Philosophy vs. Improv

What is personhood? How can a group best collaboratively invent a scene? Sarah is a host of Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling and a repeat guest on Hello From the Magic Tavern. We fit in THREE scene…

Stephen West from the juggernaut Philosophize This! podcast joins Mark and Bill to learn to say no and talk about reason vs. emotion in grounding ethics. What do the voices in your head (or at yo…

Mark and Bill break former patterns by each bringing in not a lesson but a question, which we knew about beforehand, and those questions are about pattern-breaking and about what current philosop…

Jay Sanders, famed not only for his appearances on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and The Day After Tomorrow and many many other screens and stages, joins us to talk tragedy, how he’s applied the l…

It’s all down to this. Which discipline, which host will prevail? Will a third-party cheater bust in and take the big prize? All stakes are on the table, and if this thinking isn’t critical enoug…

Skye teaches and Columbia and the City University of New York, and she recently published How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment.

She joins Mark and Bill to tal…

We talk about observations and how they relate to theories and other types of preconception. Is there such a thing as pure observation? 

For our pen-pen-ultimate episode here of season one, I …

Barry teaches at Vassar and hosts a documentary-style philosophy podcast called Hi-Phi Nation, and his most recent season had a four-episode run on David Lewis, America’s foremost philosopher of …

Bill is a sad but steadfast street sweeper. Mark has secret character traits. Filmmaker Jack C. Newell is our inaugural non-philosopher, non-improviser guest, and his film knowledge leads to us t…

Prof in the house! Babette teaches at Fordham and recently edited the collection “Reading David Hume’s ‘On The Standard of Taste,’” which Mark made use of for The Partially Examined Life’s treatm…

Contemplate the difference between signs, symbols, and symptoms. Did our improv scene get Zoom-bombed, or is that just real life intruding? THINK OF THE CHILDREN (eating Doritos)! What flavor of …

…which, as I was saying, is right in the middle of a sentence or scene! Sheesh!

How should our personal and family histories shape our behavior, both in real life and in improv scenes? Do thes…

Panpsycast host Jack, the Liverpudliest Liverpudlian of all, brings his promiscuous philosophy of mind to the show, wherein mind is here, there, and everywhere. But what does that mean? Skits abo…

Today’s episode is about questioning: how one might question, what sets the parameters for a proper answer, and how to give those answers in an informative and/or dramatically effective way. Watc…

We are joined by the young purveyor of the Reductio podcast, who wrote his dissertation on normality, which was such a normie thing to do. Can “abnormality” be morally neutral, or is that term cu…

Is money the root of all evil, or does it save us from needless cabaret bartering? What is money qua social construction? Should we retain the chocolate fountain? Are you ready to run? Did you br…

We are guest free! We are unrestrained in exploring various conversational topics in a facetious manner, from hairballs to boogers to color vision among inanimate objects and rules for unicorn pl…

Thi is a philosopher of games, making him a perfect match for this podcast. Why are games worthy of philosophical study? What counts as a game, anyway? We play a frustration game, finish each oth…

Can we have an entertaining discussion inspired by Aristotle’s most boring book? Bill leads Mark and our guest Tommy through some let’s-describe-what’s-in-an-imaginary-room exercises. 

Dark To…

There’s trouble at the work site! There are secret shifts of emotion going on. Do they make sense? Later, a guy’s car is blocking a driveway. Does he deserve the electric chair, or a beer? It dep…