Philosophy Chat & Catching Up with Amos Wollen

It’s been a slow summer for me in terms of writing, partly because I’ve been very busy but mostly because I’m characterologically incapable of writing in a disciplined or consistent manner. Hopefully, my schedule will be easing up in the next few weeks and I can get some long-overdue drafts published.

In the meantime, I had a great time talking with Amos Wollen, philosophy & theology graduate student at Oxford University and author of the excellent Going Awol Substack, where he writes about philosophy, theology, and many other topics. But more importantly, he is a consistently hilarious writer and I highly recommend subscribing even if you have no interest in philosophy or theology. You won’t regret it. I’ve included a few of my favorite posts of his below.

This was our second conversation, recorded last month before his trip to South/Southeast Asia (unfortunately the recording of our first chat a few months ago had too many A/V issues to post). We start with some catching up, talk about travel and the differences between our college experiences. Then we get into various topics mostly centered around ethics: different forms of utilitarian, consequentialism, rights, virtue ethics, the abstractness vs “lived experience” of ethics, veganism, lab grown meat, diets, and more. I had to trim our conversation down for time, and also since the last topic we discussed might be a bit too controversial for public consumption these days, but perhaps we’ll return to it again in the future.