Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos
I'm a student who teaches and a teacher who writes, among a few other things.
Im currently at Columbia University's Teachers College working on my doctorate in the Interdisciplinary Studies program. I'm also an adjunct professor and probably didn't write any of the comments about me on Rate My Professor. I love my work and it is what inspired me to pursue my degree. I want to connect philosophy to my life and the lives of others through effective learning and teaching, so I study connections.
This passion inspired my first book project which is a result of my work as a graduate student and it documents my experiences interviewing my late grandfather about his experiences during WWII in Greece as a young man, a Nazi prisoner, a soldier, and a survivor. We sat at his house in the Bronx, New York two blocks from where I grew up, and created a piece that speaks to our philosophy on love, faith, family, work and our life together.
My second book project, 100 Conversations You Need to Have is a trilogy created directly from my teaching. One day it dawned on me that I had compiled hundreds of questions from conversations in class about happiness, friendship, purpose and many other topics that felt relevant and essential to living a good life. I realized that I could share them in the form of three journal style books. They each present the reader with one of life's biggest questions, and some space to respond. On the other side of the page, there is a reply from a philosopher with space to analyze, and make the idea your own. I think dialogue and our experiences are the key elements to teaching and living the examined life so that's how I teach and what I wrote in the trilogy.
I also host a podcast called Brain Sweat, where the motto is "philosophy for a better life." Each episode is a short, around ten minutes, meditation on a question with a suggestion from philosophy and a few anecdotes here and there about how I'm trying to apply what is discussed.
My hope is that I can learn a lot and provide value to the universe with these projects and all those in the future. I hope you find my work to be engaging and useful.
Thanks for reading,
Perry