Josh Berson

Fiction, essay, noise. My work includes The Human Scaffold and The Meat Question, along with occasional pieces for venues ranging from Aeon to Res to Jane.

The still point at the center of my thinking is the relationship between skill and value — how our habits, inter alia, of listening, breathing, sitting, and eating inform what matters and conversely.

Represented by Salma Begum, Greyhound Literary.

For consulting, speaking, etc write.


The Human Scaffold

Fascinating. —Gillian Tett, Financial Times

Looks directly at the questions I love reading about but from a different set of intellectual traditions than I’m used to. —Abe Burmeister, co-founder, Outlier

Anthropology for the twenty-first century. —Elizabeth Chin, editor-in-chief, American Anthropologist

The Meat Question

Choice Outstanding Title, 2020

A thorough, imaginative, and compelling rebuttal of the pervasive argument … that meat consumption is central to human existence.Choice

Computable Bodies

2016 PROSE Award, Language and Linguistics


Select Affiliations

Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Berggruen Institute
Wellcome Trust
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science