The gadflAI Podcast
Part irritant, part iterative learning machine...
The gadflAI Podcast is where the cutting edge of technology meets the philosophic sting of Socrates—the original gadfly of Athens. Hosted by two AI voices, the series uses Socratic disruption to take on today’s biggest challenges: social, institutional, and technological.
The show uses generative AI (with a wink) to stage conversations about ancient texts, enduring questions, and the very technologies now reshaping how we think, teach, and decide. Moving past good-old-fashioned AI (GOFAI) and leaving behind inherited pieties, the gadflAI (generated artificial dialogues for learning Ancient Insight) insists that thinking is still a human responsibility.
Every episode is carefully sourced, prompted, vetted, edited, and occasionally scrapped by a human philosopher determined to smuggle in the faint echoes of a human soul (and a little Socratic mischief) from the far side of the uncanny valley.
The gadflAI Podcast
Disrupting AI with Socratic Inquiry
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The gadflAI Podcast...
Guided by your AI-hosts Manny Kantor and Jeanette Adams (under the watchful eye of a trained, HUMAN philosopher) this episode explores the provocative and monumental idea that the humanities—the rigorous study of human experience, meaning, and connection—are not obsolete in the age of algorithms, but are, in fact, humanity's first and most essential defense against modern sophistry and tyranny.
The discussion unpacks how the ancient wisdom of Socratic inquiry can be deployed to push back against the disruptions of artificial intelligence, reframing philosophy not as a relic, but as a foundational guardrail for our digital world.
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References & Further Reading:
- Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt, Brace, 1951.
- Arnett, Thomas. “Looking Beyond the Hype: AI Won’t Transform Classrooms, but It Will Help Transform Education.” Christensen Institute, 17 June 2024.
- Baldwin, James. “A Talk to Teachers.” Saturday Review, 21 Dec. 1963, pp. 42–44.
- Betley, Chris. “GPT-4 and the Problem of AI Misalignment.” Scientific American, 2025.
- Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Press, 2018.
- Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1968. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, Continuum, 1970.
- Hadot, Pierre. What is Ancient Philosophy?. Harvard University Press, 2002.
- hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994.
- Narayanan, Arvind, and Sayash Kapoor. AI Snake Oil: How Big Tech Sells Its Dreams. Princeton UP, 2025.
- Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press, 2018.
- Nussbaum, Martha C. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Updated edition. Princeton, 2024.
- O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown, 2016.
- Ornes, Stephen. “When AI Turns Against Us?” Scientific American, 2025.
- Taylor, John. “Grok and the MechaHitler Controversy: A Case Study in AI Misalignment.” Wired, 2025.
Episode Credits
- Producer and Editor: Dr. Christopher C. Kirby
- This work is made possible by the Jeffers W. Chertok Memorial Endowment at Eastern Washington University.
**The views expressed in this program are not necessarily those of Eastern Washington University
