Click here to visit PhilosophyBakesBread.com.

SOPHIA released our first episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread in our podcast series on January 19th of 2017. We had a handful of pilot episodes that now-co-host Eric Thomas Weber had made on his own. But in the third week of January, the show launched on the internet for the first time in its present form, with Anthony Cashio serving as our first guest. From then on, Cashio and Weber have to date released and aired 59 episodes on the radio, and 53 in the podcast. As we round the bend and think back on the year, we are also hopeful that this last month leading up to January 19th of 2018 will garner the 2,700 downloads remaining to mark 30,000 for our first year.

The hope is realistic. The month of November saw 3,500 downloads, and August saw more than 4,500. So, we’re excited. 30,000 seems like a nice round number that also has been mentioned in some of the podcasts that Weber and Cashio listen to regularly, and is considered an important milestone in bigger shows’ growth. Our 59th aired episode was actually our first one recorded entirely while live on the radio in Lexington, at WRFL, 88.1 FM. Anthony had to call in half way through the episode for family reasons. It worked and was a lot of fun. He says that he liked being able to pace as he spoke. That’s not usually an option when you’re in front of a condenser microphone.

In our most recent episode, we took a moment and [spoilers] talked about our most downloaded episodes, as well as which were the favorites for Anthony, Eric, and our returning guest, Dr. Annie Davis Weber. Annie has seen the mountains of work that have gone on behind the scenes to put the show together, edit it, and get it out to you all. Plus, the very first pilot episode of the show (not counting Weber’s roughly recorded speech), Ep0.1, had focused on how philosophy profoundly helped him to be happy despite challenges for the Webers’ daughter, Helen. Given that the episode was recorded so long ago, and was told from Eric’s perspective, Anthony and Eric decided to interview Annie about the matter. She was also helped by philosophical thinking. For Eric, it was stoicism that helped most. For Annie, Buddhist philosophy. We’ll have that episode out in the podcast in a few weeks, but as we round out the year, we thought we’d provide some spoilers about which were our favorite episodes, as well as which have been the most downloaded.

For anyone who hasn’t heard the following episodes, here’s your chance to catch up on them and to help us reach our target milestone of 30,000 downloads by January 19th, 2018. Let’s start with our most downloaded episodes and then we’ll share with you which ones we said were our favorites.

Our most downloaded episodes:

#5 of Our Most Downloaded Episodes

Our fifth most downloaded episode featured Drs. Seth Vannatta and Daniel Brunson! The episode was the first part of a two part series:

Episode 6: “Part I of II – Teaching Philosophy to First-Generation College Students”

As of December 20th, 2017, this episode has had 826 downloads. To listen alongside show notes and a transcript, you can click on the link here above, or just listen to it right here:

(1hr 5 mins)

(more…)