Subjects Videos

In the eighteenth century, advanced thinkers took up the idea that society was imperfect and that what you do with imperfections is get rid of them. The result was that the growth of large radical projects aimed at transforming things - the French Revolution being a dramatic case. The basic issue was how to transcend conflict and achieve harmony. But is the search for harmony compatible with a free society? This week, Kenneth Minogue, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics argues against harmony and puts the case for a contentious political life.

Adam Jacot de Boinod now has a third book on wonderful words, this time from the English language, to prove his point that, 'The English language has a word for pretty much everything, even things you've never imagined needing to describe'.

From the stage of the 2009 Mind and Its Potential conference, His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins All in the Mind's Natasha Mitchell in an extended conversation about the mind, science and much else. And, joining the dialogue over coming weeks is the founder of the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, leading Harvard evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser, and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace

This week, we follow the journey of the classics as they spread from Greece to the Arab world and beyond. At a time when Europe still hadn´t got its act together philosophically speaking, Arabs were busily translating and debating the ideas of Aristotle and others. We´re joined by Professor Peter Adamson from King's College, London, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy.

A trip to the brickworks and you´d be amazed at the variety. Plus, digging in the mud to try and grasp the shifting terrain that we sometimes call history and later, a classic building re-discovered through a study of the Australian dunny. For music details please 'show transcript'.

The amateur philologist and Queen's Counsel Julian Burnside reads a selection of excerpts from the new, revised and expanded edition of his book on language.

Just a few centuries after their deaths, Plato was thought questionable while his pupil Aristotle was all but canonised: there was almost a fear of criticising him. Everybody used his logic and Christians were drawn to him by his arguments about a first cause of all things. This week Han Baltussen from the University of Adelaide looks at the legacy of Aristotle and at why that legacy was worth preserving.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca popularised the philosophy of the Stoics, the Greek Hellenistic school. This week, Rick Benitez from the University of Sydney examines Seneca's teaching that contentedness is achieved by a simple, unperturbed life in accordance with nature and that human suffering should be accepted. He looks at Seneca as a writer of tragedies, and at the tragedy of Seneca's own life: he was tutor and later adviser to the Emperor Nero, who eventually ordered him to take his own life.

In many languages, the names used for adults are based on the names of their oldest child. Carol Priestley tells about how naming practices work in one such tongue, Koromu, a Madang language from Papua New Guinea.

A lot of big things happened in years ending with the number 9 - like the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989); the Iranian revolution and invasion of Afghanistan (1979); the moon landing and bombing of Cambodia (1969); Luna 3 orbits the moon (1959); communist victory in China and first Soviet A-bomb (1949); the outbreak of WW2(1939). Join veteran producers, Tony Barrell and Tom Morton on a nonagonal adventure. For music details, please click on 'show transcript'

Proceeding from the mythical moment when the confusion of a multitude of tongues began, in the Biblical tower of Babel, a query into the usual set of assumptions on language loss, asking the hard question: does it really matter?

Can philosophy be practical and compassionate? Can it exist for human beings and not just for its own coldly logical reasons? This was a question asked by the philosophers of the Hellenistic age, that´s the period following Aristotle, who died in 322BC. This week, Martha Nussbaum from the University of Chicago, talks about desire and Hellenistic ethics.

This week Denise Russell from the University of Wollongong argues that animals held for experimental purposes are in the same moral condition as human beings held as slaves. Secrecy and the status of science protect these practices from critical scrutiny. So millions of animals suffer and die in Australian experiments each year, though in other countries alternative ways of seeking knowledge have been developed.

Valerie Yule makes a case for all of us to, in free-form fashion, use our capacities to communicate internationally, and create for ourselves an international pidgin.

Heard the one about the psychiatrist, the Supreme Court judge and the philosopher who walked in to a radio studio...? Join Natasha Mitchell and guests in a round-table interrogation of how the brain sciences are changing our understanding of addiction, and the powerful consequences for notions of free will, responsibility and culpability.

Kathe Kirby, Executive Director of Asialink and the Asia Education Foundation, highlights that only 5.4 per cent of year 12 students study an Asian language, and explains why this has to change. Recorded on Monday 12 October, 2009. For more video, visit www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au