PODCAST ARCHIVE · GREAT TEXTS · PUBLIC CONVERSATION
Explore dedicated Beyond the Text episode pages through five different routes. Episodes appear in more than one section because the same conversation can cross thinkers, themes, formats, series and periods.
Complete trilogy: Hobbes – Fear, Power and Faction
- Who Was Thomas Hobbes, and What Was He Afraid Of?
- Why Should We Obey the State? – available now
- When Does Disagreement Become Faction? – available now
Montaigne: Self, Doubt and Difference
Three conversations with Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson: self-portraiture, living and dying, and cultural judgement. Episode 1 is available now. The next website companions are scheduled for 7 and 9 October at 10 pm UK.
Why Did Montaigne Make Himself His Subject?
Why did Montaigne write about himself? Explore his Essays, changing identity and self-knowledge with Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson.
How Should We Learn to Live and Die?
Explore Montaigne on death, education and everyday experience with Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson in the second Beyond the Text conversation.
Who Gets to Call Whom Barbarous?
Montaigne on custom, cruelty and cultural judgement: Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson ask who gets to call another society barbarous.
Choose how to browse
Browse by thinker
Begin with a philosopher, historian or political thinker. Multi-thinker episodes are listed under every major figure they discuss.
Ancient and medieval
Early modern
Eighteenth century
- Paul de Rapin de Thoyras
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Edmund Burke
- Thomas Paine
- Immanuel Kant
- Joseph de Maistre
Modern
Browse by theme
Follow an argument across different centuries and traditions.
Liberty, law and constitutionalism
- Locke, Burke and Paine: The Quest for Liberty
- John Stuart Mill: Classical and Modern Liberalism
- F. A. Hayek: Law, Legislation and Liberty
- Rapin de Thoyras and the Making of English Party
- Rawls and Sandel: Justice and Community
Faction, order and political judgment
- Rapin de Thoyras and the Making of English Party
- Edmund Burke and the Moral Imagination
- The English Civil War
- Joseph de Maistre: Order and Counter-Revolution
- Disraeli and Oakeshott: Belonging and Tradition
Religion and political theology
- Christianity’s Emergence and Impact
- Augustine’s City of God
- Gregorian Reforms and the Protestant Reformation
- Rousseau’s Social Contract and the Civic Religion
Enlightenment and tolerance
Republic, revolution and sovereignty
- Plato’s Republic
- Rome: From Empire to Republic (and Back Again)
- France, America and Haiti
- Industrialisation and Karl Marx
Science, knowledge and modernity
- The Copernican Revolution in Astronomy
- Descartes, Kant and Hegel
- Jesse Norman on Francis Bacon and The Winding Stair
Industrial society and social criticism
Morality, meaning and the self
Browse by format
Short intellectual history
Concise episodes built around a focused historical problem.
Text-led conversations
Browse by series and collection
History of Ideas Club – Revolution of Thought
An eight-part journey through revolutions in religion, government, science, philosophy and society.
History of Ideas Club – Heritage
Scholar interviews
Browse by historical period
Periods refer to the main historical focus of each episode, not simply the lifetime of a guest or host.
Ancient world
Late antiquity and the medieval world
Early modern world
Eighteenth century and the age of revolutions
- Rapin de Thoyras and the Making of English Party
- Rousseau’s Social Contract
- Locke, Burke and Paine
- Edmund Burke and the Moral Imagination
- France, America and Haiti
- Anthony Pagden on the Enlightenment
- Ritchie Robertson on the Enlightenment
- Denis Lacorne on tolerance
- Joseph de Maistre and the Counter-Revolution
Nineteenth century to the present
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Return to the main Podcast page for the latest embedded episodes, or open the complete audio feed on your preferred platform.
