Freedom within boundaries
“The easy thing is just to conform. If you look at the history of intellectuals back to the earliest times, every society that I have ever heard of, the great mass of intellectuals tends to be subordinate…
Read articleInterviews
Essays, interviews and ideas from New Philosopher.
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Taking risks
Zan Boag: You said that one regret in your life that you hadn’t taken enough risks, that you’d been too cautious in your career…
Organised sound
Zan Boag: I’d like to start with one of your books, This Is Your Brain on Music, in which you describe music as ‘organised…
Framing fame
"No one wants to pass this way unnoticed – they really don’t, even in a negative way." Acclaimed photographer Harry Benson discusses Bobby Kennedy,…
From Interviews
Akin to mindfulness
Zan Boag: I want to start with your definition of wisdom and why you think wisdom matters in our lives from moment to moment.…
Taking flight
Award-winning wildlife and landscape photographer Michael Poliza Zan Boag: You have spent many years of your life on the road, moving from one…
Being mortal
Zan Boag: What responsibility does a society have for the health of its individuals? Where do individual responsibility and societal responsibility begin and end?…
The art of conflict
If there were a word to sum up the human condition for South Korean artist Daehyun Kim, it would be conflict. It’s a topic…
Observation is all we have
Zan Boag: What does the word ‘observation’ evoke for you as a psychologist and a philosopher of mind, whose work has been about observing…
The invisible gorilla
Zan Boag: Interestingly, my daughter has been studying your gorilla experiment at college over the last month. I’ve showed it to several people as…
The paradox of choice
Zan Boag: It’s hard for me not to start with an obvious question, which is: with all the options available to you as a…
A dopamine-fuelled world
Zan Boag: Clearly, given your research and writing, we’re going to be speaking about dopamine, but I’d like to look at it through the…
13 questions: Christian Miller
From the Flourishing edition, available from our online store What is your demon? My doubts that my work hasn’t made any…
