A special philosophy episode. Nothing at all to do with Augustus or Rome. No Ray. Just me and a special guest – Dr. Richard Carrier, who has a M.Phil. and a Ph.D. Ancient History from Columbia University.  Talking about FREE WILL.

Now most of you know that I’m as passionate about philosophy as I am about history. Which is one reason I’m always peppering useless information about it into these series. In 2011 I wrote a book about my philosophy, The Three Illusions, and we’ve done that as a podcast which many of you have listened to. The book is available from Amazon in ebook format and you can buy a paperback version via Lulu. And I think you should all pay attention and listen to this interview, because I honestly think this subject is probably one of the most important things you will think about in your entire life. Pondering it deeply changed my life 30 years ago and it’s changed the lives of many of my friends.

So when I was in North Carolina last month, shooting my documentary on early Christianity, and I got talking to one of the stars of the film, Richard, about free will over dinner, and he said it exists, I said it doesn’t, we agreed to do a podcast debate on the subject. And this is it.

Richard teaches an online course about free will and the next one is starting March 1, so if you’re interested in this topic (and you should be!), just jump over to his website and register for the course.

And we’ll be back to dick jokes and ancient Rome in a couple of weeks.