Everything Whatsoever

What is Everything Whatsoever?

Everything Whatsoever is a podcast in which we do close readings of individual philosophy papers—one paper per episode, in enough detail that you come away knowing what it argues and why it matters! To be clear up front, this show is largely AI-generated. However, every episode is reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the human philosopher behind the show (that's me)! More specifically, episodes usually run across a few parts, and the hosts—Solomon and Clementine, both synthetic voices—work through the paper's actual argument rather than a two-minute gloss. Scripts are generated and verified using frontier LLMs; a local TTS model handles production. Why does this show exist? Here's what happened. I'm a philosophy doctoral candidate who just submitted my PhD thesis, and I wanted a side project—something different and more creative than thesis work. Originally this wasn't a podcast; I just wanted audiobook versions of papers to listen to on the train, since I get distracted reading normally. Then the scope crept, and somewhere around v40 of a weekend project I looked up and had a podcast, a script-generation template, a mastering workflow, theme music, and two hosts with personalities. If I stumbled on an "AI-generated podcast," I'd assume AI-slop. This isn't a content farm—I've spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time trying to make this good and minimise the grating AI feel. The script generator enforces a fidelity contract, keeps a pronunciation registry for names, structures episodes pedagogically with roadmaps and re-entry summaries, and has actual rules about when the hosts are allowed to joke (the earlier drafts were tragic!). That said, there are far better, fully human philosophy podcasts out there—listen to and support them; I'm not trying to compete. This exists to fill gaps: papers with no proper episode, shows aimed at a different audience, or ones that are just boring. On accuracy: I fact-check every script, but this is a side project meant to give you a feel for the paper you should then read carefully yourself! I try hard to avoid mistakes but guarantee nothing—treat this as a guide, never a sole source for anything that matters. The first batch of episodes are pilots—far from perfect, and I'll keep improving them. Honestly, this is still basically for myself; I figured others might find it useful too, so I'm uploading it. It's taken far more time than intended, so if you get something out of it and want to keep the caffeine flowing (and me fine-tuning the show), I made a Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/everythingwhatsoeverpodcast . No expectation of tips—just throwing it out there :) Reach out anytime—suggestions, corrections, fact-checks, recommendations, interesting thoughts, cat or dog pictures, or paper requests: everythingwhatsoeverpodcast@gmail.com Podcasts you should also (mainly) listen to: Philosophy Bites In Our Time and Thinking Allowed (BBC Radio 4 — philosophy episodes) History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps Elucidations Overthink Philosophize This! The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Talk New Books in Philosophy The Dissenter Philosophy 247 The Grey Area From Nowhere to Nothing (There are also many others I cannot fit on this list!)