Stephen Asma
Stephen Asma is executive producer and cohost (with Oscar nominated actor Paul Giamatti) of the hit podcast Chinwag, where they interview guests (experts and celebrities) about all manner of “high strangeness.” Asma has discussed spirituality, paranormal phenomena, and weird science with Tom Hanks, Natasha Lyonne, Stephen Colbert, William Shatner, Nnedi Okorafor, Kathryn Hahn, Ken Burns, Don Cheadle, Ted Chiang, Patton Oswalt, Sarah Vowell, Bruce Campbell, Paul Rudd, and many more.
Chinwag is a fast-growing platform with approximately 150,000 listens per week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and so on. Chinwag has cracked the top-ten shows on Apple several times, and lives regularly in the top 50. Stephen Colbert discusses the podcast here. Additionally, Chinwag is starting to tour with live shows (already SXSW, Seriesfest, MassMoCA, Sketchfest, Murmrr Theater, Arts at the Armory, Harvard University, and more) and demand is growing weekly.
He is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, and co-founder of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture. He is author of ten books, including The Emotional Mind (Harvard University Press), The Evolution of Imagination (University of Chicago Press), On Monsters (Oxford University Press), and The Gods Drink Whiskey (HarperOne).
He has lectured at Harvard, Oxford, the Smithsonian, University of Chicago, Fudan China, and many more. He writes regularly for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and Aeon magazine. Asma has lived and taught in Phnom Penh Cambodia, Beijing, and Shanghai China, and done research in Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Bhutan, Tanzania, and many European countries. As a musician Stephen played live music with Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and many more blues and jazz artists. He has also been a part-time professional illustrator for several books, and an award winning plein air painter. He is working on his next book.
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