Anagoge Podcast

The danger of AI, Allister Lee argues, is not that it lies to you but that it flatters you. A PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, Allister applies the phenomenology of Edith Stein to the failures of chatbots, coining "sycophantasy" for the way AI offers the form of empathy while lacking its substance: real otherness, real friction, real resistance. Without an "other" who can push back, recu...

Hüseyin Beyköylü left medicine for cognitive science after an LSD experience, and five years later he's arguing that mainstream psychology and neuroscience are built on assumptions that systematically miss what matters most about the mind. This is a dense, careful conversation about epistemology, metaphysics, and why randomized controlled trials can't capture human transformation. We get into the...

Most philosophical work on psychedelics either reduces the experience to brain states or floats off into vague mysticism. Danny Forde carves a third path. He argues that psychedelics strip away the ego's narrative overlay and give you direct contact with reality as it actually is. The case is built on realist phenomenology, anti-psychologism, and a sober Platonism that treats essences as real but...

Can technology save us? That question has been asked since the Industrial Revolution, and Heidi Campbell has spent 30 years studying how religious communities keep answering it. In this conversation, she walks through her Religious Social Shaping of Technology framework, showing that even the most conservative groups do not reject technology outright but filter it through their core values and aut...

Timothy Patitsas argues that Western ethics has the order of the transcendentals backwards. Truth and goodness come first in most traditions. But Patitsas, drawing from Greek Orthodox theology, argues that beauty must come first. Not beauty as aesthetics, but beauty as the force that draws you toward God, toward wholeness, and toward a life worth living. In this conversation, we work through what...

How much of what you read are you actually missing? In this in person conversation recorded in Rome (full video on YouTube), comparative literature scholar Piero Boitani makes the case that most of us are functionally illiterate when it comes to the Western canon, not because we lack access to the texts, but because we lack the layered knowledge required to read them. He demonstrates this with a s...

This is a in-person recorded podcast. The video is available on YouTube. Michiel van Elk is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Leiden University and head of the PRiSM Lab, where he studies the cognitive neuroscience of religion and psychedelic experiences. In this episode, we take a sober look at the current state of psychedelic science, moving beyond the cultural evangelism and med...

Arthur Versluis is the author of  Platonic Mysticism: Contemplative Science, Philosophy, Literature, and Art  and a Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. His work bridges the gap between rigorous scholarship and the experiential reality of spiritual traditions. We examine the transformative power of art and its ability to mediate between the material and the transcendent. Ve...

This conversation explores the depths of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and its radical departure from both analytic and continental philosophy traditions. Graham Harman explains the limitations of "literalism" in science and how great philosophy relies on intuition and rhetoric rather than just rational justification. We discuss the influence of Martin Heidegger's tool analysis and the difference...

This was the first real-life episode of the Anagoge Podcast, recorded in Portugal. The video of the conversation is available on YouTube. James Cooke is a neuroscientist, writer, and contemplative practitioner whose work bridges neuroscience, philosophy, and spirituality. In his recent book The Dawn of Mind, he proposes a bold reframing of consciousness—placing it not in the brain alone, but withi...

Alexander Jech is the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Philosophy Department and a Faculty Affiliate at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His work often explores political philosophy, ethics, and the limits of language. In 2024, he published a new translation of Søren Kierkegaard's influential work, Fear and Trembling. We explore Alexander's fasci...

Jean-Philippe Marceau is a writer and podcaster associated with The Symbolic World, often working with Jonathan Pageau. With an academic background in mathematics, theoretical computer science, and philosophy of mind, his new book addresses the contemporary "meaning crisis" through the lens of Christian metaphysics. In this episode, we explore the core arguments of JP's book, "Post-Reductionist Ch...

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading and an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Renowned for his work on Descartes, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of religion, he has authored over thirty books, including The Spiritual Dimension, Why Believe?, and Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane Approach. His scholarship bridges analytic rig...

You can find the video recording with the slides at Anagoge's Podcast Youtube Channel. Delivered at Kitarika 2024. 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:02:31 - Defining Reality 00:07:04 - Foundations of Cognition 00:12:30 - Affordances and Optimal Grip 00:14:26 - 4E Cognitive Science 00:21:46 - Transcendence, Music & Stories 00:28:58 - Music and the Sacred 00:36:03 - Dualities 00:41:30 - Enlightenment 00:45...

In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Joseph LeDoux, a world-renowned neuroscientist whose research primarily focuses on survival circuits and their impacts on emotions such as fear and anxiety. Dr. LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, and director of the Emotional Brain Institute. He has made significant contributions to our understan...

Long time no see! I hope to make the podcast more active this year. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Gregory Sadler, likely the most influential philosophy educator to exist. Sadler earned an M.A. and a Ph. D. in Philosophy from Southern Illinois University.  He is the Founder of ReasonIO, a consulting company providing philosophy content, training, and consulting services.  He has reached impress...

Anagoge Podcast is now over 1 year old! Thank you everyone for listening. Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis.  He is a founding editor and continues as a co-editor-in-chief of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, an interdisciplinary journal published by Springer. In this episode, we talk about Shaun's background,...

In this episode, I talk with Gregg Henriques about the problem of psychology and the solution he has been working on for 20 years. We covered the bulk of his theory in the first half of the episode, and in the second half, we do a deep dive into cognitive behavioral therapy, including Gregg's experience with it and some controversies in one of the major studies published about CBT. Gregg Henriques...

Michael Strevens teaches philosophy of science at New York University. His work revolves around the nature of science, covering topics such as scientific explanation, complex systems, and probability. In his book "The Knowledge Machine" he explains why science is so successful at creating knowledge and why it took so long for humans to come up with it. In this episode, we talk about the origins of...

Nathan Dufour is a writer, musician, video artist and activist. He produces music videos on YouTube about philosophical ideas and teaches Latin language and Greek Civilization at City College of New York. He received a PhD in Classics from CUNY's Graduate Center. In the first half, we talk about the relationship between music and philosophy, the performative aspect of art, philosophy's origins and...

Juensung Kim is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, focusing on the science of self-transformation related to the psychology of religion and the cognitive science of magic. He is the lab manager of the Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory. In this episode, we discuss the meaning of magic and some of its scientific research. Other topics such as psychedelics, wisdom and transformat...

John Vervaeke is the author of the famous YouTube series "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis". He is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and he is the director of the Cognitive Science program in the Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory. He has a vast body of scientific work related to consciousness, mindfulness, flow, and wisdom. In this episode, we cover some of John's life...

Jonathan Pageau is a carver who specializes in Eastern Orthodox Icons and other traditional Christian images. He graduated with distinction from the Painting and Drawing program at Concordia University in Montreal and has recently gained popularity on YouTube by discussing symbolic thought from Christianity and modern culture. In this episode, we cover a bit of his personal history, early greek th...

Dr. Azim Shariff is a social and moral psychologist whose research focuses on morality and religion. He also has some more recent work on the ethics of automation and how people deal with ethical dilemmas of self-driving cars. In this episode, we talk mostly about the psychology of religion through a lens of cultural evolution.

In the 4th episode of our podcast, we finally get into some psychology. I had a very insightful conversation with Dr. Steven Sloman. He received his Ph. D. in Psychology from Stanford University, and he is a cognitive scientist who studies how people think, particularly collective cognition. He wrote a book with Phil Fernbach titled The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. We cover a fair...