Can we train ourselves to experience more aesthetic joy in our daily lives? And how does our past shape what we find beautiful today?

Today’s guest is Dr. Bence Nanay, a Hungarian-born philosopher and professor at the University of Antwerp, where he leads the Centre for Philosophical Psychology. Renowned for his work at the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, Bence bridges empirical research and philosophical insight. He’s also the author of Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception, a book that has reshaped how scholars and creatives think about the role of attention in aesthetic experience.

In this episode, we explore how attention—not the object of focus, but how we attend to it—defines the richness of our aesthetic experiences. Bence draws on his early years as a film critic to illuminate how perceptual history shapes our judgments of beauty. He argues that what we find aesthetically meaningful is not fixed or objective, but influenced by what we’ve seen, heard, and felt before. We delve into the concept of "distributed attention," the idea that beauty arises when we shift from goal-oriented perception to a more open, playful awareness.

This conversation is both a philosophical inquiry and a practical guide to reclaiming wonder. Whether it's savoring a line of poetry, noticing the way sunlight hits a wall, or embracing a so-called guilty pleasure, Bence challenges us to be less rigid in our identities and more open to beauty wherever it finds us. His reflections call us to loosen our aesthetic prejudices, take ourselves less seriously, and reconnect with the joy of unfiltered perception.