I serve as researcher for Lives Well Lived, the podcast hosted by philosopher Peter Singer and ethicist Kasia de Lazari-Radek, in which they speak with remarkable people about ethics, purpose, and what it means to live well. The role demands the kind of research that goes well beyond the surface — building comprehensive profiles of guests, identifying the ideas and experiences that will generate genuine conversation, and providing hosts of Singer and de Lazari-Radek's calibre with the depth and precision they need. It is quiet, meticulous work, invisible when it's done well, and it draws on the same skills that run through everything I do: reading widely, listening carefully, and finding what actually matters in a life.
What Lives Well Lived has developed in me is the ability to move quickly and fluently into unfamiliar territory, to identify what matters in a body of work or a life, and to translate that into something another person can use. If you are working on a project that requires serious research, careful reading, and writing that carries intellectual weight, that is the skill set I bring — whatever the subject.
Rapid immersion in unfamiliar academic and professional fields
Biographical and subject research for interviews, publications, and long-form projects
Synthesis of complex material into clear, usable form
Literature review and source identification across disciplines
Interview preparation — developing questions that open up a subject rather than close it down
Writing and editing across academic, journalistic, and narrative registers
Long-form collaboration with authors, academics, and public intellectuals
Alvin Roth — Nobel Prize-winning economist; market design and repugnant transactions
Amy Aela Kauler — actress, plant-based entrepreneur, and podcaster
Brian Hare — evolutionary anthropologist, Duke University; author of Survival of the Friendliest
Catherine Price — science journalist; author of How to Break Up With Your Phone and The Power of Fun
Claude Steele — social psychologist, Stanford; pioneer of stereotype threat research
Dan Gilbert — Harvard psychologist; author of Stumbling on Happiness
Jamie Metzl — futurist and author; Hacking Darwin, Superconvergence, The AI Ten Commandments
Jennifer Breheny Wallace — journalist and author of Never Enough
Marion Nestle — nutritionist and food policy scholar; author of Food Politics
Michael Pollan — journalist and author; The Omnivore's Dilemma, How to Change Your Mind, A World Appears
Micael Dahlen — Professor of Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness, Stockholm School of Economics
Paul Simon — singer-songwriter
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein — philosopher and novelist; author of Plato at the Googleplex
Sean Carroll — physicist and philosopher; host of Mindscape; author of The Big Picture
Shermin Kruse — law professor; author of Stoic Empathy and Butterfly Stitching
Tim Minchin — comedian, composer, and playwright
Will MacAskill — philosopher; co-founder of the effective altruism movement; author of What We Owe the Future
Zoe Weil — humane educator; author of The Solutionary Way
Contact: chris@chrisvanryn.com