Principle of Charity – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode we’re joined by billionaire and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen and philosopher David Blunt, to consider the merits and pitfalls of charitable giving in a world rife with inequity. 

Whether we think of inequality as simply an outcome of meritocracies that reward talent and ambition, or we’re suspicious of the system itself, there seems to be one thing we can all agree upon: it’s important for those who do disproportionately well to help those in need, beyond just paying their fair share of taxes.

In fact, charity is a fundamental virtue across any religion worth its name. And in the secular morality of liberal democracies, it’s axiomatic to say that we have a duty to those who are less fortunate. And while we might prefer that governments solve all social ills, we recognise the need for not-for-profits to fill gaps left unattended by public programs - a need bolstered by the recognition that private philanthropy may be more nimble, experimental and adaptive, and ultimately more effective than their cumbersome government cousins. 

 But like any virtue, philanthropy has been accused of casting a shadow - one that calls into question the whole endeavour itself. Philanthropy has become a $2.3 trillion USD per annum worldwide industry. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the largest private philanthropic foundation in the world, provides grants of over $8 billion per annum - nearly double the total foreign aid budget of Australia.Without the accountability that binds programs run by democratically elected governments, the biggest private foundations can have oversized influences on the choice of recipients, the issues and the approaches that are deemed most worthy. And because they often partner with governments, they can have a huge impact not just on how their own giving is distributed, but on the way taxpayer foreign aid is handed out. 

This can leave the super rich, turned super philanthropists, with an ability to exert significant control over the lives of the needy, even stripping them, as some critics argue, of their basic agency and autonomy. There is also the question of the benefits that flow to philanthropists – either directly through related business interests, or in the way their power, influence and connections are enhanced through their philanthropic endeavours. 

Nicolas Berggruen is the Founder and Chairman of the Berggruen Institute and has spearheaded its growth, establishing its presence in Los Angeles, Beijing, and Venice. Focusing on great transformations in the human condition brought on by factors such as climate change, the restructuring of global economics and politics, and advances in science and technology, the Institute seeks to connect and develop ideas in the human sciences to the pursuit of practical improvements in governance across cultures, disciplines, and political boundaries.

Gwilym David Blunt is a writer and commentator on global politics and philosophy. He has his BA (hons) in Political Science and History from the University of Western Ontario for which he was awarded a university gold medal. He has taken his MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded a PhD in Political Science from University College London for his thesis Transnational Justice, Philanthropy, and Domination. From 2015-2022 he was a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City, University of London.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in, Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X

This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo, Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do books have a future in the new digital world order? And can we engage productively with problematic cultural content?

This week luminary philosopher A.C Grayling and cultural content creator Mary McGillivray join host Lloyd Vogelman on the couch for an unfiltered conversation that digs into the personal side of the Principle of Charity.

A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil is the Principal of Northeastern University London and its Professor of Philosophy. He is a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas and essays. He was a columnist for The Guardian, The Times and Prospect Magazine. He has twice been a judge for The Booker Prize, in 2014 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of Humanists UK, Patron of the Defence Humanists, Honorary Associate of the Secular Society and a Patron of Dignity in Dying.

Mary McGillivray is a content creator making visual culture analysis accessible for the next generation. She holds a Masters degree in History of Art and Architecture from The University of Cambridge and is currently a PhD candidate at The University of Melbourne. Mary has worked with art galleries and cultural institutions across Australia, the UK and Europe to bring their collections to a massive online audience of highly engaged young viewers and she also appears on ABC Arts.

CREDITS

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X

This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.

Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts On Being, which has won the highest honors in broadcast, Internet and podcasting. Her On Being Project is evolving to meet the callings of the post-2020 world — and to accompany the generative people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive. Krista grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, worked as a young journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin, and later received a Master of Divinity from Yale. Her most recent book is Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this special Spotlight episode the US broadcaster/podcaster/writer Krista Tippett joins Emile and Lloyd to discuss wisdom and meaning. 

Krista’s On Being radio show and podcast has enriched the lives of its many millions of listeners over decades as has her best-selling book Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

As host Emile Sherman said of Krista, “Our aim on the podcast is to have true expert guests, guests who are often scholars, academics, or advocates steeped in the knowledge of a particular issue and even our discussions around the principle of charity, about how to talk with others whose views we disagree with, are often evidence based. We draw on the latest research in psychology and other disciplines to teach us how to most effectively engage with others, to seek the truth rather than win the fight. 

“In the extraordinary Krista Tippett we have a guest who’s less interested in knowledge, than in mystery, less focused on truth than on meaning and less obsessed with reason than with resonance.It’s a privilege to see how her worldview can be applied to the principle of charity, to the way we approach, listen to and interact with others.”

Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts On Being, which has won the highest honors in broadcast, Internet and podcasting. Her On Being Project is evolving to meet the callings of the post-2020 world — and to accompany the generative people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive. Krista grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, worked as a young journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin, and later received a Master of Divinity from Yale. Her most recent book is Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.

Guests

Tigress Osborn (she/her) is a fat rights advocate and Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), the world’s oldest documented organization working towards Equality at Every Size. She is a co-founding leader of the Campaign for Size Freedom, which supports passing legislation to outlaw size discrimination. Tigress is a two-time women's college graduate with degrees in Africana Studies (Smith) and English (Mills). She is an intersectional feminist teacher and writer whose professional background as a youth empowerment leader and DEI educator has informed her fat liberation activism since 2008. She has been featured in USA Today, Newsweek, and the cover of the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly; heard on BBC AntiSocial, Burnt Toast, and NPR; and seen on ABC News, NewsNation and Free Speech TV’s Feminism Today.

Helen Pluckrose is a liberal humanist and political and cultural writer and commentator. Her writing has focused on the evolution of postmodern thought into contemporary Critical Social Justice activism which she regards as counterproductive to the goal of genuine social justice. Helen is best known for participation in the Grievance Studies Affair, co-authoring Cynical Theories and the foundation of the organisation Counterweight to support workers at risk of cancellation for not supporting Critical Social Justice theories. She mostly just wants people to value evidence-based knowledge and consistently liberal ethics. 

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We live in a culture that is obsessed by weight. About a third of adult women in the US are on a diet at any given time, and a fifth of men. Those who aren’t dieting are thinking about dieting, with well over half of all adults actively wanting to lose weight, with men only slightly trailing women. 

To feed the obsession on weight, or to help people manage their weight, depending on the way one looks at things, there is a global weight loss and management industry that is expected to surpass US$405 billion by 2030.

So what is going on here? Why is there a near pervasive belief that it’s good to be thin and bad to be fat. 

In this episode we explore some of the reasons why fat has come to signify so much, looking at issues like health, shame, self-discipline, beauty and more. 

Guests

Tigress Osborn (she/her) is a fat rights advocate and Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), the world’s oldest documented organization working towards Equality at Every Size. She is a co-founding leader of the Campaign for Size Freedom, which supports passing legislation to outlaw size discrimination. Tigress is a two-time women's college graduate with degrees in Africana Studies (Smith) and English (Mills). She is an intersectional feminist teacher and writer whose professional background as a youth empowerment leader and DEI educator has informed her fat liberation activism since 2008. She has been featured in USA Today, Newsweek, and the cover of the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly; heard on BBC AntiSocial, Burnt Toast, and NPR; and seen on ABC News, NewsNation and Free Speech TV’s Feminism Today.

Helen Pluckrose is a liberal humanist and political and cultural writer and commentator. Her writing has focused on the evolution of postmodern thought into contemporary Critical Social Justice activism which she regards as counterproductive to the goal of genuine social justice. Helen is best known for participation in the Grievance Studies Affair, co-authoring Cynical Theories and the foundation of the organisation Counterweight to support workers at risk of cancellation for not supporting Critical Social Justice theories. She mostly just wants people to value evidence-based knowledge and consistently liberal ethics. 

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo, Bronwen Reid and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.

Tim Dean

Tim Dean is Senior Philosopher at The Ethics Centre, where he works to promote ethics in public and professional spheres. He has a Doctorate in philosophy from the University of New South Wales on the evolution of human nature and specialises in ethics, critical thinking and public philosophy. He is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney and the author of How We Became Human: And Why We Need to Change published by Pan Macmillan. Tim received the Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Professionals’ Award for his work on philosophy in public. He has delivered keynotes and workshops across Australia and the Asia Pacific for the likes of TEDx, Facebook, Commonwealth Bank, Aesop, Clayton Utz, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Sydney Opera House and the University of Sydney.

Danielle Harvey

Danielle Harvey is a curator, creative producer and director. Danielle works across festivals, live performance, talks, installation and digital spaces, creating layered programs that connect deeply with audiences. She is currently Festival Director of the infamous FESTIVAL OF DANGEROUS IDEAS and Director of the line-blurring theatrical events company Dancing Giant Productions. Danielle was creator of BINGEFEST (a festival celebrating digital culture) and ANTIDOTE (a festival of ideas and action), and co-creator of ALL ABOUT WOMEN (a feminist festival). She was the co-creator and originating director of the award-winning immersive experience A MIDNIGHT VISIT. Her latest immersive work ETERNITYLAND created a theatrical ‘playground’ to rave reviews. Past roles include Head of Contemporary Performance at Sydney Opera House, the Festival Executive Producer of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras and the Director of Engagement for The Ethics Centre.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we go back to basics and look at the practical ways of communicating the principle of charity and how certain behaviours over time have been developed for social cohesion, even when we don’t all agree.

With our special guests –  moral philosopher Dr Tim Dean and festival director Danielle Harvey – we have a wide-ranging discussion on what communicating in good faith looks like, what bad faith is, and how to navigate tricky topics. We discuss ways to have hard conversations – be that in person, in events, in podcasts or even in lecture theatres. This takes us to the role of morality, behavioural evolution, and outrage. What do we have in our toolkit that we can use to solve the problems of how to live together peacefully? And just how do you communicate your view or knowledge in a way that can be understood while inviting challenge in a respectful manner?

This episode introduces our new partnership with The Ethics Centre, a not for profit organisation who works to bring ethics to the centre of everyday life. We have joined forces, aligned by an intent to bring curiosity and generosity to conversations about the tough topics in our world.  Dr Tim Dean is the senior philosopher at The Ethics Centre. We introduce Danielle Harvey, our new podcast producer who is also festival director of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which is presented by The Ethics Centre.

Tim Dean

Tim Dean is Senior Philosopher at The Ethics Centre, where he works to promote ethics in public and professional spheres. He has a Doctorate in philosophy from the University of New South Wales on the evolution of human nature and specialises in ethics, critical thinking and public philosophy. He is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney and the author of How We Became Human: And Why We Need to Change published by Pan Macmillan. Tim received the Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Professionals’ Award for his work on philosophy in public. He has delivered keynotes and workshops across Australia and the Asia Pacific for the likes of TEDx, Facebook, Commonwealth Bank, Aesop, Clayton Utz, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Sydney Opera House and the University of Sydney.

Danielle Harvey

Danielle Harvey is a curator, creative producer and director. Danielle works across festivals, live performance, talks, installation and digital spaces, creating layered programs that connect deeply with audiences. She is currently Festival Director of the infamous FESTIVAL OF DANGEROUS IDEAS and Director of the line-blurring theatrical events company Dancing Giant Productions. Danielle was creator of BINGEFEST (a festival celebrating digital culture) and ANTIDOTE (a festival of ideas and action), and co-creator of ALL ABOUT WOMEN (a feminist festival). She was the co-creator and originating director of the award-winning immersive experience A MIDNIGHT VISIT. Her latest immersive work ETERNITYLAND created a theatrical ‘playground’ to rave reviews. Past roles include Head of Contemporary Performance at Sydney Opera House, the Festival Executive Producer of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras and the Director of Engagement for The Ethics Centre.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Danielle Harvey

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With guests, Ahmed Elgammal and Michael Sacasas



In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guest, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.

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You can be part of the discussion @PofCharity on Twitter, @PrincipleofCharity on Facebook and @PrincipleofCharityPodcast on Instagram.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Bronwen Reid

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com & @JonahPrimo on Instagram. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2022, an AI generated work of art won a US state art competition. The artist used Midjourney, one of the popular AI systems that also include Dall-E and Stable Diffusion. They are trained on the millions of images scattered through the internet, using a deep learning program called a ‘generative adversarial network’, or GAN for short. It works by taking in text prompts, where you type in what you want the artwork to look like, and the AI then draws on the huge database of artworks, to generate a new work that conforms to the prompts. 

But to create a great AI work, it’s not as simple as typing ‘create some great art’. The artist who won that competition put in lengthy complex prompts, working up hundreds of iterations before he arrived at the final work. 

So, is this really art?  When we see an AI art creation, it genuinely feels ‘creative’. But is there something humans do when we create which is qualitatively different to AI? Like AI in every domain it has touched, AI art is challenging us to rethink our categories and even to ask us to question what it means to be human.

Our guests for this conversation are both experts in the intersection between art and technology.  Professor Ahmed Elgammal has actually constructed AI systems that have created artworks that are so good, a majority of people believe they are truly original human creations. Michael Sacasas,on the other hand, sees AI art as missing an essential ingredient, no matter how good its style is. It’ll never convey the deep connection between artist and viewer that we all crave.

Guests

Ahmed Elgammal

Dr. Ahmed Elgammal is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and an Executive Council Faculty at the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He is the founder and director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Rutgers. He is also the founder and CEO of Playform AI, a platform that is dedicated to give artist access to the latest generative AI tech. In 2017, he developed AICAN, an autonomous AI artist and collaborative creative partner, which was acclaimed in an Artsy editorial as “the biggest artistic achievement of the year.” In 2021, he led the AI team that completed Beethoven’s 10th symphony, which received worldwide media coverage. He received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Michael Sacasas

Michael writes The Convivial Society, a popular newsletter on technology, culture, and the moral life.  Michael has written for The New Atlantis, Comment, Plough, The New Inquiry, Real Life Magazine, Mere Orthodoxy, The American, and Second Nature Journal. His work has also been featured in The Atlantic, Vox, and the New York Times. He is the Executive Director, Christian Study Centre in Florida, and earned his MA in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in 2002. He was later a doctoral candidate at the University of Central Florida studying the relationship between technology and society with a focus on the work of Hannah Arendt.  He is an Associate Fellow in Ethics and Culture at the Greystone Theological Institute.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Bronwen Reid

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.