Scholarships, an Award-Winning Film, and Ancient Wisdom

Liminal Learning, Mother Vera, and Stephen Batchelor

I’m Bryan Kam. I endeavour daily to make philosophy accessible and relevant. To that end I write this newsletter and host a podcast called Clerestory. I’m also writing a book called Neither/Nor and I’m a founding member of Liminal Learning. In London, I host a book club, a writing group, and other events. My work looks at how conceptual abstraction relates to embodied life, and how to use this understanding to transform experience.

A few exciting announcements today!

Scholarship applications for Liminal Learning

First, I wanted to share something I'm personally involved in that might resonate with you or someone in your network.

I'm a founding member of Liminal Learning, a year-long program designed for 18-25 year olds navigating the transition into purposeful adulthood. We have 5 scholarship places available for our next cohort which starts on October 19th.

Our program follows a unique arc: it begins with a wilderness retreat called a Quest 🏕️, in Elbow Lake, Ontario, continues through an online community Hub 🌐, where participants build relationships and develop skills, and culminates in a creative project which we call a Heist 🎨.

We’ve designed the programme for young people who are:

• Taking a gap year and want something meaningful

• In university but feeling lost or disconnected from their path

• Recent graduates asking “what now?” and seeking direction

• Anyone in that liminal space between adolescence and full adulthood, looking for community and purpose

The program works because it combines wilderness experience, peer community, mentorship, and creative challenge in a way that helps young people discover not just what they want to do, but who they want to become.

As a nonprofit, we're committed to accessibility — 30% of our lifetime places will be scholarships.

Applications close September 8th. Full details here.

If you know someone who might benefit, I'd be grateful if you could share this exciting opportunity with them!

Mind-blowing documentary: Mother Vera

I also wanted to highlight my friend Cécile Embleton’s *stunning* documentary Mother Vera, which won the prestigious BFI London Film Festival Grierson Award.

In a glowing review, the Guardian calls it “riveting,” a “luminous portrait.” It's a contemplative black-and-white documentary about Vera, a Belarusian Orthodox nun who runs the convent stables and has a remarkable backstory as a former heroin addict. The Guardian notes her “intense, powerful character, speaking with ruthless honesty” as she “invites us in to her inner world.”

If you like Tarkovsky or Bresson, you’ll love it.

UK cinema release is August 29th. And you can see it NOW in London. Links to tickets:

• 📅 NOW! until Mon Sep 2 at the ICA

• 📅 Thu Sep 5 - Hackney Picturehouse, 8:00pm + Q&A with co-directors Cécile Embleton & Alys Tomlinson

• 📅 Thu Sep 5 - DocHouse, Bloomsbury, 6:20pm

• 📅 Tue Sep 10 - Picturehouse Central, Soho, 7:30pm + Q&A with directors

• 📅 Sun Sep 22 - Garden Cinema, 8:30pm + Q&A with Naomi Pallas

Nuns, redemption, heroin, horses… What more could you ask for?

Buddha, Socrates, and Us

This Thursday 4th September I'm co-hosting a salon with Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs and the forthcoming Buddha, Socrates, and Us (Yale University Press, 2025). We'll explore how these two transformative figures developed surprisingly similar approaches to living well amid uncertainty — each refusing ultimate truth claims while insisting on critical self-evaluation as the foundation of ethical life.

This connects with my philosophical framework Neither/Nor, which treats conceptual thinking and experiential knowledge as complementary skills that can be deliberately trained and alternated — offering an alternative to the rigid thinking that dominates contemporary discourse, whilst allowing for greater flourishing under conditions of uncertainty.

In this salon, we’ll examine how their methods of inquiry, rooted in humility and productive doubt, can guide us through contemporary crises toward what Batchelor calls a “secular faith” for addressing our spiritual and planetary challenges.

Details and tickets here. It says “sold out,” but I believe you can still buy tickets — if you have any trouble please drop me a line.

My recent podcasts

I was recently featured on the Interintellect Hostcast discussing “Philosophy, Conversation and Uncertainty” — exploring how to host discussions that blend intellectual depth with lived experience, and why uncertainty might be our most important philosophical practice.

And check out The Long Now in East London — my podcast with Christopher Daniel where we walked through East London discussing architecture, philosophy, long-term thinking, and how to create meaningful communities:

If you’d like to consider supporting my philosophical work financially, you can do so either here on Substack, or on Patreon.

Best,

Bryan