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 play. When the bad-ass, smelly, screaming white ball hits the 5 ball, how does the causality work? Is skepticism about physical forces just conspiracy theory?

Image from this NY Times article, perhaps about COVID? But I’m imagining that those two upper left circle figures are differentially colored billiard balls. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop of Pixel Box Media.

Hear more about Malebranche on causality in the latest PEL episode.

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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 others’ sentences, and ask dumb questions on a museum tour. It’s an unusually discussion-focused episode!

Picture is by Zahra, grabbed from this article. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop of Pixel Box Media.

Thi sticks around for the post-game, and we talk about gaming rules, algorithms, quantification, RPGs (he recommends Apocalypse World and Microscope RPG). Bill recommends Painting with John. Get all of our post-game discussions by signing up to support us at philosophyimprov.com/support.

Hear Thi on Mark’s Pretty Much Pop podcast talking about food culture.

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 Tourist, I’m Sorry, the bookCan we have an entertaining discussion inspired by Aristotle’s most boring book, The  Categories? Bill leads Mark and our guest Tommy through some let’s-describe-what’s-in-an-imaginary-room exercises. Then Tommy is supposed to give a comedy TED Talk, and chooses Mediterranean food. But what about his estranged father and all those corpses?

For the real skinny on Categories, listen to Partially Examined Life #279. Hear Tommy as Philosophy Bro monologue about Plato then join the PEL fellows on the Symposium on PEL #100. Hear Tommy and Mark talk board games on Pretty Much Pop #108.

The art for this episode is by Martin via this Angie’s List article. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop of Pixel Box Media.

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Sponsor: Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.

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 depends on your theory of punishment.

Ep. art cribbed from a Psychology Today article. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop at Pixelbox Media.

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The scene is its own entity. What else might be its own entity? Can a machine that passes the Turing test know what it’s like to be a bat? We bring in emotions from irrelevant contexts, and we keep hearing them long after they’re gone.

Episode art by Alvin Alvaro. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop at Pixelbox Media.

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Sponsor: Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.

What is “othering”? Why did Bill get such a bad grade? Is it because of his feather quill pen? Don’t miss our anti-vaxxer drama!

This is our first episode with a real philosophy professor on it, and we get to talk about her experience as an academic as it relates to this most socially relevant philosophical topic. Listen to Jenny talk in more depth with Mark and co. on The Partially Examined Life. 

The image is from a Buzzfeed article. I picked it because it sort of looked like office hours, and because it looks like it was crumpled up and throw away but then recovered. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop of Pixel Box Media.

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Sponsors: Visit betterhelp.com/improv to be matched with a licensed, professional therapist. Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.

Let’s all lose our jobs and talk instead about fundamental ontology and social dynamics. 

Image by I don’t remember. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop.

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Sponsors: Visit betterhelp.com/improv to be matched with a licensed, professional therapist. Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.

Hell is NOT other people, and the more the merrier, with our second episode with guests being with TWO guest improvisers, Jill, co-founder of HUGE Theater and her friend Michelle, owner of Improv MKE.

Bill and our guests each start a scene to explore something of what utopia might amount to, and of course how it will inevitably go bad. Then we discuss whether there is some single type of utopia, or whether human nature precludes this. Would YOU take a cookie?

Image by I don’t remember. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop.

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Sponsors: Visit betterhelp.com/improv to be matched with a licensed, professional therapist. Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.

Riffing on resemblance. Eventually invoking the spirit of a toaster. Mark is wrong: the God Emperor of Dune can’t drink water at all, just dried food.

Learn about Del Close.

Philosophy barely makes it in, but if you want to chase down this nonsense about whether a robot cat is still a cat or not, check out the Twin Earth stuff in PEL’s Putnam episode.

Image by Maia. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop.

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Sponsors: Visit betterhelp.com/improv to be matched with a licensed, professional therapist. Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.

Do you believe in miracles? If doctors believed in miracles, would they just let surgeries finish themselves? Do assumptions of a logical universe make it not just unjustified by psychologically impossible for us to really believe in miracles?

Read about our VERY FIRST guest, Tim Sniffen at timsniffen.com. Follow him @MisterSniffen and hear him talking more with Mark about improv on Pretty Much Pop.

You can read more about Hume on miracles on the PEL blog.

Image cribbed from ArtsyMomma. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop.

Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get bonus stuff and good karma!

Sponsors: Visit betterhelp.com/improv to be matched with a licensed, professional therapist. Learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu/improv.