Philosophy Playdate

Children's impossible questions addressed by the greatest minds in philosophy. With jokes.Hosted by philosopher Christabel Cane and comedian Steve Cross.

Philosophy Playdate is a society podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 24 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Philosophy Playdate, a society show with 24 episodes published.

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  Episode #25

  Episode 25 - "Why must we imagine Sisyphus happy?"

  Aug 17, 20261h 16mS1

  This week, Steve and Christabel are delighted to be joined by composer/ writer/ podcaster/ director/ photographer extraordinaire Ian Bowkett to tackle a question that was technically posed by Steve’s son. Steve relays that whilst returning his children to bed for the umpteenth time that night, he informed them that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. Steve’s son asked what this meant, which gave our hosts *just enough* of a plausible excuse to invite their friend and Sisyphus expert Ian to join them for an episode on Albert Camus’ most iconic thought experiment. Ian describes the research he conducted into Greek myth and Stoic philosophy whilst writing ‘Sisyphus: A Rock ’n’ Roll Musical’. He reports that there is no single, coherent account of what happened to the king of Corinth, his Pleiad nymph wife Merope, and the Greek gods he angered: like many stories passed down through oral tradition, there are many overlapping versions to choose from. Ian recounts the task of gently separating and reweaving the myth’s threads to create his own narrative. (This prompts the trio take a moment to consider which parts of The Odyssey Christopher Nolan should have left in his recent film adaptation). Christabel acquaints us with Camus’ absurdist philosophy, his paradoxical stance on Algerian independence, and his legendary fallings-out with the existentialist philosophers and Parisian tastemakers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Steve fills us in on the ultimate Sisyphean task of parenting, and demonstrates a highly-developed sensitivity to the absurd on the topics of football, Pokémon, jazz and dentistry. Massive thanks to Ian for joining us, find his fabulous ‘The Mayor of Musical Theatre’ podcast here: https://shows.acast.com/the-mayor-of-musical-theatre Keep your eyes peeled for tickets to Ian’s new musical ‘Stag Night’, which will be released soon for a December run at the Canal Café Theatre: https://canalcafetheatre.com/ Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Find Christabel at https://christabelcane.com/ Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

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  Philosophy Playdate

  Episode 24 - "Why do people not want to be old?"

  Aug 10, 20261h 3m

  This week Steve and Christabel take a stab at answering why it is that people don’t want to be old. They begin in Ancient Greece with a conversation between Socrates and Cephalus, drawing heavily on Saloni de Souza’s interpretation of Plato’s presentation of old age in this early passage of The Republic. Even in ancient times, it was known that wealth can help mitigate the downsides of the ageing process, so the duo hop over to France to pick up on the more explicitly class-conscious critiques of society’s treatment of the old, as provided by Simone de Beauvoir and Édouard Louis. They (hopefully) skirt Jeff Bezos’ legal team’s notice in their discussion of the plight of Amazon warehouse workers, describing what Joseph Fraccia describes as “the messages that capital writes on the bodies of labourers”. Christabel points to a UCL study led by Paola Zaninotto that found that the wealthiest can expect to live an extra 8-9 years free of disability. She then has a mild existential crisis at the thought that most professional sportspeople her age are considered significantly past their prime. Steve attempts to draw her out of her spiralling by teaching her about football manager culture (and is extremely rude about the good people of Stevenage in the process). The focus of our intrepid hosts remains steadfastly on the continent as conversation turns to Edmund Husserl’s distinction between the natural and the philosophical attitudes. Christabel relays that both Jessie Stanier and Hans-Georg Eilenberger posit that ageism gets sedimented into the natural attitude. Steve proceeds to dunk on the Silicon Valley Tech Bros who spend millions on the junk science that purports to ‘reverse their biological ages’. The episode closes with a commendation of the work that Jessie Stanier and Rosie Poebright put into facilitating intergenerational conversations between LGBTQIA+ Bristolians, and concludes that we should all be following the good example set by the wonderfulqueers of the Southwest. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Find Christabel at https://christabelcane.com/ Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

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  Episode #23

  Episode 23 - "Why do we save the best for last?"

  Aug 3, 20261h 26mS1

  This week, Steve and Christabel survey what the philosophers have said about temporal biases that drive behaviours like saving the best for last, ‘swallowing the frog’ and investing for retirement. In the course of these proceedings, Steve informs us of the objectively correct order to consume a roast dinner, and then solves Zeno’s paradox. Christabel tells us of the study conducted by Eugene Caruso, Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson that suggests that human beings become more emotional when thinking about future events, and the duo discuss the possibility that evolution might select for this trait, drawing on the work of Kristie Miller, Paul Horwich, Christopher Suhler, Craig Callender, James Maclaurin and Heather Dyke. Of course, it wouldn’t be rational for us to save the best for the distant future if we weren’t convinced that the person we’ll wake up as tomorrow is truly us. This thought sends our hosts down the rabbit hole of Galen Strawson’s view that persons are episodic, which implies that (much like the careers of Prince, Taylor Swift and David Bowie), selves can be separated into distinct ‘eras’. The duo then dive into a variety of the kinds of biases we might have for pleasurable events to be located in the future, the present, the temporally near and on particular dates. Discussion very briefly stalls as Christabel gets caught up in the question as to whether time is real, but with the help of philosophers J.M.E. McTaggart, Arthur Prior, Sidney Shoemaker and Robin Le Poidevin, our hosts leave these troubled waters and plough on into the last (and, fittingly, best) part of the episode. The final act sees the podcast return to the bread and butter of philosophical thought experiments, which are (of course) demons and torturers. These come courtesy of Christian Tarsney’s revision of Newcomb’s box problem, which calls us to question whether future biases might rub up against other intuitions we might have about how to best behave in your own best interests. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Find Christabel at https://christabelcane.com/ Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

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  Episode #22

  Episode 22 - "Do animals have different emotions?"

  Jul 27, 20261h 21mS1

  For the episode this week, Steve and Christabel tackle a question from Steve’s daughter, who asked whether animals have different emotions (to those experienced by human beings). In answering this question, our hosts build on the material covered in episode 13, which wrestles with the immense difficulty of knowing (for certain) what it’s like to be a dog (or indeed, bat). But not to be put off, the duo leaves the clear skies of deductive inference to take a dive into the murky waters of abduction, which is a form of reasoning that finds the best explanation to fit the facts. Steve propels us along with a host of duck-based inference puns. But what are the facts? One kind of evidence for animal emotion might be thought to be the sentimental behaviour that they display. Christabel tells us of her dog’s separation anxiety, and introduces analytic behaviourism, one school of thought spawned by logical positivism. Sensing that the answers provided by this philosophical trend are a little too easily-won, they move onto another kind of evidence – that of neuroscience. They discuss Jaak Panskepp’s seven emotional ‘circuits’ and Christabel addresses the links between Panskepp’s posits and David Lewis’ causal role physicalism. Steve and Christabel then try to figure out if animals not only feel pain and pleasure, but also suffering and joy, drawing on Sean Power’s observation that these more sophisticated emotions plausibly require their subjects to possess temporal concepts. Bertrand Russell and Ludvig Wittgenstein both claim that the capacity to remember is the key to understanding what time is, so our hosts take a look at Ali Boyle’s research into episodic memory in non-human minds. Though perhaps these more sophisticated feelings require a more sophisticated theory; the episode’s last port of call is the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett and her constructivist theory of emotions. Our hosts recognise that when it comes to the question of whether animals feel the same emotions, we may never know. However – as Steve points out – we’re no more certain on this question when it comes to the Danish, either. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Find Christabel at https://christabelcane.com/ Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

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  Episode #21

  Episode 21 - "How many bad guys are there?"

  Jul 20, 20261 hourS1

  This week Steve and Christabel answer Huey, who asks “How many bad guys are there?” Christabel responds with an assortment of takes on villainy given by the good, the bad and the ugly of philosophy. We start with the position that ALL the guys are bad, canvassing the pessimistic assessments of human nature offered by Niccolò Machiavelli, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Hobbes. The milder view that only SOME guys are bad is represented by the Confucian philosophers Mencius and Xunzi, the latter of whom thinks that people should strive to embody the loyalty of the birds, who pair bond for life. Ever the biologist, Steve gestures at the enormous amount of evidence for cheating in the animal kingdom, and the duo move swiftly on. They then discuss a special case of the response that only some guys are bad. This is given by the Stoics, who argue that YOU are the only baddie in your own story. Christabel advances an interpretation of Ayn Rand’s ethics that draws a similar conclusion. Steve points out that Rand’s message of ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ quite literally physically equates to falling over on your arse. Finally, our hosts consider Nietzsche’s amoralist view that NO guys are bad, because there is no such thing as good and evil. Steve immediately disproves Nietzsche by convincing Christabel that she’s pronouncing ‘gaslighting’ wrongly. Thoroughly confused, the duo end on the agreement that there are probably some bad guys out there in the world, but there certainly aren’t any who listen to Philosophy Playdate. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

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