Technology is taking on a mythic mantle as we look to our creations to supply us with a sense of belonging and purpose, but this is a category error because tech cannot honestly deliver on these promises. In this podcast Tom Chatfield explores some of the issues bound up with the ways we are thinking about technology. • Technology is not a bolt-on or option ... Show More
Jun 29
Douglas Davies - Death and the myth of the individual
What does death reveal about who we really are?This week I'm joined by Professor Douglas Davies, Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University and one of the world's leading scholars of death, ritual, and belief. His work spans decades and disciplines — f ... Show More
49m 48s
Jun 22
Anthea Lawson - Should we be trying to save the world?
What does it mean to try to change the world — without losing yourself, or everyone else, in the process?This week I'm joined by Anthea Lawson: activist, writer, former journalist, and campaigner who has spent three decades working on issues from the arms trade to financial secre ... Show More
52m 4s
Nov 2025
The Technological Soul: Alex Priou on Modernity, Ideology, and the Limits of Reason
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny speaks with Alex Priou, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Austin, about how technology and ideology shape the modern soul. From Machiavelli’s “dikes and dams” to Odysseus’s struggle ag ... Show More
1h 14m
Apr 2022
The Life We’re Looking For
In the quiet moments of our lives, we can all sense that our hearts long for something, though we often don’t know what that something is. We seek an answer in our phones, and while they can provide some sense of extension and fulfillment — a feeling of magic — the use of technol ... Show More
56 m
Aug 2024
How to make yourself more human in an automated world (from How to Be a Better Human)
Kevin Roose is a tech journalist who writes about the intersection of tech, business, and culture. In today’s episode from How to Be a Better Human, another podcast in the TED Audio Collective, he talks about the shift of technology’s role in our lives and how we can set up bound ... Show More
34m 23s
Nov 2020
#226 — The Price of Distraction
Sam Harris speaks with Adam Gazzaley about the way our technology is changing us. They discuss our limited ability to process information, our failures of multitasking, "top-down" vs "bottom-up" attention, self-interruptions and switching costs, anxiety, boredom, "digital medicin ... Show More
44m 18s