#13 Tom Chivers

Tom Chivers is a writer, who specialises in the intersection of science, philosophy and politics. He was a former staff writer at BuzzFeed UK and an assistant comment editor at the Telegraph. He's currently writing a book about Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, he talks about atheism, the value of truth and verification. He also talks about attaining truth through scientific methods, taking principles from both classical philosophy and computer science to interrogate the hard questions. Finally, he talks about the UK's media environment, and how best to handle an altercation on Twitter. The episode also features Nick Spencer, who talks about his upcoming conversation with Stephen Pinker, and his review of the writer John Gray's work on optimism, which is now available on the Theos website. You can follow Theos at @theosthinktank and you can follow Elizabeth at @theoselizabeth on Twitter.