The person behind it

Ryan Katz,
Ed.D.

I spent ten years teaching English at a Jesuit high school. Before that, I spent years trying to figure out what learning actually is — not what it produces, but what it feels like from the inside.

That question became a piece of peer-reviewed research called Phenomenological Curiosity. It became this podcast. It became an ongoing project I'm not sure I'll ever finish — which is probably the point.

I'm not trying to build a platform. I'm trying to think clearly about something important before the window closes. AI is changing what it means to learn, to iterate, to be human. Most of the people talking about that are technologists. I'm not. I'm someone who has spent his career inside the experience of it.

Ed.D. — doctoral research in phenomenological curiosity and learning

Ten years teaching English at a Jesuit high school

Published researcher — peer-reviewed work on curiosity as a learnable practice

Host — Isn't That Human? podcast, formerly Kairos, Curios & Columns of Otherwise

Why this, why now

The quality of how we pay attention is about to matter more than it ever has.

Most conversations about AI ask: what will it do? This one asks: what will we do? Specifically — how do we learn, adapt, and stay curious when the rules keep changing faster than we can catch up?

The speedrunner who has logged ten thousand hours falling in love with the reset button knows something about iteration that most people don't. The artist who has devoted her life to a single obsession knows something about attention. The teacher who has watched a hundred students discover something for the first time knows something about the moment learning actually happens.

Those are the conversations worth having. Not because they're heartwarming, but because they're maps. And we're going to need maps.

Something to say?

A question, a guest suggestion, a collaboration, or just a reaction to something you heard. All of it is welcome.