This is a bonus episode on the Philosophy Bites Podcast originally released on Thinking Books.

You're listening to the Thinking Books podcast with me Nigel Warburton.

For further information about thinking books go to www dot thinking books.

David Evans welcome to thinking books.

Thank you very much, delighted to be here.

Now the topic we're going to discuss is your book,

Undercover Robot, My First Year as a Human,

which you've written with Bertie Fraser.

I wonder if you could begin by saying how you came to write this book,

because you're much better known as a non-fiction writer.

You've written a wonderful book, Vickstein's poker or co-wrote that. You

co-wrote a book, Russo's dog, about Russo's dispute with David Hume. You wrote a book about

a chess player. Now you're writing a children's fiction book. It came about for a very successful children's podcast called Story Nori that's had tens and tens of millions of downloads.

And I have, you may or may not know a philosophy podcast and he said one day well I do

children's stories you do philosophy do you think we could somehow combine our skill sets and write a children's story

that has at the heart of it philosophy?

I think we should also say you do have children as well.

I do have children. well. I do have children that actually is very important because for the past few years I've been reading children's books every single night with very few exceptions and so I've been exposed to an

enormous array of children's literature some of which I've loved and quite a lot of which I'm afraid I thought was really mediocre

even some huge bestsellers. I think it's particularly the case in children's literature

partly because children's books don't get reviewed in the same way that adult books do.

Often the only way to break through in the children's market is to have celebrity authors,

...