Terrifying Questions

(and How Not to be terrified by Them)

Eric Kaplan, a comedy writer (Futurama, Big Bang Theory) and doctor of philosophy, and Taylor Carman (Barnard College, Columbia University), a distinguished but humble authority on matters of existence and existentialism, host a philosophy podcast that addresses the most unsettling questions concerning human life and the nature of things and finds a path to courage using comedy, imagination, and far-ranging intellectual philosophical investigation. Along the way they grapple with the deep uncanniness of being.

About the Hosts

Eric Kaplan

Eric Kaplan has an M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University where he studied medieval philosophy and philosophy of science, and a PhD from UC Berkeley where he studied philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and wrote his dissertation on “Kierkegaard and the Funny”. His book Does Santa Exist: A Philosophical Investigation was described by Matt Groening as “the funniest philosophy book since…well, ever.” As a television writer, he has written for Futurama, The Flight of the Conchords, The Big Bang Theory, and Young Sheldon, and his stories have appeared in The New York Times.

Taylor CarmAn

Taylor Carman is professor of philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University, in New York City. He is the author of two books, Heidegger’s Analytic and Merleau-Ponty, and has written essays on topics in phenomenology and existentialism. He is also a translator of German philosophy and a player of the guitar, the banjo, the mandolin, and the mandola.