Love & Philosophy

Send a love message Andrea Hiott talks with cultural researcher Patricia Martin about her book Will the Future Like You?: Reflections on the Age of Hyper-Reinvention and the condition she calls persona fog . By now we know that online life, with its endless content, algorithmic polarization, and pressure to present oneself publicly, is detrimental to our well-being; countless books and articles ha...

Send a love message This is a coversation between John Vervaeke and Darius Parvizi-Wayne introduced by Andrea Hiott. On Love, Attention, and the Good: Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke (University of Toronto) and philosopher Darius Parvizi-Wayne (Macquarie University) talk about love as a way of paying attention, starting from Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good. They discuss John’s idea that g...

Send a love message Sophie and Henry explore consciousness, mind, and the porous boundary between inner and outer experience. The conversation ranges from panpsychism and animism to imaginal empathy, ecology, myth, and why modern life makes it so hard to stay open to mystery. Sophie brings a wide ranging perspective shaped by writing, spirituality, ecology, the history of religion, and Eros. The t...

Send a love message Find Mac at https://macshine.github.io/publications/ Mac’s Lab : https://profiles.sydney.edu.au/mac.shine The Brain Inspired conversation Andrea mentions . Mac Shine on Systems Neuroscience, Automaticity, and the Cerebellum’s Role in Human Cognition. In discussion with Andrea Hiott. University of Sydney systems neuroscientist Mac Shine in conversation about systems neuroscience...

Send a love message Philosopher of science Hasok Chang (University of Cambridge) joins Andrea Hiott to trace the through-line of his work — from Inventing Temperature (2004), through Is Water H₂O? (2012), to Realism for Realistic People (2022) — and to think together about what it means to treat knowledge as something we do rather than something we merely possess . The conversation begins with why...

Send a love message Keya Maitra is the Lenney Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa . Keya joins Andrea to talk about her Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita . They discuss this text as a living philosophical conversation. They move from action without attachment and yoga as a redirection of attention, to why the Gita's dualism isn't the mind-body spli...

Send a love message Mark Solms began translating Freud's neuroscientific writings in the late 1980s, then gave twenty-nine years to revising the translation of Freud's psychological works. In this episode, Solms joins Andrea Hiott to talk about his new book, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing — and to make a surprising case: that far from being the discredited fi...

Send a love message Molyneux's Question with Janet Levin and Brian Glenney Love & Philosophy — Beyond Dichotomy In 1688, an Irish scientist named William Molyneux sent John Locke a letter with a question in it. Suppose a man born blind has learned by touch to tell a cube from a sphere. Suppose he is given sight, and the two objects are set on a table in front of him. Could he tell, by loo...

Send a love message Charlie has been gathering some of the best scientists in the world to rethink what agency is together and form new connections outside the usual academic constraints Join Andrea in NYC this week here. Today's guest is Charlie Munford, president of the Agential Biology Institute, and he has been gathering some of the best scientists and philosophers in the world together t...

Send a love message Andrea, Yogi and Marcus are forming Paradoxis. This is one of the conversations towards that, a Third Space episode of Love & Philosoph . Philosopher Andrea Hiott sits down with artist and facilitator Marcus Neustetter and biologist-philosopher Johannes "Yogi" Jaeger for a wide-ranging conversation about working in the space between art and science. The two have c...

Send a love message Why Caring Isn't Self-Sacrifice with Elissa Strauss The episode of Love and Philosophy introduces a conversation with journalist and essayist Elissa Strauss, author of When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, framed by the host’s view of care as an embodied, orienting force and “minds as actions.” Strauss distinguishes “caring,” social-status “not caring,”...

Send a love message Isabella Granic on Liminal Learning, Neither Nor , and Education for Flourishing Andrea Hiott introduces a guest podcast from Life Itself , Jacob Kishere interviews developmental psychologist Isabella Granic about “education for flourishing” ahead of the Human Transformation in a Time of Metacrisis conference at Harvard. Granic describes shifting from studying anxiety and depre...

Send a love message Beyond Genes, Toward Meaning & Care, But Rigorously Andrea Hiott hosts British science writer Philip Ball (former Nature editor; trained chemist and physicist) to discuss his book How Life Works and why the popular idea “it’s all in the genes” is untenable. Ball argues biology is shifting beyond mechanistic, bottom-up “blueprint” metaphors toward a view of organisms as open...

Send a love message Andrea Hiott in conversation with investor Jenna Nicholas .  Jenna discusses her book The Enlightened Bottom Line and how spirituality, love, and purpose can inform investing and business rather than oppose them. She traces formative experiences from ages 11–14 in a Swiss “Transformation for Peace” program and speaking at Commonwealth Day in Westminster Abbey, including meeting...

Send a love message What Marks our Movement through life? Andrea Hiott interviews A.A. Kostas, a Singapore-based lawyer and writer who runs the Substack Way Markers, blending poetry, fiction, and essays. They discuss how moving through different places shaped his writing and his interest in avoiding simplistic binaries through discernment—first identifying what kind of decision is in front of you—...

Send a love message B. Scot Rousse (“B”)'s substack, "Without Why," focuses on what it means to be alive in an age of intelligent machines. He is philosopher in residence at Topos Institute and visiting scholar in Philosophy at Berkeley. He also drums in 3 punk bands. To support us, please sign up for the newsletter or Give any amount . Andrea Hiott has a conversation with philosoph...

Send a love message The Great Psychology Delusion: Why the Mean Misleads and Pluralism Matters Read the book here. This is an academic psychology-focused episode with lecturer Marek McGann, whose work spans enactive cognitive science, embodiment, politics, feminist philosophy, and STS. Andrea and Marek discuss his co-authored book The Great Psychology Delusion with Craig Speelman. McGann explains...

Send a love message This is an impromptu bonus episode previewing the NYC premiere of Sophie Fiennes’s documentary film Acting, which follows the celebrated theatre company Cheek by Jowl through their production of Macbeth. Andrea is speaking with her this week in NYC. Andrea introduces the ideas of director Declan Donnellan, whose book The Actor in the Space (2024) helps us get some insight into...

Send a love message  Holding Paradox Through Serious Play: Can serious play be a portal to wisdom?  This is an episode about puzzles and care. Andrea has a conversation with puzzle maker Jason Robillard (StumpCraft) about how puzzles cultivate new ways of being and seeing, holding paradox by repeatedly joining opposites only to realize they were never quite opposites but mirror-like pieces of a co...

Send a love message Facing Reality with Clear Eyes but without Desperation: Scilla Elworthy on Listening with the Heart to Transform Conflict  Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Scilla Elworthy reflects on 70 years of work with conflict and war, beginning at age 12 after seeing tanks in Budapest and being sent to help concentration camp survivors. She describes how others’ suffering “hit” her he...

Send a love message  Janet Levin on Physicalism, Zombies, and Changing Minds  Andrea hosts philosopher Janet Levin, newly retired after 40 years at USC and the department’s first tenure-track woman hire, to discuss a life in analytic philosophy and debates about mind and consciousness. Levin recounts stumbling into philosophy at the University of Chicago with Ted Cohen and later studying at MIT am...

Send a love message Love and Philosophy Beyond Dichotomy: Way Making, Care, and a New Season Andrea Hiott introduces Love and Philosophy Beyond Dichotomy and reflects on how a late-2023 research project became a podcast shaped by the guiding question of “way making”: how we find our way and how our way makes us. Drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, urban planning, ecology, biology, and navigabil...

Send a love message From the archive. Giving Page Andrea introduces an archive episode of Love and Philosophy featuring Perry Zurn , provost and associate professor of philosophy at American University about the book Curious Minds, coauthored with Dani Bassett. The intro previews an upcoming season launch with Janet Levin.  In the following conversation, Perry links curiosity to desire and love, a...

Send a love message  From the archive. First aired in Jan of 2025. A conversation about Hegel. Andrea talks with Karen Ng, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. The discussion delves into Hegel's ideas on contradiction, self-consciousness, life, and love, revealing how these notions are intricately intertwined in his work. Karen Ng brings forward her insights from her aw...

Send a love message  Love, Science, and the Dynamics of Change: From the Archive This is a replay of an earlier conversation with Richard Watson (which was already an unpublished conversation we'd had earlier, so there's lots of nesting here). Initially focusing on Universal Darwinism and its limitations, the discussion evolves into a broader examination of alternative mechanisms like le...