The Philosopher & The News

On January 3rd, 2026 the United States of America military, under orders from Donald Trump, captured and kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. Despite Maduro’s and Flores’ indictments from the US Justice Department, accusing them of narco-terrorism conspiracy, this act was, according to many observers, a clear violation of international law. The Trump administration didn’t seem to care too much about that. Despite some vague attempts to provide a legal justification for its actions, Stephen Miller, The White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said he had little regard for what he termed “international niceties”: “We live in a world, in the real world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power…These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”These words echo how a particular philosophy of international relations called “realism” has been understanding the world, long before Donald Trump came to office. For realists, what the US did in Venezuela is not too different to what the US has always done (not just in South America, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan), only this time any pretence of morality or legality has been, more or less, dropped, in favour of brandishing brute force and naked self-interest.  So, was international law always just a thin veil of justification for the exercise of brute force? Or are Trump’s actions a departure from a more civilised world in which even the most powerful states were constrained by international legal norms. Linda Kinstler is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a scholar of legal and intellectual history. Her first book, Come to This Court & Cry (Public Affairs, 2022) won a Whiting Award in Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize for Jewish Literature. She is also a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and frequently writes for the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her essay The Theory That Gives Trump a Blank Check for Aggression will form the basis of our conversation.If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 politics. From seeing Hamas’ October 7 th attacks as an inevitable and even justified result of Israel’s colonial oppression, to celebrating the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, and the gleeful reaction of some to the recent assassination of far right activist Charlie Kirk, the left can be seen to tolerate or even endorse political violence by appeals to philosophers like Franz Fanon, without fully appreciating the political consequences of such violence. So, when is political violence justified, if ever? What alternatives are there when democratic politics and non-violent resistance fail? And is the appeal to violence restricting the left’s political vision?Jacob Abolafia is a political theorist who writes on the history of political thought and critical theory, and an anti-occupation activist in Israel. He teaches philosophy at Ben-Guirion University of the Negev. He is the author of the book The Prison Before the Panopticon: Incarceration in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy. His essay Violence and the Left was recently published in The Point magazine.If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

 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, even if strategically possible? And how does the complicated history and real-life politics of a region affect abstract philosophical arguments about justice? This interview is based on a piece in The Philosopher magazine, entitled  When Liberation Becomes Subjugation: The Moral Paradox of Regime Change in IranHossein Dabbagh is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London and an affiliated member of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education His work spans practical ethics, political philosophy, and Middle Eastern affairs, with a particular focus on Islamic political theology. He regularly contributes to public philosophy, writing on secularism and theocratic rule in Iran for Aeon, The Conversation, and other platforms, and has appeared on the BBC, combining philosophical analysis with regional expertise. Patrick Hassan is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Struggle Against Pessimism (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and the editor of Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy (Routledge, 2021), as well as a range of peer-reviewed articles in ethics, aesthetics, and environmental and political philosophy.If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 ideological tension between the Silicon Valley vision of politics and that of the likes of Steve Bannon? What is the level of influence of the people of Peter Tiel, who see democracy as disposable, on Trump's Government? And does Trump's Big Beautiful Bill reveal that the dominant ideology in Trump's government is still an old-fashioned version of "cut taxes and welfare"? Yascha Mounk is an Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Persuasion, an online magazine devoted to the defence of liberalism. He is the author of many books, most recently The Identity Trap - A story of ideas and power in our time. And the host of the excellent podcast The Good Fight. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 kind of isolationism in foreign policy by removing US military support for Ukraine. Trump had gone on to implement many of those policies. These are the hallmarks of a closed society, something resembling a tribe, caring for nothing but itself, “on the alert for attack or defence” as Bergson said. This episode revisits an old idea of an Open society, coined by Karl Popper in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies. Jason Alexander McKenzie is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and has written a (free access) book entitled The Open Society As An Enemy published by LSE Press, in which he defense  the open society at a time when it's under great duress. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 Columbia University. This attack on universities seems in line with common authoritarian tactics that seek to undermine a country’s institutions of knowledge production, or at the very least submit them to the political will of those in power. But are universities also partly responsible for ending up in this situation? Richard Rorty was already warning in the 1990s of the resentment that some voters would soon feel towards “post-modernist professors” and college graduates who were “dictating manners” to the rest of society. Did universities allow political ideology to contaminate their project of open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge and truth? Did academia become too focussed on which canonical figures had to be “cancelled”?  And are university professors too removed from the rest of society to be able to understand and engage with the ideas that go beyond their ideological comfort zone?Sasha Mudd is a philosopher, writer, and columnist who examines the moral dilemmas at the core of today’s most pressing social challenges. Drawing on 18th- and 19th-century thought, she brings fresh perspectives to issues such as AI, climate change, immigration, and the erosion of democratic norms. She is an Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, a visiting professor at the University of Southampton, and the Philosopher-at-Large for Prospect Magazine, where she writes a monthly column.If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 one crisis going on simultaneously. But with its origins in Ancient Greek medicin, what does the term "crisis" really mean today? How can philosophy help us understand the different types of crisis, from the arena of science to that of politics? And what kind of political crisis yields a President like Donald Trump? This conversation took place on the day of the US election. Miguel de Beistegui is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He is a philosopher with a broad range of interests from ontology and aesthetics to ethics and political philosophy. He has written monographs on Heidegger, Deleuze, Proust, Chillida, and Lacan. His forthcoming book, A Philosophy of Crisis, aims to construct a rigorous concept of crisis.If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 of the past? Are genetics all that matters in the identity of a species? And even if it is practically possible to bring back to life species that have gone extinct - is it a good idea? Are we are morally obliged to bring lost species back to life if we can, especially if humans were responsible in their extinction? Or would such a practices risk "Jurasic Park"-like scenarios and our limited resources for environmental conservation are best channelled in preserving existing species?Jay Odenbaugh is the James F. Miller Professor of Humanities at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, USA.  His research is in the philosophy of science, especially ecology and conservation biology, and environmental philosophy. He is the author of the book Ecological Models (Cambridge University Press)  and has written about the ethics and aesthetics of species conservation and de-extinction. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 to get elected once again using the rhetorical tricks that the Sophists used to undo Athenian democracy? Or does our era of memes, Twitter and fake news mean that demagogue’s methods have changed?  Robin Reames is associate professor of English and Culberston chair at IU Blumington, specializing in rhetorical theory and the history of ideas. Her latest book is The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times (Basic Books, 2024)If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

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 our elevation of human understanding to something that machines like Chat GPT can’t reach is mere narcissism, or worse, a philosophical mistake? What if, what current AI can do isn’t really possible without some robust level of understanding?  Reuben Cohn- Gordon is an AI researcher at the Iniversity of British Columbia and UC Berkeley, and recently wrote an article entitled GPT’s very Inhuman Mind for Noema magazine, in which he argues against the standard critique of large language models like Chat GPT, namely that they lack any form of intelligence and understanding. Reuben uses a number of ideas from 20th century philosophy in approaching this, as well as intriguing metaphors from Classic Roman literature.  If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride