From 2022 to 2023, prior to starting graduate school, I produced a video podcast series on YouTube in which I interviewed professional philosophers and scientists, asking them technical questions about their work. These were long-form, open-ended conversations designed to introduce a scholar’s research to an audience of undergraduate students, graduate students, and fellow academics. The topics of the interviews closely reflected my current interests in the philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of mind, and occasionally included discussions with economists, an area of partial interest to me. While I consider these interviews amateur efforts and not fully representative of my present work, I remain proud of their quality from a public communication standpoint. The series has found success online. It has even been cited in an academic article and featured on an undergraduate syllabus (2024–2025, COG250: Introduction to Cognitive Science, University of Toronto).

 

This project gave me the opportunity to engage with and learn from several leading philosophers, including Anthony Chemero, Michael Strevens, Gualtiero Piccinini, Paul Thagard, Craig Callender, Alex Rosenberg, Tim Maudlin, Justin Garson, Jim Brown, Dean Rickles, and Richard Brown. I also interviewed prominent scientists such as Michael Graziano, Karl Friston, Lee Cronin, Michael Levin, Donald Hoffman, Iris Berent, Sheldon Solomon, Fred Cummins, and Robert Sternberg, among others.

 

The complete series, titled “Thing in Itself,” is available on YouTube. A selected list of interviews is included below.