Stephen West, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Host of Philosophies This, which has to be one of the biggest Philosophy

podcasts in the world.

I was just telling you, I've been wanting to reach out to you for a very long time I think if you just

type in philosophy into you know Apple Podcasts or on to Spotify or something your show is going to be the one that comes up

over 200 episodes now covering all kinds of areas of philosophy. I mean do you consider

the channel to be a sort of history of philosophy channel or more of a philosophical ideas

channel? Probably more of like a humanizing philosophy channel. I don't really think I match up to any

like legit historian of philosophy and what I do, but I do think I try to my goal is to always make it

where like if you know nothing about a subject and then you want to become at least

aware of what's relevant and cool about it and why it should matter to you at all like that's

kind of where I sit there's so many levels above that and I mean I guess a few levels

below that but I try to sit right there I try to just take something from like the

abstract realm and just make it

something that people can find something to care about. So I wouldn't say a

history, I'd say a humanization.

Yeah and there's so much to talk about I thought that you'd be the perfect person to sit down and try to give people an idea about how to get into philosophy.

That's really what your show seems to be about is encouraging people to find philosophy interesting and also give them

some advice about how to begin thinking about this kind of stuff. And so I know a lot of people often reach out to me looking for things like book

recommendations and looking for things like areas of philosophy that they should start studying.

I suppose I want to begin by just asking you how it is

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