Even allowing for the fact that relationship between the sexes has never been easy, we surely live in strangely anxious times when it comes to such matters, with accusations of misogyny and toxic masculinity rife. Are men a problem? How do men and women differ? And what, if anything, do we want or need from each other?

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Nina Power about her book What do men want?: masculinity and its discontents.

Anti-vaxxers, creation science, astrology – for supposedly rational times, irrational and pseudoscientific beliefs appear to be doing quite well. Why? Which pseudosciences are flourishing, and for what reasons? And where even is the border between science and pseudoscience?

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Michael Gordin about his book On the Fringe: Where Science meets Pseudoscience.

We live in strange, unsettling, perhaps even exceptional times. How did we get here? In particular, how have our dependence on energy, our need for economic growth and our distrust in politics combined to shape our unstable 21st century.

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Helen Thompson about her book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.

The more religion dies, the more it stays alive, predictions of its imminent demise being as popular now as they were a hundred years ago. Why? Where did religion come from? Why is it so deep rooted in human nature? And where, if anywhere, is it going?

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Robin Dunbar about his book How Religion Evolved and why it endures.

Strange as it may seem given what they do, ethics is very important to the intelligence services. But how do you – how even can you – spy ethically?

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Cécile Fabre about her book Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence.

Science is the basis of so much in the modern world that to ask why we should trust it seems unnecessary, even wrong. Yet, people do, and not all of them for the best motives.

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Naomi Oreskes about her book Why Trust Science? which answers ‘science sceptics’ of all stripes, and opens up new perspectives on the importance of diversity in science.

Covid-19 was not the first pandemic in history, and it won’t be the last. We have lived with disease throughout our history, and our history has accordingly been shaped, sometimes transformed, by disease. But how?

In the final episode of this series of Reading Our Times, Nick Spencer talks to the historian Kyle Harper about his new book Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History.

The Common Good is a remarkably popular phrase, used widely by the left and the right, the religious and the secular. But does it actually mean anything? Is it so elastic as to have no real content?

In this episode, Nick Spencer talks to Anna Rowlands about her new book Towards a Politics of Communion, about what the Common Good means and what it offers a society like ours.

Even as formal religious adherence wanes (at least in the West), people go on talking about God and spiritual matters. But how is that even possible? How can you talk about someone (or something) that is beyond language? Is all God-talk literally nonsense?

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Janet Soskice about her classic 'Metaphor and Religious Language' and her forthcoming 'Naming God' about how on earth we can hope to talk about God.

Secularism is supposed to epitomise reasonableness and fairness – the refusal to favour one (non/religious) group over another. Yet, it is coming under fierce pressure across the world. Why?

In this episode Nick Spencer talks to Prof. Sumantra Bose about his book 'Secular States, Religious Politics' and looks at the future of secularism in the 21st century.