Naked Reflections, from the Naked Scientists
by The Woolf Institute · 144 episodes
SocietyCulturePhilosophy
Reflecting on recent science news stories and current events, authoritative thinkers unpack the implications for society. Naked Reflections is chaired by Ed Kessler, director of the Woolf Institute, Cambridge.
Latest episodes
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27 min
Love the other
LOVE THE OTHER can mean many things. For a psychologist it can imply two contrasting personalities coming together in a complementary and constructive relationship. It can also be…
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30 min
Turning the other cheek
How practical is Jesus's advice to turn the other cheek? Some see it as an example of the excessive passivity of Christianity. Others think it's the only way to get out of an endle…
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24 min
The Politics of Music
Music - that most abstract of arts - can of course express religious feeling but it can also be directly or obliquely political, especially when lyrics are involved. Think, Nationa…
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28 min
Good Luck
Can positive thinking create its own momentum, or to put it another way, does negativity reap its own bad harvest? Esther-Miriam Wagner and Robert Tombs read the runes Like this po…
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27 min
Time to stop talking?
If you asked the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, to discuss cosmology with a "flat-Earther", he would probably politely decline. But when it comes to more nuanced matters than scien…
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28 min
8 Billion and Counting
The United Nations recently announced that by their estimate World population passed the 8 billion mark in November 2022. World population is predicted to continue growing, peaking…
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23 min
Refugees and Migrants
The system for those seeking asylum in the UK is not working, with damaging effects across society and for refugees. That's why the Woolf Institute has just launched its Commission…
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24 min
The National Health Service
Since the COVID pandemic, satisfaction ratings with the National Health Service have plummeted. Should we look to other countries for alternative models? And Social Services, which…
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28 min
Faith in Mental Health
What do people of faith think about the psychological and psychiatric approach to dealing with mental health problems? Is there a sense for some that one's faith, one's God should…
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27 min
Modern Slavery
Modern slavery is going on all around us. Brothels, nail bars, car wash outlets and some wealthy households all need victims who they can exploit, and people traffickers happily su…
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27 min
Hope and Fear
For Muslims it's coming, but it's shrouded in mystery; for Christians it's straightforwardly the return of Christ; for Hindus there's the get-out card of reincarnation. But the not…
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29 min
Hate
Hatred is something most people feel some of the time but how should it be controlled? Certainly not by giving free rein to social media platforms to stoke up controversy in order…
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26 min
Feeding Body and Soul
It would be an exaggeration to say that there are as many beliefs about what and how we should eat as there are beliefs about religion but sometimes it feels that way. And like rel…
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27 min
Blasphemy on the Big Screen
There is no orthodoxy that could not have been construed as blasphemous when it started. Christianity was accused by Jews of being blasphemous for proclaiming Jesus as divine, and…
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30 min
Summer Special: QAnon and Sex
We've combined extracts from two of our favourite episodes into a Summer Special covering QAnon and Sex. QAnon, the claim a pizza joint in Washington is a centre for child abuse, h…
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26 min
Discipline versus Creativity
When it comes to learning and education, there has always been a tension between discipline and creativity or scepticism. The balance has ebbed and flowed over the centuries and co…
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28 min
Odds on Either Way...
Two and a half billion pounds was wagered on the last soccer World Cup in the U.K. alone. There are reckoned to be 400 thousand problem gamblers in this country and that could well…
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28 min
Suicide
Suicide is more common than we might think: no one is immune from suicidal thoughts and there are more than 5,000 actual deaths by suicide in the UK each year. Rose Doyle tells the…
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31 min
Fortress Europe
Are we in danger of weaponising Christianity as a bulwark against Islam? Would it be more fruitful to pay more attention to the period in medieval Spain when the three Abrahamic fa…
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29 min
Memories and Memorising
Memory is unreliable and can even be treacherous. Think of all those criminal trials where two witnesses recall an event in totally contradictory ways. So how does memory operate?…