Naomi Fry, a critic and podcast host, had something to get off her chest.

“This is such a horrible thing to say, and probably many listeners will not like hearing this,” she began, speaking hesitantly. Her co-hosts, the fellow critics Vinson Cunningham and Alexandra Schwartz, leaned in from across a small, round table at a recording studio in Manhattan.

“I don’t like … philosophy?” Fry said, as if asking for permission.

Cunningham and Schwartz, who had joined Fry to discuss, in part, the book “Should We Go Extinct?” by the philosopher Todd May, burst into laughter. Soon Fry was laughing, too.

“I thought you were going to be like, ‘I think humans shouldn’t exist,’” Cunningham said.

“It’s just such a philistine thing to say, I feel,” Fry replied.

Schwartz interjected: “Everyone knows our biases. Give us a novel, put the philosophy in with it. We love story!”

“I love stories,” said Fry, coming alive. “Like, can you share a piece of gossip with me?”

“Can we get some details from Jeremy Bentham’s love life?” added Schwartz. “Like, let’s go here!”

In a darkened control room adjacent to the studio, Steven Valentino, the executive producer of audio at Condé Nast, laughed along with the co-hosts, who were recording an episode last month of “Critics at Large,” the weekly pop culture podcast of The New Yorker. Valentino developed the show, which premiered last fall, after reading the transcript of an article for the magazine’s website, in which Fry, Cunningham and Schwartz debated the state of sex scenes on film and television.