Episodes
-
This week leading neuroscientist Anil Seth, and spiritual leader and scholar Swami Sarvapriyananda, join host Lloyd Vogelman on the couch for an unfiltered conversation that digs into the personal side of the Principle of Charity. Can the inevitability of human suffering help us understand the existence of the ‘self’?
BIOS
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. 2021 saw the publication of his best selling book, Being You - A New Science of Consciousness.
Anil was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press),
Swami Sarvapriyananda is a Hindu monk belonging to the Ramakrishna Order and the Minister and spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of New York. He was in the first group of Hindu swamis to participate as a Nagral Fellow for the year 2019-20 at Harvard Divinity School. He is a well-known speaker on Vedanta teachings and his talks are extremely popular worldwide.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In this episode, we’re joined by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Anil Seth, and Advaita Vedanta spiritual leader and scholar, Swami Sarvapriyananda, to explore ideas around consciousness. When we die, does our consciousness die with us, or is our body just a vehicle, at best, for a consciousness that continues?
Most mainstream forms of western knowledge are based on an understanding that nothing exists outside of the physical world which follows the fundamental laws of physics. It posits that whatever we seek to understand, we need to do so using the tools of material reality.
It seems however, that this largely shared assumption around the nature of reality falls apart for many of us when we think about what happens after death. By far the majority of people living on this planet believe in a consciousness, or a related term like ‘soul’, that exists separate to our material body and can therefore continue after death.
This belief is of course the basic building block of pretty much all religions - and all these beliefs share an assumption that there’s a realm of disembodied mind, or spirit, which can continue after our body dies. In philosophy of mind, this belief is called ‘dualism’.
But for most hard-nosed scientists and philosophers, there’s something deeply problematic about dualism, of this separating out of conscious experience from the material world. Everything else can be explained using the tools of material reality. Why not consciousness?
BIOS
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. 2021 saw the publication of his best selling book, Being You - A New Science of Consciousness.
Anil was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press), a role he served from 2014-2024.
Swami Sarvapriyananda is a Hindu monk belonging to the Ramakrishna Order and the Minister and spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of New York. He was in the first group of Hindu swamis to participate as a Nagral Fellow for the year 2019-20 at Harvard Divinity School. He is a well-known speaker on Vedanta teachings and his talks are extremely popular worldwide.
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Missing episodes?
-
This week economist Gene Tunny and activist-scholar Anitra Nelson join host Lloyd Vogelman on the couch for an unfiltered conversation that digs into the personal side of the Principle of Charity. Can two diametrically opposed thinkers meet in the middle when it’s planetary survival that’s at stake?
BIOS
Gene Tunny is the Founder and Director of Adept Economics and the current President of the Queensland branch of the Economic Society of Australia. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer in economics at Griffith University and an Adjunct Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). He hosts the Economics Explored podcast. Gene is a former Treasury official who led teams in the Treasury’s budget and industry policy divisions.
Associate Professor Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar with the Informal Urbanism Research Hub (InfUr-) at University of Melbourne. Her books include Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy (2022) and Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018). She is co-author of Exploring Degrowth (2020) and co-editor of Post-Carbon Inclusion (2024), Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018) and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021). Anitra is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the joint International Society for Ecological Economics–Degrowth Conference, to be held 24-27 June 2025, in Oslo (Norway) and holds a PhD from LaTrobe University (Australia). See more – https://anitranelson.info/
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In this episode we’re joined by economist Gene Tunny and activist-scholar Anitra Nelson to ask whether degrowth can save the planet, or if we should stay the current economic course.
As recently as 150 years ago, pretty much everyone was living in what we’d now call extreme poverty. Thanks to capitalism, that rate is now just 9%, with a reduction of 38% in the last 30 years alone.
So what’s the problem? Well, for one thing, we’ve been plundering the natural world to fuel our growth, with little regard for its limitations. And it’s come back to bite us.
A regular economist might say – no problem. Let’s just price in the cost of climate pollution, and natural capital, recognising that we’ll need governments to take the lead. But there’s a growing challenge to market-centrism from a number of movements who share a belief that a bit more government regulation is not going to get to the root of the problem; our erroneous assumption that the natural world is limitless.
Degrowth argues that we can’t save the planet, or end the systemic ills of capitalism like inequality, using the tools that created the problem in the first place. That our addiction to growth needs to be cut at its roots. It argues for a paradigm shift which sees wellbeing decoupled from economic growth. It envisages a different way of being, of caring and relating to each other, of flourishing itself, that’s in harmony with our more noble instincts, unperverted by our current system of exploitation.
BIOS
Gene Tunny is the Founder and Director of Adept Economics and the current President of the Queensland branch of the Economic Society of Australia. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer in economics at Griffith University and an Adjunct Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). He hosts the Economics Explored podcast. Gene is a former Treasury official who led teams in the Treasury’s budget and industry policy divisions.
Associate Professor Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar with the Informal Urbanism Research Hub (InfUr-) at University of Melbourne. Her books include Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy (2022) and Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018). She is co-author of Exploring Degrowth (2020) and co-editor of Post-Carbon Inclusion (2024), Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018) and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021). Anitra is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the joint International Society for Ecological Economics–Degrowth Conference, to be held 24-27 June 2025, in Oslo (Norway) and holds a PhD from LaTrobe University (Australia). See more – https://anitranelson.info/
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Lloyd meets Annabel on the couch to ask some crunchy questions. Including but not limited to: What makes a good leader? And to what extent is journalism responsible for partisan attack politics?
Annabel Crabb
Annabel Crabb is an Australian political journalist, commentator and television host who is the ABC's chief online political writer. She has worked for Adelaide's The Advertiser, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald, and won a Walkley Award in 2009 for her Quarterly Essay, "Stop at Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull". She has written two books covering events within the Australian Labor Party, as well as The Wife Drought, a book about women's work–life balance, and two cookbooks with her friend and collaborator, Wendy Sharpe. She has hosted ABC television shows Kitchen Cabinet, The House, Back in Time for Dinner and Tomorrow Tonight. Annabel is the co-founder of the hit podcast Chat 10 Looks 3, which she co-hosts with Leigh Sales, now in its 10th year.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
The inimitable Annabel Crabb joins us for this special spotlight episode where we shine a light on the changing impact of journalism in a shifting media landscape. In a world where truth is increasingly contested, can the fourth estate still be trusted to deliver reliable information which brings us together into some sort of shared reality?
Or has our trust in journalism been irrevocably broken by the ‘democratisation’ of information - the relentless immediacy of self-selecting delivery platforms - as well as the unabating attacks of all political sides, who too often claim that it's just a front for power or an opinion, or even worse, a home for misinformation. How can we rebuild trust in the news, recognising its limitations while understanding its critical role in a well-functioning society?
As to disagree productively, we need a shared reality as our foundation.
Annabel Crabb
Annabel Crabb is an Australian political journalist, commentator and television host who is the ABC's chief online political writer. She has worked for Adelaide's The Advertiser, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald, and won a Walkley Award in 2009 for her Quarterly Essay, "Stop at Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull". She has written two books covering events within the Australian Labor Party, as well as The Wife Drought, a book about women's work–life balance, and two cookbooks with her friend and collaborator, Wendy Sharpe. She has hosted ABC television shows Kitchen Cabinet, The House, Back in Time for Dinner and Tomorrow Tonight. Annabel is the co-founder of the hit podcast Chat 10 Looks 3, which she co-hosts with Leigh Sales, now in its 10th year.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
This week billionaire philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen and philosopher Dr David Blunt join host Lloyd Vogelman on the couch for an unfiltered conversation that digs into the personal side of the Principle of Charity.
BIOS
Nicolas Berggruen is the Founder and Chairman of the Berggruen Institute and has spearheaded its growth, establishing its presence in Los Angeles, Beijing, and Venice. Focusing on great transformations in the human condition brought on by factors such as climate change, the restructuring of global economics and politics, and advances in science and technology, the Institute seeks to connect and develop ideas in the human sciences to the pursuit of practical improvements in governance across cultures, disciplines, and political boundaries.
Committed to visual arts and architecture, Berggruen sits on the boards of the Museum Berggruen, Berlin, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is a member of the International Councils for Tate, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; and of the President’s International Council for The J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles. Berggruen has also collaborated on projects with renowned architects including David Adjaye and Shigeru Ban.
Berggruen is co-author with Nathan Gardels of Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism (University of California Press) and Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century, a Financial Times Book of the Year, and is co-publisher of Noema Magazine. Nicolas Berggruen is Chairman of Berggruen Holdings, the investment vehicle of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust.
Gwilym David Blunt is a writer and commentator on global politics and philosophy.
David was born in Toronto, Canada.
He has his BA (hons) in Political Science and History from the University of Western Ontario for which he was awarded a university gold medal. He has taken his MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded a PhD in Political Science from University College London for his thesis Transnational Justice, Philanthropy, and Domination.
He was a Temporary University Lecturer and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where he was also a fellow of Corpus Christi College.
From 2015-2022 he was a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City, University of London.
He now lives and works in Sydney, Australia.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In this episode we’re joined by billionaire and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen and philosopher David Blunt, to consider the merits and pitfalls of charitable giving in a world rife with inequity.
Whether we think of inequality as simply an outcome of meritocracies that reward talent and ambition, or we’re suspicious of the system itself, there seems to be one thing we can all agree upon: it’s important for those who do disproportionately well to help those in need, beyond just paying their fair share of taxes.
In fact, charity is a fundamental virtue across any religion worth its name. And in the secular morality of liberal democracies, it’s axiomatic to say that we have a duty to those who are less fortunate. And while we might prefer that governments solve all social ills, we recognise the need for not-for-profits to fill gaps left unattended by public programs - a need bolstered by the recognition that private philanthropy may be more nimble, experimental and adaptive, and ultimately more effective than their cumbersome government cousins.
But like any virtue, philanthropy has been accused of casting a shadow - one that calls into question the whole endeavour itself. Philanthropy has become a $2.3 trillion USD per annum worldwide industry. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the largest private philanthropic foundation in the world, provides grants of over $8 billion per annum - nearly double the total foreign aid budget of Australia.Without the accountability that binds programs run by democratically elected governments, the biggest private foundations can have oversized influences on the choice of recipients, the issues and the approaches that are deemed most worthy. And because they often partner with governments, they can have a huge impact not just on how their own giving is distributed, but on the way taxpayer foreign aid is handed out.
This can leave the super rich, turned super philanthropists, with an ability to exert significant control over the lives of the needy, even stripping them, as some critics argue, of their basic agency and autonomy. There is also the question of the benefits that flow to philanthropists – either directly through related business interests, or in the way their power, influence and connections are enhanced through their philanthropic endeavours.
Nicolas Berggruen is the Founder and Chairman of the Berggruen Institute and has spearheaded its growth, establishing its presence in Los Angeles, Beijing, and Venice. Focusing on great transformations in the human condition brought on by factors such as climate change, the restructuring of global economics and politics, and advances in science and technology, the Institute seeks to connect and develop ideas in the human sciences to the pursuit of practical improvements in governance across cultures, disciplines, and political boundaries.
Gwilym David Blunt is a writer and commentator on global politics and philosophy. He has his BA (hons) in Political Science and History from the University of Western Ontario for which he was awarded a university gold medal. He has taken his MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded a PhD in Political Science from University College London for his thesis Transnational Justice, Philanthropy, and Domination. From 2015-2022 he was a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City, University of London.
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in, Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo, Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Do books have a future in the new digital world order? And can we engage productively with problematic cultural content?
This week luminary philosopher A.C Grayling and cultural content creator Mary McGillivray join host Lloyd Vogelman on the couch for an unfiltered conversation that digs into the personal side of the Principle of Charity.
A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil is the Principal of Northeastern University London and its Professor of Philosophy. He is a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas and essays. He was a columnist for The Guardian, The Times and Prospect Magazine. He has twice been a judge for The Booker Prize, in 2014 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of Humanists UK, Patron of the Defence Humanists, Honorary Associate of the Secular Society and a Patron of Dignity in Dying.
Mary McGillivray is a content creator making visual culture analysis accessible for the next generation. She holds a Masters degree in History of Art and Architecture from The University of Cambridge and is currently a PhD candidate at The University of Melbourne. Mary has worked with art galleries and cultural institutions across Australia, the UK and Europe to bring their collections to a massive online audience of highly engaged young viewers and she also appears on ABC Arts.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
This special episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival with Emile and Lloyd joined on stage by eminent philosopher A.C Grayling and digital content creator Mary McGillivray. Together they consider the merits and pitfalls of various forms of factual information distribution.
This is arguably the greatest time in the history of the world for reading, with literally the entirety of human knowledge available in books or in the online world of articles, blogs etc. If you want to develop a deep understanding of the world we live in, you just have to read. But with the rise of online video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, many people - young people in particular, are getting their factual content, not from reading, but from these alternative sources.
Research has shown that we are evolutionarily adapted to taking in knowledge audiovisually - we apparently process video images 60,000 times faster than text - and that reading, as a form of communication is complex and inefficient.
For a long time, reading was the only available technology to disseminate ideas beyond the campfire, fuelled most powerfully by the invention of the printing press. Now that we have the technology to create video content, which sits most naturally with the way we’re evolved to take in information, maybe we should thank reading for its help in bridging the techno- gap, and let our books collect dust as we finally return to the way we most naturally absorb knowledge about the world.
In this conversation we look at the tsunami of non-fiction video content that has taken so many young people’s attention away from the written word, and ask whether it’s a merciful release from the boring and inefficient world of reading, a release into a promised land of enlivened, engaging, memorable video content, or whether it signals a slow spiral into a shallow, unfocused, unimaginative and insubstantial way of understanding of the world we live in.
~~~~
You can be part of the discussion @PofCharity on Twitter, @PrincipleofCharity on Facebook and @PrincipleofCharityPodcast on Instagram.
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.
This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
With David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore.
In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.
David Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter.
In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK’s first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock’n’Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.
Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don’t Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David’s most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY - A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest book is THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In this episode we spend time with David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore and ask - Where do Jews really come from? Are they white or people of colour? And how should we deal with the ethnic diversity within Jewish populations, with differences between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews?
Questions around whether Jews are white or people of colour has become a fraught issue. In an ideal world (or the ideal for at least most of us in the multicultural liberal west,) it shouldn’t matter. However, race, ethnicity and politics have always been intertwined, and this question takes us to some surprising places in the battle of racial politics.
In particular, both the far right and now the progressive left are drawing a lot of meaning from the question ‘are Jews white or people of colour?’, with Jews seemingly on the wrong side of each of their equations. They are non-white for the far right, and quintessentially white for the progressive left.
To help answer this question and more, we have two guests with very different lenses. Our first, Simon Sebag Montefiore, is one of the world’s leading historians. He outlines the historical, archaeological and genetic consensus, and any counterviews, on where Jews come from and how Jewish populations have moved through the ages. We also have author, comedian and documentarian David Baddiel to help with the cultural and political significance of this question, and to explore whether Jews are privileged enough to be ‘deemed’ white, regardless of their Middle Eastern heritage.
BIOS
David Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter.
In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK’s first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock’n’Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.
Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don’t Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David’s most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY - A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest book is THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Featuring the wonderful Benjamin Law and Professor John Rasko AO. In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.
BIOS
Benjamin Law is an Australian writer and broadcaster. He’s the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia (2013), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101 (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). Benjamin is also an AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter. He’s the co-executive producer, co-creator and co-writer of the Netflix comedy-drama Wellmania (2023), playwright of Melbourne Theatre Company’s sold-out play Torch the Place (2020), and creator and co-writer of three seasons of the award-winning SBS/Hulu/Comedy Central Asia TV series The Family Law (2016–2019).
Benjamin works and lives on Gadigal Country, part of the Eora Nation (Sydney). He is a board member of Story Factory, committee member of the Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship and ambassador for Plan Australia, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, Victorian Pride Centre, Bridge for Asylum Seekers and the Pinnacle Foundation.
Professor John Rasko AO is internationally renowned as Australia’s pioneer in the clinical application of adult stem cells and gene therapies. As a clinical hematologist, pathologist and scientist with a renowned track record in gene and stem cell therapy, experimental haematology and molecular biology he has published over 220 academic papers. He is Deputy Director and leads the Program in Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at The Centenary Institute and is Head, Department of Cell & Molecular Therapies at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Danielle Harvey
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Featuring the wonderful Benjamin Law and Professor John Rasko AO
In this episode with the help of a cultural critic and a genetic expert we consider how to best make sense of our ancestral past and the dangers of over identifying with tribes alongside the very real opportunities science is giving us to change our genetics.
While we are all unique individuals, who of course come from families and a line of ancestors, in the end we are responsible for our own lives. While we may look to our ancestry for helpful hints as to how to live well, how much, if at all, should our heritage define or constrain us?
On a genetic level we have inherited some of the traits of our forebears, and even if, for example the colour of our skin, hair or facial features does express our genetic connection to race, that necessarily ‘mean’ something to us or should it be embraced? What about inherited genetic disorders, are there responsibilities around passing these on that need to be considered?
While knowing which ‘tribe’ we come from can offer a deep sense of belonging, even pride, for some the reminder of our heritage is irrelevant or even shameful or simply unhelpful. The deep psychological pull towards identifying as part of a ‘tribe’ can be particularly true if we are discriminated against because of your heritage and background. If you’re attacked because you’re black, Islamic, Asian, Jewish, deaf etc, you quickly find that you are part of that tribe, whether it’s personally important to you or not.
There are of course many dangers of over-identifying with tribes. Tribal thinking is always fraught with danger - any look at history will tell you that. These questions about whether our heritage matters, and what it means, have also become heavily politicised.
We make sense of our lives through the stories we tell ourselves. Many of us seek out our ancestry, our tribe, as a way of knowing who we are. Yet inherited genes from past individuals, randomly shaken up in their journey across generations and finally passed from our parents to us are just that – random. So how much should our ethnic heritage matter, and is it the most important part of our individual stories?
BIOS
Benjamin Law is an Australian writer and broadcaster. He’s the author of The Family Law (2010), and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). Benjamin is also an AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter. He’s the co-executive producer, co-creator and co-writer of the Netflix comedy-drama Wellmania (2023), playwright of Melbourne Theatre Company’s sold-out play Torch the Place (2020), and creator and co-writer of three seasons of the award-winning SBS/Hulu/Comedy Central Asia TV series The Family Law (2016–2019).
Professor John Rasko AO is internationally renowned as Australia’s pioneer in the clinical application of adult stem cells and gene therapies. As a clinical hematologist, pathologist and scientist he has published over 220 academic papers. He is Deputy Director and leads the Program in Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at The Centenary Institute and is Head, Department of Cell & Molecular Therapies at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.
BIOS
Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk. His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.
John Humphreys is the Chief Economist at The Australian Taxpayers' Alliance. He has worked previously as a policy analyst for the Australian Treasury. John was the founder of the Australian Libertarian Society, the Liberal Democratic Party (now called "Libertarian Party"), and the Friedman Conference. He also ran a research centre and education charity in Cambodia for many years, for which he was awarded a knighthood in 2016.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Danielle Harvey
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In this episode we contrast two very different ways of seeing the world — Libertarianism and Indigenous Ways, to consider which model is better for society.
Libertarianism, with a focus on the version of this political philosophy that came about in the second half of the 20th century, usually associated with the centre right, does in fact cut across traditional left /right lines. It sees our individual liberty, our freedom as the most important political value. It's a political philosophy that values civil liberties, competitive markets, private property and free speech. It sees the government as a poor substitute for voluntary community and dislikes government intervention. Not just because governments may be corrupt or inefficient, but because of the real threat of force that lies at the base of all laws to coerce us to do what we may not want to do. Libertarianism sits on the extreme, but still well within a general Western enlightenment worldview with other pillars like capitalism and free functioning markets. One could say that the purpose that sits behind this entire worldview is the flourishing of the individual.
In contrast to libertarianism we consider Indigenous Australian knowledge systems, which echo many First Nations’ ways of seeing the world. Here the individual is just one node in a hugely complex system of relationships that extend to the family, to community, to ancestors, to future generations, to animals and to the land — which is also seen to be alive and sentient — and to the creation stories themselves. While this system recognises we have individual desires and we should honour our individuality, it is driven by prioritising our relationships and obligations to all those groups mentioned above with an overarching sense of custodianship for a story that started in creation and will continue long after we are gone.
There are some interesting crossovers between the two worldviews, such as a distrust of centralised top-down systems of control and a belief in the power of emergent systems that come from the web of human interactions, however these are two very different ways of seeing the role of the individual and their relationships and responsibilities in and to society.
This episode contains some coarse language.
BIOS
Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk. His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.
John Humphreys is the Chief Economist at The Australian Taxpayers' Alliance. He has worked previously as a policy analyst for the Australian Treasury. John was the founder of the Australian Libertarian Society, the Liberal Democratic Party (now called "Libertarian Party"), and the Friedman Conference. He also ran a research centre and education charity in Cambodia for many years, for which he was awarded a knighthood in 2016.
CREDITS
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X
This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Danielle Harvey
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.
Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts On Being, which has won the highest honors in broadcast, Internet and podcasting. Her On Being Project is evolving to meet the callings of the post-2020 world — and to accompany the generative people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive. Krista grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, worked as a young journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin, and later received a Master of Divinity from Yale. Her most recent book is Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.
This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
On this special Spotlight episode the US broadcaster/podcaster/writer Krista Tippett joins Emile and Lloyd to discuss wisdom and meaning.
Krista’s On Being radio show and podcast has enriched the lives of its many millions of listeners over decades as has her best-selling book Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
As host Emile Sherman said of Krista, “Our aim on the podcast is to have true expert guests, guests who are often scholars, academics, or advocates steeped in the knowledge of a particular issue and even our discussions around the principle of charity, about how to talk with others whose views we disagree with, are often evidence based. We draw on the latest research in psychology and other disciplines to teach us how to most effectively engage with others, to seek the truth rather than win the fight.
“In the extraordinary Krista Tippett we have a guest who’s less interested in knowledge, than in mystery, less focused on truth than on meaning and less obsessed with reason than with resonance.It’s a privilege to see how her worldview can be applied to the principle of charity, to the way we approach, listen to and interact with others.”
Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts On Being, which has won the highest honors in broadcast, Internet and podcasting. Her On Being Project is evolving to meet the callings of the post-2020 world — and to accompany the generative people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive. Krista grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, worked as a young journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin, and later received a Master of Divinity from Yale. Her most recent book is Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.
This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.
Guests
Tigress Osborn (she/her) is a fat rights advocate and Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), the world’s oldest documented organization working towards Equality at Every Size. She is a co-founding leader of the Campaign for Size Freedom, which supports passing legislation to outlaw size discrimination. Tigress is a two-time women's college graduate with degrees in Africana Studies (Smith) and English (Mills). She is an intersectional feminist teacher and writer whose professional background as a youth empowerment leader and DEI educator has informed her fat liberation activism since 2008. She has been featured in USA Today, Newsweek, and the cover of the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly; heard on BBC AntiSocial, Burnt Toast, and NPR; and seen on ABC News, NewsNation and Free Speech TV’s Feminism Today.
Helen Pluckrose is a liberal humanist and political and cultural writer and commentator. Her writing has focused on the evolution of postmodern thought into contemporary Critical Social Justice activism which she regards as counterproductive to the goal of genuine social justice. Helen is best known for participation in the Grievance Studies Affair, co-authoring Cynical Theories and the foundation of the organisation Counterweight to support workers at risk of cancellation for not supporting Critical Social Justice theories. She mostly just wants people to value evidence-based knowledge and consistently liberal ethics.
Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.
This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.
Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in
Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.
This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey
Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram
Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Show more
