In addition to writing academic philosophy, I like to bring philosophy to a wider audience. Here is some work I’ve done as part of this.
Writing for a popular audience
Essays, opinion, blog posts etc
What is incoherence? (Aeon, January 2024)
Which anti-vaxxers are irrational? (OUP Blog, February 2022)
Not for anything (The Point, Issue 7, 2013)
Against pragmatism (Prospect Magazine, December 2012) [picked up by thebrowser.com, a compendium of the web’s best writing]
Will the real liberal America please speak up? (Prospect Magazine, July 2011)
Book reviews
John D Caputo, Truth (Prospect Magazine, January 2014)
David Miller, Justice for Earthlings (Prospect Magazine, May 2013) [picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Arts & Letters Daily, and among Prospect’s top ten most read articles of 2013]
Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson & Robert P. George, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (Prospect Magazine, January 2013)
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (Prospect Magazine, April 2012) [brief piece responding to an earlier review, also for Prospect, by David Goodhart].
Multimedia work
Guest on the Colin McEnroe Show (Connecticut Public Radio/NPR), show on incoherence, February 2024 [link]
Interview on Friction (YouTube philosophy channel) on rationality (and related topics), July 2022 [YouTube link]
TED-Ed video on the Ethics of Belief for their ethical dilemmas series (scriptwriter), April 2022 [YouTube link]
Guest on WCHL Radio, discussion on “America’s epistemic crisis,” October 2021 [link]
Short video on my paper “The Skeptic and the Climate Change Skeptic,” made for the Political Epistemology Network to coincide with the launch of The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology [YouTube link]
Guest on Chapel Phil podcast, episode on rationality and politics, February 2020 [link]
Public lectures and other talks for a lay audience
“Seeking truth in an age of distortion: navigating America’s epistemological crisis”
- World Affairs Series, Carolina Meadows retirement community, February 2022
- Public Lecture, Carolina Public Humanities series, October 2021
“Media bias: what is it, and why is it bad?”
- Public Lecture, University of Colorado Boulder, October 2018
“Being rationally inconsistent”
- Philosophy in 15 Minutes Talk, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, March 2017 [YouTube link]
Applied epistemology events for K-12 teachers
In collaboration with Paula McAvoy (NC State College of Education) and Michael Vazquez (Director of Outreach, UNC Philosophy), I organize and deliver occasional workshops on applied epistemology (broadly construed) for K-12 teachers (both in-service and in-training).
Our first event was at Morehead Planetarium & Science Center at UNC, on the topic of science education in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our second event was at NC State College of Education, on the topic of political neutrality in the classroom.