The Art of Attention
An interview on the Tusk & Quill Podcast
A few weeks ago, I sat down for a conversation with Nimayi Dixit of Tusk & Quill for a new series on attention they’re putting together.
I often share links like these on social media, but I’m trying to be better about including them here in the newsletter for better cataloguing of these conversations.
You can watch the conversation below on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.
From the show notes:
Adam Robbert joins Tusk & Quill for a conversation about attention—what it is, why it matters, and how it might be trained. The discussion was inspired by a chapter from his book Practice in Still Life, titled “Attention is an Art Form.”
Robbert is a philosopher and co-founder of The Theōros Project, a San Francisco-based event series exploring the role of contemplation in the humanities. His work draws from Western philosophical traditions and weaves together philosophy, religion, and perceptual practice.
This episode explores attention not merely as a cognitive process, but as a skill that can be refined through practices like contemplative prayer and memory work. Robbert also reflects on how such practices can deepen the vocation of scholarship, especially in a time defined by digital distraction.
The conversation moves from the personal to the institutional, touching on the need for new forms of support for the humanities, with Theōros as one such experiment. At its heart, this is a conversation about training perception, resisting ideological capture, and cultivating the inner life.