TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Philosophy on the Fringes

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28 episodes
2023 to 2025
Median: 55 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

A couple of philosophy professors, Megan Fritts and Frank Cabrera, try to prove that you can do philosophy about almost anything. Join them as they explore the philosophical dimensions of topics on the outskirts of the academy. From Bigfoot to birthday parties, they take a Socratic approach to phenomena strange and mundane, asking listeners the question: What if we did philosophy on the fringes?

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

➤ Philosophical inquiry into fringe and everyday phenomena • skepticism, evidence, pseudoscience demarcation • memory/identity, consciousness • religion, secularism, apocalypse • paranormal, reincarnation, UFOs • ethics of medicine, tech, sports, dating, childhood, mortality

This podcast features two philosophy professors who apply philosophical tools to subjects that often sit outside standard academic syllabi, mixing the strange with the everyday. Across the show, discussions use a broadly Socratic style: clarifying concepts, testing assumptions, and asking what would count as good reasons for belief. Many conversations sit at the intersection of philosophy and empirical research, bringing in cognitive science, psychology, and the philosophy of science to explore how evidence works, where it can mislead, and why people find certain explanations compelling.

A recurring theme is the evaluation of extraordinary or disputed phenomena—such as paranormal reports, reincarnation memories, conspiracy narratives, and occult practices—through questions about testimony, perception, memory, and inference. The hosts regularly contrast supernatural or dramatic hypotheses with more mundane explanations, while also exploring what these experiences might reveal about human meaning-making, fear, hope, identity, and the boundaries between the sacred and the secular.

Another throughline is the demarcation problem: how to distinguish science from pseudoscience, and what role scientific authority should play in public life. Topics like alternative medicine, hypnosis, personality systems, and astrology become case studies for thinking about placebo effects, causation, confirmation and falsification, paradigm shifts, and methodological skepticism.

The podcast also uses popular culture and social practices—sports, movies, alcohol, dating technology, childhood, and self-improvement rituals—as entry points into classic philosophical issues. These include personal identity over time, agency and autonomy, moral luck, rule-following and fairness, political legitimacy, and ethical questions about risk, harm, enhancement, and immortality. Throughout, the show draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary thinkers to connect fringe topics to enduring debates in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of mind.

Episodes: