What Is X?
“What Is X?” has been described as “a cross between a Platonic dialogue and ‘The Price Is Right.’” It combines dialectical inquiry of the sort perfected by Socrates and his interlocutors with a distinctly ludic spirit. Here’s how it works: For each episode, host Justin E. H. Smith invites on a guest distinguished in their field (or occasionally a “regular” person who really likes to talk). Smith asks the guest to answer a question of the form “What is X?” (for example, “What is beauty?” “What is nature?” “What are dreams?”), after which the two partners in dialogue undertake a Socratic inquiry into the nature of X, in search of a definition that satisfies both of them. There are three possible outcomes: agreement, disagreement, and aporia (Greek for “dead end”), each with its own sound effect: if we arrive at agreement, a church bell will chime; disagreement is signaled by a bleating goat; if aporia is the best we can do, we will hear naught but a gust of wind. Rigorous but freewheeling, fun and serious at once, accessibly highbrow, these conversations model rational inquiry in a new way, providing answers for truth-seekers... or perhaps just more questions. /// Host: Justin E.H. Smith (justinehsmith.substack.com) /// Presented by The Point Magazine (thepointmag.com)
- Update frequency
- every 20 days
- Average duration
- 63 minutes
- Episodes
- 25
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2022
What Is Being? | Kris McDaniel
This month’s episode of “What Is X?” asks a suitably grand question for the end of the year and for the end of Season 2: What is being? To help him figure it out once and for all (or to at least less…
What Is Money? | Joseph Tinguely
This month on “What Is X?”—timed perfectly after the latest crypto crash—Justin asks, What is money? To begin the conversation, his guest—Joseph Tinguely, a philosophy professor at the University of …
What Is Breakfast? | Seb Emina
On this episode of “What Is X,” Justin brings back a seasoned veteran for one last job: he invites on his friend Seb Emina, former editor of the London Review of Breakfasts blog and author of The Bre…
What Are Numbers? | Michael Harris
What does it mean for a number to exist? In the philosophy of mathematics, there are two general camps when it comes to numbers: there are the Platonists—or the “realists”—who think numbers somehow r…
What Is Punk? | Joseph M. Keegin
The dog days of late summer call for a break from discussions of concepts like Time, War, and Virtue and a turn to a subject that, though significant, probably lacks its own Platonic form: Punk. Join…
What Is War? | Vladislav Davidzon
On February 25th, Vladislav Davidzon burned his Russian passport on live TV to protest Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. War makes us do extreme things, Davidzon says, in this episode of “What Is X?” It s…
What Is Authorship? | Jonathan Egid
What counts as authorship? Why does it matter? Should we stop putting our names on what we write and sign off instead, as early scribes preferred to do, as nothing more than humble servants of God? I…
What Is Time? | Emily Thomas
In this episode of “What Is X?” Justin E.H. Smith and Emily Thomas tackle the timely yet timeless question: "What is time?" Is time an external, objective fact, or is the flow and tempo of the world …
What Are Conspiracy Theories? | Sam Kriss
In this live-recorded episode of What Is X?, Justin meets up with the writer Sam Kriss at a (sometimes noisy) pub in London to chat about conspiracy theories. What makes a conspiracy theory conspirat…
What Is Humor? | Luvell Anderson
Longtime Point readers may remember that Justin E.H. Smith contributed to our issue 14 “What is comedy for?” symposium back in 2017. He now returns to the subject for us with this episode of “What Is…
What Is Friendship? | S. Abbas Raza
On this episode of “What Is X?” Justin E.H. Smith asks: What is friendship? His guest, S. Abbas Raza, is the founding editor of 3 Quarks Daily and has a graduate degree in philosophy from Columbia, b…
What Is Consciousness? | Eric Schwitzgebel
In this episode of “What Is X?” Justin E.H. Smith comes ready to be persuaded, as he tries to get a handle on one of the most difficult Xes of all: consciousness. What are the inner states we experie…
What Is Virtue? | Jennifer Frey
The ancient conception of virtue is quite far removed from our own. Nowadays, we tend to think of virtue as a kind of moral righteousness, as opposed to sin. The Greeks, however, had a very different…
What Is Love? | Dominic Pettman
For Valentine’s Day, there was only one question “What Is X” could ask, one that thinkers through the ages, from Plato to Howard Jones, have not managed to answer: What is love? In this episode, Just…
What Is Gender? | Robin Dembroff
When it comes to gender, there are many big questions that people often get stuck on. On this episode of “What X?," Justin E. H. Smith asks Robin Dembroff, a professor of feminist and LGBTQ philosoph…
What Are Slurs? | Jason Stanley
On this episode of “What Is X,” Justin invites his “old friend and sometimes adversary” Jason Stanley, the Yale philosopher and author of How Fascism Works, to investigate what might seem to be a rel…
What Is Criticism | Ryan Ruby
What is the relation between criticism and crisis—is criticism in crisis? On this episode of "What is X?," taped in July 2021, Justin invites the critic and poet Ryan Ruby on to attest to the state …
What Is History? | D. Graham Burnett
This week’s episode of “What Is X?” begins with a provocation: Does this conversation really need to be an hour long? Can’t Justin and this week’s interlocutor, D. Graham Burnett, just agree that his…
What Is Art? | Becca Rothfeld
How is the aesthetic experience of art different from how we appreciate wonders of nature—a pretty flower, or a mountain vista, or a peacock's beautiful feather? In this brisk and bracing 40-minute d…
What Is Memory? | Julian Lucas
Say you’re researching your ancestry, and you hit a dead end: the genealogical trail goes cold. Is it really a dead end? Or might this open up new ways of understanding who we are and how we came to …