‘Fresh AiR’ is a podcast, hosted by Joe, Martijn and Dave. It is part of Answers in Reason but hopes to bring a fresh perspective on a number of topics you might hear from the atheist and sceptic community.
Our primary topics are in the realms of philosophy, so that is pretty much anything and everything you can imagine, and we hope to do it whilst making you laugh.
The short answer is anyone that wants to be.
As the shows host and producer Joe asks a number of stupid questions to further the conversation. This pleases Joe as it keeps the guys guessing as to whether he’s good at asking questions or is genuinely that stupid.
Dave is a Philosophy masters student. At the ripe old age of 84 he is still young enough to find Cilla Black attractive.
Martijn loves ethics & philosophy and is constantly looking for uranium. Alas, he hasn’t got the intelligence to do either dye to his brain being exposed to radiation. He is stronger than those pesky humans, though!
Kriss is one of the founders of AiR, and joined us from episode 4 on-wards. Having long wanted to do a podcast was eager for the opportunity and gladly wears a tiara during every episode.
Andy is one of AiR’s editors and has been subjected to Joe’s friendship for the last 5 years. Andy managed to survive our discussion on Morality, and joined us for the last 2 episodes as well, hopefully returning next season in a more permanent role.
Who’d win the Fight, Santa or God? One of the worst comparisons I see us atheists make is comparing God to Santa (or any other mythological character). I understand the reason comparisons like this start. Many of us atheists regard both Santa and god as myths, which is fine, but what is not fine is that is where…
Is Atheism the Null Hypothesis? It is common to hear folks claim Atheism is the null hypothesis. In this SciPhi Short we will be going over what the null hypothesis is with a few examples. We will start by covering off what a hypothesis is, moving on to the null hypothesis itself, and finishing up…
Read More “The Null Hypothesis: How it Relates to Atheism and God – SciPhi Shortz” »
Are we Really Born Atheists? We atheists have a number of things in our toolbelts, and one of those is memes. Many of these memes are oversimplifications or just flat out wrong, so I thought I would create a series to address some of our worst memes and explain why they are so bad. Something that…
Read More ““We Are All Born Atheist!” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!” »
What does it mean to be rational? It is common to hear that all beliefs are irrational, but is that really the case? In this SciPhi Short we will be briefly examining rationality and how it relates to belief. We will be covering: – What is a Belief – What is Rationality – States of…
Read More “Rationality: How Can a Belief Be Rational? – SciPhi Shortz” »
Conclusively Atheist? I see a lot of memes flying about the internet. Some are great, some are funny, and others are just terrible. As an atheist, I find some of our atheistic memes absolutely awful so I thought I would start a series called “Bad Atheist Memes” or “BAM!” to go over the memes, explain…
Read More ““Atheism is a Conclusion, Not a Belief” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!” »
Hume’s take on Testimony and Miracles! After our chat with Bearded Heretic and his take on the problems with testimony from a psychological perspective, we return to the topic through a different lens. We shall start with Hume on miracles and his theory on testimony and see where the conversation takes us. We also have…
What is the Gap? Tonight we return to our discussions on the philosophy of mind. We often hear that physicalism cannot account for consciousness. That there is a gap between the physical explanations and the phenomenal experience. Come join us as we explore the ‘explanatory gap’! What does it mean to explain something? What is…
Evidence is often a hot topic, and one frequently misunderstood. I covered off a number of different types of evidence before in the post Dirty Words: Belief, Faith and Evidence and we have done a small podcast on the matter too BoPping to The Evidence. Even still, sometimes it is better to see if we can approach things…
The Truth is Out There! What is truth? How can we know if something is true? What is a truth-apt statement? Do all statements hold a truth value? How does truth relate to morality? Can we have a subjective truth? In this stream, we hope to cover off these questions and examine a few theories…
The Rationality Thesis We take a look at the rationality thesis and delve into the rationality debate asking; are humans rational creatures that make performance errors or irrational creatures that sometimes demonstrate rationality? Dave talks about slides in this stream which you can find here: To Be or Not Be Rational – The Video This…
Testified! Today we will be looking at testimony, and whether or not it is worth anything. Are our memories to be trusted, or do they contain lots of false information? Can people create fake memories just by using words? How good are people at remembering other’s faces? We will also be coving off a pet…
The Paradox of Negative Emotions Disgust, Fear and Sadness are all negative emotions we usually avoid.Why would rational agents want to seek out things that cause them such distress? We embark on a journey through the paradox of negative emotions to gain a deeper understanding of this very thing. Disgustingly Enjoyable – The Video To…
Philosophy of Emotion, how sweet it is! Are emotions just chemical reactions? Or can we consider them more than that? Come join us for a basic introduction to the philosophy of emotion! We are also joined last minute by our friend Bearded Heretic (Luke). We look at emotion both through the lens of Philosophy and…
Another Video Review? Yes, sorry, another one. Having been incredibly busy we thought we would do another video review. We thought that perhaps Haitham Talaat might have produced a better video than his last. It turned out worse. At least in episode 2 he seemed to be trying to engage in an open dialogue but…
Artificial Ethics We venture into the world of AI and consider the ethical implications and applications. Will our future overlords be moral and just? We will be considering how morality is used in the automated world from now and into the future, looking at various thought experiments, and pondering ethical culpability and responsibility when things…
Rationality and Hammers? We come back round to rationality, as well as hammers! What do hammers have to do with rationality? Tune in to find out! The conversation will include, but will not be limited to: What is Rationality? How does Rationality relate to Reason? Are there any tools that can help you with rationality?…
