For the very first episode of Philosophy Playdate, Steve and Christabel tackle a fresh new take on the trolley problem, provided by a 7-year-old nascent ethicist. Her question was: “If there was a switch that turned all dogs into human babies, and another switch that turned all human babies into dogs, and you had to push one, which would you push?” This ethical dilemma prompts a discussion of animal sentience and the problems we face when tasked with ranking different kinds of human and non-human consciousness, and whether such a ranking could ever justify the ‘speciesist’ conclusion that some lives are worth more than others. Christabel extolls the virtues of care ethics over the utilitarian aggregative calculus, and Steve extolls the virtues of vasectomies. Both oscillate between the two poles of pro- and antinatalism, considering the environmental, social and hedonistic factors that bear on the question as to when - if ever - it is morally permissible to bring life into the world. 

As a rare treat for this inaugural episode, both hosts come to a definitive answer on this week’s question (though in a characteristically philosophical turn of events, they fail to meet an agreement).

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This week Christabel is on a mission to convince us that navy blue is the objectively best colour. In her efforts to do this, she enlists the help of Immanuel Kant, and his distinction between things that are capital B Beautiful, and the merely agreeable. Kant relegates wine to the latter category, and Steve argues that the same is true of Queen (but makes a reasonable exception for Freddie Mercury). Christabel takes issue with both, drawing on Shen-Yi Liao’s characterisation of nostalgic food as art to argue that we have good reasons for widening our understanding of what counts as both Beautiful and high art.

We are then introduced to Samantha Matherne’s Kant scholarship, to which Christabel appeals in order to make the claim that if we squint at the Critique of Judgement in the right light, Kant might give us what we need to make the argument that individual shades and tones, when appreciated in a sufficiently abstract way, might be taken to count as the kinds of things about which proper aesthetic judgements can be made. We are invited to conclude that there may be a universally correct answer to this week’s question “What’s the best favourite colour to have?” (and that the answer is navy blue).

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This week, Steve and Christabel try their best to avoid suffering the fate of John William Dunne, who was laughed out of metaphysics circles for proposing that time is an infinite layer cake. In fact, in answering this week’s question, “How long is a minute?”, both hosts are clear on one thing; that you cannot have your cake and eat (all of the temporal parts of) it too. In fact, Christabel argues that the project of destroying a whole cake is just as problematic as that of travelling back in time to kill your grandfather. But time travel isn’t found to be completely paradoxical, and the possibility of travelling back to your favourite minute of a Weird Al Yankovich concert is found to be broadly unobjectionable (at least as concerns logical consistency).

Christabel introduces us to distinctions between ecstatic, historical, personal, external, absolute and proper times, and makes the case for perdurantism; the theory that all objects that persist through time are four-dimensional spacetime worms, and that only small slices of these worms exist at any given time. Steve is more convinced by this view than the presentist’s denial of the existence of the past and future, which he likens to the philosophical commitments shared by babies and Beach Boys. 


Read Christabel’s paper about time, as mentioned in the episode: 
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10217604/1/10.1515_krt-2025-0022%20%281%29.pdf


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To answer this week’s question, “Am I too perfect?” Steve and Christabel begin with a brief survey of a selection of religious conceptions of human perfection. This takes them from the contemplation of fitra in Sufi Islam, to the concepts of ātman and puruṣa in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Sāṅkhya traditions of Hinduism. They weigh in on the Pelagian-Augustinian debate on whether spontaneously conceived babies are on the hook for Adam’s crimes against apples – or St Augustine of Hippo’s crimes against pears – according to the Christian doctrine of original sin (noting that IVF babies might have found the perfect theological loophole).

Discussion then turns to the question as to whether perfection is even a logically coherent concept. Divine perfection seems problematic, given that it seems to entail that God could create a rock so heavy that no being could lift it, and then immediately do so. Christabel explores the process theist’s rejection of the classical, monopolar view of God as existing within Boethian eternity. She begins to expound upon the idea that time is a wheel, and that according to this dogma, though good times pass away, so do the bad. It’s considered that mutability is our tragedy, but also our hope; that the worst of times - like the best - are always passing away. Steve simply replies: “I know”.

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Content note: extensive discussion of death, mortality and loss.

This week’s episode is an existential crisis courtesy of Steve's daughter, who asks “When will I die?”. This triggers a brief discussion of the chic continental philosophers you might expect to find theorising about mortality (most likely while wearing berets and smoking Gitanes outside a Parisian café). Steve and Christabel take us from Pascal’s divertissement, to Heidegger’s emphasis on finitude, to Jean Paul Sartre’s nausea.

However, rather than succumbing to a dark night of the soul, Christabel turns to what she knows best, which is (as faithful listeners will know) a worm-based metaphysics of time. This is the kind of philosophy practiced by philosophers whose invites to hip gatherings on the continent always seem to get lost in the mail.

As a result, the duo turn from contemplation of the cool and angsty philosophers to the practical question of how your philosophy of time should affect your view of death. Steve is delighted to have presentism between his crosshairs again, as Christabel compares presentist, eternalist and growing block-theoretic conceptions of the end. Natalja Deng’s assessment of Robin Le Poidevin’s claim that eternalists shouldn’t feel existential dread is examined, as is Daniel Story’s reassurance that worm theorists shouldn’t ever worry that their time is growing short.

Steve chastises contemporary philosophers Harry S. Silverstein and Thomas Nagel for their critique of Epicurus, arguing that these modern thinkers should pick on someone who’s still around to defend themselves. Christabel replies that Epicurus is still kicking about somewhere in the spacetime manifold, it’s just that he can’t respond (and probably has more pleasurable things to be doing, anyway).

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In this episode, Steve and Christabel smash through Marxian false consciousness as they answer this week’s question: “Why do people make the same bad choice again and again?”. The duo embark on a heroes’ journey through a landscape of determinisms, exploring the lush valleys of nominative, environmental and physical determinism, and braving the arid wasteland of phrenology, eugenics, and other junk theory that coalesces around biological determinism. The villains of the piece are Cesare Lombroso, Laplace’s demon and gentle parenting. The heroes are bell hooks, Pierre Bourdieu and Susan Wolf. Steve asserts his free will but can’t decide whether he wants to be a berserker, a brigand or Friedrich Engels’ sugar baby. Christabel wonders if dedicating oneself to any of these vocations would exemplify Jean Paul Sartre’s bad faith. It is concluded that as in the case of butter, many philosophical positions are best enjoyed soft.

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This episode sees Steve and Christabel explore a topic that has fascinated philosophers for centuries in their attempt to answer Steve’s daughter's question “Is your brain a separate thing that tells you to do things?”.

To gain insight into the nature of a person’s relationship with their brain, mind or thoughts, the two begin by consulting Plato, Akṣapāda Gautama and the Cārvākamaterialist school of thought.

Rather than answering our original question, this foray into the ancient world only serves to generate more, including “Does the mind have parts?”, “Are mental states physical?” and “Where does our agency originate from?” To answer the first question, Margret Cavendish’s argument for mental disunity is pitted against René Descartes insistence that the mind is indivisible. The winner of this particular bout is clear to anyone who’s stayed at the pub for one more round, knowing they have work early next morning.

In considering the second question, Steve and Christabel wonder what the Cartesians would have made of the unfortunate case of Phineas Gage, who had a rod pass through his brain whilst working on the railroad.

The third question is answered pretty definitively by way of David Hume’s slogan that ‘reason is the slave of the passions’. The two finish with a (fierce, but wholly unphilosophical) debate as to which of them would better endure Bernard Williams’ torture thought experiment (it’s Christabel).

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Can we be in the same family again?

This week’s question was posed by Ralph, who – after losing a beloved family dog – asked if he, his pet and his parents could ever be born into the same family again. Casting around for answers, Christabel returns to the wheel of reincarnation known in Indian philosophy as saṃsāra. Caraka, an ayervedic physician and the author of the Caraka-Saṃhitā is consulted, after which Christabel lowers the tone, diverting conversation to the significance of past-life recognition in popular culture. The two gossip over Madeline Miller’s portrayal of the relationship between famous ‘good pals and roommates’ Achilles and Patroclus in her novel The Song of Achilles, and Christabel extolls the philosophical merits of asking your partner whether they would love you if you were a worm. Steve gives some terrible romantic advice but redeems himself by offering the listener a set of comprehensive directions for earthwormhusbandry.

Discussion then turns to Friedrich Nietzsche. Christabel takes us on a whistlestop tour of his theory of infinite return, and how the Nietzsche scholars Kathleen Higgins, Neil Sinhababu, Ivan Soll and Phillip Kain (no relation) have interpreted him. Steve, like a true übermensch, demands justice on behalf of albatrosses, and treats us to a stunningly accurate portrayal of how Nietzsche would have featured as a guest star on an episode of The Golden Girls. However, try as they might, neither host seems ready to embrace Nietzschean amor fati, even according to Béatrice Han-Pile’s agapic prescription for loving one’s fate. 

Special thanks to Jack Moar for exquisite performance in his new role as the podcast’s official Nietzsche consultant.

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Usually when Steve’s daughter asks why she has to wear a bike helmet whilst he doesn’t (tut tut), Steve responds “Because your head is important, and mine is not.”  However, over the course of this episode, Steve’s head is filled with political theory that will help him to explain why liberal democracies tend to extend rights associated with self-governance to adults whilst refusing to let children exercise the same sovereignty over their own lives. 

Christabel leads us over John Stewart Mill’s (wife’s) rickety bridge thought experiment and helps Steve avoid the fate of Joseph Raz’s man in a pit example. Steve talks us through his favourite DnD-informed strategies for escaping pits, and makes an inappropriate Silence of The Lambs reference. Christabel only dials up the horror when she brings up Robert Nozick’s libertarianism and the school of thought known as child liberationism.

However, antipaternalism isn’t dismissed outright, and the arguments of Roger Griffin andRonald Dworkin are presented as reasons for thinking that adults should be allowed to act unwisely if their doing so doesn’t cause harm to others.  But as Thomas Douglas points out, this doesn’t commit us to thinking that the same is true of children who lack the capacity for autonomous decision-making. Christabel leaps at the opportunity to cover Kat Jennings’ account of what exactly this capacity consists in, and under which circumstances it must be respected.

Special thanks to Kat Jennings for their absolutely invaluable assistance in the research for this episode.

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This week, Steve and Christabel take irony, malapropisms and poetry to task in their quest to find the meaning of meaning. To begin, they survey a couple of naïve theories; the reference theory, and John Locke’s idea theory of meaning. Steve takes this opportunity to remind us of the first rules of philosophy; do NOT die, and don’t let young upstarts relabel your theory as naïve. Christabel draws on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and William Lycan (though she doesn’t get much further than the first sentence of the first chapter of Lycan’s contemporary introduction to the philosophy of language – it’s admittedly a very good sentence). 

The discussion settles upon Paul Grice and his conversational maxims. Christabel explains that for Grice, the purposes of conversation are very important. She then fulfils what she deems to be the purpose of every conversation, and launches into a tangent about David Lewis’ theory of possible worlds. Steve flouts Saul Kripke’s law of the necessity of identity, and considers a parallel world in which David Lewis and Lois Lane switch places. He then pursues his own conversational purpose, reopening an old argument he’d had with his English teacher over Phillip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’. 

Steve and Christabel establish two things: the first being that the official podcast position is strongly pro-multiverse, and the second being a conversational maxim of their own. Steve decrees that we are allowed to be linguistic pedants if (and only if) it serves comedic purposes. Christabel grudgingly agrees, on the condition that she is still allowed to point outthe kind of semantic ambiguity that typifies corporate pharmaceutical messaging.

But will the duo accomplish the pragmatic ambitions of this week’s conversation, or will they fade away into Bolivian? Listen to find out!

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In this episode, Steve and Christabel sit down with author, podcaster and capricious god Iszi Lawrence to discover how to impart big ideas to small humans. She lets us in on the intoxicating power (and crushing burden) of deciding the fates of her characters, and admits that she quite enjoys informing her child fanbase that free will probably doesn’t exist, anyway. 

Christabel relishes the opportunity to talk time travel as Izsi lays out the literary universe of her The Time Machine Next Door series. The trio get to grips with using the power of boredom to temporarily stray from your timeline, and come to understand the ethical distinction between stealing from the past versus ‘borrowing’ from the British Museum. 

They touch on a range of philosophico-literary influences, from Goosebumps and The Never Ending Story to Olga of Kyiv (the woman John Wick WISHES he was). However, the gang stop short of fully deconstructing the moral ramifications of Goodnight Sweetheart, resolving to allow themselves just one problematic fave. 

But in typical fashion, the episode raises more questions than it answers. These include ‘Do deer often have stomach aches?’, ‘Was Tracy Emin’s Unmade Bed the result of a sentient time machine’s tantrum?’ and ‘Will Steve convert Christabel to vegetarianism?’

Huge thanks to Iszi for sharing her wit, wisdom and elite footnote-writing ability with us.

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Steve and Christabel set off to bravely go where no one has gone before to answer this week’s question: ‘Who looks after outer space?’ but due to the Kessler effect, they spend most of the episode bumping around in low-Earth orbit. However, this portion of (barely) outer space proves to be more philosophically provocative than the duo might have bargained for.

Discussion begins with space ethicist Nikki Coleman, who compares being trapped onEarth by an atmospheric layer of Elon Musk’s space debris to the existential threat of climate change. This turns conversation to space law, and specifically Setsuko Aoki’s interpretation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which designates space as ‘the common heritage of humanity’. With heritage on their minds, Steve and Christabel turn to the brave new world of space archaeology, and three of its leading lights; Alice Gorman, Beth Laura O’Leary and Lisa Westwood. 

Gorman’s advocacy for lunar conservation launches our hosts out of Earth’s atmosphere andplants them right onto the dusty and flag-strewn surface of our nearest celestial body. Christabel gets disproportionately angry at the thought of losing her view of the Moon due toindustrial mineral extraction, possibly forgetting about the existence of clouds.

However, it isn’t long before they both plummet back to Earth, landing first in the Wild West (where Steve introduces us to Sheriff Bentham, protector of the innocent) before returning back to London to consider the real-life trolley problem of diverting the Nazi V-weapons. They apply what they’ve learned to the problem of deflecting asteroids, taking particular noteof the ethical analysis provided by Mazlan Othman, Malaysia’s first astrophysicist anddirector of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. Christabel ends on a plea for listeners to write in with all and any space-related questions that they’ve ever been asked by a child.

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This week, our hosts ransack the bookshelf of the prototypical edgy teenager to answer ‘What makes a good leader?’. Steve and Christabel start off strong with the classics: Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, Thomas Hobbes’ The Leviathan and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. They take a quick detour into Ludvig Wittgenstein’s theory of games, stopping briefly to consider whether a llama might rightly identify themselves as a unicorn.

Later, the duo dive into Maria Kli’s research into the political philosophy of modernity, and consider the truism that a philosopher’s politics often tells you more about their own view of human nature than about how to rule over people. With this in mind, Christabel introduces some philosophers who seem to have held more optimistic views of humanity. Among these are Mencius, the second sage of Confucianism, Zengzi, a disciple of Confucius, and the Neo-Confucians, who held that true kings create the social conditions for their citizens to cultivate their virtues and to better their moral dispositions. Steve offers helpful comparisons against the leadership styles of some of his favourite football managers. Christabel then introduces the controversial Confucius scholarship of Loubna El Amine and the ideal type theory of Max Weber, stopping off to consult some Platonic theory of statecraft along the way.

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This week, Steve and Christabel respond to Max, who asks ‘What is it like to be a dog?’ Christabel tells us of Thomas Nagel’s seminal paper ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ and his sceptical answer. This leads discussion to David Hume’s observations as to the limitations of imagination, and to Frank Jackson’s ‘Mary the super scientist’ thought experiment. Steve learns about the nature of qualia (which we learn isn’t just the name of the hamster Christabel kept as an undergraduate) and informs us how to control for mentos variability under experimental conditions. For reasons best known to herself, Christabel explains how toasters work.

The duo then tackle Gregory Berns’ rebuttal of Nagel’s claim that we can’t know what it’s like to be a bat, which he bases on his extensive collection of MRI scans of dog brains. Steve points out that Berns is making a rookie mistake; he’s scanned the wrong mammal. Our hosts settle on the strategy of abduction: perhaps it’s impossible to know EXACTLY what it’s like to be anyone other than yourself, but we can use inference to the best explanation to guide us towards a best-guess approximation of how the subjective experiences of others feel to them. They end with a discussion of the work of Ali Boyle and Johnathan Birch on animal sentience, noting some chilling experimental data gathered about the empathetic capacities of rats.

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In this episode, Steve and Christabel discuss environmental ethics, prompted by Steve’s daughter asking if she should pick a flower she found growing by the roadside. Our hosts use Immanuel Kant’s formula of the universal law to provide both a full moral accounting of London bus stops, and a rigorous philosophical defence of using the woods as a toilet. In the course of making these invaluable contributions to the cannon of Western thought, they survey Peter Singer’s sentientism, Kenneth Goodpaster’s biocentricism and Aldo Leopold’s ecocentricism. Steve professes not to be a naked mole rat expert, but follows his denial with a deluge of intriguing facts about the animal. 

The duo get down with deontological defences of disallowing deforestation, following their discussion of Julia Nefsky’s critique of Shelly Kagan’s consequentialist approach to collective action problems. Steve narrowly avoids a tragedy of the commons, and provides some sound advice for those at risk of suffering the uncommon tragedy of contracting brain worms (which is to cook your bear kebabs well done). Our hosts then find out what links President Franklin D. Roosevelt and William Morris (it might be sneaking off for a solo moment in the woods). 

The villains of the episode are Derek Parfit’s 1,000 imperceptible torturers, the Boy Scouts, and the utilitarians who refuse to condemn the Nazi bomb technicians who unintentionally created wildlife sanctuaries (like Walthamstow’s Bomb Crater Pond). The heroes, on the other hand, are Michael Nelson and Holmes Rolston, for their complimentary styles of pro-wilderness advocacy. An honourable mention goes out to Henry David Thoreau’s long-sufferring mother, and to the panspermic rock that just might have bought a living environment to Earth in the first place.

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Is Lego Batman the real Batman?

This week, Steve and Christabel enlist the help of writer, podcaster, musician and fabulously knowledgeable comic book nerd Dr MJ Hibbett to answer ‘Is Lego Batman the real Batman?’. Our hosts draw on Mark’s doctoral research into how to track characters whose narratives span multiple retellings, asking whether we can ever identify individuals across depictions of them within novels, films, comic books and TV. The trio discuss a range of transmedia characters, from protagonists like The Flash, Spider-man and Superman, to antagonists like Dr Doom, Judge Dredd and the father of the original Dennis the Menace. Mark reveals the surprisingly wholesome evolution of Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx over three generations, and Steve (ever the contrarian) informs us that he was always more into Whizzer and Chips. 

Christabel draws comparisons between the fictional worlds created by artists and the possible worlds of David Lewis. She asks whether we should conceive of the fictional multiverses posited within intellectual properties like Marvel, DC Comics or Rick & Morty as spatio-temporally separated worlds, or as more like the parallel universes we find in Everettian interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Steve tells us how to distinguish between the Watsonian and Doylist frameworks for literary analysis, and Christabel learns in real time that Dr House is the medical reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Mark poses the question as to whether The Great Mouse Detective is a true retelling of Holmes’ story, and Christabel poses a metaphysical problem for supposing that this is so. She explains that according to Saul Kripke’s accounting of modal metaphysics, names ‘rigidly designate’ their owners across all possible worlds. This implies that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is identical with Enola Holmes’ brother, which generates a philosophical problem known as ‘the problem of accidental intrinsics’. 

In the end, very little is concretely established, other than a commitment to the plural of Spider-man being ‘Spiders-men’. Thanks so much to Mark for sharing his multiversal expertise with us! 

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In this episode, Christabel and Steve frolic amongst the infinite plurality of possible worlds. Christabel explains that accidents are things that didn’t have to be the case; they only happen in SOME possible worlds. Much discussion of the ‘Into the Spiderverse’ movies and the parallel universes of the Superman comics ensues, and Steve treats us into a staggeringly detailed deep dive into which day the Earth was blown up in Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchicker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (for the full accounting, please see Steve’s set here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yufv5dfTgQ4).

But are possible worlds real? Our hosts survey a selection of answers, ranging from David Lewis’ full-throated endorsement of concrete non-actual worlds, to the ersatz worlder’s denial, and the modal fictionalist’s equivocation. Modal fictionalists say that events happen in merely possible worlds in the same way that they do in works of literature, (which is to say, they kinda happen, they kinda don’t). Christabel brings in some problems for the possible worlds account of essences based on Kit Fine’s criticisms, but she leaves us with some plausible solutions provided by Ruth Barcan Marcus that were recently highlighted by Jessica Leech. 

The duo return to an ancient disagreement between Plato and Aristotle about the nature of properties. Christabel suggests that David Lewis’ radical modal realism about possible worlds might be used to settle this dispute once and for all. However, she admits both that this doesn’t get us any closer to distinguishing between the properties like ‘triangular’ and ‘trilateral’, and that (as Steve points out) her hero might well have been using the word ‘cordate’ incorrectly because he misheard it as 'chordate'.

Christabel then takes us to her two warehouses full of hypothetical sacks to respond to a criticism raised by Ethan Millar-Virkutis, and the episode wraps up with a foray into the impossible worlds of Daniel Nolan and Mark Jago. Our hosts end on two conclusions. The first is that in the vast preponderance of possibilities, accidents are inescapable. The second is that any snub-nosed man is worth a second look if you encounter him at one of Plato’s sex parties.

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This week, our hosts tackle a question from Steve’s kids as to why in their house, they’re vegetarian. Steve tells us that he doesn’t eat, buy or prepare meat for environmental reasons, reminiscing about a global warming meetup he’d attended: harrowing reports as to the ecological damage being done by the meat industry were bandied about, only to be followed by all-beef conference dinners. Christabel spends the episode laying out a different kind of carnivorous cognitive dissonance, and focuses on the ethics of eating animals with sentience.

She starts with canvassing consequentialism, first recapping Shelly Kagan’s utilitarian calculus for ascertaining a meat-eater’s guilt. Mark Budolfson’s reply is considered, as is the unfortunate consequence that blue whales might turn out to be the most ethical animal to consume, if Kagan’s account is taken to its logical extreme. Leslie Stephen’s and Roger Scruton’s arguments are held up as examples of the ‘diner’s defence’: a consequentialist-flavoured line of reasoning that animals should be grateful to be eaten, as their place in the food chain ensures their existence in the first place. This conclusion takes quite a pummelling from Tatjana Višak, Harry Salt and Karri Heikenen. Steve tells us of the warrior ancestry of the modern broiler chicken, and Christabel rounds off the consequentialist part of the episode by bringing up sentientist Peter Singer, and UCL’s resident mummy Jeremy Bentham. At a time before his (un)death, Bentham asked of animals: "The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but, 'Can they suffer?'"

The duo briefly discuss deontological responses to the meat-eating question, and the unexpectedly fraught task of revising Immanuel Kant’s surprising views on animal torture. Our hosts eventually settle on Roslind Hursthouse’s virtue ethicist analysis of meat-eating, and Steve comes to the (entirely unbiased) conclusion that achieving the eudaemon life of flourishing involves being a vegetarian father of twins.

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