The Examined Life

In this episode I sit down with philosopher Philip Goff to ask what makes a belief rational when your most vivid evidence is your own inner life. We explore how mystical experience, priors, and philosophical clarity shape what we trust about consciousness, religion, and even AI. It's a fascinating conversation that moves between philosophical reasoning and personal experience, and tries to pull the two together in some kind of harmony. As ever, if you do enjoy listening, then please send it ...

In this episode Michael Sacasas explores what humans should keep doing even when machines can do it faster, cheaper, and “better,” and why convenience can quietly erode competence, attention, and relationship. We explore how friction, effort, and embodied practice can be part of flourishing rather than a problem to eliminate. • the guiding question of what remains good for humans to do even when tasks can be automated • Albert Borgmann’s focal things versus devices and what centr...

In this episode I speak to Sherry Turkle about why generative AI feels intimate, why that intimacy is often a simulation, and what we lose when we outsource love, care, and growth to machines. We keep returning to one question: what is the end game of letting AI become a friend, therapist, teacher, or companion, especially for children and for civic life. • AI as an attachment technology that comes for the heart • the lure of friction-free connection and why we are “cheap dates” •...

We pull together the strongest takeaways from months of conversations on death, grief, and loss, and we share why these topics reach so many people despite how easy they are to avoid. We explore how facing finitude can sharpen our values, deepen our love of life, and help us become more grounded and emotionally mature. • why death and grief conversations feel taboo and why they matter • how chasing immortality can be a way to avoid finitude • Katherine Mannix’s question abo...

What does death reveal about who we really are? This week I'm joined by Professor Douglas Davies, Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University and one of the world's leading scholars of death, ritual, and belief. His work spans decades and disciplines — from the anthropology of funerals to digital legacy, from woodland burial to the theology of grief — and his central conviction runs through all of it: the dead live within us, and recognising that can help us live be...