As result of global Covid lockdowns and satisfying videos on TikTok, pottery has experienced a new revival. With thousands of years of history behind the practice, what benefits might it have in store? And why might it just be the hobby of the future?

In this episode, Alice Hazell, Classical Archaeology and Ancient History (CAAH) student at Lady Margaret Hall, will be interviewing Cathy O'Brien, an archaeology DPhil candidate at Keble college, who has used theories of cognitive archaeology and anthropology to research how people have been potting during the pandemic and its effect on our wellbeing.

Common to Christianity, Judaism and Islam is the concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent God. Surely, then, this God knows everything you have done and everything you will do in your life. This raises a profound philosophical problem: is there free will within an Abrahamic context if God knows our future? Why doesn’t God intervene if He knows one will never find religion?

Join Katie Peachey, a second year Philosophy and Theology student from St Peter’s College, and Dr Tim Mawson, Edgar Jones Fellow and tutor in Philosophy at St Peter’s, as they discuss these pressing issues.

Across the globe, biologists have set up a series of long-term study populations, where all individuals within an animal population are monitored both across their own lifespan and also over many generations. But what's the point of this, and what questions can be answered using long-term studies that can’t be addressed through alternative experiments? 

In this episode of OxPods, biology PhD student Joe Woodman will be interviewing Prof Ben Sheldon FRS, whose research into ecology, evolution and animal behaviour exploits insights from the longest running ecological study of marked wild individual animals in the world, that of the great tit in Wytham Woods.

According to recent polls, the most well-known Shakespeare plays are Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth, all of which are tragedies. Although Shakespeare wrote just as many comedies as he did tragedies, they simply are not as popular or widely read, and this trend applies to other playwrights of Shakespeare’s time as well. 

Flora Symington, English Literature student, asks world-renown drama expert and Professor of Shakespeare, Emma Smith, why this is the case, and why she thinks we could all do with spending a bit more time with comedies.

Over the past few decades, US politics has become increasingly polarised, resulting in the emergence of a highly fractured political landscape, exemplified by the storming of the Capitol in January 2021. How did American politics become so polarised? What are the origins of these divisions? And how do we define what it means to be an American today? 

To find out, in this episode of OxPods, Katerina Zagurova, history student at The Queen´s College, will be interviewing Dr Bruce Shulman, the Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American history, whose research on 20th century US history focuses on the relationships between political and broader cultural change.

When the world was brought to a halt by the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals all over the world stepped up to the job of saving lives and ‘bringing normal back again’. In Oxford, Dr Adam Ritchie was one of them. 

In this episode of OxPods, Miya McFarlane, Human Sciences undergraduate at Regents Park College, interviews Dr Ritchie, a senior programme manager of the Oxford-AstraZeneca mass vaccine program, on how he helped vaccinate people all over world.

Last summer, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, reigniting a fifty-year abortion debate once thought settled in the Western world. Though disguised by coverage of judges and commentators alike, the crux of the debate remains deeply philosophical: what is the moral value of a foetus? Is it a human being? Is it a person? 

To answer these questions, Todd Horton, law graduate from Trinity College, will be interviewing Professor Jonathan Herring, a pre-eminent exponent of the ‘relational’ conception of personhood, and author of the leading textbook on Medical Law.

Many social animals live in groups that appear to be relatively unaffected by disease. But just how is this possible? And what could we, humans, learn from the way that animals deal with disease? To find out, in this episode of OxPods, Alex Rodway, biology master’s student at Jesus College, will be interviewing Dr Chris Pull, whose research looks at the ways in which animal collectives have evolved avoidance, resistance and tolerance strategies to mitigate the damaging effects of disease.