What happens when loss alters the very world we inhabit? In this conversation, Matthew Ratcliffe and Kathleen Higgins discuss grief as an unfolding emotional journey marked by disrupted meaning and shifting possibilities that reshape how we experience ourselves, others, and the world. They consider the differences between grief and depression, examine why grief can feel inexpressible, how it transforms identity and meaning, and what philosophy can contribute to understanding

Havi Carel explores the challenge of articulating and understanding suffering, focusing on illness as a deeply embodied and transformative experience. Drawing on phenomenology, she examines how illness profoundly reshapes a person's relationship to their body, identity and environment. Carel reveals how illness disrupts the taken-for-granted certainty of bodily existence, leading to 'bodily doubt'. This gives way to uncertainty, vulnerability and sometimes the collapse of age

"Home is our anchor point within reality which gives us orientation and allows us to set out in new directions."

"Who can speak is a fundamental political question – both in the meaning of who is allowed to speak, and who is seen as a speaking being."

"Emotions are based rather on affective concerns, concerns over what really matters to the subjects­­ – what we “give a damn” about."

"Selfhood is not only what allows us to mark our difference to others, it is also what permits us to share a perspective with them."

"The phenomenon of 'continental' philosophy or even 'French theory' is a thoroughly Anglophone one."

This essay explores whether “climate” is truly real, not by denying it, but by questioning how we understand it. Drawing on philosophy, it argues climate is both everywhere and hard to define—shaping experience without being directly observable. Climate change, then, is not just physical warming but a shift in how humans perceive and relate to the world, revealing gaps between lived experience and abstract scientific concepts.