This course is designed around ‘The Lives of the Philosophers’ series released on our podcast in 2026. The course is made up of an introduction and eight units, each of which will ask you to begin by listening to the relevant episode from the series. The episode will be followed by a short recall quiz, after which you can reveal our suggested answers and compare them with your own.

We've then provided some suggested readings, which should help when considering the list of broader questions that will follow. The readings will be a mixture of primary texts by the philosopher we’re discussing and a series of secondary texts written about the philosopher or relevant to ideas they discussed.

The questions at the end of each unit are yours to approach as you like. If you’re taking this course as a group we hope they will be useful to prompt discussion. If you’re working alone, you could use one or two of them to try writing essays, or to consider your thoughts about an episode.

Finally, the course concludes with a set of broader questions, which we hope will draw out some of the ideas and themes across the series. If you enjoy writing in response to these, you might like to explore the essay competition associated with our ‘Great Political Essays’ course.