Interview for the project “Where do Religious Scholars Work? Our Alumni”
I recently gave an interview to my alma mater—the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies at St. Petersburg State University (SPbU). As part of the alumni section, we talked about how a lawyer came up with the idea to study religion, why I decided to start my own YouTube channel, and how popular science videos are born.
The original material can be read via the link on VKontakte. Below I share the full text of our conversation.
— How did you come up with the idea of creating a YouTube channel, and why did you decide to take on such an important and difficult task as educational work?
Once, after finishing my master’s degree at SPbU, I was sitting at home and caught myself explaining the theory of secularization to my cat. At that moment, I came to a clear realization: I couldn’t hold myself back anymore, and I urgently needed to start a YouTube channel :)
There is only a grain of joke in this story: you should only engage in science popularization and upload your videos to the net when you simply can’t help but do it. I have always loved talking about interesting ideas, collecting, systematizing, and conveying information. Also, the spoken genre is much closer to me than the written one: writing is a bit tough for me, but I speak fairly well.
I am glad that I managed to create one of the three or four relatively large YouTube channels on religious studies in Russian. Our super-interesting field of knowledge is underrepresented here, and I consider it important to make my own, albeit small, contribution to the promotion of our discipline.
— Why did you decide to get a master’s degree in “Religious Studies” at SPbU? How did this affect the content of your channel?
While finishing my bachelor’s degree in Law at the Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), I already knew I wouldn’t be a lawyer. During my fourth year, I suddenly won the Higher School of Economics (HSE) Olympiad for students and university graduates in the Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, which gave me the opportunity to enroll in a master’s program practically without exams.
I chose SPbU: St. Petersburg is my native and beloved city, and the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies is one of the strongest in the country.
I don’t regret that my first degree was in law, because law really puts your head in the right place and provides practical knowledge. But religious studies quickly became my main interest. This discipline makes it possible to use a huge range of methods—from sociological to natural-scientific—and obtain objective results.
Besides, religion itself has always fascinated me aesthetically and intellectually. At 16, I read Augustine and Anselm, and was amazed at how deftly they reasoned about religion. This admiration almost led me to the philosophy department. In the end, it was during my master’s program that I learned how rich the toolkit of theoretical religious studies is, and I have been self-educating ever since.
Actually, my channel is a projection of my self-education. I tell the audience about what is personally interesting to me. What I have read, learned, and understood. I do not tailor myself to the audience, but rather try to explain in an accessible way things that I have only just learned myself. It helps a lot in self-education.
— Could you tell us in more detail what your videos are about and what main topics you cover?
I make videos featuring interesting facts about various religions—this format is quite popular. I also talk about the views on religion held by certain public intellectuals (Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Steven Weinberg, and many others).
I am also slowly recording lectures on the history of freethinking and atheism; this topic fascinates me immensely. I host live streams, conduct interviews—in general, I try to diversify the content.
Since YouTube is a hobby, there is often a lack of time for this kind of activity. But in the long run, I’d like to devote even more attention to this area; the opportunities in the media sphere are vast. If you are planning to launch your own project: don’t think that all the niches are already taken. In the Russian-speaking segment, there is a huge demand for new information and fresh faces.
— Tell us more about the video that won a prize in the “ANTROPOGENEZ.RU” contest?
A relatively new format for me is the debunking of pseudoscience. With the video “Allan Chumak: A History of Deception?”, I managed to make it into the top 3 popular science videos of 2023 according to Antropogenez.ru. By the way, in this video, I don’t just debunk psychics; they do it perfectly well themselves. Rather, I am interested in the nature of belief, which directly refers to religious studies issues.
The Chumak phenomenon is extremely interesting. He became popular for a variety of reasons: social, psychological, economic. In the video, I try to develop a balanced perspective on how it happened that people massively believed in such seemingly irrational things.
At the same time, the lens of a “debunker” is inherently unnatural for a religious scholar. We try to understand and explain, rather than expose, outplay, and destroy. In this sense, filming an exposé can be a bit difficult; you have to step over yourself in some ways.
Book Recommendations
I have a whole section on the channel dedicated to book analysis. Recommending just one book would be sheer blasphemy, so I will offer several options for different goals at once:
- The “Basics” category: Robert Bellah’s fundamental work Religion in Human Evolution. A massive but well-written book in which the classic sociologist of religion shares his perspective on the most difficult problems of religious studies.
- The “Read in One Evening” category: I love Clifford Geertz’s essay Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. A classic of interpretive anthropology, a beautifully written short text. Do you like basking in the Balinese sun? Grab it and read about why the Balinese love cockfights so much, and what Shakespearean dramas have to do with it.
- The “New Classic” category: Pascal Boyer’s book Religion Explained. A beautifully written text that largely determined the development of religious studies in the 21st century. If you want to delve into cognitive religious studies at a basic level—this is exactly what the doctor ordered.
- The “New Release” category: Robert Sapolsky’s recent book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will. The scientist’s take on an absolutely philosophical problem is fascinating. I advocate the thesis that science is slowly taking over philosophy’s turf, and this book is a good confirmation (or refutation?) of my point of view.