Tent Talks

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Dr. James Kaufman, who is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Kaufman is one of the world’s leading experts on the study of creativity. He is the author/editor of more than 35 books, including Creativity 101 (2nd Edition, 2016) and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (with Robert Sternberg; 2010). He has also published 250 papers, including the study that spawned the “Sylvia Plath Effect” and three well-known theories of creativity, including (with Ron Beghetto) the Four-C Model of Creativity. In this episode, Dr. Kaufman and I have a wide ranging conversation about the nature of creativity. His wikipedia page and official profile on the Uconn website can be found at the following two links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Kaufman

https://education.uconn.edu/person/james-kaufman/

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Dr. Heather Battaly, who is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Battaly specializes in epistemology, ethics, and virtue theory, is one of the leading researchers in the world on the concept of intellectual humility, and is a pioneer on the topic of epistemic vice. She is editor in chief of the Journal of Philosophical Research as well as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. In this episode, Dr. Battaly and I discuss different theories of intellectual virtue and vice, focusing on what effects social media and the information economy are having on intellectual virtues and vices. To learn more about Professor Battaly’s work, visit her website at the following link:

http://www.uconn.academia.edu/HeatherBattaly

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with my friend and colleague Darian Spearman about many different topics, including contemporary politics, capitalism, socialism, the phenomenon of fake news, artificial intelligence and automation, universal basic income, race relations in America, the nature of science, the replication crisis, mythology, and psychedelic drugs.

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with my colleague Steve Nunez. Steve spent five years in the U.S. army as a Green Beret before moving into academia. He holds a BA in the philosophy of religion and anthropology from UNC W and an MA in theological studies from Harvard. Currently, Steve is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Connecticut. In this episode, Steve and I talk about the history and philosophy of hip hop and trap music. In particular, we discuss a paper Steve is working on in which he applies the Ancient Greek Aristotelian concept of catharsis to hip hop and trap.

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Dr. William Lycan. Dr. Lycan is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, and currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut. Professor Lycan has made groundbreaking contributions in many areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of linguistics, and metaphysics. He is the author of eight books and over 170 articles. In this episode, Professor Lycan and I discuss the philosophy of consciousness. To learn more about Professor Lycan’s work, visit his wikipedia page and his personal website at the following links:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lycan

http://www.wlycan.com

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Drew Johnson, who is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Connecticut.  Drew works primarily in the domain of meta-ethics, epistemology, and truth.  For his dissertation, he is developing a neo-expressivist account of morality that aims to explain the possibility of moral knowledge while also recognizing the connection between moral judgment and non-cognitive motivational states.  In this episode, Drew and I have a conversation about a paper of his in which he provides a solution to the problem of moral skepticism.

To learn more about Drew’s work, visit his website at the following link:
https://sites.google.com/uconn.edu/drewjohnson/home?authuser=0

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Dr. Harry van der Hulst.  Dr. van der Hulst is full professor of Linguistics and director of undergraduate studies in Linguistics at the University of Connecticut.  He is also, among other things, editor in chief of the peer-reviewed linguistics journal ‘The Linguistic Review’, a lifetime fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and a board member of the European linguistic organization GLOW.  Professor van der Hulst’s research focuses on phonology, which is a subfield of linguistics that deals with the organization of sounds in languages.

This episode essentially serves as an introduction to linguistics, and in particular, phonology.  I begin by asking Professor van Der hurst some general questions about the nature of language, and then proceed to ask him some more specific questions about phonology.  To learn more about Professor van der Hulst’s work, visit his Wikipedia page or his website at the following links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_van_der_Hulst

https://harry-van-der-hulst.uconn.edu/