Challenging Time

Dr. Aaron Thierry has a background ecological scientist, science communicator and environmental campaigner. He received his original PhD in Ecology from the University of Sheffield and went on to a position as a postdoc on a project researching climate feedbacks in the Arctic. Aaron subsequently left academia to focus his efforts on environmental activism and become a youth campaign coach working...

Dr. Yogi Hale Hendlin is an environmental philosopher and public health scientist. Hendlin is assistant professor at the Erasmus School of Philosophy, and core faculy of the Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity Initiative at Erasmus University Rotterdam, as well as research associate in the Environmental Health Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco. Hendlin's research has been publ...

Ernst-Jan Kuiper obtained his Master's degree in Climate Physics In 2014, after which he focused on research into the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet. After 5 years, including 6 weeks of fieldwork on the Greenland ice sheet, he obtained his doctorate (PhD) in 2019. Ernst-Jan currently works at Milieudefensie on the appeal against oil giant Shell . He also writes articles about climate change f...

Lee McIntyre is a philosopher and a scholar of science denial. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a recent Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. Lee is the author of many books for MIT Press, I will just mention three now.   In The Scientific Attitude (2019), Lee argues that we can best understand what is distinctive about...

Jeanne Proust  has studied Humanities, Philosophy and Visual Arts in Bordeaux, Berlin, and Paris. She has been teaching Philosophy for the last 12 years in the US. Her PhD dissertation (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) focused on the pathologies of the willpower, both in philosophical and psychological perspectives, but her interests are wide: among many fields, she does research in Ethics, P...

Rani Lill Anjum is a philosopher at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences ( NMBU ), working in philosophy of science and medicine. She leads the Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science ( NMBU CAPS ), together with  Yevgeniya Tomkiv . Her expertise is in the philosophy of causality, complexity, probability and risk, and other philosophical biases in science that influence choice of theory, met...

Our guide through Plato's Cave and medical education is Lara Varpio. Dr. Lara Varpio is Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Philadelphia and the Co-Director of Research in Medical Education at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She started these positions in 2022, after serving for 9 years at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences...

Our mountain guide through Plato's Cave and the philosophy of Michel Serres is Aldo Houterman. Aldo teaches Medical Ethics and Philosophy at the Amsterdam University Medical Center and is doing his PhD research at the ESPRIT center for sports, integrity and transition at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His book ' We are our body ' is about the meaning of the body, sports and...

Chris Julien mixes research and practice in the fields of public innovation, theory and culture, with a focus on ecology and epistemology. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Utrecht university that combines new materialisms and eco-thinking to constitute a field of so-called ‘ecological governance’. Furthermore, he is active in Extinction Rebellion and XR Nieuwsmedia and works on urban ecology and...

Mike Huiskes is professor of Language and Social Interaction at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands . His work focuses on social interaction as an embodied phenomenon in both mundane and professional settings. His studies topics like intersubjectivity, epistemics and action coordination. Currently, his work focuses on learning and teaching as action coordination in various professional...

Hannah Prins is a climate activist and studies criminal law and international law in Amsterdam. She is active in the Extinction Rebellion Legal Circle and is passionate about protecting the right to demonstration.   Sources: Merchants of Doubt documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ii9zGFDtc   Oreskes, Naomi; Conway, Erik M. (2010). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured...

If the idea in society about how science works does not match how it actually works, how can society provide the optimal conditions for science?   Vincent Icke is Professor of theoretical Astrophysics at  Leiden University , where he founded the Astronomy Theory Group, and Professor of Cosmology at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. His main research interests are cosmology, the relat...

The book Applied Philosophy for Health Professions Education by Megan Brown, Mario Veen and Gabrielle Finn considers the practical application of philosophical concepts to teaching, learning, and research, covers philosophical concepts such as Stoicism and Practical Wisdom, and includes practice points for educators within each chapter of the book. *To skip to a specific presentation, scroll down...

We discuss World-Centered Education by Gert Biesta. Gert Biesta ( gertbiesta.com/ ) is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy , Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport , University of Edinburgh, UK, where he is also deputy head of the Institute for Education, Teaching and...

We discuss Image-Thinking: Artmaking as Cultural Analysis by Mieke Bal. Mieke ( www.miekebal.org ) started as a literary scholar. Her commitment is to interdisciplinary approaches to cultural artifacts and their potential effects. She focuses on gender, migratory culture, psychoanalysis, and the critique of capitalism. Mieke published 45 books and curated many exhibitions. She directed films and d...

Marcia Bjornerud is Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies at  Lawrence University  in Appleton. Her research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain-building, and she combines field-based studies of bedrock geology with quantitative models of rock mechanics. Marcia was named Outstanding Educator in 2011 by the Association of Women Geoscientists. She is the author of   Reading t...

Jeanne Proust has studied Humanities, Philosophy and Visual Arts in Bordeaux, Berlin, and Paris. She has been teaching Philosophy for the last 12 years in the US. Her PhD dissertation (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) focused on the pathologies of the willpower, both in philosophical and psychological perspectives, but her interests are wide: among many fields, she does research in Ethics, Ph...

Camillo is a medical doctor from South Africa. Currently he works as a senior house officer at Letterkenny University Hospital department of Hematology. He has a special interests in existentialist philosophy, German idealism and phenomenology. We published a paper together called "Because We Care: a philosophical investigation into the spirit of medical education" . We discuss that paper at lengt...

Ian Partman (he/they) is a 19-year old student, writer, activist, and artist based in New York City. He is the founder of Ignite Collective, a national organization of young activists who work to resist police violence through mutual aid and direct action. He currently works at the Brennan Center for Justice in the Office of the President. Their academic research explores how histories of exclusio...

We've been looking at what Plato's allegory means. But what happens when we examine what it does? We'll discuss political scientist Mark Reinhardt's article "The Cave of Images: Understanding Visual Politics in and through Plato’s Republic" and what we can learn from it for the visual in contemporary politics, such as images of racism and violence. The article appears in the April issue of Theory...

The returning soul in Plato's allegory of the Cave is not heard by the prisoners, who are too occupied with the shadows on the wall. In the most literal sense, Plato was probably speaking about how the people do not appreciate the philosophy of, for instance, his teacher Socrates, at the time when this philosopher is most needed. This is an independent educational podcast and I appreciate any supp...

What keeps Plato's prisoners chained in the cave? What keeps us grounded to our reality? Food is definitely one of those things. How can we develop a more conscious relationship to food, how can we turn our entire being (like Plato says) rather than just our intellect, and how can we integrate spiritual experiences in our daily life? Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifefromplatoscav...

Imagine you descended from the surface into Plato's Cave and told them "you're in Plato's Cave!" And they responded "No, YOU'RE in Plato's Cave!"   In this episode, we will speak about how to deal with science denial. To learn about science communication in general, we focus on one particular extreme case of science denial, which is the idea that we live on a Flat Earth.   Our guide is the creator...

Welcome (or welcome Back) to Life From Plato's Cave. This is a course in interdisciplinary philosophy in which we look at life - the part of life that interests you - from a new perspective in every episode. In each of the other episodes, I will interview a guest about their intepretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave: philosophers, artists, literary scholars, phycisists, actors, psychologists,...

Welcome (or welcome Back) to Life From Plato's Cave. This is a course in interdisciplinary philosophy in which we look at life - the part of life that interests you - from a new perspective in every episode. In each of the other episodes, I will interview a guest about their intepretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave: philosophers, artists, literary scholars, phycisists, actors, psychologists,...