This PPF+ bonus episode to accompany our series about the challenges facing universities looks back at one of the most serious crises to face a British university this century. David talks to historian Edward Acton, who was the newly installed Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia in November 2009 when it was engulfed by the Climategate scandal. Who were the real heroes and villains of this story? How did the university survive it? What does it tell us about the politics of climate change? And what does it tell us about the times in which we live?

In this PPF+ bonus episode we conclude our series about the profound influence of transhumanism on our world by exploring where things stand today. David talks to Duncan Bell about existential risk, warnings of AI apocalypse and dreams of living forever. Plus they explore what’s wrong with transhumanism and whether this has anything to do with the fact that it’s a vision of human transformation overwhelmingly conceived of by men. Whose future is it anyway?

Today’s PPF+ bonus episode is part two of David’s conversation with Samuel Moyn about the growing wealth and power of older generations and what can be done about it. Can we stop older people worrying about the worst that might happen? Can governments do more to redress the imbalance between the generations? Can the cause of young people ever become a political movement in its own right? And is there any way past the sclerotic US constitution?

In today’s PPF+ bonus episode David introduces our two new educational courses and lays out the thinking behind them. He also discusses some of his own thinking about the relationship between what he used to do as a university teacher and what we do now on PPF. Is it possible to learn from a podcast? What makes education stick and what gets in the way? And what should we all be doing more of at a time when so much of our reading, writing and remembering has been franchised out to machines?

In today’s PPF+ bonus episode David talks to philosopher and biographer Kate Kirkpatrick about the life and thought of Simone de Beauvoir. How was Beauvoir shaped by her childhood and was she a reliable narrator of her own history? What sort of feminist and what sort of existentialist was she? Did she influence Sartre more than Sartre influenced her? Which were the relationships that ultimately mattered to her most?

In this PPF+ bonus episode which concludes our series on bad ideas David talks to geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about the pitfalls of genealogy and why we need to be careful about over-interpreting the evidence regarding our ancestry. What exactly is genealogy and why has it become such a popular hobby? How do people get the genetics so badly wrong? Who are the charlatans who exploit our credulity? And what has all this got to do with Danny Dyer?