Philosopher"s Zone

0:34:49

02 | Unsteady State | Who owns Antarctica?

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/10/07

What can Antarctica teach us about statehood and sovereignty?The continent has no government, no citizens, no permanent human population. Its native inhabitants are mostly seals and penguins who, as far as we know, take little interest in politics.But according to this week's guest, Antarctica offers a remarkable political experiment, one that challenges some of our most basic assumptions about territory and political community.Since the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961,

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1:10:05

The Unsteady State part 1: Politics and the good life

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/09/30

First episode in a five-part series. Liberal democratic theory has traditionally held that it's up to individual citizens to decide for themselves what constitutes the good life, and that the state should have nothing to say on the matter. But increasingly, a number of states around the world are taking it upon themselves to decide what the good life means, and to offer various combinations of carrot and stick in getting their citizens to fall into line. And while many liberals

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0:45:10

Technology and the lure of ancient Athens

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/09/23

One of the more utopian promises of technology has always been that it will free us from the necessity of work - but not having to work poses its own problems. What will we do instead? how will we make money? and what might a leisure-oriented society look like? Technophiles - from the early cybernetics enthusiasts to today's AI promoters - have looked to ancient Athens as an example of a society where citizens were free to engage in culture, reflection and political participation

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0:38:02

Sympathy, himpathy and feminism

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/09/16

Australian feminist philosopher Kate Manne memorably coined the term "himpathy" to describe what happens when a man commits a crime against a woman and finds himself the object of disproportionate sympathy. But as useful as this description is, the psychological mechanism behind himpathy remains unexplored in Manne's account. To remedy this, we're turning this week to Catharine Macaulay, a fascinating late 18th century English philosopher whose work on sympathy provides some

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0:30:54

Signal, noise and interpersonal conflict

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/09/09

If someone's behaving badly, it can be hard to know how much of their behaviour stems from a deep character flaw, and how much of it is incidental - the stuff we might charitably filter out as unreflective of their true self. And the same goes for achievement: how much credit for a Nobel prize should go to the person themselves, and how much to their fortunate circumstances, or to the people who helped them? This week we're asking if philosophy can help us discern the signal from

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0:38:26

Feminism, generosity and cross-cultural support

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/09/02

Western feminists often express support for women in Muslim majority countries, but sometimes that support is couched in the language of pity, as though Muslim women were held captive by their religion and culture, and in need of 'rescue'. This week, a conversation about how to offer cross-cultural support without paternalism, and how the insight of Simone de Beauvoir can illuminate the issue.Guest: Sameema Zahra, psychotherapist and Lecturer in Philosophy, Australian Catholic

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0:36:33

Getting angry at the system

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/08/26

If I pick up a tree branch and smash your window with it, you're going to be angry, and your anger will rightly be directed at me. But if a tree branch smashes your windscreen during a cyclone whose intensity has been caused by global warming, you're still going to be angry — but who or what exactly should you be angry with? This week, a conversation about responsibility for systemic injustice.Guest: Stephanie Collins, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Monash University

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0:45:54

Who's afraid of Cultural Marxism?

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/08/19

Cultural Marxism is many things to many people — at one end of the political spectrum, it's the hidden force behind political correctness, identity politics and 'wokeness', while at the other end it's a shopworn conspiracy theory that explains nothing much at all. So what is Cultural Marxism? Did a group of Marxist intellectuals in the mid-20th century really set out to reshape Western culture? And if they did, how convincingly does their story stack up as a tale of secret plots

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0:42:05

Habermas and the retreat of reason

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/08/12

The great German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who died in March, wrote in his later works about what he called Unheimlichkeit — roughly translated as "the unease of the times" — to describe the global retreat of liberal democracy, the fraying of the rules-based international order, and the increasing polarisation and hostility of public discourse. And yet, to the end he defended Enlightenment reason and the utility of rational debate. In a world that seems to be losing its

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0:32:49

Visual art as philosophy

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/08/05

When it comes to the ideal philosophical medium, most of us would identify the written word - or maybe the spoken word, if we're fans of Socratic dialogue - and this is because for centuries, philosophy has been a linguistic practice. But this week we're arguing that visual art can be philosophy, and looking at how visual art can represent concepts in ways that haven't traditionally been recognised by Western epistemic traditions.Guest: Taylor-Jai McAlister, clinical psychologist

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0:32:01

How smart are machines, anyway?

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/07/30

Ever since AI was founded in the 1950s, people have talked and written about 'intelligence' as though we all broadly agree on what that word means. But there's considerable debate on that score, and among the debaters are philosophers - like this week's guest - who question the degree to which machines can be said to be intelligent at all, and think that claims of intelligence can all too easily deflect attention from the real ethical issues around AI.Guest: Tim Crane, Professor of

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0:36:19

Hegel: The philosopher with the (one) big idea

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/07/23

GWF Hegel (1770-1831) wanted to construct nothing less than a complete explanation of reality - nature, consciousness, art, history, politics, the lot - based on a single self-explanatory idea. Whether or not he succeeded is an interesting question (spoiler: he didn't), but more interesting is the question of why philosophy has become so much less ambitious since then, and what we can learn from Hegel today.

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0:28:58

Eco-grief and environmental loss

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/07/16

Philosophers have traditionally thought of grief as something that attaches to immediate loss - the death of a loved one, something terrible that's happened to us personally. But as the environmental crisis continues to wreak havoc on human and non-human lives, the philosophy of emotions needs a concept that captures a response to loss that perhaps hasn't happened yet, or loss that affects other people we may never meet: eco-grief.

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0:32:37

Colonising space

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/07/09

There's something about space that's always captured the human imagination, but what happens when space begins to capture the imagination of billionaire tech entrepreneurs? In the past, we've visited space for scientific purposes, but now the grand vision is colonisation, permanent human settlement on the Moon, Mars and even further afield, with such ventures along the way as asteroid mining, which promises to deliver untold riches. The technical challenges are immense - as are the

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0:32:57

Can pregnancy be a job? the ethics of commercial...

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/07/02

Commercial surrogacy - the practice of paying someone to gestate your child and then hand it over when it's born - is banned in Australia, but it has its supporters. Defenders of commercial surrogacy argue that it should be legal for someone to receive payment for the labour of carrying a child, on the grounds that surrogacy constitutes a legitimate form of work. But are there some things that just shouldn't be for sale? This week we're testing the arguments.

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0:35:30

Belief, emotion and trust

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/06/24

The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this account, things like delusion and religious belief are "edge cases", exceptions that prove the rule. But this week we're considering not only that belief may be closely tied to emotion, but that it may actually be a form of emotion itself.

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0:34:02

Communication in an age of crisis

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/06/16

Collins Dictionary made "permacrisis" their word of the year in 2022 - a prescient choice because since then, the crises have just kept coming. Permacrisis is forcing us to take a close look at the way we communicate, because while free public discourse is one of the cornerstones of democracy, there's something about the nature of today's public discourse that fuels crisis, and keeps us frozen in a fight-or-flight posture.

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0:37:35

Can sport survive AI?

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/06/11

Elite sport is traditionally a celebration of the human, but for how much longer? We watch in awe as athletes perform feats of skill, strength and endurance, and experience the high drama of triumph and defeat - but it's all on a human scale, or at least it has been until now. Sport and technology have always been intertwined, but with the advent of AI, this week we're wondering if the human element of sport - the physical dimension, but also the ethical - might be under threat

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0:36:00

Purity, filth and 'promiscuous defecators': why we're...

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/06/04

Why are we so repelled yet fascinated by bodily waste? Today we're talking purity, pollution, colonial sanitation regimes, medicine and public health, and how they've been shaped by our deeply ambivalent attitudes to the stuff we all produce (ideally) every day, but rarely think about deeply.

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0:28:58

Bad faith and 'just asking questions'

Philosopher"s Zone ·

2026/05/27

There's a certain kind of question that raises suspicion as to the motives of the person asking it. 'Was the Holocaust really as bad as historians have made out?' 'Is there really a scientific consensus on climate change?' 'How do we now for sure that vaccines aren't harmful?' These kinds of questions can be read on the surface as innocent enquiry, but sometimes they can function as a kind of epistemic sabotage, casting doubt on settled issues and seeking to undermine confidence in

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