In addition to my academic work, I have written a number of articles on philosophical topics for a general audience, as well a journalism in a less strictly philosophical vein. This page also tracks interviews, work I've done as a playwright, and other incidental writings.
We Can’t Outsprint Cheetahs, But We Can Beat Them in a Marathon. Washington Post (2024)
On Animals, Persons, and Things. Line of Beauty (2023)
What Heidegger Can Teach Us about Life Hacks. Culturico (2022)
Why the History of Philosophy Matters to Philosophy. Daily Nous (2022)
An Ode to Jury Duty: How the Courtroom Can Summon a Kinder Body Politic. The Globe and Mail (2022)
Where the Light Is Better. The Point (2021)
How to be anxious. Psyche (2021)
Looks are not superficial. The Institute of Art and Ideas (2021)
What our animal-based use of slurs and endearments says about us. Psyche (2021)
The moral conflict between environmentalism and animal welfare. New Statesman (2020)
Cousin Starfish. The Hedgehog Review (2020)
Forest for Trees. The Point Quarantine Journal (2020)
Is there anything especially expert about being a philosopher? Aeon (2019)
Can you step in the same river twice? Wittgenstein v Heraclitus. Aeon (2019)
Calling Bullshit. The Point (2018)
Speaking Nonsense. The Point (2017)
Donald Trump’s victory shows why we need philosophy students more than ever (with Simona Aimar). Times Higher Education (2017)
All Made Up. The Point (2016)
Children and Animals. The Point (2012)
In 2012, I wrote a series of articles for the History Page on the now-defunct iPad news app, The Daily. The published articles have now disappeared into the mists of cyberspace, but I’ve preserved penultimate drafts of the following pieces:
“Nothing Secedes Like Excess”: a brief history of Talossa, an independent state founded in a Milwaukee teenager’s bedroom.
“Before Pong Came Along”: on the world’s first video game.
“Gael Storm”: on the abortive Fenian raid that was meant to capture Canada and ransom it back to the British in exchange for Irish independence.
“Chop Shop”: on the “disassembly line” that streamlined pig processing in the nineteenth-century and how it revolutionized the automobile industry.
“When Irish Guns Are Firin’”: The story of the St. Patrick’s Battalion, a group of disaffected Irish-American soldiers who defected to the Mexican side of the Mexican-American War.
“Behind the Mask”: How Marvel Comics gave birth to the Silver Age of superheroes.
“Licensing Pooh”: How Winnie-the-Pooh gave birth to the modern licensing industry.
An Olympic Transformation. The Oxford Cherwell (2010)
Visit my YouTube channel
Rhapsodes. Episode of the Minor Books Podcast, where the hosts and I discuss Robert Bringhurst’s A Story as Sharp as a Knife and Ismail Kadare’s The File on H. (2025)
Games, Play, and Philosophy. YouTube series on the philosophy of games and play. (2025)
Wittgenstein and the Religious Point of View. Presentation for the Consciousness Perspectives Forum with the Scientific & Medical Network. (2025)
Philosophy and Death. YouTube series giving an overview of my course, Thinking About the End: Philosophy and Death. (2024)
Environmental Philosophy. YouTube series giving an overview of my course, The World Around Us: Philosophy and the Environment. (2023)
The Multi-Species Community. Presentation to the World Community for Christian Meditation (2023)
Interview with Chris Jeffries. The Homeless Romantic YouTube channel. (2023)
Aristotle on the Good Life. Presentation for the CFA Society Vancouver (2022)
Was Wittgenstein an Existentialist? Presentation to the British Wittgenstein Society (2022)
Interview with Douglas Oh and Santosh Kumar. Breaking the Spell YouTube channel (2022)
Should We Fear Death? Lecture series with Academia Premium (2021)
Interview with Ryan Bissett. Chasing Reality podcast (2020)
I have a lifelong love of the theatre, and have been writing seriously for the stage for a decade and a half. Two of my plays have been produced professionally. The first, The Fly-Bottle, deals with Wittgenstein’s notorious encounter with Karl Popper, and was nominated for the American Theater Critics Association’s New Play Award in 2003. The second, Tom’s a-cold, deals with Sir John Franklin’s disastrous expedition to the Arctic in the mid-nineteenth century. It won Canada’s Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition in 2009.
In addition, I’ve written a number of other short and full-length plays, adaptations, and translations. I have won a number of other awards for this work, including the New Play Award from the Toronto Fringe Festival for a play called Love Songs From Unlikely Places, and the New Play Award from the Oxford Playhouse for a short play called Pork, which I am expanding into a trilogy of shorts, entitled Three Little Pigs. My translation of Chekhov’s The Seagull has been produced professionally in Toronto.
I love to travel, and I enjoy writing about my travels. I’ve written four lengthy blogs about four separate trips I’ve taken in recent years: to Ethiopia, Iran, Myanmar, and the Caucasus and Central Asia.