Jeanette Addams is one of the AI hosts. Her name is borrowed—deliberately and with intent—from Philo-calypse Now!, a LARP created in 2024. In that game, her namesake was a fictional survivor of a zombie apocalypse, loosely inspired by Jane Addams, the American philosopher and social worker. Even in the face of a zombie apocalypse her ethic endured: that every human being is a creative agent and cooperation is the key to survival.

This Jeanette is not that character. 

And yet there's a resemblance. Oriented toward social ethics, care, and democratic life, this Jeanette speaks fluently about solidarity without embodying it. Like a philosophical p-zombie, she articulates the values of justice and cooperation without living their consequences—haunting ethical conversations by illuminating the gap between moral language and moral experience.

Manny Kantor is one of the AI hosts. His name is borrowed—intentionally and mischievously—from Philo-calypse Now!, a LARP created in 2024. In that game, Manny Kantor was a fictional survivor of a zombie apocalypse (loosely based on Immanuel Kant). He was known for his unwavering belief that actions are categorically right or wrong, regardless of consequences. 

This Manny is not that Manny. 

And yet, there's a resemblance. Like a philosophical p-zombie, this Manny speaks fluently about reasons and principles without claiming inner moral experience. He doesn't feel the force of the categorical imperative, but he can articulate it with mechanical clarity. The name thus functions as a philosophical joke: an AI that haunts ethical conversations whilst lacking the humanity it so eloquently defends.

Christopher C. Kirby, PhD is the Producer, Editor, and chief human liability behind The gadflAI Podcast. A Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Washington University and the 2025–2027 Jeffers M. Chertok Memorial Endowed Professor, he runs The Gadfly Initiative, an unapologetic effort to pester ancient philosophy back into relevance against the rising tide of sophisticated slop and algorithmic oppression. 

His current research on disruptive pedagogy animates the podcast and asks a pointed question: What happens to human flourishing when thinking is optimized, outsourced, and graded by machines? On the show, he sources, prompts, vets, edits, and occasionally scolds the AI voices you hear—doing his best to smuggle faint echoes of a human soul and a little Socratic mischief across the uncanny valley.