We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem strange to think of time in terms of 'temporalities', different concepts and experiences of time that reflect different cultural values. In Australia, Indigenous temporalities are deeply interwoven with notions of justice, sovereignty and care for country - but these temporalities exist in tension with settler-colonial notions of time.

Buddhism in the West is often thought of as an ethical or philosophical system first and foremost, based on principles of non-self and impermanence, and universalist in its outlook. So it can come as a surprise to find that in countries like Sri Lanka, there exists a strain of Buddhist nationalism that has fierce pride, religious chauvinism and even violence in its history.

The forced removal of First Nations children from their families was active government policy in Australia between the 1910s and the 1970s, and still continues today under the banner of child protection. Today we're hearing that the story of the Stolen Generation has a historical parallel in the 'child rescue' movement in 19th century Britain, when so-called 'ragged children' were taken from their families - in many cases, abducted - and placed in institutions, to be trained and moulded into productive citizens.

Conspiracy theorists are turning out to be a resilient bunch, and no amount of refutation or mockery will make them go away. It's a problem, because as well as being ethically problematic, conspiracy theories can sometimes be downright dangerous. So how do we deal with them? This week we're exploring the ways in which the familiar diagnosis of the conspiracy theorist - lacking in reason, perhaps mentally ill - doesn't really get it right.

Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749) is best known as a contemporary and defender of John Locke - but she was also a fascinating philosopher in her own right. Writing at a time when secular philosophy was beginning to challenge the Christian religious monopoly on moral authority, Cockburn was a devout Anglican - and, for a time, a devout Catholic - who nevertheless believed that virtue could be attained via reason.

Reading seems like a simple, uncomplicated activity that most of us enjoy without thinking too much about it - but how simple is it really? Literary theorists have been arguing for decades over what it is to read, what it is to interpret a text, what it is for something to be a text. This week we're catching up on some of the recent debates.

It's been said that the work of the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer should come with a health warning, so stark and pessimistic was his outlook on life. And the man was no less confronting than the philosophy: he could be rude, intemperate and misanthropic. But a new biography of Schopenhauer shows him to have been a more complex and even endearing figure than his reputation might suggest.

The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme exposed a system that unfairly (and illegally) subjected vulnerable people to stress and trauma - but was it deliberately punitive? And to what extent does our welfare system reflect negative public attitudes toward people living in poverty?

There's an app for everything these days, including parenting and childrearing - but at what cost? Women in the Global South are increasingly using parenting apps, whose Western developers say their advice is scientific and reliable. But that modern, scientific advice is edging out older, traditional childrearing wisdom and causing intergenerational tension.

Democracy is a powerful force for progress, but it's also vulnerable and beset by its own internal contradictions. Plato thought that democracy was a bad idea, as it gave unmerited power to the ignorant and the malevolent. Looking around the world today, can we confidently say he was wrong?

Conservation is the name of the game in most ecological thinking - but in the eyes of some environmental philosophers, conservation is a backward-looking concept. What if, instead of looking to conserve nature, we tried to recreate and improve it via biotechnology? This year's Alan Saunders Lecture explores such futuristic interventions as reviving extinct species, turning carnivores into herbivores and genetically engineering less resource-intensive humans.

Are you troubled by the way that social media has enabled the spread of propaganda? Well, get ready for slopaganda, which is propaganda that's AI-powered and unprecedented in terms of speed, scale, audience reach and persuasiveness. "AI slop" is the term used to identify unwanted AI content - the algorithm-driven equivalent of spam email. Slopaganda is turning out to be just as annoying as spam, but far more dangerous.

As an academic discipline, Australian literature has been a largely white affair, with the canon of "great Australian authors" dominated by Anglo-European men. Indigenous writers are working to change this, and Australian indigenous literature is flourishing. But how comfortably does it sit within the traditional university structure?

Living and writing through the years before, during and after the Second World War, French author and philosopher Albert Camus witnessed the rise of fascism and its terrible endgame in German National Socialism. Today, amid fears of a neo-fascist resurgence in the USA, his work well is worth revisiting.

Beauty apps are becoming more and more miraculously high-tech, but also more and more invasive. You might feel OK about an app that gives your face a "beauty rating", but what if the app started to recommend cosmetic surgery procedures? Or how about a selfie enhancement app that doesn't just get rid of minor skin blemishes, but actually alters the shape of your face to suit and algorithmically determined ideal?

Babies cry, smile, laugh and react to their environment - so it seems odd to look at a baby and wonder whether or not it's conscious. But consciousness is a tricky thing to pin down, and according to some theories of consciousness, babies don't attain it until two or even three years of age, while others suggest that babies could be conscious even in the womb. It's an important scientific question but also a moral one, as it affects how we treat not only babies but other such "consciousness candidates" as non-human animals, AI and synthetic biological systems.

If there's one thing AI has in common with all new technology, it's that a lot of people are scared of it. When it comes to AI and education, horror stories abound of students using ChatGPT to write their essays, and a possible future where teachers are replaced by bots. But according to this week's guest, there's much to be excited about.

Most of us have Male or Female registered on our birth certificates - but what does this certification mean, in terms of its effect on our lives? There are many other things about us that have at least as much significance as our gender - our sexuality, our ethnicity - but only gender has legal status. This week we're talking about the pros and cons of uncoupling gender from the law.

It's easy to say that people who hold extreme antisocial beliefs should be held responsible for those beliefs. But in fact, many extremists operate within what philosophers call impoverished epistemic environments - epistemic "bubbles" and echo chambers whose inhabitants might be ignorant of the truth, or subject to manipulation. But does that mean responsibility for extreme beliefs therefore lies with the wider public? And if so, what are we to do about it?

The 2019 bushfires that devastated the east coast of Australia had one upside: the smoke in the atmosphere made for some stunning sunsets. But is a beautiful sunset caused by bushfire smoke really beautiful? Or consider the blobfish: crowned the world's ugliest animal in 2013 by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, the blobfish is actually a miracle of evolution, perfectly adapted to its deep-sea environment. But does that feature make it attractive? This week we're looking at how the aesthetic appreciation of nature and scientific knowledge can be at odds with each other.