In this 66th episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, Eric Thomas Weber and Anthony Cashio had the pleasure to talk with self-taught philosopher John Altmann (a.k.a. Adrian Alba), who has been engaging in independent philosophical scholarship since 2010. We talking with John about “Disability and Popular Culture.”

John is a regular contributor to the Popular Culture and Philosophy book series. He is a member of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy. He is also a field editor for the Public Philosophy Journal. John is an active public thinker also in his writings on Facebook and Twitter, on the latter of which he was known as @FerrumIntellectus, now as @Iron_Intellect. John published a powerful piece in The New York Times, called “I Don’t Want to Be Inspiring,” which was about disability and the ways in which people will often refer to persons with disabilities as being “so inspiring!”

Eric and Anthony both had the chance to meet John at the 2018 gathering of the Public Philosophy Network in Boulder, Colorado this past February, where John gave a powerful paper about the profession of philosophy, called “The Disabled Can Speak: Socratic Midwifery as a Means of Resisting Epistemic Violence.” In addition to that well received paper, John has also written for volumes such as Dracula and Philosophy, The European Journal of Japanese Philosophy, Deadpool and Philosophy, Hippo Reads, and the Blog of the American Philosophical Association, where he wrote about Charlottesville.

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.