At But Why, we believe that curiosity is key to learning.

That's why we bring kids questions to life with experts, fun stories, and fascinating facts in our podcasts and video episodes.

But we can't do this without you.

Support from people who love the show and believe in what we do helps keep curiosity thriving.

Head to butycids.org slash donate to become a buttwey fan club member

or make a gift in any amount to support the show.

Thanks and stay curious. This is But Why? A podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont Public.

I'm Jane Lindholm.

On this show, we take questions from curious kids just like you, and we find answers.

Every now and then, actually, more frequently than you might think,

we get questions that are really, really big and very hard to answer.

These are the questions from kids who are wrestling with what we call existential questions. Things like, why do humans exist? Why is life sometimes unfair?

Questions about punishment and kindness, how we define art, or what if we're all living in a dream

and we just don't know it?

Another way to describe these kinds of questions is to say they're philosophical in nature.

What's philosophy? My favorite definition of philosophy actually comes from my son from when he was in second grade.

That's Scott Hershowitz. He teaches philosophy and law at the University of Michigan.

He said philosophy is the art of thinking, which I think is a really perfect description.

So what we do when we do philosophy is we think about the world and we think about ourselves,

and we try to understand them better.

Because Scott's a philosophy professor, he spends a lot of his time thinking about these

kinds of complicated questions that don't always have a straightforward answer.

...