Reading Our Times

We live in strange, unsettling, perhaps even exceptional times. How did we get here? In particular, how have our dependence on energy, our need for economic growth and our distrust in politics combined to shape our unstable 21st century. In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Helen Thompson about her book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.

The more religion dies, the more it stays alive, predictions of its imminent demise being as popular now as they were a hundred years ago. Why? Where did religion come from? Why is it so deep rooted in human nature? And where, if anywhere, is it going? In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Robin Dunbar about his book How Religion Evolved and why it endures.

Strange as it may seem given what they do, ethics is very important to the intelligence services. But how do you – how even can you – spy ethically? In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Cécile Fabre about her book Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence.

Science is the basis of so much in the modern world that to ask why we should trust it seems unnecessary, even wrong. Yet, people do, and not all of them for the best motives. In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Naomi Oreskes about her book Why Trust Science? which answers ‘science sceptics’ of all stripes, and opens up new perspectives on the importance of diversity in science.

Covid-19 was not the first pandemic in history, and it won’t be the last. We have lived with disease throughout our history, and our history has accordingly been shaped, sometimes transformed, by disease. But how? In the final episode of this series of Reading Our Times, Nick Spencer talks to the historian Kyle Harper about his new book Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human Histo...

The Common Good is a remarkably popular phrase, used widely by the left and the right, the religious and the secular. But does it actually mean anything? Is it so elastic as to have no real content? In this episode, Nick Spencer talks to Anna Rowlands about her new book Towards a Politics of Communion, about what the Common Good means and what it offers a society like ours.

Even as formal religious adherence wanes (at least in the West), people go on talking about God and spiritual matters. But how is that even possible? How can you talk about someone (or something) that is beyond language? Is all God-talk literally nonsense? In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Janet Soskice about her classic 'Metaphor and Religious Language' and her forthcoming 'Naming God...

Secularism is supposed to epitomise reasonableness and fairness – the refusal to favour one (non/religious) group over another. Yet, it is coming under fierce pressure across the world. Why? In this episode Nick Spencer talks to Prof. Sumantra Bose about his book 'Secular States, Religious Politics' and looks at the future of secularism in the 21st century.

Debates around sex, gender and identity have emerged as some of the most important, and heated, of our time. But what are the issues – scientific, philosophical, ideological, anthropological – that lie beneath them? In this episode, Nick Spencer talks to the journalist and author Helen Joyce about her book Trans, and the tensions underlying the debate.

Iain McGilchrist rose to public prominence with his book 'The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World'. Now, in his long–awaited follow up ‘The Matter with Things’, he develops his ideas about the divided brain into a remarkably detailed and comprehensive vision of reality, “a whole philosophy – … [with] new answers to the questions of what the world is and w...

There was a time (and not so long ago) we thought animals were 'mere machines’, incapable of inner life or emotions. Now we know better and are beginning to understand the extraordinarily rich inner life of primates and some other species. In the first episode of this series of Reading Our Times, Nick Spencer talks to the eminent primatologist Frans de Waal about his book 'Mama's Last Hug' which e...

The last 30 years have seen liberalism fall from heights of triumph at the end of the Cold War to a place of genuine fragility. Both in Western countries and even more so elsewhere, liberalism appears to be in retreat. What comes next? Some argue that liberalism will bounce back. Others that populism or authoritarianism are set to dominate things for the foreseeable future. But still others have a...

People today often like to be considered “spiritual but not religious”. But what could that actually mean? All too often, the spiritual is juxtaposed against the material. But in reality, the two are inseparably linked. In this episode of Reading our Times, Nick Spencer talks to Rowan Williams about his latest book [Looking East in Winter](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/looking-east-in-winter-97814...

Given how much richer we are today than, say, 50 years ago, it is remarkable how many people think ‘the system’ is not working for them. Particularly in high income countries, there is a pervasive sense that neither the market nor the state are providing citizens with the security and welfare that they could and should. In this episode of Reading our Times, Nick Spencer talks to Minouche Shafik, f...

Languages come and languages go – but mostly nowadays they go. According to the Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, nearly 90% may have died out by the end of the century. What do we lose when we lose a language? Indeed, what is a language? What does it do? How does it work? And what does it say about human beings and our shared culture? In this episode of Reading our Times, Nick Spencer t...

Lockdown does strange things to people. After 20 years of marriage, Nick and his wife bought two cats for the family. They love them but they are mystifying. What is going on in there? Luckily for Nick and his family, John Gray, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, recently published his new book ‘Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life.’ In this episod...

“Follow the science” we have been told – many times – over the last year. It makes good sense…and yet, there are times in history when societies have followed the science – or at least the science of the times – and it has led them into some very troubling places. And there are signs we may be doing so again. In this episode of Reading our Times, Nick Spencer talks to the science writer and broadc...

“It seems, just now,/ To be happening so very fast.” So wrote Philip Larkin in 1972 of the loss of the English countryside. Fifty years later, we might say the same thing of the whole world – not only in terms of environmental crisis but of technological progress, with artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and cybernetics promising to change our world – and ourselves – beyond recognition....

War seems to be omnipresent in human history and despite the number of people who have argued that the world is getting ever more peaceful, it remains a reality for millions of people today. Margaret MacMillan is Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford and a world–renowned expert on history and international relations. Nick Spencer speaks to her about her book 'War:...

In the first series of Reading Our Times we looked at meritocracy, secularism, dementia, liberalism and much else besides. In this series, we’ll be talking to Margaret MacMillan about war, to Angela Saini about race, to Alexandra Aikhenvald about the origins and the end of language, to Rowan Williams about spirituality, Martin Rees about the future of humanity, and John Gray about cats and the mea...

Liberalism and religion have had an intimate and sometimes tempestuous relationship over the years. In recent decades, a number of people have claimed that liberal political theory doesn’t really understand religion, and that religion in liberal societies suffers as a consequence. 'Liberalism’s Religion', an award winning book by Cécile Laborde, Nuffield Chair of Political Theory at the University...

We live in an age of ever expanding law and of rampant political cynicism. Perhaps the two are connected? Nick Spencer talks to former BBC Reith lecturer and the Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption about his book 'Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics' which argues that our growing inclination to turn to the law to resolve our problems may, in fact, be making our public life wor...

Humans see and understand the world in different ways, ways that appear to map onto the brain’s function and in particular its hemispheric nature. But how has that ‘attention’ shaped the world we live in today? Nick Spencer talks to the former Consultant Psychiatrist and author of 'The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World' about brains, minds, cultures, an...

The concept of ‘rights’ tends to provoke a strong response from people today: some hold them in quasi–religious esteem, while others consider them responsible for selfish individualism and social fragmentation. Nick Spencer talks to Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, about his new book 'What’s wrong with rights?', which takes a critical look...

Levels of inequality, particularly in the West, have been growing steadily over the last 50 years, and they seem likely to accelerate in the wake of Covid–19. Why is this? Why was the 20th century so good as equalising wealth and income, why is the 21st century different, and what should we do about it? Nick Spencer talks to the economist, Thomas Piketty – whose books Capital in the 21st century a...