Salt Live

ChatGPT. Gemini. Qwen. AI is shaping the fabric of society, from classrooms to hospitals, science labs to parliament - and even security services and military strategy. Science fiction dreams and nightmares are materialising before our eyes. What will all this mean for the human race? In a world dominated by superintelligent machines, what are human beings for ? And what kind of world are we build...

Sage and crystals, star signs and chakras. The modern West may be less religious than in the past, but it is no less spiritual. Many have traded Christianity, with its dos and don’ts, for spiritual practices offering transcendence without obligation. Yet, in the noisy and confusing marketplace of spiritual practices, many feel untethered and uncertain. Does being “spiritual but not religious” offe...

Listen to the Q&A from our Salt Live event, “Spiritual but not religious: Freedom or fallacy?” Author and speaker Simon Edwards joins host Tobias Brown to answer audience questions and delve deeper into the conversation.

We live in a generation obsessed with self-improvement. Bullet Journaling, juice cleanses, cold plunges. And, of course, much of it works. Many of us have achieved far more than our parents or grandparents could have dreamt of. And yet, the focus on self-improvement has a dark side. We become anxious about our performance. We obsess over the small details of our sleep, diet, exercise, mental healt...

Listen to the Q&A session from our Salt Live event, "Never Enough: Can self-improvement really fix us?". Speaker Daniel Ogbonna and host Jeremy Moses take questions from the audience.

Less than 20 years after the birth of the iPhone, screens have become the dominant presence in modern life. We work, plan, socialise, read, and entertain ourselves through them. Barely a minute goes by without a pick-up.  And yet, we’re increasingly aware that too much screen time is harmful. Heightened anxiety from constant doomscrolling. Brain-rot from too much YouTube. Insecurity from perp...

For centuries, secularism has been heralded as humanity’s golden bullet. Society will flourish if we reject religion, so we’ve been told. No more truth, intolerance or control.  But over recent years, a wave of backlash has formed. Feminist thinkers have slammed secular ethics, cultural Christianity is on the rise, and prominent atheist figures have come to faith. Meanwhile, a ‘meaning crisis...

The writer Christopher Hitchens famously claimed that  ‘religion poisons everything’ . For many, religion appears to be the cause of much of the world’s intolerance, division and even violence. And yet, for others, religion is a source of personal meaning and existential peace. Why is In this archive episode from our Salt Live event in January 2019, popular Christian speaker and author,...

The desire for happiness is self-evident, and yet, true happiness often feels fleeting and unobtainable. Londoners are changing their jobs, their living arrangements and their relationships, looking to create the perfect set of circumstances that will bring about lasting contentment. But will they ever find it? In this archive episode from our Salt Live event in January 2020, speaker and pastor An...

Millennials and Gen Z are reportedly experiencing higher levels of anxiety than any generation before them. Anxiety feels ever-present in modern Western culture. What’s causing this? Are we simply more willing to admit to poor mental health? Have our circumstances become more uncertain? How much do lifestyle factors play a part? Loneliness? Screen time? Overbusyness? Is there a solution to this an...

For some, we're merely advanced apes who've managed to establish ourselves as the dominant species on the planet. For others, we're sophisticated biological machines, ready to be upgraded or replaced by superior technology. Is there anything about human beings that makes us special? Do we have a soul, or are we just clumps of cells? In this archive episode from our Salt Live event in February 2022...

21st-century society lacks a positive vision of what it means to be a man. For many, masculinity is something poisonous or toxic. How can men understand themselves, and seek to be better men, in a world in which the idea of masculinity is so divisive, disparaged and unclear? We’re left asking, what’s the point of men? And how can men flourish in a post-patriarchal world? In this archive episo...

Christianity has been used to justify the conquest, enslavement, oppression and marginalisation of Black people. Churches can be places where racism goes unaddressed. Christian teaching often feels irrelevant to life in inner-city London. Yet all over the world, Black Christians find identity, hope, comfort and joy in Jesus Christ. We're asking, is there a contradiction here? Does it really make s...

We’ve been told that the purpose of life is self-discovery and self-expression and that the key to good mental health is boosting self-esteem. We have been raised on a steady diet of praise and positive self-talk: You are special. You can be anything you want to be. You do you. But is our self-obsessed age fuelling the crisis in mental health? In this archive episode from our Salt Live event in Ma...

The world of sex and dating has changed more rapidly since the onset of the smartphone than at any point in the history of the world; hence some are calling it a dating apocalypse. In this archive episode from our Salt Live event in February 2018, Speaker Andrew Haslam thinks about how we should think about dating apps, sex, and love in the modern age.

The modern era has become the ‘age of the self’. It sounds compelling. But is this contemporary focus on ourselves part of the problem rather than the solution? In this episode from our latest Salt Live event on 6th of February 2024, speaker Jeremy Moses explores what ancient Christianity has to say about our modern era's focus on self.

Listen to the Q&A session from our latest Salt Live event "The Age of Self-Obsession", where speaker Jeremy Moses and host Andrew Haslam take questions from the audience.

Are we really living in a post-truth world or is there such a thing as objective truth? Are truth claims nothing more than disguised bids for power, or is truth the only weapon that can speak to power? Our answers to these questions have profound implications for us as individuals and for our interactions with wider society. In this archive episode from our Salt Live event in 2018, speaker Simon E...