Hello, all! I'm Austin (from Austin, Texas).

After finishing up my undergrad degree in Edinburgh, Scotland I moved to New York City to start my PhD in Philosophy. I am particularly interested in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and social psychology.

I work from home/coffee shops, generally meandering around the city. Give me a shout if you are in town and want to hang out. I am still feel new to the NYC and very much want to make new friends! So if you are up for a pint of beer or a cup of coffee sometime, please give me a shout. :-)

THINGS I LIKE: art, literature, classical history, good alcohol, vegan cooking, and stimulating conversation.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Mmm, I am a true believer in the goodness of CS! I have had really wonderful experiences through CS both from hosting and being hosted. I often travel by myself and particularly enjoy getting to know a new city by staying with and meeting interesting local people. I also enjoy the experience of hosting and if I host you in Edinburgh or New York, I would be happy to show you around a bit if you so desire and if I am free.

The biggest thing I have taken away from my CS experiences would be the lesson that people are generally good and trustworthy. Not to sound overly preachy (or hippy, though I suppose we are all a bit hippy here), but I think it's all too easy to get into a paranoid and distrustful mindset, thinking that everything is dangerous and everyone is out to get out you; and certainly this the a mindset that is reinforced within the media. However, I have found that the CS experience of staying with people who were perviously total strangers to me, making new friends, and welcoming travellers into my home, has really gotten me to identify and challenge this way of thinking; that itself has been a really worthwhile experience and it's one of the things that I think makes CS such a special community.

Interests

- Traveling (though I suppose everyone on CS has this interest so this is probably annoying uninformative)

-Theatre (I have worked during three summers for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, helping organise the outdoor street events; it was a wonderful experience and I am always up for chatting art and theatre)

- Painting (specifically impressionist oil painting, which I learned from my father when I was a child in Normandy, France)

- Coffee (my drink of choice as of late is a latte)

- Philosophy (well, I do this professionally but fortunately for me I am also interested in it)

- Scottish whisky (my favourite distilleries are Glenfarclas, Glengoyne, and Old Pultney; I'd say I mostly prefer Speysides and Highlands to Islays but I have recently been getting interested in Islays)

- Modernist literature (Woolf, Joyce, and Eliot in particular)

- Neuroscience (especially where neuroscience interacts with philosophy of mind and epistemology)

- Wine (what can I say? I'm the child of wine collectors and have a passion for the grape)

- Sustainable living (both in terms of how to integrate sustainable methods into my life and how to make sustainable living globally tenable)

- Dancing badly when I am alone (I think this requires not further clarification)

• arts
• literature
• festivals
• cooking
• wine
• beer
• coffee
• traveling
• painting
• outdoor activities
• communications
• languages
• neuroscience
• science
• mountains
• vegan food

Music, Movies, and Books

Books: Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Shakespeare, Milan Kundera, Alan Moore, James Joyce, David Foster Wallace, Jorge Louis Borges, John Milton, Lord Byron, Vladimir Nabokov, TS Eliot, e. e. cummings, Zadie Smith, John Dunn, Wallace Stevens, George Orwell

Movies: The Royal Tenenbaums, Casablanca, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 8 1/2, Army of Darkness, Earthlings, The Graduate, O Brother Where Art Thou, Dazed and Confused, Doctor Zhivago, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, High Fidelity

TV Shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 30 Rock, Doctor Who, Would I Lie To You, QI, That Mitchell and Webb Look, Black Books, Star Trek, The IT Crowd, The Thick of It, Archer, Frasier, Spaced, Modern Family, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Mock the Week, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Sherlock, Gavin and Stacey

Music: Screaming Females, P.S. Eliot, All Dogs, Slothrust, The Ramones, Belle and Sebastian, Cayetana, The Smiths, Radiator Hospitol, The Shins, Okkervil River, Downtown Boys, Velvet Underground, Pulp, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Dead Kennedys, Diet Cig, Julie Ruin, Joy Division, Bear vs. Shark, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Two Door Cinema Club, The Decemberists, Elliot Smith, Voxtrot, Wolf Parade, Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon, Ghostland Observatory, David Bowie, Ratatat, Pity Sex, The National, Monsters of Folk, Crystal Castles, The New Pornographers

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Okay, it's easier to list a few (maybe not "amazing" but at least "memorable") things I've done:

(i) Walked through the medieval streets of Rouen, France, (ii) strolled through vineyards overlooking Vienna, Austria, (iii) attempted to wetsuit surf in the Atlantic ocean off the coast of Cornwall, England (truth be told the attempt wasn't altogether successful), (iv) biked through East Berlin to a surprisingly warm lake outside of the city, (v) danced at a ceilidh in the Scottish highlands (I've done this a few times, actually), and (vi) skied in the US Rocky Mountains in Telluride, Colorado.

I'm of course always looking to add to this list of "amazing" experiences.

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: After living in Scotland for five years I acquired a lot of knowledge about Scottish whisky so I suppose I could teach you about that. Oh and 'teaching' about alcohol is great because it ideally involves drinking and good conversation. I also could teach you a thing or two about academic philosophy (though my students might disagree!) if you were so philosophically inclined. :-)

Learn: Oh man, there are a great many things I would like to learn... I'd like to learn pieces of a lot of different languages to help me when I'm traveling (hell, I'd like to be fluent in a lot of different languages, but I am trying to aim for more obtainable goals at the moment). Also I would like to play the mandolin, so if you could share some musical wisdom that would of course be splendid!

Share: My city, my stories, and hopefully some fun and memorable experiences. Sound alright?

What I Can Share with Hosts

I suppose I can share my stories, a good bottle of wine, and my kind disposition. Oh, oh, I can also cook (decently well) and would be happy to cook for you to repay your kindness!

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Scotland, United Kingdom, United States