Alan Watts was a British and American writer and speaker who called himself a philosophical entertainer and became known for popularizing Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for Western readers. He first gained a following while volunteering as a programmer at KPFA radio in Berkeley, California. His books include The Way of Zen (1957), which brought Zen to the Beat Generation and the counterculture, Psychotherapy East and West (1961), and The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, which questions the idea of the self as an isolated ego.
