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Andrea Hiott talks with cultural researcher Patricia Martin about her book Will the Future Like You?: Reflections on the Age of Hyper-Reinvention and the condition she calls persona fog.
By now we know that online life, with its endless content, algorithmic polarization, and pressure to present oneself publicly, is detrimental to our well-being; countless books and articles have dissected these angles. But after a decade of empirical research, Patricia Martin argues the damage goes deeper. We discuss her book Will the Future Like You?, which makes the case that the capacity to form and sustain an identity is itself being eroded by code built to keep us uncertain about who we are and cut off from our own inner authority. She calls this condition persona fog.
About Patricia Martin
Patricia Martin is a cultural researcher, author, and Director of the Institute for Psyche and Culture, a depth-psychology think tank based in Chicago. She is the founder and host of the podcast Jung in the World, now in its sixth season with over two million cumulative downloads. Author of four books, including RenGen, featured by the New York Times, and her latest, Will the Future Like You? (Karnac, 2026), which Kirkus recommended as an "incisive, fresh work." For the past decade, she has led independent research on the erosion of selfhood through digital persona management, advancing her theory of persona fog. She completed postgraduate training in Jungian theory at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and holds a certification in Medical Narrative from Duke University, an MA in Irish Literature and Culture from University College Dublin, and an MFA in nonfiction from Bennington College. She is a Research Affiliate of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.
More about this show:
In Jung’s model, the persona is the thin, outward-facing layer of the psyche. Patricia compares it to a user interface for social life: useful, but never meant to be load-bearing. Drawing on a three-year ethnographic study with roughly 100 participants and a decade of data on online self-presentation, she describes what happens when we pour our whole sense of self into multiple online personas: fragmentation, chronic self-doubt, and estrangement from a core self.
The conversation moves through Patricia’s own “undoing” (divorce, three moves in 18 months, her mother’s sudden death, her child’s transition, and the loss of a major project), her path into Jungian psychology, and the difference between resilience and endurance. Passion, she reminds us, once meant the capacity to suffer and hold steady amid uncertainty. Along the way: Csikszentmihalyi and flow, social pain research, Winnicott’s attentive gaze, and why everyday attention to one another may be a form of love.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction: persona fog, endurance, and the art of enough
04:00 Missing the school bus and a childhood moment of transcendence
08:00 What the persona is, and why it was never meant to be load-bearing
11:30 The self as product and the post-identity era
17:00 What changed since our grandparents’ generation; the three factors of identity
23:00 From public libraries to the early internet
25:00 Patricia’s personal undoing and the question “Who am I?”
29:00 Fragmentation, resilience, and endurance
34:30 Persona, brand, and optimization; passion as endurance
37:00 Social pain online and the neuroscience of rejection
38:30 Movement, the body, and the micro-singularity of the self with its devices
41:30 Who listens to Jung in the World, and a yearning for depth
44:00 How Patricia found Jung; Jason’s story
48:00 Jonathan’s descent story and preparing to endure the AI era
50:30 Csikszentmihalyi, flow, and 45 minutes offline
53:45 The transcendent function, and the Jung lecture that inspired Csikszentmihalyi
55:00 Why high achievers can be the most fragile; chronic self-doubt
59:45 Janet’s story: auditing her “wardrobe” of personas
1:05:30 Love, attention, and Winnicott’s good-enough gaze
1:08:30 Why the self still matters; persona and romantic love
1:11:00 Listening as love, participatory sense-making, and stewarding attention
1:16:30 The spiral: returning to where we started, but anew
Links
Patricia Martin
Will the Future Like You?
Jung in the World podcast
Participatory sense-making with Hanne De Jaegher (Love & Philosophy ep. 68)
Love & Philosophy
Podcast and website: loveandphilosophy.com
Substack: lovephilosophy.substack.com
Andrea Hiott: andreahiott.net
Andrea’s book, Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness: Simon & Schuster
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This is a coversation between John Vervaeke and Darius Parvizi-Wayne introduced by Andrea Hiott.
On Love, Attention, and the Good: Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke (University of Toronto) and philosopher Darius Parvizi-Wayne (Macquarie University) talk about love as a way of paying attention, starting from Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good. They discuss John’s idea that getting out of the meaning crisis means “falling in love with being again,” Murdoch’s famous M and D example, what “unselfing” really means, Simone Weil, Heidegger, the Kyoto School, and pilgrimage as a way of knowing. They end with a personal conversation about mentorship, vocation and the love of wisdom.
Introduced by Andrea Hiott from the Philosophers’ Way in Heidelberg.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction from the Philosophers’ Way, Heidelberg
02:30 Darius and John introduce themselves
07:00 “Falling in love with being again”
12:00 Love as volitional necessity
17:00 Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good
27:00 The M and D example
37:00 Can cognitive science explain loving attention?
43:00 Unselfing: Murdoch vs. Simone Weil
46:30 The Kyoto School: self-power and other-power
52:00 The two-worlds mythology and nihilism
1:08:00 Nishitani and absolute nothingness
1:20:30 Place, basho, and the sacred
1:23:30 Pilgrimage and theoria
1:27:30 Darius’s story
1:32:30 Mentorship, vocation, and the love of wisdom
1:38:00 Closing: dialogos and Middlemarch
MENTIONED
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good · Harry Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love · Mark Wynn, Renewing the Senses and Faith and Place · Silvia Caprioglio Panizza, The Ethics of Attention · Taliaferro & Evans, Iris Murdoch and the Transcendent · Jeff Malpas, Heidegger’s Topology · Robert E. Carter, The Nothingness Beyond God · John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
John Vervaeke and Darius Parvizi-Wayne
How preferences enslave attention (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences)
What active inference still can’t do (Philosophy and the Mind Sciences)
Iris Murdoch – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Lawrence Blum)
Iris Murdoch and the Transcendent – Taliaferro & Evans
Save the World Podcast
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Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott
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Sophie and Henry explore consciousness, mind, and the porous boundary between inner and outer experience. The conversation ranges from panpsychism and animism to imaginal empathy, ecology, myth, and why modern life makes it so hard to stay open to mystery.
Sophie brings a wide ranging perspective shaped by writing, spirituality, ecology, the history of religion, and Eros. The two ground the discussion in consciousness, reenchantment, and the question of how language and labels can flatten lived experience.
A few references:
On empathy and imagining the lifeworlds of other beings: Sophie Strand, “Supracellular” through Emergence Magazine, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Taliesin, Paul Shepard
On challenging the individual self: Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation, Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, Amitov Ghosh
On the imaginal and its relationship to reality: JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings and William Blake, “Double Vision”
On panpsychism: Philip Goff, Galileo’s Error, Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
On trickster pedagogy and weirding the ordinary: Horace Miner, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” and Viktor Shklovsky on “defamiliarization
Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous projects and publications, including Spirituality & Health, Atmos, Braided Way, and Art PAPERS. She is the author of The Flowering Wand, The Madonna Secret, and The Body Is a Doorway as well as the creator of the popular Substack “Make Me Good Soil.”  You can follow her work on Instagram (at) cosmogyny

Henry Kramer is a scholar, educator, and artist exploring wonder, imagination, and our relationship with the more-than-human world. Henry teaches in the Program in Religion at CUNY Hunter and is Academic Dean of the Strother School of Radical Attention, where his Radical Imagination course was featured on the New York Times’ Hard Fork. Henry is also a ritual and immersive theater designer, songwriter, storyteller, and (most recently) a bit of a puppeteer.

00:00 Andrea Sets the Stage
00:33 Meet Host Henry
02:14 Why This Episode Matters
05:41 Henry Introduces Sophie
09:43 Sophie on Being a Lover
10:31 Re Enchantment and Mind
12:15 Symbiosis and Selfhood
14:23 What Is Consciousness
18:35 Myth Archetypes and Reality
25:29 Language Labels and Weirdness
27:37 Conspiracy and Ontological Shock
34:13 Species Humility and Long Story
38:31 Crab Universe Joke
38:53 Disorientation Teaching Tactic
39:53 Nacirema Defamiliarization
42:12 Taliesin and Shapeshifting
45:44 Spiderweb Mind Ecology
46:55 Imitation Builds Empathy
48:52 Against Anthropomorphize
52:36 Utility Addiction and Mushrooms
56:28 Inner Biodiversity and Stories
01:00:47 Panpsychism Resurgence
01:04:43 Hard Problem of Consciousness
01:07:47 Trickster Ending Farewell
Save the World Podcast
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Find Mac at https://macshine.github.io/publications/
Mac’s Lab: https://profiles.sydney.edu.au/mac.shine
The Brain Inspired conversation Andrea mentions.
Mac Shine on Systems Neuroscience, Automaticity, and the Cerebellum’s Role in Human Cognition. In discussion with Andrea Hiott.

University of Sydney systems neuroscientist Mac Shine in conversation about systems neuroscience and the challenge of linking single-neuron explanations with whole-brain network accounts. Shine describes his path from evolutionary biology influences and medical training to a search for simplified, cross-scale principles in brain science, noting how terminology like “representation” or “integration” can hinder communication across disciplines. They discuss his 2014 paper “Delegation to Automaticity,” inspired by observing his son learn to walk, which argues that cerebellar architecture supports the delegation of difficult skills into automatic control, freeing resources for higher-level cognition and potentially shaping human cognitive evolution alongside bipedalism. Shine contrasts basal ganglia habit findings with cerebellar predictive control, uses driving and chess to illustrate deliberate versus automatic processes, and emphasizes embodiment, learning through struggle, and collaborative, caring lab culture.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:27 Automaticity and Evolution Teaser
02:48 Why This Conversation Matters
05:02 What Is Systems Neuroscience
10:24 Mac’s Path Into Systems Thinking
18:42 Language Gaps Across Fields
26:15 Are We Assuming Cognition
33:35 Delegation to Automaticity Paper
37:19 Cerebellum as Automation Engine
46:09 Bipedalism and Coevolving Mind Body
47:29 Bipedalism And Cognition
50:05 Natural Selection Good Enough
52:37 Frozen Accidents And Delegation
55:06 Humans Adapt Not Excel
58:33 Repetition To Automaticity
01:00:19 Habit Versus Automatic
01:08:18 Driving And Chess Layers
01:16:18 Beyond Motor Cognition
01:21:57 Flow States And Expertise
01:27:26 Scientific Humility Ethos
01:29:16 Curiosity Over Credit
01:30:57 AI And The Value Of Being Wrong
01:33:07 Learning Through Struggle
01:37:59 Embodiment And Driving
01:40:56 Cerebellum Body Brain Coupling
01:48:14 Expertise Through Variation
01:53:31 Lab Curiosity And Next Questions
01:59:49 Care Love And Leadership
02:04:44 Closing Reflections
Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...
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Philosopher of science Hasok Chang (University of Cambridge) joins Andrea Hiott to trace the through-line of his work — from Inventing Temperature (2004), through Is Water H₂O? (2012), to Realism for Realistic People (2022) — and to think together about what it means to treat knowledge as something we do rather than something we merely possess.
The conversation begins with why Inventing Temperature has quietly become an inspiration for neuroscientists: it shows how a felt quality (hot and cold) can become a trustworthy number (temperature) — not by discovering a pre-given fact, but through a messy, iterative, bootstrapping process of invention. From there, Chang and Hiott move through the ideas that organize his mature philosophy: epistemic iteration, operational coherence, active/activist realism, path dependence, conceptual engineering, and a pragmatist re-reading of truth that no longer leans on correspondence to an inaccessible reality.
A recurring theme: Chang describes each of his books as costing him “an article of faith” — first foundationalism, then monism, then the ideal of pure science — and how each loss opened onto a more dynamic, practice-based, and pluralist picture of knowing. Hiott connects these moves to her own navigational approach to mind and NAEC, where cognition is understood as a body’s coherent, aim-directed action in the world rather than the storage of static representations.
Full show notes here.
Hasok Chang is the Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Trained first in physics (Caltech) and then in philosophy (Stanford), he is known for “integrated history and philosophy of science” and for what he calls complementary science — using historical and philosophical study to recover scientific questions that mainstream science has forgotten or foreclosed. His three main single-author books are Inventing Temperature (Oxford, 2004; winner of the 2006 Lakatos Award), Is Water H₂O? (Springer, 2012), and Realism for Realistic People (Cambridge, 2022). He is a founding figure of the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) and the Committee for Integrated HPS.
Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions to Chang throughout.
Chang’s three books at a glance
Book Year Central question “Article of faith” Chang says he lost Inventing Temperature 2004 How did scientists learn to measure temperature reliably without already having a trustworthy thermometer to check against? Foundationalism — the idea that knowledge rests on some ultimate, secure foundation (fundamental laws, or raw experience) Is Water H₂O? 2012 Was the consensus that water is H₂O actually forced by the evidence — and should science ever settle on a single account? Monism — the idea that there is one world, one truth, and one job for science: to find it Realism for Realistic People 2022 What would scientific realism look like if we started from practice and everyday life rather than from correspondence to an ultimate reality? The ideal of pure science — knowledge first, application second (he moves openly into pragmatism)
Key terms & concepts (glossary)
The definitions below are general but we're staying faithful to Chang’s own usage.
Epistemic iteration. Chang’s name for how inquiry actually makes progress: we don’t begin from a secure foundation, but knowingly start from an imperfect position and then use the results of inquiry to correct and refine that very starting point — a self-improving loop with no bedrock underneath. In Realism for Realistic People Chang invokes Peirce’s image that inquiry “is not standing on the bedrock of fact… It is walking upon a bog, and we can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present.” The aim is not coherence as such, but the ongoing improvement of coherence. (In the conversation, Chang stresses that he first thought iteration solved only the narrow problem of validating measurement standards, then came to see it as a very general pattern of learning.)
Operational coherence. Roughly, “a harmonious fitting-together of the elements and aspects of an activity, which is conducive to the successful achievement of the aims of that activity.” It is Chang’s practice-based replacement for truth as correspondence: instead of asking whether a proposition matches reality, we ask whether an activity’s parts hang together well enough to reliably achieve its aim. Crucially, coherence is always defined relative to an aim — without a stated or assumed purpose, the word “coherence” has no meaning.
Epistemic activity. “A more-or-less coherent set of mental or physical operations that are intended to contribute to the production or improvement of knowledge in a particular way, in accordance with some discernible rules (though the rules may be unarticulated).” Examples: measuring, detecting, predicting, hypothesis-testing — but also mundane actions like lighting a match.
System of practice. A coherent, interacting set of epistemic activities carried out with a view to achieving certain overall aims. (This is the unit Chang argues can be legitimately plural: several incommensurable systems of practice can coexist productively within one discipline.)
Active knowledge / “knowing how.” Chang’s term (in Realism for Realistic People) for knowledge that resides in ability and action rather than in propositions — knowing how to do something rather than knowing that some statement is true. He argues proposition-based epistemology simply isn’t the right tool for evaluating methods, instruments, or institutions; for that we need to look at the coherence of what we do.
Active realism vs. activist realism (a terminology note). In Is Water H₂O? Chang introduced active realism: the view that realism shouldn’t be sitting back satisfied that we know a lot, but should be an attitude — even an “ideology” — committed to continually learning more and better about reality. In Realism for Realistic People he renamed it activist realism, to avoid confusion with his separate notion of active knowledge (someone might wrongly hear “active realism” as “any assured possession of active knowledge”). “Activist” better captures the ever-learning, never-shrinking commitment. (The two terms are easy to run together in conversation; Chang’s clarification here is the reference point for both.)
Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Support the show
Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott
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Please rate and review with love.
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