on to discuss the value of studying the history of philosophy, and how we can address the problem of its lack of diversity.

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosophy's newly appointed teaching fellow Massimiliano Lacertosa. Max is interested in Chinese Philosophy (specifically Daoism) and in this interview we discuss questions such as: How can a course on "Chinese Philosophy" be taught without being too reductive? What is the benefit of approaching Philosophy comparatively? What does "Chinese Philosophy" even mean? If you are a student at Warwick and you were interested to read more about the contents...