Bring a cup
A philosophy podcast where every question has a cost.
There’s a story about a fox and some grapes he couldn’t reach. The version you know is about a liar. There’s a worse version, and it’s where this show starts.
Arc OneThe Unreliable Narrator
Five episodes on why you are not a reliable witness to your own life, and why finding that out is still worth the cup. They work best in order.
The first two arrive together on November 3, then one a week on Tuesdays.
Sour Grapes, or: How to Tell Growth From Surrender
There’s a person you used to want to be. At some point you stopped wanting it, and it felt like maturity. How would you know if that were false?
You stopped wanting something you couldn’t have, and it felt like growing up. From the inside, growing out of a want and giving up on one feel identical. This episode is about whether you could ever tell the difference.
I’m Just Not That Kind of Person
“I’m just not a confrontational person.” It sounds like a fact about you. But you said it, just now, at exactly the moment the alternative was hard.
Someone at work is taking credit for what you did. You’ve drafted the sentence on the drive home. You don’t say it, and you explain it to yourself with: I’m just not a confrontational person.
The One Who Wants and the One Who Objects
Ten past two in the morning, still scrolling. You want to stop. You want to keep going. Both are you. Which one is really you, and why is it the one that’s losing?
Two wants in the same head at the same time: stop, and keep going. We don’t treat them as equals. We call the one that wants to stop the real you and the other one a hijacking. But they’re both yours, and the one you call you is losing.
There Is No Vault
Try to lie to yourself. Right now, deliberately. You can’t. And yet you’re doing it about something. Either there’s a hidden room, or self-deception isn’t what we think.
The first three episodes all assumed you can keep something from yourself. This one asks whether that’s even possible. To lie you have to know the truth; to be deceived you have to not know it. Self-deception needs you to be both.
What It Cost
Four episodes of taking things away. So: what was that for? Socrates has the strongest answer there is, and he paid the maximum price for it. Whether the answer holds.
The arc ends where the show’s name comes from. Not the story of the trial, which you half-know, but whether the answer Socrates gave holds up when you put weight on it.