Think global
Delighted to have been the guest on ABC’s The Philosopher’s Zone with David Rutledge. Recorded while in Brisbane for an insanely brief visit. I think I was coping with the jet-lag at the time… Listen or download here.
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Free thinking
“Julian Baggini, Tiffany Watt Smith and Christopher Harding join Rana Mitter to talk about philosophical traditions around the world, modern Japanese history and Schadenfreude.” Listen again to this episode of BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking.
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The Wisdom of Ramen
In Japan, thought and action, philosophy and life, are more intimately connected than most other places. Philosophy is largely an attempt to articulate and develop insights into how to live and who we are that are embedded in practices more than they are rooted in theories. The documentaries Ramen Heads and Jiro Dreams of Sushi show what much of this philosophy means more eloquently than can be straightforwardly said.
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Our kinder politics
I suggest looking at three ways of thinking prominent in non-western philosophies that might alert us to aspects of our own that have been squeezed too much into the background and could benefit from being given more attention. Once we do that, we can recalibrate, putting more emphasis on the values that have been neglected and less on those that have come to carry too much weight. If that helps us to a more compassionate, less adversarial politics, all the better.
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Why it’s impossible to measure happiness
No one but a misery guts wants to stop people being happy, but the fundamental problem with well-being indices is that all the measures are quantitative, ranking how you feel on a one-to-10 scale, whereas the most important variations are qualitative.
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