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In a hurry? Skip to my 100 word summary   In June 2025, OpenAI's automated systems flagged an 18-year-old's ChatGPT account after detecting conversations describing gun violence. The account belonged to Jesse Van Rootselaar, a teenager in Tumbler Ridge, a remote town of 2,700 in the Canadian Rockies. Open-AI Company employees debated alerting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reviewed the conversations and assessed threat levels. They then decided the activity did not meet t

In a hurry? Skip to my 100 word summary This week, the courts decided it is acceptable for the state to know who you meet, what societies you join, and what associations you keep. The Freemasons might be the headline, but the lesson is universal, privacy is under siege and liberty is negotiable. When secrecy becomes suspect and lawful association becomes a matter for government scrutiny, we cross a line that no citizen should accept lightly. The High Court in London dismissed

In a hurry? Skip to my 100 word summary My friends regularly joke that the Open University is not a real university and philosophy is not a real degree. The joke feels harmless, yet it persists because it expresses something that is widely believed. Education is increasingly judged not by what it teaches, but by what it produces. That belief is now explicit in politics, where politicians across the UK speak openly about limiting student numbers, cutting courses, and demanding

100 word summary for busy people : This week’s news has highlighted a situation that would not have surprised Plato or many of the ancient Philosophers in the slightest. A think tank aligned with the governing party commissioned an investigation into journalists who had exposed undeclared political donations. The inquiry, referred to as “Operation Cannon”, appears to have examined personal details about the journalists, including their religious beliefs, while suggesting thei

In a hurry? Skip to my 100 word summary We tend to talk about information overload as if it were a a modern problem. Too many emails, too many notifications, too much news. The implied solution is always the same, filter better, optimise feeds or legislate for exclusion. But philosophy suggests something more uncomfortable. The problem is not how much information there is. The problem is what it does to judgment. Long before screens, philosophers noticed that knowing things a

In a hurry? Skip to my 100 word summary There is a curious moment happening in UK culture where people seem more confident diagnosing their own minds than ever before, the symptoms can be vague, the tests non-existent, and yet the conclusion is firm: “I have ADHD,” “I have anxiety disorder,” “I’m on the spectrum.” What interests me is not the truth of these claims but what the act of claiming them says about the way we now think about the mind. Daniel Dennett and David Chalme

In a hurry? Skip to my 100 word summary Traditional just war theory works from a polite fiction, it tells us that wars can be judged by two separate questions, one is about whether the decision to fight is just and the other is about how the fighting is carried out. Crucially, it claims that the soldiers on each side share a kind of moral equality. They are all doing their duty, so they can kill each other without either side being condemned as murderers. The rights and wron

David Chalmers points to the 'hard problem', the unbridgeable gap between firing neurons and the inner glow of experience. He asks why there is something it is like to be at all. Brains and AI may simulate thought and behaviour, but the fact that we experience red, feel pain, or taste chocolate cannot be accounted for by functions alone. Consciousness, for Chalmers, is a fundamental feature of the world, something that cannot be reduced or eliminated without losing the essenc

I have been trying to avoid the noisiest UK political items but it seems that for now UK current affairs is just too tempting. Today it is impossible to ignore the latest announcement by the Home Secretary, and Machiavelli would see it as a fertile area for investigation. The government set out new plans on asylum yesterday, presenting them as a step toward greater clarity and control. The announcement came at a time when migration remains a difficult issue to manage and publ

It would be too easy today to focus on the problems within the labour government and the plots to unseat the prime minister. This is prime estate for Machiavelli and perhaps number 10 have read "The Prince" (or worse they have not understood it). However I have chosen today to highlight something quite different but very relevent to the thoughts of Machiavelli. A tribunal in Bangladesh has sentenced Sheikh Hasina, the long-serving and fiercely polarising former Prime Minister

When people call someone Machiavellian, they usually allude to cunning, manipulative, and strategic behaviour in pursuit of power or self-interest, often with little regard for conventional morality. It suggests someone who puts results over ethics, who can deceive, flatter, or manipulate to achieve their goals, and who is always thinking several steps ahead. This comes from the popular reading of Machiavelli’s The Prince , where he advises rulers on how to maintain power in

Foucault’s constant whisper is simple, but easy to ignore: look at the system, not just the people; examine the structures, not just the events; notice how knowledge and power circulate in ways that shape behaviour and belief. On the surface, news stories seem to be about choices, personalities, or moral failings. But beneath the headlines lies something far more intricate, a web of invisible forces shaping what happens, how it is interpreted, and what society accepts as norm

Resident doctors are striking because they say the system no longer gives them what they need to work safely or sustainably. Pay erosion plays a role, but so do long hours, gaps in training, and the pressure of keeping services running when demand keeps rising. It is a dispute about conditions, but also about what kind of system modern healthcare has become. Strikes create a moment where the familiar routines of hospitals are disrupted and the underlying structure becomes vis

Today’s news that scientists have analysed Adolf Hitler’s DNA is both fascinating and unsettling. The findings suggest he may have had a genetic disorder, Kallmann syndrome, affecting sexual development, and that rumours of Jewish ancestry were unfounded. But Foucault would argue the real story isn’t about Hitler’s biology. It’s about what it reveals about us . Every age finds its own way to explain evil. In the past, it was sin for the Church, crime for the courts, and now,

I was intending to continue with Michel Foucault throughout the week, and next week I was going to turn my attention to Niccolo Machiavelli, but it is all about "events dear Boy" (Harold Macmillan). I have shoehorned Foucault in later on, but it seems UK politics is still fascinating at a Practical Philosophy level. Downing Street feels more like a Shakespeare stage than a seat of power today. Anonymous briefings slip through the cracks, whispers of betrayal echo in corridors

Armistice Day began as a quiet, somber moment of national mourning after the First World War, centred on local memorials and reflective silence. After the Second World War it gradually evolved into Remembrance Sunday, with a more formal civic structure replacing raw grief. Over time, the symbols of remembrance shifted as well: the poppy became not just a token of mourning but a public signal of support for veterans, while debates about its politicisation, and the emergence of

I could hardly have planned a better start to the week than the scandal surrounding the splicing together of parts of a Trump speech and the response from the BBC. This news story goes to the heart of Michel Foucault and his warning to the world about institutions. Tim Davy resigned from the BBC after pressure built around recent internal mistakes and questions about how the organisation had handled them. The BBC presented the decision as a natural step to restore confidence

Next week, our reflections turn to Michel Foucault. He was a thinker who spent his life tracing how power operates not through kings or laws, but through the quiet systems that shape us every day. Foucault’s philosophy begins with a simple but disturbing insight: control in the modern world rarely looks like control. It isn’t the whip or the prison wall that disciplines us, but the rules, institutions, and categories that define what is normal, acceptable, or true. Schools, h

We will say goodbye to Hannah Arendt for now, but I hope as a recurring thread through the weeks news she provided an interesting and thought provoking link between very different items. Before we consign her to last weeks news it is worth reflecting on what she was all about. This week’s events, from the Huntingdon stabbings, to David Lammy’s silence at PMQs, to debates on education and work, all return us to one of Hannah Arendt’s most urgent ideas: the need for thinking an

This blog contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the final of celebrity Traitors and you don't want to know how it ended, don't open this blog. This blog contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the final of celebrity Traitors and you don't want to know how it ended, don't open this blog. This blog contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the final of celebrity Traitors and you don't want to know how it ended, don't open this blog. Hannah Arendt would likely see Alan Carr’s wi