Category: Blog

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. All Things Are Full Of Gods is David Bentley Hart’s philosophical case for an idealist and theist understanding of consciousness, understood as an intertwining of mind, language and life. As he puts it: “Mind and life, and language… Continue reading All Things Are Full Of Gods by David Bentley Hart. A summary and discussion

An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Dante’s Divine Comedy, available via podcast feeds. “Circles of hell” has become commonplace in language. But what was Dante trying to show us when he wrote the inferno? What has been lost in translation, with this first canticle in Dante’s trilogy now part of a… Continue reading Is hell forever? The Inferno. Jason Baxter & Mark Vernon on Dante’s film noir

An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available on podcast feeds. No one knows. Repeated experiments have failed to locate where memories are stored in the brain, casting doubt on the conventional assumption that memories are stored as material traces. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake… Continue reading How does memory work? A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake

Read the talk below. Have a listen above. What Socrates taught is, of course, the wrong question. For, if there is one thing that Plato is quite clear about, it is that Socrates taught nothing. Something else is going on when you encounter this figure – which is probably why he is still alive in… Continue reading What did Socrates teach? On understanding Plato

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. What has poetry to do with philosophy? Why might poetry particularly matter now? How did figures from Plato to Einstein value the poetic voice? Valentin Gerlier and Mark Vernon return for another conversation about the manner in which… Continue reading To see a world in a grain of sand. Poetry & philosophy for a civilisation in distress

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, found via podcast feeds. Just Stop Oil and the imprisonment of Roger Hallam and others has provoked an outcry, on both sides of the dispute. And the heightened emotions have made me think. What’s going on here? What is at stake? I… Continue reading Hallam v the State, and free speech. The Just Stop Oil desecrations are calling to our humanity

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Randomness and luck, fate and providence. How do these facets of life relate to one another? Or is everything, actually, mechanically determined with synchronicities, say, being no more than coincidences? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert… Continue reading Chance and accidents, indeterminism and prayer. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Dante’s Divine Comedy, available via podcast feeds. Rowan Williams and Jesse Armstrong talked at The Idler festival, partly around the idea, caught in the expression, “boring as hell”. But is that right, they asked, when a drama like Succession so clearly appeals to us? The… Continue reading Is hell really boring? Rowan Williams & Jesse Armstrong, Dante & William Blake

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. At one level, Blake is clearly Christian. It’s even trivial to say so. And yet, his identification with Jesus is often sidelined, even written out, of accounts of the poet’s work today. There are many reasons for this… Continue reading Cultural Christianity kills. Taking Blake’s Christianity seriously. William on Jesus

An audio version of this thought can be found at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Three “trans” issues seem to be proxies for vision in contemporary politics, feeding the sense of despair and disillusion. Trans activism, which is not the same as trans pathology. Transhumanising, the techno-utopian dream of tomorrow. Transitioning… Continue reading Trans activism, transhumanising, economic transition. Proxies for vision & the lost soul of politics