Philosophy Projects And Plans For 2026

it's going to be a busy but hopefully productive and exciting year!

Will 2026 be the year? Probably not, if by that one means the year that I sort everything out, enjoy massive successes, sail from virtue to virtue, or the like! But there are quite a few things I’ve got planned out for my professional and public philosophy work that I’d like to share with you. So that’s what I intend to do in this post (which to be honest, I’ve been hoping to get to for a few days now).

Of course as a person who lives in the world that just includes philosophy, I obviously have plenty of other more personal matters that figure into plans and projects, for example my continued recovery from my emergency hip replacement a few months ago, or my ongoing work at Almost Home Cat Rescue, but I’ll reserve those for a different post.

There’s a number of different categories that these matters fall into. They’re not lined up according to any particular order, for instance importance. And there’s probably some additional categories I might end up needing to add. But here’s what I’ve got in mind at present.

Online Classes, Seminars, and Workshops

I have put together a tentative schedule covering much of the year for my Study With Sadler Academy. It’s subject to change of course, depending on what happens with my other commitments, or if I pick up more speaking gigs requiring travel. For the time being, here’s what I am planning:

• Special 1-Day Seminar: Nietzsche’s Birth Of Tragedy — Meeting 9 AM - 3 PM Central Time, Saturday, January 10

• Special 1-Day Workshop: Studying Philosophy Outside Traditional Academia — Meeting 9 AM - 3 PM Central Time, Saturday, January 31

• Online 16-Week Class: Existentialist Philosophy And Literature — meeting Thursdays 9 AM Central Time, starting February 5

• Online 8-week Class: Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue — meeting Saturdays 9 AM Central Time, starting February 14

• Special 1- Day Seminar: Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy — Meeting 9 AM - 3 PM Central Time, Saturday, April 18

• Online 6-Week Class: Philosophical Themes In Philip K. Dick’s Stories — meeting Saturdays 9 AM Central Time, starting May 2

• Online 10-Week Class - Rene Descartes, Meditations, Objections, and Replies — meeting Thursdays 9 AM Central Time, starting June 4

• Special 1- Day Seminar: Topic TBD — Meeting 9 AM - 3 PM Central Time, Saturday, June 4

I’ll announce each of these in Substack, YouTube, and my social media as they become available for enrollment.

Regular Monthly and Quarterly Events

Each month, I have some regularly scheduled online events that you can take part in, if you’re interested. These include:

• My monthly Ask Me Anything sessions: these are opportunities to ask me questions about a wide range of topics, or to watch my responses to others

• Worlds Of Speculative Fiction: a series now in its 11th year, focusing each month on an author, their works, the narrative universe, and philosophical themes in them

• Classic Metal Class: discussions of a wide range of topics related to classic heavy metal bands, musicians, and movements from the 1970s-1980s and beyond, hosted with my good friend and colleague, Scott Tarulli

I’m also looking to start hosting more regular monthly sessions focused on philosophical topics in Substack Live. I held the first of those earlier this month, focused on New Years Resolutions.

A quarterly, in-person series that is now moving into its 11th year is Philosophers In The Midst Of History, which is hosted at the Frank Weyenberg Library here in the Greater Milwaukee area.

Platforms and Organizations

My wife, Andi Sciacca, and I have been providing workshops, talks, and interviews about Stoicism and relationships for a number of years now, including providing materials that have been used in the International Stoic Week classes. We are in the process of building out something quite a bit more extensive, which we call the Stoic Heart platform. We already have a Substack space staked out, plans for a podcast, monthly events, and a curriculum we’re building. All of that is in addition to the talks and workshops we have already developed and offer to a wide range of interested organizations, groups, institutions, couples, and individuals. We’ll be launching a bit later on in the year, so stay tuned!

Book Projects

I have several different book projects that I hope to make significant progress on over this current year. It’s all a matter of available time, so we’ll see how much I’m able o accomplish. But at the start of the year, we can dream big.

I’ve nearly finished my first edits of transcripts of the series of commentary videos I produced on Epictetus’s Enchiridion some years back. It turns out to run about 83,000 words, and after I add an introduction, the text I’m commenting on, and a glossary, it’ll likely be around 90,000. So a decently long book. I’ll likely self-publish it, both so I can get it out there quickly without having to jump through a lot of publisher hoops, and so that I can offer it at an affordable price.

You may notice that I’ve been publishing a number of what I call “orphaned papers” here in my Substack. I have dozens of papers that I wrote, and often presented at conferences or workshops, and then either never got around to sending out for publication, or they were supposed to be published and then something went off track (e.g. the book one was to be included in got cancelled by the press). I’m thinking of assembling these into one or more volumes (depending on how many of them I find in my files!) which again I’ll self-publish at a pretty affordable price for those interested in reading them.

There’s another longer-term, more massive book project that I’ve been working on for quite a while now. I’ve designed and taught several online classes on Stoicism and the Cardinal Virtues (and may offer it again later this year), and recently, I’ve produced a series of short videos covering topics in Stoic texts focused on cardinal and subordinate virtues. I’ve poured a lot of research into these matters, and I think that there’s likely two books that will come out of it down the line. One will be an extensively researched scholarly book which I’ll seek a home for in some academic press. The other will be more a book for the layperson interested in better understanding the full scope of the Stoic conception of the cardinal and subordinate virtues. If I get ambitious enough, I might also put together a workbook for developing them as well.

Public And Professional Speaking

It is early in the year, but I already have one big invited talk lined up for late January, on the feast of Saint Thomas, out at Mount Angel Seminary, specifically about Aquinas, varieties of Thomism, and the Christian philosophy debates. I’ve been invited as well to speak at one Stoicon-X on the topic of the Stoic sage. And I’m in discussions with organizers and institutions about several other invited workshops and speaking engagements for the year that will involve some travel. More locally, we’re looking to restart the Philosophy Eats series of dinner lectures and discussions.

This year, I’d like to do a lot more public and professional speaking, so in place of my usual course of letting those who would like to book me find me and make the invitation, I’ll be more proactively reaching out to see who would like to bring me in for a talk, workshop, or other event.

Videos And Podcasts

For years, I’ve been pretty productive when it comes to developing high-quality resources on philosophy, religious studies, literature, and political theory in both video and podcast formats. We’re close to passing the 4,000 video mark in my main YouTube channel, and we passed 1,500 episodes in the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. I also produce another podcast in Substack, called Mind & Desire.

I’ll be continuing my usual work in all three of these, but there’s some types of videos I’d like to resume or start producing. Those include:

• more Ideas That Matter interview videos

• more regular Sadler’s Honest Book Review videos

• new book review videos of works that aren’t recent that I’m revisiting

• more Self-Directed Study advice videos

• videos that examine and discuss AITA cases

• videos that examine and discuss After Dinner Conversation stories

• and perhaps a series of videos specifically geared towards helping out complete beginners in philosophy

Digital Housekeeping

I’ve been significantly online for over two decades at this point, and since I’ve switched platforms from time to time, and built out resources and sites in a number of different places, there’s a good bit of, let’s just say, messiness. Sort of like what you accumulate when living in a house, with a garage, basement, shed, and yard that you’ve owned for many years.You don’t always know what you’ve got, or where its kept, and some of it really needs tidying, organization, or a new coat of paint. That’s what I’ll be slowly chipping away at over the course of this year.

This Substack will likely end up being one place where some things ends up. But I’ve also realized I need to build out my PhilPeople profile much more extensively. Frankly, at this point, I can’t say I’m entirely sure about precisely what needs to be attended to in my sprawling online presence. But hopefully, I get things much better organized by the end of 2026.

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Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.