Searching For It

E25 Thanks for Listening

Sun, 16 May 2021 15:30:00 -0000

This is the last episode of Searching For It that I will be releasing for the foreseeable future.

Thank you to those of you who have listened to the show, and I hope that you are able to find "it".

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E24 Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 07:00:50 -0000

Today, most scientists agree that the universe began with the "Big Bang". But why did the Big Bang occur in the first place? What gave rise to the conditions required for the Big Bang to kickstart our universe? Why is there something rather than nothing?

When compared with the possibility of a silent, empty, nothingness, the existence of a universe as rich and expansive as ours seems staggering. Surely it would have been much simpler for there to have just been nothingness.

In this episode, we'll look at the best theories put forward by scientists, religious thinkers, and philosophers, as to why anything exists at all.

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E23 GUEST: Sam Rickless on Philosophy and the Meaning of Life

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:00:19 -0000

Sam Rickless is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, where he’s created a brand new course entitled ‘The Meaning of Life’. In many ways, Sam's course gets right to the heart of what Searching For It is all about: Sam teaches his students about Schopenhauer, Sartre, Buddhist philosophy, and much more.

In this episode, Sam and I will discuss the lessons he's learned from thinking about the meaning of life, the results of his students' "experiments in living", as well as his thoughts on Camus, Nagel, and Wolf.

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E22 Wolf: Meaningful Lives in a World Devoid of Meaning

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 07:00:55 -0000

Philosophers have spent millennia pondering the question of life's meaning. Kierkegaard grounded the meaning of life in a passionate belief in God, Sartre declared that we're each free to create our own meaning, while Camus and Nagel deny that we could ever come to know life's meaning.

But, if you ask Susan Wolf, each of these philosophers are beating a dead horse. Life has no meaning and that's that. But so what? In Meaning in Life and Why it Matters, Wolf argues that we should abandon our quest for the meaning of life, and refocus our efforts on living meaningful lives. Tune into this month's episode to find out how we can continue to live meaningful lives in a world devoid of meaning.

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E21 Nagel and the Absurd

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 07:00:00 -0000

According to Albert Camus, the absurd is the "one truly serious philosophical problem". In fact, Camus was so concerned by the notion of the absurd that he wrote an essay investigating whether or not we should commit suicide in the face of it. But in the words of Thomas Nagel, Camus' attitude towards the absurd is "romantic and slightly self-pitying". According to Nagel, all we need in order to respond to the absurdity of human life is irony and a good sense of humour.

Tune in to this episode of Searching For It to learn why Nagel describes human existence as absurd, and despite the dramatics of Camus, why it doesn't really matter.

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E20 The Philosophy of Time Travel

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 06:00:00 -0000

Back to the Future, Interstellar, The Terminator - we've all been guilty of enjoying a good time travel flick at one point or another. But more recently, time travel has been taken out of Hollywood and placed under the inquisitive philosophers' lens. Stepping beyond science fiction and fantasy, philosophers have uncovered a hidden trove of tantalising thought experiments and mind-bending paradoxes.

Tune into this episode to learn about causal loops, the Grandfather Paradox, closed timelike curves, and to investigate whether time travel really is a possibility.

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E19 GUEST: Peter Singer on Morality, Meaning, and Cancel Culture

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 06:00:13 -0000

Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher who has dedicated his life and his career to reducing the suffering of animals and tackling global poverty. In 2005 Singer was listed as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, and by 2014 Singer had encouraged more than 17,000 people to publicly pledge a percentage of their income to effective charities. Why, then, has Singer been derided as a 'Nazi', and spent decades facing protests and cancelled talks across the world?

In this special guest appearance, Peter and I will discuss the moral obligations that we face to give money to effective charities, the backlash that Peter has faced to his work, and the state of cancel culture in 2020. We'll also talk about Peter's recent research into the oldest novel ever written, and his support for the animal rights movement.

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E18 Life Extension: Cryonics and Mind Uploading

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 04:00:00 -0000

Ancient civilizations all across the world have spent centuries searching for the secret to immortality, launching quests to seek the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. While their efforts proved unfruitful, advances in modern-day science are illuminating new and exciting pathways towards life-extension. But, as companies emerge pledging to raise the dead through cryonics and mind uploading, we find ourselves faced with fundamental philosophical questions regarding the nature of consciousness and the concept of personal identity. Tune in to dive deep into these philosophical mysteries and discover whether life extension is truly as enticing as it appears.

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E17 The Fermi Paradox

Mon, 04 May 2020 04:00:00 -0000

According to scientists' best estimates, there are likely a great number of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy, and many more throughout the rest of the observable universe. But if that's the case, where is everybody?

Maybe homo sapiens are the first of many intelligent civilizations that will one day explore the universe. Maybe intelligent life is more improbable than we'd thought. Or maybe aliens are really out there, but we haven't found them just yet.

Scientists and big thinkers have spent decades trying to get to the bottom of the Fermi Paradox, but they're yet to get to the bottom of this cosmic mystery. In this episode, we'll find out why many scientists predict that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, why we're still waiting for contact, and the ways in which our answers might radically alter the long-term prospects of the human race.

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E16 Why We Are Living Inside a Simulation and Why We Should Care

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 04:00:00 -0000

The idea that we are living inside a simulation used to be little more than the brainwave of pot-smoking teenagers and people who took The Matrix a bit too seriously. But since the early 2000s, the tide has started to change.

In 2003, Nick Bostrom published a paper arguing that if we accept a reasonable set of assumptions, we are almost certainly living in a simulation. To this day, philosophers and physicists alike have failed to find a good reason to reject this staggering conclusion. Could it really be the case that our universe is no more than code in the computer of some highly advanced civilization? And, if Bostrom is right, what effect might this discovery have upon our lives?

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E15 The Pessimism of Schopenhauer

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 05:00:53 -0000

"Happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small, dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future uncertain, and the past irrecoverable.”

Schopenhauer paints a bleak, unforgiving picture of the human condition. Yet, Schopenhauer identifies a path away from the relentless suffering that consumes us all, and towards salvation. In this episode, we'll explore why Schopenhauer is so disillusioned by our very existence, and whether a better life is within our grasp.

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E14 Buddhism: Meditation and Mindfulness

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 05:00:00 -0000

Meditation is sometimes thought to be a relaxation or an anti-stress technique - a get-out-of-jail-free card to play when you're not feeling your best. But that's just one small part of what meditation can do.

Last month, we saw how following the Buddhist path can lead us to Nirvana: a state beyond suffering and of pure contentment. In this episode, we'll explore how Vipassana meditation can be used to radically alter our worldview and discover the kinds of insights necessary for attaining Nirvana.

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E13 Buddhism: The Path to Nirvana

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 05:00:00 -0000

Relative to our ancestors, we live in a very strange world. Food, sex, a holiday for 2 to Timbuktu - our every desire is available at the click of a button. But are we any happier than we were before?

Right at the other end of the spectrum, Buddhism offers us a path away from desire and towards contentment and tranquility. This episode will try to answer: how do Buddhists understand human nature? What is their alternative to the hedonic treadmill? And how can we attain Nirvana?

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E12 Anti-Natalism: Why Having Children Is Wrong

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 05:00:00 -0000

Searching For It explores philosophies, ideas, and ways of life that can provide our lives with an overarching sense of purpose. But if anti-natalists had their way, we'd euthanize the human race as soon as possible because life is simply not worth living. In this episode, we'll investigate this provocative philosophy and try to understand why anti-natalists think it would be better never to have been born at all.

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E11 Sartre and Existentialism

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 05:00:00 -0000

Communist, womanizer, and intellectual rebel: Jean-Paul Sartre wasn't just another grey, ageing philosopher, trudging his way through the academic establishment. Sartre was an existentialist, a fierce political campaigner, and he lived the philosophy he preached. In this episode, we'll be getting to grips with Sartre's brand of existentialism and discovering what it means to live as an authentic, radically free being.

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E10 GUEST: Liam Ward on Camus and the Absurd

Sun, 20 Oct 2019 22:00:03 -0000

In today's bonus October episode, Liam Ward joins Searching For It to discuss the philosophy of Albert Camus. Today's episode will see us revisiting the first episode of Searching For It and exploring Camus' notion of the absurd in more depth. Liam has a long-standing interest in Camus and all things existentialist, and brings to the table his thoughts on Camus' novel The Outsider and how we can apply Camus' philosophy to our day-to-day lives.

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E9 Altruism: How to do Good Effectively

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 04:00:00 -0000

This episode brings the second instalment of the 2-part series on altruism. After having looked into why we should be so concerned about doing good in the last episode, today we'll be trying to figure out how we can do good the most effectively.

We'll be looking at a group of people called Effective Altruists who have spent a lot of time thinking about this question. We'll uncover the interesting and surprising conclusions that Effective Altruists have reached regarding which causes deserve our attention, and how we can go about supporting them the most effectively.

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E8 Altruism: The Case for Doing Good

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 04:00:03 -0000

This episode brings the first instalment of a 2-part series on altruism. Today we’ll be asking: what reasons do I have to be a good person? From a moral point of view, do I face any obligations to spend my time helping those in need? And from a self-interested point of view, can I find a sense of meaning and fulfilment in doing so?

In this episode you’ll find provocative thought experiments, interesting ways of making a positive difference to the world, and a lot of Peter Singer! Tune in, and Searching For It will be back on Monday 7 October with an episode on Effective Altruism and the most effective ways of doing good.

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E7 Freedom and Happiness

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 04:00:00 -0000

Aldous Huxley wrote a novel Brave New World, set in a futuristic society in which the citizens have everything they could ever want handed to them on a silver platter by the government. Although, the people don't have a choice but to accept this one-size-fits-all perfect life - they might be happy but they're not free to choose otherwise. In 2019, in a world in which insights from the behavioural sciences and big data are beginning to allow the government to exert more control over our lives, but in ways that might make our lives go better, how should we approach this trade-off between our freedom and our happiness?

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E6 The Psychedelic Experience: The Acid Tests

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 04:00:16 -0000

In today's episode, we'll finish off the two-part mini-series on the psychedelic experience. This 'cross-over episode' will see many of the characters from the last 4 episodes of this podcast come together on a legendary bus trip, wild parties, and sharing mind-bending properties of LSD-laced Kool Aid. Join us to learn why they did this, and what they discovered.

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E5 The Psychedelic Experience: Psychedelic Music and the Grateful Dead

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 04:00:20 -0000

Join us in the first of our 2-part mini-series on the psychedelic experience. We'll begin today by exploring one of the most influential and unique bands in rock history: the Grateful Dead, and how they could induce a 'psychedelic effect' in the listener. But what is a psychedelic experience, and how can listening to music have such a strange effect on us? Tune in to find out!

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E4 Living Deliberately

Mon, 27 May 2019 04:00:30 -0000

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Thoreau, Walden.

In this episode, we'll be looking at the idea of living deliberately, and how it can help us to make the most of our limited time on this planet. We'll begin by exploring this idea through Thoreau's hugely influential book Walden, before thinking about how we can apply this lifestyle to our own lives in a world defined by consumerism and technology.

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E3 Jack Kerouac: Beyond the Road

Mon, 13 May 2019 04:00:00 -0000

In the last episode we took a look at Neal Cassady, the living embodiment of 'it' in the eyes of Jack Kerouac. Today, we'll move beyond the passion and the frenzy exuded by Cassady in On The Road to explore the path to transcendence that Kerouac found elsewhere. We'll find out how Kerouac progressed from a hunger for pleasure and kicks to meditation, solitude, and an inner tranquillity.

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E2 Jack Kerouac: On the Road

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 08:00:32 -0000

In the Beatnik classic On The Road, Jack Kerouac wrote explicitly about the "it" that his buddy Neal Cassady seemed to have found and embody. In this episode, we're going to explore whether Kerouac was really on to something here, and whether there are any lessons that we can take from his adventures with Cassady.

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E1 Suicide and the Absurd

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 08:00:19 -0000

Albert Camus once described the problem of suicide as the "one truly serious philosophical problem". In this episode, we'll investigate why Camus found the question of suicide so important, how he answered the question, and the way in which his answer lays the foundation for the rest of this podcast.

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0 - Introduction

Sun, 21 Apr 2019 20:48:08 -0000

Welcome to Searching For It.

Our search for 'it' will explore the most insightful thoughts from philosophy, literature, and elsewhere that provide a meaning or purpose to our lives. Each episode will uncover a new idea or way of life that brings us closer to transcendence. You don't need to have a degree in philosophy to listen to this podcast - just an open mind and a desire to learn more about the meaning behind human existence.