Episodes
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Author · Historian · Curator
Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics · The Eyelid ·
Marvellous Utopia
I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because
utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination
is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two,
reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous. -
Author · Historian · Curator
Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics · The Eyelid ·
Marvellous Utopia
I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because
utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination
is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two,
reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous. -
Missing episodes?
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Can silence be painted? How can artists capture interior states, solitude,
and the passing of time? How are the homes we live in a reflection of the
people who inhabit them? How can we read a painting to piece together the
life of the artist? -
Oscar & Emmy-winning Director
Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge · A Girl in the River
Forthcoming Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley
As a filmmaker, I've always made films about extraordinary women whose
lives are faced with extenuating circumstances who've had adversity thrown
at them and who've risen to the occasion. And when I began to look at
Diane's story, for me, Diane is a fashion designer, but she's so much more.
Her central ethos is woman before fashion, and we felt it was very
important to take that ethos and weave it into the spine of our film, and
make it about the woman. -
Editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness · Cambridge University
Press’ Elements in Philosophy of Mind
Author of Mind and Supermind · Consciousness
What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully
part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into
little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real
action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more
engaged with the world. It's not all happening in some private mental
world. It's happening in our engagement with the shared world, and that
seems to me a vision that I find much more uplifting, comforting, and
rewarding. -
Asst. Professor in Philosophy of AI · Macquarie University
I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI
technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of
technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that
might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms
that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I
might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a
concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist
or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as
researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false
citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might
result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That
would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor
using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda
to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium
term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be
language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that
is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get
better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems
might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people
have been trying to mitigate these potential harm -
Asst. Professor in Philosophy of AI · Macquarie University
I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI
technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of
technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that
might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms
that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I
might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a
concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist
or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as
researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false
citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might
result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That
would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor
using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda
to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium
term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be
language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that
is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get
better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems
might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people
have been trying to mitigate these potential harm -
Author of The Culmination: Heidegger, German Idealism, and the Fate of
Philosophy
Modernism as a Philosophical Problem · Hegel’s Idealism
Philosophy is both an academic discipline and also something that everybody
does. Everybody has to have reflective views about what's significant. They
also have to justify to themselves why it's significant or important. The
nature of justice itself, and the various opinions that have been written
about in philosophy about justice, can get to a very high level. So there's
this unusual connection between philosophy and human life. We've inherited
from the middle ages, this incredible tradition that's now developed into a
chance for young people to spend four or five years, in a way, released
from the pressures of life. The idea to pursue your ideas a little further
in these four years you have, exempt from the pressures of social life,
allows philosophy to have a kind of position unique in the academy. In
confronting what the best minds in the history of the world have had to say
about these issues, the hope is that they provide for the people who are
privileged enough to confront philosophy a better and more thoughtful
approach to these fundamental questions that everybody has to confront. -
Electronic Musician · Fmr. Computational Biologist
As technology becomes more dominant, the arts become ever more important
for us to stay in touch the things that the sciences can't tackle. What
it's actually like to be a person? What's actually important? We can have
this endless progress inside this capitalist machine for greater wealth and
longer life and more happiness, according to some metric. Or we can try and
quantify society and push it forward. Ultimately, we all have to decide
what's important to us as humans, and we need the arts to help with that.
So, I think what's important really is just exposing ourselves to as many
different ideas as we can, being open-minded, and trying to learn about all
facets of life so that we can understand each other as well. And the arts
is an essential part of that. -
Electronic Musician · Fmr. Computational Biologist
As technology becomes more dominant, the arts become ever more important
for us to stay in touch the things that the sciences can't tackle. What
it's actually like to be a person? What's actually important? We can have
this endless progress inside this capitalist machine for greater wealth and
longer life and more happiness, according to some metric. Or we can try and
quantify society and push it forward. Ultimately, we all have to decide
what's important to us as humans, and we need the arts to help with that.
So, I think what's important really is just exposing ourselves to as many
different ideas as we can, being open-minded, and trying to learn about all
facets of life so that we can understand each other as well. And the arts
is an essential part of that. -
President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue
Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan
Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And
it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the
Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition
for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of
self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment. -
President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue
Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan
Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And
it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the
Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition
for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of
self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment. -
Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing ·
University of Ferrara
Co-editor of Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories
and Policies
The humanities are all about representing the world, while the sciences are
all about knowing the world. But I believe the roles are deeply
intertwined, and that literature, the humanities, philosophy, history, and
the arts are all ways of knowing the world. They do exactly the same thing
in our understanding of the world. And it is really important to try to put
these things together to bring people closer in talking to each other. -
Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing ·
University of Ferrara
Co-editor of Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories
and Policies
The humanities are all about representing the world, while the sciences are
all about knowing the world. But I believe the roles are deeply
intertwined, and that literature, the humanities, philosophy, history, and
the arts are all ways of knowing the world. They do exactly the same thing
in our understanding of the world. And it is really important to try to put
these things together to bring people closer in talking to each other. -
Actress · Artist · Director · Producer · Writer
House M.D. · Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce · Little Bird
I have always thrown myself into everything, and that includes terrible
things, because I want to have the whole experience. Even if I know it's
going to hurt for better or for worse, that has been how I've lived my
life. And so it's given me a lot of information and allowed me to play a
lot of different roles and understand a lot of different points of view. I
think part of the beauty of being in a long-running television show is
that, in season one, you're playing the role they wrote. By season two,
they're writing the person you're playing. You start to build your voice,
and they start to merge, and so by the time you get to season three, you're
much more like full human beings having this dialogue. -
Actress · Artist · Director · Producer · Writer
House M.D. · Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce · Little Bird
I have always thrown myself into everything, and that includes terrible
things, because I want to have the whole experience. Even if I know it's
going to hurt for better or for worse, that has been how I've lived my
life. And so it's given me a lot of information and allowed me to play a
lot of different roles and understand a lot of different points of view. I
think part of the beauty of being in a long-running television show is
that, in season one, you're playing the role they wrote. By season two,
they're writing the person you're playing. You start to build your voice,
and they start to merge, and so by the time you get to season three, you're
much more like full human beings having this dialogue. -
Eisner Award-nominated Comic Book Author KYLE HIGGINS
Emmy-nominated Producer KARINA MANASHIL & KID CUDI on the Making of Moon
Man
So, as we started talking and going through what this could look like. What
a new black superhero in 2024 could look like? What would the threats be?
What the world might look like if it's maybe not even five minutes in the
future? I would argue it's like two and a half minutes in the future. And
then what kind of really complex, emotionally layered journey we could put
this character through? -
Eisner Award-nominated Comic Book Author KYLE HIGGINS
Emmy-nominated Producer KARINA MANASHIL & KID CUDI on the Making of Moon
Man
So, as we started talking and going through what this could look like. What
a new black superhero in 2024 could look like? What would the threats be?
What the world might look like if it's maybe not even five minutes in the
future? I would argue it's like two and a half minutes in the future. And
then what kind of really complex, emotionally layered journey we could put
this character through? -
Artist
What are you trying to do with the portrait? On a basic level, you're
trying to communicate something about the essence of who someone is. You're
trying to figure out who they are, not necessarily who they present
themselves as. The two things can quite often be different. And then,
you're trying to find ways of showing that through their face, their
posture, or any other context. My instinct is always to try to reduce down
to the essential elements. We read faces. It's obviously very, very deep in
our DNA, really our survival instinct. We are programmed to read faces in a
very fine-tuned way.
