Name: Why read the Nicomachean Ethics? by Oxford Academic (OUP) in Educational
Duration: 3 min 1 s
Description: An introduction by the editor, Lesley Brown of Somerville College, Oxford to this seminal work.

Educational

NARRATOR:
In the early fifteenth century, artists and intellectuals in Italy came to realize that the time they lived in was very different from the centuries before.  There was a revival of interest in the achievements of classical antiquity -- in the art, literature, and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  They came to see the previous medieval period as a time of darkness after the glories of the classical past, and their own era as a new age in the arts.  

In the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter best known as the biographer of artists, used the term rinascità—meaning rebirth -- to describe this change in the artist’s vision of the world around him.  Later historians coined the term Renaissance from the French word for rebirth.

The focus of the Middle Ages had been the spiritual world, and the major patron of the arts the Roman Catholic Church.  Painted altarpieces and frescos conveyed the church’s teachings in a form that could be understood even by those who could not read.  During the Renaissance, the Christian religion continued to play an important role in art.  But the masters of the 15th and 16th centuries, like Greek and Roman artists before them, looked to man as the measure of all things.  They based even their spiritual images not on an imaginary world, but on the world around them.  In Italy, the remains of numerous ancient sculptures and monuments, still visible after more than a thousand years, inspired many of the great Renaissance artists whose work is on view here at the National Gallery – including Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. 


Renaissance Overview-English

This lecture will review just some of the extensive evidence from ancient civilisations – mainly China, Mesopotamia and Greece – that helps to throw light on four interrelated questions that form my principal agenda: (1) What items were the subjects of prediction? (2) How were predictions made: on what basis did people think they could foresee the future? (3) Why were they interested in doing so? (4) How is foresight related first to divination and prediction in general, and then to wisdom and prudence? The subjects on which predictions were attempted (Q 1) can be used to reveal the concerns and values of the groups in question. While hundreds of different techniques were tried out (Q 2) that will lead me to examine the ways ancient theorists evaluated them and to a discussion of the growth of scepticism. The aims and motives of ancient investigators (Q 3) include influencing policy and advising rulers as well as building up their own prestige (when they got it right). Most important is Q 4 . What were the resources available in antiquity to learn to make more prudent and wiser judgements about what to do, and to that end do we not still need all the resources available to us to do the same?

Biography

Geoffrey Lloyd is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Philosophy and Science at Cambridge, where he was Master of Darwin College from 1989 to 2000. He is now based at the Needham Research Institute, whose Trust he chaired from 1992 to 2002. He has held Visiting Professorships in Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Germany) in the Far East (PRC, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore), Australasia, and North and South America. He has published 25 books, initially concentrating on ancient Greek philosophy and science and then embarking on detailed comparative studies with ancient Chinese thought. His three most recent books, which tackle the underlying philosophical problems of such comparisons and related issues in cognitive science, are: Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind (2007: the subject of a special number of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews in 2010), Disciplines in the Making (2009) and Being, Humanity and Understanding (2012, all from Oxford University Press). He has been translated into12 different languages. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1983 and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. He was awarded the Sarton medal for History of Science in 1987, and the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies in 2007. He holds Honorary Fellowships at King’s, Darwin, and Tembusu College Singapore, and Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Athens and Oxford. He was knighted for ‘services to the history of thought’ in 1997.

Foresight in Ancient Civilisations

An introduction by the editor, Lesley Brown of Somerville College, Oxford to this seminal work. 

Why read the Nicomachean Ethics?

On this episode, Andrea Temkin-Yu, author of the new guidebook 'Supporting Your Teens Mental Health,' talks about the small, intentional activities that all parents of teens can adopt in order to focus on building connections and combating the rise of mental health symptoms in adolescents.

Andrea Temkin-Yu is Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, having earned her PsyD from The Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. She completed her clinical internship at Bellevue Hospital Center/New York University Child Study Center and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Youth Mental Health at Weill Cornell Medicine. Temkin-Yu specializes in parent-focused interventions and has expertise in cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of anxiety, depression, ADHD, and disruptive behaviors. Her research focuses on transdiagnostic interventions and improving treatments for youth and parents through technology.

Learn more about 'Supporting Your Teen's Mental Health' here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/supporting-your-teens-mental-health-9780197768617

Listen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi6b8qx6RbY

The Side Comment Crew:
Executive Producer: Steven Filippi
Host: Sarah Butcher

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License: oxford.ly/3VGGhZw

© Oxford University Press

Andrea Temkin-Yu on Supporting Your Teen's Mental Health - Episode 46 - The Side Comment

Brought to you by Penguin

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025

‘Without mud, the lotus could not survive.’

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal…

Written by the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of the most important Japanese novels of the 21st century, Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity’s edge.

‘Filled with unforgettable insight’ Sakaya Murata, author of Convenience Store Woman

©2025 Saou Ichikawa (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Hunchback, written by Saou Ichikawa and read by Yuriri Naka

Brought to you by Penguin.

'We love a rags-to-riches story, and we love to see someone triumph through sheer determination. But the story is rarely that simple. My story isn't, anyway.

'As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O'Sullivan making anything of her life. When she became a mother at 15 and ended up homeless, what followed were five years of barely coping.

This is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around. How the seeds of self-belief planted by teachers in childhood stayed with her. How she found mentors whose encouragement revived those seeds in adulthood.

Now an award-winning lecturer whose work challenges barriers to education, Poor stands as a stirring argument for the importance of looking out for our kids' futures. Of giving them hope, practical support and meaningful opportunities.

©2023 Katriona O'Sullivan (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Poor, written and read by Katriona O'Sullivan

Brought to you by Penguin.

Six friends. One remote hotel. A long-overdue reunion. Welcome to The Hitchcock Hotel...

Alfred Smettle adores Hitchcock.

And who better to become founder, owner and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a remote, sprawling Victorian house sitting atop a hill in the beautiful White Mountains, New England. There, guests can find movie props and memorabilia in every room, round-the-clock film screenings, and an aviary with fifty crows.

For the hotel's first anniversary, Alfred invites the five college friends he studied film with. He hasn't spoken to any of them in sixteen years. Not after what happened. But who better to appreciate Alfred's creation?

His guests arrive, and everything seems to go according to plan. Until one glimpses someone standing outside her shower curtain.

Another is violently ill every time she eats the hotel food. Then their mobile phones go missing.

You should always make the audience suffer as much as possible, right?

The guests are stuck in the middle of nowhere, and things are about to get even worse. After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a dead body.

'Fans of Knives Out, Agatha Christie, and (of course) Alfred Hitchcock, rejoice! The Hitchcock Hotel is cool, classy – but such fun; reverent – yet so original.' A.J. FINN

'As twisty as a Hitchcock film' ALEX MICHAELIDES

'A scream from start to finish' JANICE HALLETT

©2024 Stephanie Wrobel (P)2024 Penguin Audio

The Hitchcock Hotel, written by Stephanie Wrobel and read by Michael Crouch, Helen Lloyd, Gail Shalan

in February 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Michael Latner, Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State University and Director of Research on Democratic Reform at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.   

They discussed the recent history of voting rights and the state of democracy in America in 2025.  

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.   

Further reading and resources 

Keena, A., Latner, M., McGann, A.J.M. and Smith, C.A. (2021). Gerrymandering the States. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995849  

The Guinier Project at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute - https://charleshamiltonhouston.org/events/a-convening-race-reform-and-multiracial-democracy/  

LSE: The Ballpark | The state of American Democracy with Professor Michael Latner

Artificial intelligence is transforming the world around us, offering increased productivity and promising to help tackle difficult problems like global warming.  
But behind the scenes, its environmental costs are mounting. From massive energy use to vast quantities of water required to cool data centres, AI’s footprint is growing fast. So, in an age of water scarcity and climate crisis, can we justify this technological boom?
In this episode of LSE iQ, Anna Bevan asks: Is AI destroying the planet?
She travels to a data centre in Slough to find out exactly how data centres work, and speaks to Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at LSE; Eugenie Dugoua, Assistant Professor in Environmental Economics at LSE; and Ceara Carney, an actor and climate activist. 

This episode explores the AI sustainability paradox: can AI be both a climate solution and a climate problem? And discusses surprising ways AI is being used for good, such as catching poachers in the Serengeti. 

Research
Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight it, Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias https://lnk.to/DataGrabBook

The Space of the World: can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What if it Can't? Nick Couldry https://linktr.ee/SpaceOfTheWorldBook

Induced innovation, inventors and the energy transition, Eugenie Dugoua and Todd D. Gerarden
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121309/1/dp1951.pdf

Directed technological change and general purpose technologies: can AI accelerate clean energy innovation? Pia Andres, Eugenie Dugoua and Marion Dumas
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/directed-technological-change-and-general-purpose-technologies-can-ai-accelerate-clean-energy-innovation/

Could artificial intelligence deliver a green transition? Marion Dumas
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/could-artificial-intelligence-deliver-a-green-transition/

LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. We’re keen to find out more about our audience so we can better tailor our content to suit your interests. With this in mind, we would be grateful if you could please take the time to fill out this short survey and share your feedback.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=_epnVXfnpUKRu5RA_UO4k9i3ygPzxbNDuStfrFFNRBNUMzYxS1BITDlHTkdYMVhaVE9LRDhNQkxaVC4u

Is AI destroying the planet?

In Episode 09 of Campus Conversations the podcasters dive into the world of sports, hobbies, and personal interests, sharing their own experiences and opinions. They discuss the importance of sports in student life, how hobbies help manage stress, and the ways personal interests shape identity and social connections at university. The conversation also touches on balancing leisure with academic responsibilities, making it a relatable and insightful episode for students navigating campus life. Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of our students and do not necessarily reflect the views of UCL.

Transcription link:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/ucl-student-success/students/campus-conversations/episode-09-sports-hobbies-and-interests

Date of episode recording: 2025-02-12T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:39:50
Language of episode: English
Presenter:Inara Vanessa André, Keira Gazzingan and Sophia Mencatelli
Guests: N/A
Producer: Luther Mayers, Adella Forder-Gore, Devon Kuziw

Episode 09 - Sports, hobbies and interests

Reference to the self is ubiquitous in contemporary culture. But what is the self? Is it discovered or created? What kinds of self does literature depict? And what do philosophers have to say about it? In this trailer episode we introduce the podcast’s key questions and the literary authors on whose works we will be focusing throughout the series. 

Speaker names:  

Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL. 
Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL. 

https://sites.google.com/view/uclphilandlitgroup/podcast

Trailer: The Self Today

In this special episode for Mental Health Awareness Week, host Jade Hunter is joined by Professor John Tomaney, Dr. Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros, and James Fildes, founder of Space North East. Together, they explore a growing public health crisis: rising rates of male suicide in the UK, particularly in post-industrial regions like the North East.

This conversation examines how non-clinical, community-led interventions are filling critical gaps in mental health support for working-class men in the North East of England. Drawing on lived experience, academic research, and grassroots activism, this episode highlights the importance of belonging, place-based identity, and social infrastructure in men’s mental wellbeing.
 
Featured in this episode:
Host: Jade Hunter – Coordinator, UCL’s Grand Challenge of Mental Health & Wellbeing
With special thanks to our guests: 
Professor John Tomaney – UCL Bartlett School of Planning, Pro-Provost for Regional Communities
Dr. Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros – Research Associate and Honorary Research Fellow, UCL
James Fildes – Founder and Managing Director, Space North East
 
Resources:
Learn more about UCL Grand Challenges https://www.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/
Visit Space North East https://spacenortheast.org/
Read about the project’s progress and future outputs via the Grand Challenges Mental Health and Wellbeing page https://www.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/themes/mental-health-wellbeing

Local Solutions, National Crisis: New Insights on Men’s Mental Health from the North East

In this episode, we consider the first chapter of Cusk’s Outline alongside a paper by Daniela Dover entitled ‘The Conversational Self’. The paper examines the role of conversations in getting to know people, what an understanding of this entails for how we think about the self, and how open we should be to the influence of others. We analyse the conversations reported in Cusk’s novel in the light of Dover’s ideal.

Speaker names: 

•	Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
•	Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.


1. The Conversational Self: Daniela Dover

Speaker(s): Professor Sadik Al Azm | Al-Azm, one of the Middle East's most notable contemporary thinkers, will reflect on the effects of the Arab uprisings on Arab nationalism and Islamist movements. Sadik Al Azm is emeritus professor of modern European philosophy at the University of Damascus. Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Arab Nationalism, Islamism and the Arab Uprising [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Barry Smith | This lecture will explore the philosophy and neuroscience of taste and what it tells us about perception. Barry Smith is professor of philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London and director of the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Thu, 1 Dec 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Perspectives on Taste – Philosophy and Neuroscience: the nature of tastes and tasting [Audio]

Oxford University Press’s academic insights for the thinking world combine authority, innovation, and excellence.  We share audio resources for students, scholars, and researchers.

Why read the Nicomachean Ethics?

Oxford Academic (OUP)

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