Living Philosophy
What is your second-life? Living Philosophy is dedicated to exploring the inspiring second lives of people who have successfully made significant changes to their careers and lives through self-reflection, insight, and practice. Listen also to our Public Philosophy podcasts, which you can find by topic and the bespoke logo artwork. Hosted by Dr Todd S. Mei, former Head of Philosophy at the University of Kent (UK), and founder, consultant, and freelance author at Philosophy2u.com.
Episodes
41 episodes
Philosophy of Gastronomy with Kelly Donati
Believe it or not, the saying “You are what you eat” reveals what we’ve got wrong about our approach to eating and living well. Why? It tends to take an overly narrow focus on ourselves without consideration of other values, histories, and spec...
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Season 2
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Episode 17
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55:04
Philosophy of Disability with Chris Riddle
Grasping what it means to be disabled is more complex than you might think. But doing so is key to understanding how we might treat people with impairments as equals with respect to justice, rights, and ethics. Prof Chris Riddle (Utica U...
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Season 2
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Episode 16
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59:20
Philosophy of Technology with Dominic Smith and Mark Coeckelbergh
One of the great insights from the philosophy of technology is that the more our devices become integrated with our lives, the more they reframe our relationships to others, the world, and even our purposes. In other words, technological device...
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Season 2
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Episode 15
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51:47
Valerie Noble on Turning a Passion for Science Fiction into a Career
Valerie Noble is a senior literary agent at the Donaghy Literary Group, where she works primarily within the genre of science fiction. She discusses the challenges she faced while completing a degree in food science, only to find how one of her...
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Season 2
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Episode 14
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53:22
Is Abortion Constitutional?
We tend to react to the issue of the right to abortion according to moral, religious, or political convictions. But what we often tend to overlook is that the debate surrounding Roe v. Wade is primarily a legal one. So according to the US const...
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Season 2
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Episode 13
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1:11:40
Embodied Trauma with Anna Westin
Traumatic experiences are those which involve significant and terrible events on emotional, mental, and bodily levels. Their effects can often go unnoticed or can be dismissed as being purely subjective or emotional. A more balanced and holisti...
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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56:43
Kat Batchelor on Performing and Teaching Folk Music
Kat Batchelor is a classically trained violinist who transitioned to the fiddle and playing folk music. She shares her insights into life, teaching, and performance that derive from her time spent performing at classical and public venues, busk...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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55:23
Animal Crisis with Alice Crary & Lori Gruen
What if the key to respecting and appreciating non-human animals resided in understanding our human selves better? Thinking about animals and our relation to them might then involve trying to grasp the ways in which our current social, economic...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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58:19
Philosophy & Cryptocurrency with Sebastian Purcell
Do crytpocurrencies and blockchain technology figure substantially in the possibility of financial freedom for those who currently are lacking in wealth? Or does the hype really just indicate that all things crypto are based on a speculative bu...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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1:13:56
The Problem of Translation with Lisa Foran
Is translation really just a problem of finding the right words in one language to fit the words in another language? Or, is there much more than meets the ear? Lisa Foran, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin (...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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59:19
Mind and the Philosophy of Medicine with David Corfield
Medicine involves more than science and evidence-based experiments. In today’s health climate—where there seems to be a conflict of interest between health care, on the one hand, and pharmaceutical companies and the privatization of medicine, t...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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56:12
Hillary Hutchinson on Transitioning into Change
Hillary Hutchinson is a career coach and change strategist at Transitioning Your Life. She has helped professionals understand who they are in order to make significant changes to their careers. She reflects on how events in her own li...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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56:24
Arvind Gupta on Improving the World through Venture Capitalism
Arvind Gupta is a genetic engineer and venture capitalist whose approach to investment is driven by trying to better the planet, yet without the use of moral arguments and platforms. Instead, his approach to business draws on his personal exper...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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55:54
Why Does Hermeneutics Matter?
We see it every day—the problem of misunderstanding and misreading meaning and intentions. It can be the cause of frustration, hurt, and even violence. Hermeneutics is the branch of philosophy interested in how the interpretation of language, s...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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51:44
Charlie Undershaw on the Musical and Philosophical Life
Charlie Undershaw (Carlos Marin de Miguel) is a Spanish jazz musician whose recent album “Agora” has been hitting the airwaves in Spain and on Spotify. He shares how Brazilian jazz and philosophy have shaped his life, his academic teachi...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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1:03:31
The Difficulty of Understanding Others with Constantine Sandis
It seems more than ever that our present era is one of misunderstanding others—their motives, their reasons, their practices, and their beliefs. Is there a quick remedy to this, such as being more objective? Is objectivity even possible, especi...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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1:04:11
Hans Florine on the Virtue of Speed, Climbing, and Learning How to Fail in Order to Succeed
Hans Florine is a world-renowned climber, best known for holding the record for the fastest ascent of the Nose on El Capitan (Yosemite) with Alex Honnold in 2012. The record remained until 2018. Hans has spent his life learning from competition...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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49:34
Bringing Us Together by Questioning (2021 Annual End Roll)
Dr Todd Mei discusses closing thoughts and reflections on the year which explore the prospect of social cohesion through the task of posing questions. Topics discussed:StoicismToleranceHermeneuticsP...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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12:46
Paula Leach on the Essential Features of Leadership in a Changing World
Paula Leach is an executive leadership coach and former executive herself, with over 25 years of experience within the public and corporate sectors. She recently made the decision to start her own consultation business, Vantage Points...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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54:55
Time & Temporality with Graeme A. Forbes
We live within time, but apart from it passing or lingering too long, how much do we understand the extent to which it pervades our lives? And what should we make of the claim based on physics that time does not pass, and therefore, that our ex...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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55:39
Practices, Traditions, Innovations with Anna Mudde & Robert Piercey
We are familiar with practice as a method for getting better at something. But what if this idea was only one part of the importance of practice? What if a key aspect of practice was learning how to fail? Professors Anna Mudde and...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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1:03:27
Brendan Mills on the Music Industry, Jazz, and Getting Inspired
Brendan, a classically trained saxophonist and composer, discusses how he transitioned from a love of bebop jazz to house music. He reflects on his perseverance and success as a multi-faceted musician, especially in view of the pandemic, when l...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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58:07
Ashna Sen on Re-Imagining Mathematics
Ashna Sen is a best-selling author and former academic in geophysics and mathematics. In her recent book, Re-Imagining Mathematics: Learning through the Magic of Nature, the Arts and Friendship, Sen explores our natural relation...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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1:07:29
Fake News and Fiction with Hannah Kim
What is the difference between fake news and fiction? While we tend to deplore fake news, we often enlist fiction in the forms of stories, films, and literature to provide entertainment as well as moral and aesthetic edification. And yet, we al...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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52:30
Geoffrey Moore on How We Can Be Ethical Without Religion
Geoffrey Moore is a best-selling author and internationally renowned consultant for high-tech business. He’s also a former academic in the humanities and has recently turned to reflecting on what evolution can teach us about being ethical in hi...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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1:04:53
