What Is X?

Is matter “an idea in the mind of God,” as the early modern philosopher and noted immaterialist George Berkeley would have it? On this week's episode of “What Is X?” Justin invites on Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech and host of the podcast “Mindscape” to try to improve on Berkeley’s original definition. But this is not so simple a task. After all, asking “What is matter?,” as Carroll notes, raises a bigger and more salient question—namely, is there matter at all? Over the course of their wide-ranging hourlong conversation, Justin and Sean discuss everything from the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics and human consciousness to scientific literacy and why crackpots love the theory of relativity.

Jeff Dolven and Justin E.H. Smith assay the hoard of poetry’s riches in this month’s episode: Is poetry a way of grasping at the treasures of language, past and present? Or might there be something that is particular to poetry, something unlike the pleasures and possibilities of other forms of literature? Countering Justin’s more extensive notion, Jeff offers that poetry is language that wants to happen “all at once.” Will Jeff and Justin be able to reach an agreement? Or will the goat bleat at the buzzer, before they can settle their differences? Listen in to find out. Along the way, they’ll discuss Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf and Edmund Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” epic poetry versus novelistic prose, and the poetic doppelgängers Frank O'Hara and Thomas Wyatt. 

What kind of thinking do we do when we sleep? Is that what dreaming is? And how is it different from the thinking we do in waking life? In this episode of “What Is X?,” Justin E.H. Smith talks to Matthew Spellberg, a scholar working on a comparative history of dreaming, about one of the mysteries that has fascinated humankind from the ancients to Descartes and Freud and beyond: What are dreams, really? Why do we have them? Why do we share them? And what can they tell us?

What does it mean to be a philosopher? After all, it's an odd job title. In this episode, Justin E.H. Smith asks philosopher and Point columnist Agnes Callard, What even is philosophy? What does philosophy do, and what does it take to do it? Along the way, they consider whether philosophy is meant to reveal actual truths about the world, answering abstract questions like "What is reality?" or more everyday ones like "How should I be happy?" Or could philosophy actually be a form of complaining?