Loneliness and You
By Axel Seemann
Loneliness and YouMar 30, 2024
First Series Final
This is the final episode of the first series of the podcast. I have a look at the conversations of the past year, try to identify some guiding threads, and create some connections. I also ramble on a fair bit about various philosophical questions. Please stay tuned - we'll be back in the autumn with the second series, in which we'll focus on the lived experience of loneliness.
Melba Jensen
My guest in this episode is Melba Jensen. Melba is a guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. She previously taught 19th Century American Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Richard Deming
My guest in this episode is Richard Deming. Richard is the Director of Creative Writing at Yale University. He is a writer, critic, and scholar whose work explores the intersections of philosophy, literature, and visual culture. His recent book, This Exquisite Loneliness: What Loners, Outcasts, and the Misunderstood Can Teach Us About Creativity, is published with Viking.
Tamara Kayali Browne
My guest in this episode is Tamara Kayali Browne. Tamara is Senior Lecturer in Health Ethics and Professionalism at Deakin University, Australia. She works in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine with a focus on reproductive technology (particularly ethical issues related to non-medical sex selection) and neuroethics (particularly ethical and philosophical issues related to diagnoses of mental illness). Her book, Depression and the Self: Meaning, Control, and Authenticity, is published with Cambridge University Press.
Olya Kudina
My guest in this episode is Olya Kudina. Olya is Assistant Professor in Ethics and Philosophy of Technology at TU Delft in the Netherlands. She explores moral questions through the lens of hermeneutics, pragmatism, and empirical philosophy and is particularly interested in AI ethics. Her new book, Moral Hermeneutics and Technology: Making Moral Sense through Human-Technology-World Relations, is published with Rowman & Littlefield. Her paper, “Alexa, who am I?”: Voice Assistants and Hermeneutic Lemniscate as the Technologically Mediated Sense‐Making, is in the journal Human Studies.
Ulla Schmid
My guest in this episode is Ulla Schmid. Ulla is a physician and philosopher. One of her interests, both in research and as a social worker and junior assistant in psychiatry, is addiction. Her recent paper, Alcohol and Loneliness: Their Entanglement and Social Constitution, is published in the journal Topoi.
Marlies Maes
My guest in this episode is Marlies Maes. Marlies is Assistant Professor for Youth Studies, Interdisciplinary Social Science, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is interested in social relationships between humans and studies loneliness, mainly amongst adolescents. Her co-authored paper, How (Not) to Measure Loneliness: A Review of the Eight Most Commonly Used Scales, is published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Lucy Osler
My guest in this episode is Lucy Osler. Lucy is Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University, UK. She is interested in phenomenological and 4E approaches to online sociality, embodiment, intersubjectivity, affectivity, and psychopathology. Her recent co-authored paper, Loneliness and Absence in Psychopathology, is published in the journal Topoi.
Johnna Wellesley
My guest in this episode is Johnna Wellesley. Johnna is a PhD Candidate in Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas, Medical Branch. She is interested in the ethical, cultural, legal, and emotional aspects of medicine and focuses on the presence of shame and stigma in the dying and the dead. Her recent commentary, "Autonomy requires more curiosity less deference to risk" is published in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Jeff Meek
My guest in this episode is Jeff Meek. Jeff is Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is interested in the experiences of gay and bisexual men in post-war Scotland, as well as the history of same-sex desire from the 17th century to the late 20th century in Scotland. His recent work includes "A Purer Form of Loneliness’: Loneliness and the Search for Community amongst Gay and Bisexual Men in Scotland, 1940 to 1980". His book, Queer Trades, Sex, and Society: Male Prostitution and the War on Homosexuality in Interwar Scotland, is published with Routledge.
Bryanna Moore
My guest in this episode is Bryanna Moore. Bry is Assistant Professor in the Department for Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas, USA. She is interested in clinical ethics, pediatric ethics, medical decision-making, end of life issues, virtue ethics and moral psychology. Her paper, At What Cost? Analyzing Hospital Visitation Restrictions in a Pandemic Using a Public Health Framework is published in the Journal of Hospital Ethics.
Lars Svendsen
My guest in this episode is Lars Svendsen. Lars is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author of several books, including "A Philosophy of Loneliness" (2017) for which he won the 2022 Philosophical Book Prize in Germany.
Rick Anthony Furtak
My guest in this episode is Rick Anthony Furtak. Rick is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College, USA. He is interested in the moral psychology of the emotions, the relations between philosophy and literature, and existential thought. Apart from his philosophical publications, Rick also writes poetry. His paper (co-authored with Ruth Rebecca Tietjen), Loneliness, Love, and the Limits of Language, has been published by The Southern Journal of Philosophy. His recent book, "Love, Subjectivity, and Truth: Existential Themes in Proust", is published by Oxford University Press.
Aaron Hames
My guest in this episode is Aaron Hames. Aaron is a medical anthropologist and a Research Assistant Professor in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines how the elderly in Japan encounter an ageing society and work through cooperative medical organizations to meet their social and health needs. He has recently published the paper, "The Energetic Brain Club in Life and Death" in the journal Anthropology and Humanism.
Richard Gipps
My guest in this episode is Richard Gipps. Richard is a clinical psychologist and philosopher practicing as a psychotherapist in Oxford, UK. His recent book, On Madness: Understanding the Psychotic Mind, is published by Bloomsbury Press.
Zohar Lederman
My guest in this episode is Zohar Lederman. Zohar is an emergency medicine physician with a PhD in bioethics. He currently works as a researcher at the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit at the Medical Faculty of the University of Hong Kong, where he investigates issues in bioethics including loneliness and One Health Ethics.
Pritika Nehra
My guest in this episode is Pritika Nehra. Pritika is a political philosopher with particular interests in the works of Kant and Hannah Arendt. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Delhi, India.
Fred Cooper
My guest in this episode is Fred Cooper. Fred is a historian of medicine and transdisciplinary researcher in the medical humanities. He currently works as a postdoctoral research associate in the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter in the UK.
Eric Schoenmakers
My guest in this episode is Eric Schoenmakers. Eric is Senior Researcher and Lecturer at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Amongst other things, he focuses on the question of how people of various age groups talk about and cope with loneliness and the social stigma or taboo that may be associated with feeling lonely.
Samir Dayal and Jon Ericson
My guests in this episode are Samir Dayal and Jon Ericson. Samir is Professor in English and Media Studies at Bentley University in Greater Boston, US. His main research is in Culture Studies, especially postcolonial studies with a focus on South Asia. He is interested in literary theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Jon is Associate Professor in Information Design and Corporate Communication at Bentley University. His background is in Cognitive Science and Experimental Psychology. He is interested in all the ways in which we experience ourselves as connected with, or disconnected from, ourselves, other people, and the world, and how all this relates to technology and design.
Ruth Rebecca Tietjen and Sanna Tirkkonen
My guests in this episode are Ruth Rebecca Tietjen and Sanna Tirkkonen. Ruth is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She specializes in social and political philosophy and is interested in topics such as fanaticism and radicalization and also existential phenomena such as melancholia and anxiety. Sanna is Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and Visiting Scholar at Heidelberg University Hospital. She works in practical philosophy but is also interested in phenomenology, the philosophy of the emotions and of psychiatry. Ruth's and Sanna's paper, "The Rage of Lonely Men: Loneliness and Misogyny in the Online Movement of "Involuntary Celibates" (Incels)" is recently published in the journal Topoi.
Joanna McHugh Power
My guest in this episode is Joanna McHugh Power. Joanna is Associate Professor of Psychology at Maynooth University in Ireland, where she works on loneliness and social functioning in later life. Her new co-authored paper, “Freedom and loneliness: dementia caregiver experiences of the nursing home transition", is now published in the journal Age and Ageing.
Elena Popa
My guest in this episode is Elena Popa. Elena is a philosopher of science and postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics at Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where she is working on the project “Values, Trust, and Decision-Making in Public Health”.
Shaun Gallagher and Jonathan Cole
My guests in this episode are Shaun Gallagher and Jonathan Cole. Shaun is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, US. His new book, the Self and its Disorders, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Jonathan is Professor of Clinical Neurophysiology at University Hospitals Dorset in the UK and President of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. His new book, Chekhov’s Sakhalin Journey: Doctor, Humanitarian, Author, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Press.
Mark James
My guest in this episode is Mark James. Mark is a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy and cognitive science at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. His research is on topics related to embodied intersubjectivity, habituation, enactive cognitive science, learning, and design.
Valeria Motta
My guest in this episode is Valeria Motta. Valeria is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she investigates loneliness and solitude.
Julian Stern
My guest in this episode is Julian Stern. Julian is Professor of Education and Religion at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, UK. One of his research interests is the study of solitude, silence, and loneliness.
Matthew Ratcliffe
My guest in this episode is Matthew Ratcliffe. Matthew is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, UK. One of his main research interests is in phenomenology and the philosophy of psychiatry. His most recent book, Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience, has just appeared with MIT Press.
Elana Feldman
My guest in this episode is Elana Feldman. Elana is Associate Professor of Management in the Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, US. She is a founder and steering committee member of the international Positive Relationships at Work (PRW) Microcommunity. Amongst other things, she is interested in how people relate to one another at work.
Emily Hughes
My guest in this episode is Emily Hughes. Emily is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of York, UK. She is currently working on the project "Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience".