Insight training

perceptual clarity Wisdom practices meta-cognitive skills

COLLECTIVE InSIGHT TRAINING sessions Fall 2025 - 2026

Participate in the most important conversations of our time.

These group participatory sessions are designed to train people in insight dialogue in order that intimate dialogue among a community of practitioners can replace the role of the public intellectual we have today.

Who gets to build the world we live in?

Who are we becoming as a people?

The technological vs democrative republic.

Upcoming short course

A New Theory of the body

~ PUTTING THE MIND BACK INTO THE BODY & THE BODY BACK INTO NATURE ~

Eight sessions, October 12 - Nov 21

  1. Dispositional States

  2. Affect & Emotion

  3. On Perception

  4. Memory

  5. Imagination & Synaesthesia

  6. Representational Thinking, Narrative, Meaning, & Systems of Justification

  7. Math & Pure Abstractions

  8. States of Awareness

upcoming Intensive courses & immersive workshops

UPCOMING INTENSIVE STARTS MARCH, 2026

On Being Conscious - A Global State naturalized view

  • Building on the foundations laid out in the popular series in the Cognitive Widget Show, this 8 part course explores contemporary advances in cognitive science and how they challenge existing tenets of evolutionary, developmental, phenomenological, and metaphysical theories.

    You will learn the core insights as well as the key oversights in emerging fields based primarily on the following work:

    • Karl Firston: Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior

    • Mark Solms The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

    • Andy Clark:Being There: Putting Brain, Body, nd World Together Again

    • Riccardo Manzotti: The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World are One

    • Denis Noble: Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity

    • Kenneth Aizawa: Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground

    • Carl Gillet: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy

    • Andreas Wagner: Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture

    • Andreas Wagner: The Origins of Evolutionary Innovations

    • Michael Levin: Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments

    This course will expand your view on mind and consciousness, previewing future advances in both biological and machine learning.

    Part 1:Introduction to the Global State, Naturalized View

    Part 2: Phenomenological and Meditative Perspectives

    Part 3: Evolutionary Perspectives

    Part 4: Developmental Perspectives

    Part 5: Metaphysica Perspectives

    Parts 1 -4 are 3 sessions each/ Part 5 is two sessions

    • Session 1: Presentaion, Q&A

    • Session 2: Discussion

    • Session 3: Further Research & Directions

    Also included are more than 6 hours of pre-recorded video, course guide and study groups.


    • Fourteen, 2- hour live, on-line sessions with video recordings of all sessios.

    • Begins Thursday Oct 2nd at 2pm (eastern)

    • Session dates & times (all times eastern)

      • Thursdays at 2 pm: Oct 2,9,16,23,30 | Nov 6,13

      • Sundays at 12 noon, Oct 5,12,19,26 | Nov 2,9,16

    • Price: $ 244 USD

  • This course is for people who have tracked either academic or popular sources on cognitive science, those who are interested in new sciences of mind, psychologists and philosophers of mind and behavior studies, meditators interested in new and scientifically relevant interpretations of state experiences, and people who are tracking “new axial age” level transformations in consciousness.

UPCOMING WORKSHOP STARTS SEPTEMBER 2026

naturalizing machine agency - meta-theoretical explorations

  • Building on the foundations laid out in the popular series in the Cognitive Widget Show, this 8 part course explores contemporary advances in cognitive science and how they challenge existing tenets of evolutionary, developmental, phenomenological, and metaphysical theories.

    You will learn the core insights as well as the key oversights in emerging fields based primarily on the following work:

    • Karl Firston: Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior

    • Mark Solms The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

    • Andy Clark:Being There: Putting Brain, Body, nd World Together Again

    • Riccardo Manzotti: The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World are One

    • Denis Noble: Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity

    • Kenneth Aizawa: Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground

    • Carl Gillet: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy

    • Andreas Wagner: Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture

    • Andreas Wagner: The Origins of Evolutionary Innovations

    • Michael Levin: Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments

    This course will expand your view on mind and consciousness, previewing future advances in both biological and machine learning.

    Part 1:Introduction to the Global State, Naturalized View

    Part 2: Phenomenological and Meditative Perspectives

    Part 3: Evolutionary Perspectives

    Part 4: Developmental Perspectives

    Part 5: Metaphysica Perspectives

    Parts 1 -4 are 3 sessions each/ Part 5 is two sessions

    • Session 1: Presentaion, Q&A

    • Session 2: Discussion

    • Session 3: Further Research & Directions

    Also included are more than 6 hours of pre-recorded video, course guide and study groups.


    • Fourteen, 2- hour live, on-line sessions with video recordings of all sessios.

    • Begins Thursday Oct 2nd at 2pm (eastern)

    • Session dates & times (all times eastern)

      • Thursdays at 2 pm: Oct 2,9,16,23,30 | Nov 6,13

      • Sundays at 12 noon, Oct 5,12,19,26 | Nov 2,9,16

    • Price: $ 244 USD

  • This course is for people who have tracked either academic or popular sources on cognitive science, those who are interested in new sciences of mind, psychologists and philosophers of mind and behavior studies, meditators interested in new and scientifically relevant interpretations of state experiences, and people who are tracking “new axial age” level transformations in consciousness.

To stay updated on news, courses and events, join our substack community: The POP-UP School.

Become a paid subscriber and receive all access to previous courses, new content including the Cognitive Widget Show, PLUS get 25% off all premium courses, events, workshops and retreats.