David Edmonds has co-authored a children's book, Undercover Robot. Here in this bonus episode (originally released on the Thinking Books podcast) he discusses it with Nigel Warburton.
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.thinkingbooks.com.
david Edmunds, 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, Wittgenstein's poker, or co wrote that.
You co wrote a book, Rousseau's dog, about Rousseau'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 very prosaic reasons, really.
I have a friend who writes under the name of Bertie Fraser, and he has a very successful children's podcast called Storynori 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.