Our Team
James Ryerson
Ryerson has worked for more than two decades at the intersection of scholarship and journalism. Since 2003, he has been an editor at The New York Times, first at the Sunday Magazine and now at the Op-Ed page, specializing in editing pieces about the work of, or by, researchers and scholars. Ryerson is responsible for launching the Gray Matter column that appeared weekly in the Sunday Review section of the Times from December 2015 to January 2019, and which, as its name suggests, is designed to offer readers insight into some of the most intriguing questions about the human mind, the human body, and the world we inhabit. Ryerson was also the Ivory Tower columnist for The New York Times Book Review, covering university press books.
In 2018, he received the Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He is a permanent fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities.
Before working at the Times, Ryerson was an editor at Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life; Legal Affairs: The Magazine of Yale Law School; and the science, culture, and technology magazine Feed.
Ryerson himself also has experience writing on academic topics: He has written introductions to Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will, by David Foster Wallace (Columbia University Press) and Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty (Stanford University Press).
He has lectured on the “journalism of ideas” at Columbia University, New York University and Yale University. He holds a B.A. in History with highest honors and a B.A. in Philosophy, both from Brown University.
Joseph holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Cornell University, where he studied as a College Scholar, Dean’s Scholar, and Rawlings Scholar. In 2019, Mr. Fridman received a M.S. in Media Advocacy as an inaugural member of the joint program offered by the School of Journalism at the College of Art, Media and Design and the School of Law at Northeastern University. In 2020, he completed a Certificate in Business, having pursued a Masters of Business Administration/Masters of Science in Finance degree through the D’amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. He’s currently a full-time Director at Ginkgo Bioworks, the worker-owned synthetic biology platform company, and is working towards a J.D. through the City University of New York School of Law’s evening program.
Fridman was previously the inaugural Editorial Fellow at the Scholars Strategy Network, and is a founding board member of the non-profit Psychgeist with Dave Nussbaum.
He has assisted in the production of hundreds of op-eds and podcasts, as well as the Line Edit masterclass video series and interview series. His writing has appeared in Aeon and Elemental, and he has led the Beyond the Ivory Tower alumni community since 2018.
David is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association, for which he served as editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion. His work has been repeatedly funded by the National Science Foundation and has been regularly featured in the media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR's Radiolab and On Point, and USA Today.
He is the author of How God Works, Emotional Success, The Truth About Trust, and co-author of The Wall Street Journal spotlight psychology bestseller Out of Character. He frequently writes about his work for major publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.
David received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is among the top one percent most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior. She has published multiple op-eds in the New York Times.
In addition to the books Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and How Emotions are Made, Dr. Barrett has published over 240 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes published by Guilford Press. She has also given a popular TED talk with over 6 million views.
Dr. Barrett received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multimillion dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the APS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology in 2021.