Philosophy in Media Fellowships 2026

The application for this fellowship is now closed.


Directed by Barry Lam, Associate Director of Marc Sanders Foundation, Professor of Philosophy at UC Riverside, and Host/Executive producer of the Hi-Phi Nation Podcast, Philosophy in Media aims to identify and develop academically-trained philosophers to write, speak to, and produce for the general public in the major media market spaces. We concluded a year-long initial run of the program here with support from the John D. Templeton Foundation. Now, with a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and generous funding from the Princeton University’s Center for Human Values and the Department of Philosophy, we are pleased to share that we are now accepting applications for our third and final year of fellowships in 2026. Fellows will be academically-trained philosophers of all career stages who aim to write, speak to, and produce media for the general public in the form of essays (long- and short-form), trade-book writing, or podcasting.

Fellows will be accepted from all areas of philosophy, but should indicate both their professional areas of specialization and competence, as well as the topics or areas they would like to talk about when they speak to the public. Special consideration will be given to applicants whose professional or public-facing work focuses on race and racism, social justice, applied ethics of biology, technology, or other special sciences, and to applicants who are affiliated with HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribal colleges/universities, or underserved/under-resourced smaller regional or state schools.

Successful fellows will receive a $1500 stipend and full room and board at one of our three media workshops, to be held between June 22 – June 30, 2026. Workshops will be held in Tarrytown, NY, just north of New York City. One workshop will focus on essay writing (short- and long-form), one on trade books and publication, and one on podcast production and distribution. All will be led by esteemed media editors, producers, publishers, and agents.

Each workshop will be three days long. Travel to and from the venue will be covered by Media Fellows.

The schedule of the workshops are organized as follows:

  • June 22-June 24, 2026: Essay Writing (Short- and Long-form)
    Fellows will arrive the evening of June 21 and depart after the workshop concludes on June 24 at noon.
  • June 25-June 27, 2026: Trade Books and Publication
    Fellows will arrive the evening of June 24 and depart after the workshop concludes on June 27 at noon.
  • June 28 -June 30, 2026: Podcasting and Production
    Fellows will arrive the evening of June 27 and depart after the workshop concludes on June 30 at noon.

Learn more about the Philosophy in Media Initiative HERE.

 

Essay

Joshua Rothman

Joshua Rothman, the ideas editor of newyorker.com, has been at The New Yorker since 2012.

Link: The New Yorker

James Ryerson

James Ryerson has been an editor at The New York Times since 2003, first at the Sunday magazine and now at the Op-Ed page. Before that, he was an editor at Legal Affairs, Lingua Franca, and Feed. He has written introductory chapters for Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will, by David Foster Wallace, and Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty. In 2012-2013, he was awarded a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman fellowship from the New York Public Library. In 2018, he was awarded the Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He writes the Ivory Tower column for The New York Times Book Review and is at work on a book about the philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser.

Link: NYT

Trade Books

Margo Beth Fleming

Margo Beth Fleming is a Literary Agent and Managing Director of Brockman, Inc., where she seeks out and supports authoritative voices who change the way we see the world. The natural home for authors of serious nonfiction, Brockman represents 11 Nobel Laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners, and over 45 bestsellers in the last decade alone.

Before she became an agent, Margo was an editor. In over a decade at Stanford University Press, she developed a young book program into one of the press’s flagship lists. Margo began her publishing career at SAGE, signing and developing titles on research methods and across the social sciences.

Follow Margo on Twitter @WordNerd Margo

Link: LinkedIn

Agnes Callard

Agnes Callard is an Associate Professor in Philosophy. She received her BA from the University of Chicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy and Ethics.

She is also known for her public philosophy work, writing on topics like aspiration and anger, and her books include Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming and Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life. Callard also contributes to public discourse through articles and a podcast called Minds Almost Meeting.

Link: Website

Emily Wunderlich

Emily Wunderlich is a senior editor at Viking, where she acquires a broad list of nonfiction books, seeking out strong voices, fresh takes, and new arguments that recast our understanding of the world around us or even help us live better. She has published a number of bestselling, award-winning, and critically acclaimed books from authors with a wide range of expertise and backgrounds, from journalists to biologists to historians to social scientists, activists, philosophers, politicians and paleontologists, and more. She ran a nonfiction literary reading series in Manhattan and prior to Viking, she worked at Gotham Books, Macmillan, and The Missouri Review.

Link:

Podcasting

Alix Spiegel

Alix Spiegel has worked on NPR's Science Desk for 10 years covering psychology and human behavior, and has reported on everything from what it's like to kill another person, to the psychology behind our use of function words like "and", "I", and "so." She began her career in 1995 as one of the founding producers of the public radio program This American Life. While there, Spiegel produced her first psychology story, which ultimately led to her focus on human behavior. It was a piece called 81 Words, and it examined the history behind the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

In January 2015, Spiegel joined forces with journalist Lulu Miller to co-host Invisibilia, a series from NPR about the unseen forces that control human behavior — our ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and thoughts. Invisibilia interweaves personal stories with fascinating psychological and brain science, in a way that ultimately makes you see your own life differently. Excerpts of the show are featured on the NPR News programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The program is also available as a podcast.

Over the course of her career in public radio, Spiegel has won many awards including a George Foster Peabody Award, a Livingston Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Spiegel graduated from Oberlin College. Her work on human behavior has also appeared in The New Yorker magazine and The New York Times.

Link: Website

Mia Lobel

Mia Lobel is the executive producer of Pushkin Industries, overseeing all podcast production including Revisionist History, The Happiness Lab, Against the Rules, and more.

She has been making audio content since 2001 for public radio stations, non-profit organizations, museums, universities, and voice-activated services.

She received a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She has been an adjunct professor at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY since 2010.

Link: Website

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