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, recursive self-reflection becomes a closed loop that slides toward what the literature calls AI psychosis.

But Allister resists pure pessimism. AI is a "negative tool," a photographic negative that develops a hidden image of the intellectual vices we already had, and so hands us a reason to cultivate virtue and, above all, to recover wonder: the capacity to sit with not-knowing that drives all genuine inquiry. Along the way we get into friction as the mark of the real, whether the sacred can survive Heidegger's "enframing," and his essay on nostalgia and the "eternalisation of the present."

Note: Allister misspoke. Edith Stein first studied under Husserl in Göttingen, not Freiburg.

**TIMESTAMPS**

0:00 Start

1:24 Allister's work

2:23 Mass solitude and Edith Stein

4:44 Empathy as perception

12:11 Awe and the hidden depth of the other

18:40 Sycophantasy, AI flattery, AI psychosis, and the missing friction

31:09 Friction and the loss of the real

35:19 AI as a "negative tool" and Heidegger's enframing

41:07 Can we still perceive the sacred?

48:01 Wonder and sitting with not knowing

53:36 The child, instrumentalization, and unselfing

1:00:07 The aesthetics of nostalgia and the eternal present

**READ & LISTEN**

Read key insights and the full transcript here:
https://tiagovf.com/posts/podcast-edith-stein-empathy-and-the-loss-of-wonder-with-allister-lee

**FOLLOW**

https://substack.com/@tiagovf
https://www.instagram.com/tiagobooks/

**MUSIC CREDIT**

Intro song by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'
Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/
Album: https://liefsjostrom.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-parade

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 entropy-fluency hypothesis, how destabilization and reorganization cycle through every scale from insight to mystical experience, and why false fluency (the smoothness of a conspiracy theory, the comfort of a simplified worldview) is just as real as the real thing. In the second half, the conversation opens into metaphysics: what is truth, is there a ground, and does groundlessness mean nothing matters? Hüseyin draws on Madhyamaka, Spinoza, Karen Barad, and Varela to argue that reality is a cosmic play we actively participate in, and that truth is something you embody rather than correspond to.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00:00 - Introduction & Hüseyin's Background

0:02:16 - From Medicine to Psychedelic Research: The LSD Pivot

0:05:05 - Overview of Published Papers

0:06:31 - The 4P Model: Four Ways of Knowing

0:10:55 - Are the Categories Real? Yogacara, Madhyamaka & Reflexivity

0:17:53 - Language of Description vs. Language of Training

0:23:15 - What's Wrong with Therapy? Non-Propositional Transformation

0:28:18 - The Woo Problem: How to Evaluate Alternative Therapies

0:34:57 - Ergodicity, Idiographic Science & Complex Systems

0:43:31 - Hüseyin's Empirical Research: Time Series & Phase Transitions

0:48:42 - The Cognitive Continuum: From Fluency to Mystical Experience

0:55:48 - Relevance Realization & the Entropy-Fluency Hypothesis

1:02:24 - False Fluency, Conspirituality & Context-Dependence

1:12:23 - The Biggest Problems with Psychedelic Science & Neurophenomenology

1:27:39 - What Is Truth? Groundlessness, the Sacred & the Cosmic Play

2:05:57 - What Would You Tell Your Younger Self?

KEY INSIGHTS & TRANSCRIPT
https://tiagovf.com/posts/podcast-enactivism-buddhist-epistemology-the-cosmic-play-with-huseyin-beykoylu

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MUSIC CREDIT
Intro song by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'
Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/
Album: https://liefsjostrom.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-parade

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 not otherworldly.

The episode is a sustained, sometimes contentious dialogue about whether that claim holds up: whether perception can ever be "raw," whether the minimal self really persists through ego dissolution, whether all traditions point at the same truth or differ in ways that matter ontologically, and whether psychedelic experience tells us about consciousness or about reality itself.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Start
0:37 - Introduction: Danny Forde & Phenomenology of Psychedelic Experiences
1:55 - Danny's Background: Cork, UCC, and the Accidental Academic
4:15 - Wonder, Curiosity & Psychedelics as Fuel for Philosophy
6:29 - The First Trip: Vondelpark, Copelandia & The Great Shark Hunt
7:57 - Philosophy of Psychedelics in Academia: From Fringe to Legitimate
14:00 - Naturalism, Anti-Psychologism & the Limits of Science
27:50 - Realist Phenomenology: Sober Platonism & the Munich-Gottingen Circle
36:32 - Representationalism, Affordances & the Richness of Perception
47:03 - Ego-Free Seeing: Raw Perception vs. Sense-Making
55:15 - Language, Art & the Insufficiency of Words
58:23 - The Self in Psychedelic Experience: A Tripartite Model
71:03 - The Ground of Being, Noetic Conviction & Psychedelic Realism
82:08 - Essentialism: Defending Platonic Essences Against the Mainstream
91:50 - Perennialism, Tradition & the Problem of Religious Pluralism
108:00 - Semiotics of the Therapy Space & Future Work

Correction (28:12): The epistemic/non-epistemic seeing distinction is from Fred Dretske, not Kripke.

FOLLOW DANNY FORDE
https://x.com/dannytheforde
https://dannytheforde.substack.com/

READ & LISTEN
Key insights and the full transcript here:
https://tiagovf.com/posts/podcast-psychedelic-realism-platonism-the-ground-of-being-with-danny-forde

FOLLOW
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MUSIC CREDIT
Intro song by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'
Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/
Album: https://liefsjostrom.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-parade

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 that actually means: how liturgy functions as a structuring force analogous to high-reliability organizations like aircraft carriers, why asceticism follows naturally from eros rather than opposing it, and how trauma healing must proceed through concentric stages: stabilizing the animal first, then the relational human, then the deeper archaeological work. Patitsas draws on Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Roy Rappaport, and Jonathan Shay to connect the Orthodox vision to secular frameworks, while insisting that certain realities can only be known by crossing a threshold, not by argument.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Teaser

00:49 Background & The Ethics of Beauty

04:08 Growing Up Greek-American

11:41 Liturgical Knowing vs. Book Knowledge

18:10 Explaining Liturgy to Secular People

24:41 Why Religious Ritual Needs More Structure

28:12 The Aircraft Carrier Study: Three Systems of Order

36:41 Asceticism as a Consequence of Eros

42:41 Eros Unfolding into Agape

49:37 Jane Jacobs & The Secular Person

56:42 Meeting a Saint Changes Everything

1:04:37 Psychedelics, Faith & Threshold Experiences

1:12:38 The Berserk Mode & Dark Initiation

1:20:43 Talk Therapy, CBT & Trauma Healing

1:32:33 Beauty First vs. Truth First

1:39:36 Christ Crucified as Beauty

TRANSCRIPT AND KEY INSIGHTS
Read here: https://tiagovf.com/posts/podcast-the-orthodox-vision-of-beauty-with-timothy-patitasas

FOLLOW
https://substack.com/@tiagovf
https://www.instagram.com/tiagobooks/

MUSIC CREDIT
Intro song by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'
Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/

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 single word in Tolstoy that links The Death of Ivan Ilyich to Christ's crucifixion through Tolstoy's own Gospel translation, a connection invisible without Russian, Greek, and biblical literacy working simultaneously.

From there, the conversation expands into the thin border between philosophy and poetry, why both originate in Aristotelian wonder, and what exactly poetry can reach that philosophy cannot. Boitani traces how every major Western intellectual revival has been an attempt to recover antiquity, and argues that modern culture's refusal to look backward is not progress but a form of blindness. He closes with an unexpectedly blunt reflection on dying, fame, and whether literature offers any real defense against either.

00:00 Start

00:33 Introducing Piero Boitani and a 50 Year Career

04:21 Astronomy and the Necessity of Original Languages

09:43 Wonder as the Root of Philosophy and Poetry

18:47 The Ineffable in Dante and Modern Literature

27:19 Rejecting the Bifurcation of Science and Art

38:40 Plato and the Paradox of Poetic Truth

46:27 The Death of the Past and Historical Stratification

59:45 The Collapse of Antiquity and Medieval Renaissances

1:07:51 Translating the Timaeus Through the Ages

1:24:25 World Literature versus Universal History

1:35:56 Confronting Finitude and the Defense Against Death

1:49:10 The Illusion of Literary Immortality and Final Thoughts

---

Read key insights and the full transcript here:
https://tiagovf.com/posts/the-timaeus-beauty-and-tradition-anagoge-podcast

Follow me to get updates on the podcast and my work:
https://substack.com/@tiagovf
https://www.instagram.com/tiagobooks/

The intro song is by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'.
Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/
Album: https://liefsjostrom.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-parade

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 media hype. Michiel critiques the biomedical model of psychedelic therapy, discusses the disappointing effect sizes in recent clinical trials, and highlights methodological issues like "breaking blind" and selection bias.

We explore why psychedelics are not a "reset" button for the brain but rather amplifiers of meaning, potentially functioning as "super placebos." The conversation covers the theoretical gaps in the field, contrasting the popular "entropic brain" hypotheses with the lack of solid empirical data. Michiel also outlines his vision for the future of the field: a move toward "sober science" that separates the study of these substances from the spiritual fervor that often surrounds them.

00:00 - Meet Michiel van Elk: Academic Background & The PRISM Lab

02:34 - The Role of Philosophy in Psychedelic Science

07:34 - Critiquing "Narrative Theories" in Psychology

11:09 - From Pentecostalism to Atheism: Michiel's Personal Journey

17:59 - Critiquing the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR)

30:36 - "Absorption" & The Process of "Real-Making"

39:59 - The "More Real Than Real" Debate: Perception vs. Meaning

51:14 - The Flaws of the Biomedical Model & 4E Cognition

1:02:18 - Misconceptions & The Hype Bubble in Psychedelic Science

1:15:39 - The "Super Placebo" & The Meaning Response

1:19:09 - Can We Cultivate Transformation? Personality & Openness

1:22:39 - The "Einstein Effect" & Notable Research

1:28:59 - The Future: Toward a More "Sober" Psychedelic Science

1:33:44 - New Research: Magic Truffles & Natural Compounds

---

Transcript:

https://tiagovf.com/posts/the-science-spirituality-of-psychedelics-with-michiel-van-elk-anagoge-podcast

---

Follow me to get updates on the podcast and my work:

https://substack.com/@tiagovf

https://www.instagram.com/tiagobooks/

---

The intro song is by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'.
Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/
Album: https://liefsjostrom.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-parade

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. Versluis highlights the Hudson River School and the concept of "Luminism," explaining how the visual representation of light in nature mirrors the internal experience of mystical illumination.

The discussion navigates the complex relationship between the "forms" of Plato and the direct experience of the divine, moving beyond the common accusations of dualism often leveled at the Platonic tradition. We explore the "apophatic" or negative theological tradition, comparing the insights of Western mystics like Meister Eckhart with the emptiness found in the Heart Sutra. Finally, Versluis shares how his background in agriculture informs his work ethic and how Western philosophy can be complemented by the precise "maps" of consciousness found in Vajrayana Buddhism.

0:00 - Introduction: Teaching Plato & The Allegory of the Cave

4:45 - The Eclipse of Platonism & The Dominance of Materialism

10:19 - Reframing the "Forms": Angels, Hierarchy & Non-Duality

16:11 - Gnosticism, The Heart Sutra, and the Apophatic Lineage

24:10 - Luminism: The Hudson River School & The Metaphysics of Art

33:59 - Kant vs. Schelling: Who Opens the Door to Mysticism?

40:21 - The Descent into Darkness & The Ancient Mysteries

50:38 - What is Perennial Philosophy? (Truth vs. Relativism)

58:52 - American Gurus & The Problem with New Age Spirituality

69:17 - Breaking Through the Materialistic Deception

75:23 - Farming, Buddhist Maps of Consciousness & Recovering the West

Follow me to get updates on the podcast and my work:
https://substack.com/@tiagovf

https://www.instagram.com/tiagobooks/

The intro song is by Lief Sjostrom, titled Peril, from the album 'Impossible Parade'.

Website: https://liefsjostrom.com/

Album: https://liefsjostrom.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-parade