Chapter One: Introduction | Beyond Small Talk: A Modern Framework for Understanding Someone Deeply

In this episode, I speak with Lisa Wade, Associate Professor of Sociology at Tulane University, whose research examines gender, sexuality, and culture. She is best known for her groundbreaking book American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, which explores how social norms, power, and inequality shape the way young people learn about intimacy.

We talk about what it means to live in a society full of social scripts—unwritten rules that govern how we express desire, show affection, and understand freedom. Lisa explains how hookup culture emerged in the mid-1990s and how it reflects broader political and economic shifts, including the rise of neoliberalism and the feminist movement’s complicated legacy. She shows how many college students find themselves trapped between contradictory messages: be liberated, but not emotional; be free, but not vulnerable.

Our conversation dives into shame, pleasure, and the myths of sexual liberation. We discuss how cultural expectations privilege masculine forms of sexuality, why many young people struggle to assert kindness and care in their intimate lives, and what it might mean to create a more humane and inclusive culture of desire.

Chapter:

00:00 – Introduction: Closing Season 10 with Lisa Wade
02:00 – The origins of her interest in sexuality and culture
06:00 – Understanding cultural and social scripts
10:00 – How globalization and technology have reshaped dating
13:00 – The birth of hookup culture in the 1990s
18:00 – The role of feminism and neoliberalism in shaping sex
24:00 – The contradictions of modern desire and emotional detachment
30:00 – Students navigating shame, independence, and vulnerability
35:00 – Opting out of hookup culture and its social costs
40:00 – The myth of sexual liberation and the persistence of inequality
45:00 – Whose pleasure matters most? The gendered politics of orgasm
50:00 – Sex positivity and the pressure to be “game for anything”
54:00 – Rethinking freedom, kindness, and care in intimacy
56:00 – Closing reflections: How culture teaches us to love

In this episode, I speak with Talbot Brewer, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, whose work bridges moral philosophy, political theory, and moral psychology. His writing challenges the way modern philosophy and education have reduced human life to a series of goals and transactions. At the center of his thought is a radical and revitalizing idea: that the most meaningful human activities are pursued not as means to an end, but as ends in themselves.

We talk about what it means to live well, the difference between doing and being, and why the most beautiful activities in life—conversation, friendship, love, learning—are valuable precisely because they are not instrumental. Talbot shares how Aristotle’s conception of energeia, or activity for its own sake, redefines how we think about education, work, and happiness. We explore how philosophy, the humanities, and even daily acts like washing dishes or parenting can become moments of presence and purpose when approached as ends in themselves.

This conversation is a meditation on meaning, morality, and wonder. It invites us to rethink success, productivity, and the very structure of modern life. What if living well is not about achievement or progress, but about being wholly absorbed in what is beautiful, true, and good right now?

Chapter:

00:00 – Introduction: Talbot Brewer and the idea of dialectical life

02:00 – The story of how a windy day led him to philosophy

06:00 – Aristotle, Plato, and the origins of moral reflection

10:00 – The essence of Aristotelian ethics and why it still matters

15:00 – How ethics became about obligation rather than flourishing

20:00 – Living well versus living rightly: Aristotle and Kant compared

25:00 – The concept of dialectical activity and what it reveals about human life

30:00 – Why education should be about wonder, not utility

35:00 – Learning for its own sake and the beauty of engagement

40:00 – The humanities, meaning, and what it means to live freely

45:00 – Why philosophy is not a luxury but a necessity

50:00 – The moral and emotional cost of turning every pursuit into a product

55:00 – The end as the means: lessons from yoga, art, and parenting

1:00:00 – Living a full human life through shared activity and love

1:04:00 – Closing reflections on purpose, community, and being present

In this episode, I explore how sexuality evolves over time and what aging reveals about pleasure, gender, and identity. My guest, Dr. Lisa R. Miller, is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Discipline Coordinator at Eckerd College, whose research examines how women’s sexual well-being transforms across the life course. Her work highlights how experience, confidence, and agency can expand desire rather than diminish it.

We talk about how cultural expectations around gender and sexuality shift as people age, and why aging often brings greater authenticity and emotional freedom. The conversation uncovers how prejudice and inequality shape intimacy, the myths surrounding sexuality in later life, and why the study of pleasure is essential to understanding human health and happiness.

This is a conversation about desire as a form of growth, the freedom that comes with self-knowledge, and the beauty of embracing the body’s changing story.

Chapter:

00:00 – Introduction: Dr. Lisa R. Miller and her research focus
02:00 – Why sexuality and aging are rarely studied together
06:00 – How cultural scripts shape pleasure and self-image
10:00 – The gendered expectations that limit sexual expression
14:00 – How aging can liberate desire and deepen confidence
19:00 – Sexuality as communication: what changes with experience
24:00 – Myths about aging and sexual decline
29:00 – LGBTQ+ experiences and the sociology of health and stigma
34:00 – How prejudice and discrimination affect intimacy
39:00 – Pleasure as resistance and reclaiming the body
44:00 – Redefining what it means to be attractive and desired
48:00 – How to teach about sexuality, aging, and gender with empathy
53:00 – What the future of sexual well-being research looks like
57:00 – Closing reflections: embracing aging as growth

In this episode, I speak with Roy F. Baumeister, one of the world’s most influential psychologists, whose work has shaped how we understand self-control, motivation, and the search for meaning. Author of over 700 scientific publications and nearly 40 books, including The Cultural Animal and Meanings of Life, Roy has spent his career asking some of the most profound questions about human purpose and the inner architecture of the mind.

We talk about what makes life meaningful, why the concept of meaning itself only recently became a scientific topic, and how psychology moved from behaviorism to studying purpose, values, and self-reflection. Roy shares his framework of the four pillars of meaning purpose, values, efficacy, and self-worth and how these shape our sense of belonging and motivation. We also discuss pleasure, passion, and awe, and whether meaning is a feeling, a thought, or something deeper that connects past, present, and future.

The conversation moves through science, philosophy, and personal reflection, exploring how meaning evolves across culture, religion, and time. We talk about how people create coherence in their lives, what meaninglessness really looks like, and why the most meaningful lives may also be the most incomplete.

Chapter:

00:00 – Introduction: Meeting Roy Baumeister, psychologist and author

01:00 – Life in Utah and the power of writing in nature

04:00 – The separation between theory and experience in modern academia

07:00 – Discovering psychology and the big questions of human life

10:00 – How Meanings of Life became his most influential book

13:00 – Why psychology avoided studying meaning for so long

16:00 – From behaviorism to social psychology: a shift in focus

20:00 – How science began measuring and experimenting with meaning

24:00 – Purpose, values, efficacy, and self-worth: the four pillars of meaning

28:00 – Why pleasure and meaning are not the same

32:00 – Religion, culture, and the birth of existential reflection

36:00 – The role of curiosity and reflection in discovering purpose

39:00 – The connection between passion, awe, and the meaningful life

44:00 – Is meaning a thought or a feeling? The psychology of coherence

48:00 – Meaninglessness and the search for wholeness

52:00 – Roy’s next book: coherence, incompleteness, and meaning in life

54:00 – Closing reflections: curiosity, consciousness, and human purpose

In this second conversation with Julie Walsh, the Whitehead Associate Professor of Critical Thought and Director of the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College, we explore what it truly means to be free. Building on our earlier discussion about embodiment and ethics, Julie takes us through the philosophical history of freedom—from Augustine to Descartes to early modern women thinkers who redefined liberty as a social and moral question rather than a purely metaphysical one.

We talk about financial independence, moral dependence, and why freedom may be impossible without resources. Julie introduces the ideas of Gabrielle Suchon, who argued that freedom requires a life without engagements—a world free from moral or financial debt. We discuss how these ideas translate into modern life: parenthood, marriage, work, and even the emotional ties that define us.

The conversation then expands into empathy, virtual reality, and the tension between knowledge and experience. We ask whether freedom and happiness can coexist, and what happens when we consciously choose our own chains. It is an intimate, wide-ranging reflection on autonomy, responsibility, and the fragile balance between connection and independence.

Chapter :

00:00 – Introduction: Continuing the conversation on freedom and ethics02:00 – The moral imagination and the question of empathy07:00 – Animal suffering, compassion, and emotional distance12:00 – Disgust, denial, and what society chooses not to see17:00 – Class, privilege, and the ethics of looking away22:00 – How art and storytelling transform awareness into care28:00 – Facing darkness without losing hope33:00 – Freedom through knowledge: from Augustine to Descartes38:00 – Princess Elizabeth, Suchon, and women redefining moral freedom43:00 – The privilege of freedom and the weight of dependence48:00 – The cost of independence: relationships, family, and work53:00 – Financial freedom and moral debt in modern life58:00 – Why no one is truly free: interdependence as a human truth1:03:00 – Freedom, happiness, and the ethics of choice1:08:00 – The limits of autonomy in a connected world1:13:00 – Choosing your chains: love, faith, and surrender1:18:00 – Closing reflections: freedom, dependence, and moral responsibility

In this episode, I sit down with Julie Walsh, the Whitehead Associate Professor of Critical Thought and Director of the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College. Her work bridges early modern philosophy, feminist thought, and the ethics of digital technology. At the heart of her research lies a single question: what does it mean to be free?

We explore how philosophy has historically separated reason from emotion, and why this division continues to shape our understanding of enlightenment, knowledge, and identity. Julie reflects on how academic philosophy has often excluded the body—reducing thought to abstraction—and how reintroducing emotion, vulnerability, and positionality can make knowledge more human. We talk about the ethics of curiosity, the limits of objectivity, and why she believes that curiosity itself is a form of privilege.

Our conversation moves from the ethics of scientific research and animal experimentation to the role of philosophy in education and the urgent need to teach ethics and critical thinking earlier in life. We end by reflecting on freedom, embodiment, and how philosophy can guide us through the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence. It is a conversation about humanity, humility, and the meaning of thinking itself.

Chapter:

00:00 – Introduction: Julie Walsh and the philosophy of editing
02:00 – What makes a podcast an artifact of thought
05:00 – Fact versus emotion: how feelings shape belief
09:00 – Disgust, politics, and the emotional roots of polarization
13:00 – Learning to unlearn: emotion, race, and moral growth
17:00 – The power of embodied philosophy and feminist thought
21:00 – Why academic philosophy lost its humanity
25:00 – The ethics of science: ancient DNA and researcher positionality
30:00 – Curiosity as privilege: who gets to explore freely
35:00 – Responsibility, objectivity, and the limits of pure reason
40:00 – Why ethics must guide curiosity and research
45:00 – Animal ethics, empathy, and the cost of experimentation
50:00 – The importance of teaching ethics and philosophy to children
55:00 – The purpose of education: architects vs. gardeners
59:00 – Privilege, exploration, and the meaning of liberal arts learning
1:03:00 – Closing reflections: freedom, embodiment, and meaning

In this episode, I sit down with Paul Thagard, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, whose career has bridged philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and computer modeling. Paul has spent decades exploring how humans think, feel, and make sense of the world. From scientific reasoning and creativity to consciousness and the meaning of life, his work has helped reshape how we understand the mind itself.

We talk about how he first fell in love with philosophy as a teenager shelving books in a public library, and how that early curiosity evolved into a lifelong pursuit of understanding how reasoning and inference work. Paul explains his theory of coherence, showing how both thought and emotion can be understood through neural networks that seek balance and connection. We also discuss motivated reasoning, how emotions shape our beliefs, and why science and philosophy must work together to reveal truth and value.

The conversation turns deeply human as we explore his scientific theory of meaning. Drawing from his book The Brain and the Meaning of Life, Paul argues that love, work, and play are not just sources of happiness but the biological and psychological foundations of a meaningful life. We end by reflecting on empathy, curiosity, and how wonder can lead not to mysticism, but to understanding. It’s a conversation about truth, beauty, and what it really means to be human.

⏱️Chapter

00:00 – Introduction: Meeting Paul Thagard, philosopher and cognitive scientist
02:00 – Discovering philosophy at age 15 in a public library
06:00 – From curiosity to cognition: how reasoning became his lifelong pursuit
10:00 – Reason vs inference: how we think, feel, and communicate
14:00 – Social reasoning and why communication is central to thought
18:00 – Creativity and the psychology of discovery
22:00 – Defining science and its difference from belief or politics
27:00 – Misinformation, evidence, and the culture of truth
31:00 – The balance between science, ethics, and values
36:00 – Wonder, awe, and the human drive to understand
41:00 – Can science explain beauty, art, and emotion?
46:00 – The theory of coherence: how the brain fits reality together
51:00 – Neural networks, reasoning, and the structure of consciousness
56:00 – Motivated reasoning and how emotions distort evidence
1:00:00 – Ethics in science: curiosity, danger, and responsibility
1:03:00 – The meaning of life: love, work, and play as biological truths
1:06:00 – Closing reflections on empathy, rationality, and the future of understanding

In this episode, I speak with Brandon Smith, an FRQSC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities, who earned his PhD in Philosophy from McGill University in 2024. His research examines the history and applicability of philosophical accounts of happiness, and his first book, The Search for Mind-Body Flourishing in Spinoza’s Eudaimonism, is forthcoming in Brill’s New Research in the History of Western Philosophy series.

We trace a historical arc of ideas about pleasure and the good life, moving from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through the Stoics and Epicureans, and into early modern debates with Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Brandon explains how the Stoics treat pleasure as neither good nor bad in itself, why Epicurus distinguishes the calm pleasure of healthy functioning from the thrill of satisfying a want, and how Spinoza reframes pleasure as the feeling of increased self-expressive power that supports flourishing across a whole life. We also look at the worry that pleasure can mislead, and how a hierarchy of pleasures helps separate short-lived impulses from sustainable well-being.

I ask how these frameworks shape everyday choices and public ideals, from addiction and shame to policy and education. Brandon argues that flourishing is both objective and subjective, grounded in facts about human functioning while also requiring lived awareness. We end by connecting this to classrooms and culture, asking how a richer account of pleasure and meaning can help people learn, collaborate, and live well.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction: Who is Brandon Smith and what drew him to the philosophy of happiness
03:00 – What it means to study happiness historically and philosophically
07:00 – The ancient roots of eudaimonia: from Socrates to Aristotle
12:00 – Aristotle’s idea of flourishing and the life of rational activity
17:00 – Stoicism: virtue, detachment, and the neutrality of pleasure
22:00 – Epicurus and the distinction between active pleasure and calm tranquility
27:00 – Misunderstanding Epicureanism: pleasure as simplicity, not indulgence
32:00 – The tension between desire, control, and the moral suspicion of pleasure
37:00 – How Christianity and modern moral theory reframed pleasure as suspect
42:00 – Spinoza’s revolution: joy as an increase in the power to act
47:00 – Pleasure, reason, and the harmony of mind and body
52:00 – Why Spinoza rejects dualism and reframes happiness as understanding
57:00 – The difference between momentary joy and lifelong flourishing
1:02:00 – Modern echoes: how psychology and ethics return to ancient ideas
1:07:00 – Can happiness be taught? What education can learn from eudaimonism
1:11:00 – Flourishing beyond utility: meaning, community, and freedom
1:16:00 – Closing reflections: the art of living well in a restless age
1:20:00 – Final takeaway: happiness as the joyful exercise of understanding

In this episode, I speak with Terry E. Robinson, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists on addiction and reward. A Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, Robinson’s work has transformed how we understand compulsion, motivation, and brain plasticity. His pioneering research on the Incentive Sensitization Theory of Addiction—developed with Kent Berridge—helped redefine addiction not as a failure of willpower, but as a deeply ingrained form of learning that alters how the brain “wants” rather than “likes.”

We begin with the history of neuroscience and how the field has evolved since Robinson entered it in the late 1970s. He explains how, while the central questions of neuroscience have remained the same, our tools have changed dramatically, allowing us to peer into the brain with unprecedented precision. We discuss the concept of brain plasticity and how experiences, drugs, stress, and even education reshape neural circuits. Robinson describes how addiction arises when this same plasticity becomes maladaptive, transforming desire into pathological wanting that can persist for years after drug use stops.

Our conversation moves beyond addiction to the broader implications of adaptability itself—how our brains constantly change in response to life’s experiences, for better or worse. Robinson shares how curiosity has fueled his 47-year career, how science progresses through serendipity, and why real discovery means being open to the unexpected. It is a conversation about the power and peril of a brain that never stops changing, and what that means for learning, freedom, and the human capacity to evolve.

ChatGPT said:

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction: Welcoming Terry E. Robinson, pioneer in addiction neuroscience

01:00 – Life between Michigan and Italy: Reflections on remote work and retirement

03:00 – Entering neuroscience in the 1970s: How the field has changed over 47 years

06:00 – The evolution of neuroscience methods and what questions remain the same

09:00 – Can we ever fully understand the brain? The limits of human comprehension

12:00 – How public understanding of neuroscience has grown over time

15:00 – What brain plasticity really means and why change defines our minds

18:00 – How experience, stress, and environment shape the brain’s adaptability

22:00 – Can IQ and plasticity be connected? Learning, flexibility, and intelligence

26:00 – The importance of connecting knowledge across disciplines in education

30:00 – Genes, environment, and the false dichotomy between nature and nurture

33:00 – When adaptation turns harmful: PTSD and maladaptive brain change

37:00 – The birth of the Incentive Sensitization Theory of Addiction

40:00 – How drugs rewire the brain: tolerance, sensitization, and lasting change

44:00 – Dopamine, wanting, and liking: redefining reward and motivation

48:00 – Beyond drugs: behavioral addictions like gambling, food, and pornography

52:00 – Why treatment remains difficult and how context influences relapse

55:00 – Curiosity, serendipity, and the real nature of scientific discovery

58:00 – Closing reflections: Change, curiosity, and the future of neuroscience

In this episode, I sit down with David Sulzer, known in the music world as Dave Soldier, a neuroscientist and composer whose work lives at the intersection of art and science. As a Columbia University professor with over 200 research papers and a prolific musical career, Sulzer has spent decades exploring how the brain learns, remembers, and creates. Our conversation flows through his current reading list, from Thomas Paine and Aldous Huxley to Johannes Kepler, revealing how the questions of the past continue to shape our search for truth and meaning today.

We talk about the way Kepler and Galileo once believed the stars were embedded in a celestial sphere and how understanding their errors opens a window into the evolution of human thought. Sulzer explains how curiosity, rather than certainty, drives real discovery and how science and art are bound by the same impulse: the desire to understand the world through pattern, rhythm, and form. We explore his book Music, Math, and Mind, which demystifies how sound becomes emotion, how learning happens in the brain, and why curiosity might be the most beautiful human instinct of all.

As the conversation unfolds, we move from neuroscience to philosophy, from Indian classical music to Renaissance art, from learning behaviors to the politics of scientific funding. What emerges is a reflection on what it means to be truly educated: to follow your curiosity wherever it leads, to see connections others miss, and to find harmony between intellect and imagination. This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered how a melody can change your mind or how the mind itself might just be music in motion.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Introduction: Meeting David Sulzer, neuroscientist and composer
01:30 – How he chooses what to read and what books teach him about our time
05:00 – Kepler, Galileo, and how early scientists imagined the universe
09:30 – The harmony between music, mathematics, and planetary motion
14:00 – What we forget about how people once understood the cosmos
18:00 – Curiosity, play, and the beauty of not knowing
22:00 – How Music, Math, and Mind explores sound, emotion, and learning
27:00 – Why education should connect art and science
32:00 – Tradition versus innovation in music and human creativity
37:00 – Balancing two callings: being both a scientist and a musician
42:00 – The neuroscience of learning and what changes in the brain
47:00 – Depression, schizophrenia, and the complexity of mental illness
52:00 – Why funding for science and research truly matters
56:00 – Closing reflections on curiosity, meaning, and the purpose of knowledge

In this episode, I sit down with historian Barbara H. Rosenwein to talk about how emotions, far from being timeless or universal, are shaped by the cultures and communities we live in. Drawing from her influential concept of emotional communities, Barbara helps me understand how emotions like anger, shame, pride, and love have been expressed, suppressed, and moralized across history. We explore how medieval monks, warriors, or aristocratic women didn’t just feel differently than we do today. They inhabited different emotional worlds, with distinct rules about what could be shown, hidden, or valued.

We also discuss the modern myth that emotions are raw, instinctive things we should either control or let loose. Barbara challenges this binary, showing instead how emotional expressions are learned, practiced, and patterned, passed down like language or custom. We talk about the emotional life of institutions (like schools), the policing of public vulnerability, and how historical shifts in religious or political structures can create entirely new emotional landscapes. There’s a particularly powerful moment where we reflect on the role of shame in both medieval and modern settings, how it can be used as a tool of control, but also resisted through new emotional solidarities.

This episode is not just about what people felt in the past. It’s about what we’ve been taught to feel today, and how knowing history might free us to feel differently. If you’ve ever wondered where your emotions come from, or why some are welcome in public while others are hidden, this conversation offers an eye-opening and deeply human perspective.

🎙️ Episode Chapters

00:00 – Introduction
02:15 – Emotional Communities Defined
06:42 – Are Emotions Universal?
12:01 – How Historians Read Emotion
17:25 – Religious Emotional Norms in the Middle Ages
24:40 – Emotion as Power and Social Order
30:15 – From Individual Emotion to Emotional Style
34:50 – Grief and Love Across Time
40:08 – The Modern Myth of Emotional Freedom
45:23 – Rethinking Emotional Intelligence
50:50 – What History Can Teach Us About Feeling
55:10 – Final Reflections and Takeaways

In this episode, I speak with Kent C. Berridge, the James Olds Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, whose pioneering work has reshaped how we understand pleasure, motivation, and addiction. Kent explains the crucial distinction between “liking” and “wanting,” showing how dopamine drives craving and desire rather than pleasure itself. We trace the history of neuroscience discoveries, from early experiments with rats pressing levers to stimulate brain reward centers, to the identification of hedonic hotspots in the brain that genuinely generate pleasure.

We explore how this distinction helps explain phenomena like irrational cravings in addiction, where people may intensely want a drug even if they no longer enjoy it. Kent connects this to broader issues, including depression, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia, where wanting and liking can become uncoupled. We also discuss how these insights apply beyond clinical settings, from understanding why students may not always want to learn despite liking the subject, to how everyday cues like social media notifications hijack our dopamine systems.

Our conversation also considers the future of this research: from possible biomedical treatments for compulsive cravings to the role of meditation and cultural practices in shaping pleasure. Kent emphasizes that understanding how liking and wanting operate separately not only deepens our knowledge of the brain but also helps us cultivate empathy for people struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. This episode invites listeners to reflect on their own habits, pleasures, and desires—and what it really means to like something versus simply wanting it.

In this episode, I talk with Gautam Kaul about how we learn, make decisions, and deal with risk. Gautam, a finance professor at the University of Michigan, has spent much of his career studying markets, uncertainty, and how people respond to them. But what makes his approach unique is the way he frames finance not only as numbers and equations, but as stories about human behavior and responsibility.

We explore why humans often misjudge risk and how education can help people become more thoughtful decision-makers. Gautam explains how teaching finance is less about technical formulas and more about building the ability to understand uncertainty, weigh options, and take responsibility for choices. We also talk about the emotional side of learning and decision-making, and how stories can be just as important as logic in shaping our understanding of the world.

This conversation left me thinking about how education—whether in finance or any field—prepares us for the uncertainties of life itself. Instead of only focusing on outcomes, Gautam argues that we should be paying attention to how we make decisions, what values drive those choices, and how we learn from both successes and failures.

In this episode, I sit down with Michael Treadway, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist whose work focuses on how the brain makes decisions about effort and reward. We explore why motivation sometimes feels elusive and how conditions like depression and anxiety can shift the way people weigh costs and benefits. Michael explains how his lab uses tasks and brain imaging to study the decisions we all make about whether something is "worth the effort," and what this tells us about both healthy behavior and mental health challenges.

Our conversation moves between the lab and everyday life—why following through on goals often feels harder than setting them, how motivation is tied to brain circuits that evolved to help us survive, and why mental health struggles can make effort feel overwhelming. Michael also reflects on how understanding the neuroscience of motivation can shape new treatments for depression and anxiety, as well as practical strategies for daily living.

By the end of the discussion, we not only examine the science behind effort and persistence but also look at what it means for education, work, and personal growth. It’s a chance to see how the brain’s decision-making processes influence everything from simple daily choices to long-term goals.

In this episode, I talk with Keith Sawyer about how creativity really works, especially when it happens in groups. We begin by challenging the common image of creativity as the result of a lone genius working in isolation. Keith explains how innovation often grows out of collaboration, improvisation, and the back-and-forth exchange of ideas. Drawing examples from jazz ensembles and brainstorming sessions, we discuss how structure and spontaneity combine to create moments of breakthrough.

We also explore what research tells us about the conditions that help teams become more innovative. Keith shares why diversity of thought matters, how psychological safety fuels risk-taking, and why most brainstorming sessions fail to deliver. He explains that creativity isn’t just about sudden inspiration but about patterns of interaction that can be studied and encouraged.

For anyone interested in education, work, or the arts, this conversation offers practical ways of thinking about collaboration and creativity. It highlights how we can create environments—whether in classrooms, offices, or communities—that don’t just value ideas but actively nurture the connections that make them possible.

In this episode, I sit down with Georg Northoff to explore the complex relationship between the brain, consciousness, and the self. We start by questioning the assumption that neuroscience alone can fully explain who we are. Georg points out the limitations of reductionist approaches, showing why studying neurons and brain regions in isolation isn’t enough to answer fundamental questions about experience and identity.

Our conversation moves into the idea of the self not as a static object in the brain, but as something that emerges in relation to the body and the world. Georg explains how consciousness might be better understood through the connections between brain, environment, and time, rather than by searching for a single “location” of self. He draws on philosophy as much as neuroscience, stressing that the most important questions often lie between disciplines rather than within one.

Together, we reflect on what it means to be human when science cannot give a final answer to the question of existence. Is the self reducible to neurons firing in the brain? Or is it something that can only be grasped by looking at how life unfolds in context—through relationships, history, and lived experience? This conversation invites us to rethink not just what consciousness is, but how we go about asking the question in the first place.

In this episode, I speak with Roger Crisp, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, about the role of ethics in our personal lives and society. We start with a discussion of Aristotle’s ideas on human flourishing and compare them with utilitarian approaches that focus on maximizing happiness. Roger explains how different ethical traditions address the question of what it means to live well, and we explore whether it is possible or even desirable to measure happiness.

We also talk about the challenges of applying moral philosophy to real-world decisions, especially when theoretical ideals meet practical constraints. Roger shares examples of how moral reasoning can guide policy, personal choices, and our interactions with others. Along the way, we touch on topics such as virtue, moral motivation, and how philosophical thinking can help navigate life’s complex trade-offs.

This conversation offers an accessible look at how philosophy connects to everyday life, showing that moral theory isn’t just an academic exercise it’s a tool for understanding ourselves and making better decisions in a complicated world.

Season 9 Summarized: Art, Beauty, & Complexity.

In this episode, I talk with Aaron Meskin, a philosopher of aesthetics whose work spans comics, food, popular culture, and the philosophy of art. We begin by talking about architecture, cultural memory, and the feeling of living in spaces that carry historical weight. From there, we explore what it means to care about beauty in different domains, why some people care deeply about buildings or fashion, while others are drawn to beer, music, or television. Aaron suggests that aesthetics isn't limited to galleries or museums, it’s part of everyday life, and we all engage with it, whether through a shared concert experience or the design of our homes.

We dive deep into comics as an art form, what makes them unique, why it's difficult (and maybe unnecessary) to define them, and how their hybrid structure of text and image creates new forms of narrative and expression. Aaron reflects on how comics offer intimacy, especially when created by a single artist, and why they deserve more philosophical attention. We also touch on food and drink as potential art forms, considering when a cocktail or a carefully prepared dish becomes more than just consumption. Toward the end, we challenge the boundaries of art itself, asking whether conversation and podcasting could be considered artistic forms, and what criteria we use to make that judgment.

Throughout, we explore how aesthetics helps us pay attention, how it’s social, and how it enables new ways of connecting to each other and the world. Whether through a comic, a gourmet meal, or a walk through a 14th-century village, aesthetic experiences are all around us Sometimes we just need to notice them.