What Is X?
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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...
Episodi recenti
25 episodi
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 fi...
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 Tingu...
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 Londo...
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 Platoni...
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,...
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, Da...
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 d...
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, objec...
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 t...
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...
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...
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: co...
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...
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 manag...
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 Demb...
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...
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 cri...
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 int...
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 beautif...
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 way...
What Is Matter? | Sean Carroll
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...
What Is Mental Health? | Danielle Carr
Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been an ongoing quarrel over the definition of mental health: Are disorders like depression, OCD, or schizo...
What Is Poetry? | Jeff Dolven
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...
What Are Dreams? | Matthew Spellberg
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 episod...
What Is Philosophy? | Agnes Callard
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...