Thinking on Sunday was launched as a new series of events with different themes to the Sunday Lectures. These interesting and stimulating sessions have a talk or presentation followed by Q&A, debate and discussion. The speakers are experts in their field, and/or have a passion for subject. Especially popular with our ethical society members, Thinking on Sunday is open to the public and promises to motivate and nourish the mind!
Professor David Nash explores the crime of blasphemy: as an act of individuals but also as a widespread and constant presence in cultural, political and religious life.
The model of ‘the good life’ and its formulas for success ignore the haunting possibility that one may not succeed and as a result be deemed ‘a failure’. Beverley Clack explores that often-neglected theme of failure, not just as the opposite of achievement but also how it has been conflated with loss.
Geoff White, one of the UK’s leading technology correspondents, charts the astonishing development of hacking, from its conception in America’s hippy tech community in the 1970s, through its childhood among the ruins of the Eastern Bloc, to its coming of age as one of the most dangerous and pervasive threats to our digital world.
Cancer has always been with us. Dr Kat Arney takes us to the dawn of life on planet earth right up to the present day to get to the heart of what cancer really is and how by better understanding its evolutionary journey we might one day overcome it.
Evolving technology changes ethics. Juan Enriquez points out that, contrary to common wisdom, technology often enables more ethical behaviours. Technology chal-lenges old beliefs and upends institutions that do not grow and change.
The story of western correspondents in Russia is the story of Russia’s attitude to the west. James Rodgers analyses the news throughout history, from the coverage of the siege of the Winter Palace and a plot to kill Stalin, to the Chernobyl explosion and the Salisbury poison scandal.
Marina Sitrin discusses what she found whilst writing her book Pandemic Solidarity, which collects first-hand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid during the global crisis of COVID-19.
George Zarkadakis envisions a future liberal democracy in which intelligent machines facilitate citizen assemblies, helping to extend citizen rights, and blockchains and cryp-to-economics enable new forms of democratic governance and business collaboration.
In a time of intensified global white supremacist and patriarchal violence, anti-racist feminist movements and analyses have never been more vital. Women of colour are at the forefront of such struggles worldwide – but are white feminists really by their side?
What does it mean to be human? Amanda Rees and Charlotte Sleigh showing how, by understanding humanity, we can go some way to resolving our, and the world’s, biggest problems.
Maybe it’s time to live. Philosopher John Sellars walks us through the history of Epicureanism, showing us how it can help us think anew about joy, friendship, nature and being alive in the world.
Graham Hutchings offers a vivid, gripping account of 1949: the year in which China abruptly changed course and pulled the rest of world history along with it. The overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek’s government by Mao Zedong reverberated across the world, resulting in long-lasting consequences that are still being felt today.
