Select Philosophy Podcasts (Co-)Hosted by Women: A Listicle

Podcasting is to the early 2020s what blogging was to the late aughts. The philosophy podcast world in particular has exploded, and it can feel like it is hard to keep up. One blog listed 80 philosophy podcasts you must follow. 80! I scrolled through the top twenty and wasn’t sure I had yet found one hosted by a woman or a non-cisman. Andrew Lavin compiled an archive at DailyNous of known philosophy podcasts, with over 100 podcasts in alphabetical order. But that’s a lot to sift through. If you are out here looking around for philosophy podcasts and hoping to see more women’s voices in your podcasts, this listicle is for you. I did look for genderqueer and nonbinary hosts, but didn’t find them – if you know of podcasts hosted by other non-cismen you want to rave about, drop them in the comments.

In no particular order…

Overthink.

Overthink is hosted by Ellie Anderson (Pomona College, previous blogger for the Women in Philosophy series here) and David Peña-Guzmán (San Francisco State). They might be showing their hand a bit regarding what they think of the philosophy podcasting world with their tagline, “The philosophy podcast you’ll actually want to listen to.” With episode titles like “Why Millenials Love Homemaking” and “The Problem with Ghosting,” and topics ranging from open relationships and polyamory to gaslighting and cancel culture, the “you” in the tagline is clearly their fellow millennials. The podcast is fun because Anderson and Peña-Guzman are friends and are interested in taking philosophy to the streets, the bedroom, and the party scene. They just talk about life and what matters to them inflected through their philosophical training. Don’t let the easy accessibility of the show make you think it isn’t philosophically astute, because it is.

UnMute.

Now in its fourth season, UnMute was one of the first philosophy podcasts I listened to (along with History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, which, while not hosted by a woman does a good job repping forgotten women in the history of philosophy). Hosted by Myisha Cherry (UC, Riverside) who started the podcast as a graduate student, UnMute aims to give space for topics often muted in the field. Cherry has worked out a nice formula that gives each episode an air of familiarity even as she leads guests to share new and intriguing insights in each episode. I also appreciate the personal aspect of the podcast. Cherry begins by asking philosophers to share how they came to philosophy and it is refreshing to see how varied the roads to the field can be, perhaps especially among women. Cherry was ahead of her time in naming this podcast as it now seems like “you have to unmute yourself” has become a mantra of our virtual lives. Cherry invites those who have been holding back due to the structural inequities of the field to unmute themselves.

Black Mirror Reflections.

BMR is a podcast addressing each episode of Charlie Brooker’s show on Netflix, Black Mirror. Hosted by Leigh Johnson (Christian Brothers University), this podcast explores the issues of “technology, philosophy, morality, and politics” in the series. Johnson regularly references Brooker’s statement that the series is “about the way we live now– and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy,” and she regularly asks her guests, have we been clumsy? The podcast is organized to feature a guest each week with some background on the issues at work in the episode under discussion, which leads her to invite a wide array of experts from feminists, queer theorists and philosophers of race to philosophers and practitioners of AI and religious studies scholars, historians and filmmakers. The episodes are highly entertaining and sometimes delightfully meandering (full disclosure, I am the guest on episode 5, “Striking Vipers”). If you are still asking whether the ethics and politics of technology are important for contemporary human existence, let me just tell you, that horse is out of the barn.

Hotel Bar Sessions.

HBS’s tagline is: “A podcast where the real philosophy happens.” The first season was hosted by Leigh Johnson (CBU), Shannon Mussett (Utah Valley University), and Ammon Allred (University of Toledo); the second season by Johnson, Rick Lee (DePaul), and Charles Patterson (Oberlin). Johnson used Black Mirror Reflections as a springboard for a more extended podcast series. The idea behind this podcast is that we all know the real philosophy at a conference happens at the bar. Johnson and co-hosts aim to capture that bar vibe with introductory drink orders and, in the first season, mock titles to the papers they just left, and in the second season, weekly rants and raves. Each episode has a theme, but really the episodes are very conversational and capture the joy and dynamism of friends who care about philosophy and one another really trying to think through things together. I’m still thinking about the discussion of nostalgia in Camus in 1.7, but it’s all good.

What’s Left of Philosophy?

What’s Left of Philosophy plays off the double meaning of the question of what is left, in the sense of “radical,” within philosophy and what is left, as in “what remains,” of philosophy, and thinks about how the question of what is radical is not unrelated to the question of whether anything “live” remains of philosophy. The show title also seems to be responding to the political left podcast, “What’s Left,” a show that is similarly asking whether anything is left of political life and what in fact it means to be “left,” in the sense of radical and revolutionary. What’s Left of Philosophy is hosted by Gil Morejón (DePaul), Lillian Cicerchia (Free University, Berlin), Owen Glyn-Williams (DePaul, who blogged about the January 6 insurrection for the APA Blog), and William Paris (Toronto). I feel pretty well immersed in the texts under discussion on this podcast and I yet learn from them every week. Are they a little snarky and dismissive about philosophers that I think might make the work they are doing possible? Sure. But they are also really careful and thoughtful thinkers while being witty and fun at the same time. I thought the short series on dialectic was top-notch. And I love how Lillian pushes this line about whether various deconstructive, post-Marxist thinkers even understand economics and with that the importance of understanding economics, and things like say, what exactly working-class means, for developing a left philosophy. They do put episodes behind a paywall every so often. Workers gotta live, I guess. Patreon here.

New Books in Philosophy.

The philosophy series at the New Books Network now includes two women hosts – Carrie Figdor (University of Iowa) and Sarah Tyson (Colorado University, Denver). New Books in Philosophy podcast involves a host interviewing an author about a recently published book. Tyson interviewed me about my last book and, as an interviewee, it was a lovely experience. She read the book carefully and asked interesting questions – including about my epigraphs, which thrilled me — that invited me to elaborate on aspects of the book that were important but not what I might mention in the synopsis. Listening to the podcasts is equally enjoyable — and less stressful! I find that they choose provocative books in diverse areas of philosophy. You know how professors joke that academics never read whole books anymore? If you listen to this podcast regularly, you could get the hour dish on a bunch of books you can claim you read! But of course, you would want to read them after listening to these interviews.

The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or Associate Editor Julinna Oxley.