Eric Kaplan (born February 23, 1967) is an American television writer, producer, and story editor. His work has included shows such as Late Show with David Letterman, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Malcolm in the Middle, Futurama and Simpsons. He currently works on The Big Bang Theory.
Kaplan was raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn where his father was a "storefront lawyer" and his mother taught high school biology at Erasmus Hall. Kaplan graduated from Hunter College High School and Harvard College (where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon) in 1989.[citation needed] Prior to committing to a career in professional writing, Kaplan had been an English teacher in Thailand. After that he took five years of philosophy graduate school at Columbia and UC Berkeley. While in philosophy graduate school he studied with Donald Davidson, John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus and Bernard Williams. He is qualified to teach philosophy of science, metaphysics, medieval philosophy, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language, and is at work on a thesis on the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty.[citation needed]
Starting in 1986, Kaplan interned for Spy magazine, where his duties included mopping the floors and writing blurb-length film reviews.