TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: What Is X?

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25 episodes
2021 to 2022
Median: 62 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast centers on extended conversations in which host Justin E. H. Smith invites a guest—often an academic, writer, or practitioner with relevant expertise—to attempt to answer a deceptively simple question: “What is X?” Each dialogue uses a Socratic method, with the participants proposing definitions, testing them against counterexamples, clarifying ambiguities, and tracing the historical and conceptual baggage that comes with familiar words. The tone is intentionally playful as well as rigorous, and the endpoint may be consensus, principled disagreement, or an acknowledged dead end.

Across the episodes, the “X” ranges from foundational philosophical topics—metaphysics, time, consciousness, being, matter, and the status of numbers—to social and political realities such as war, money, gender, mental health, and conspiracy theories. The show also treats cultural and aesthetic subjects including art, poetry, criticism, humor, punk, authorship, and even everyday categories like breakfast, using them as occasions to ask what makes a thing what it is, how definitions shift across eras, and what purposes our concepts serve.

A recurring theme is the tension between objective accounts (scientific, metaphysical, or realist) and accounts that emphasize human practices, institutions, language, and power. Listeners can expect wide-ranging references to philosophy and intellectual history alongside concrete examples drawn from contemporary life, with a consistent focus on how rational inquiry works when the terms of the question are themselves part of the problem.