The One You Feed - Learn Good Habits to Increase Mindfulness and Happiness and Decrease Anxiety and Depression

Poe Ballantine- Full- The One You Feed

 

 

Poe Ballentine is a great writer. Thank goodness for that because it's through his gift and skill of writing that we get a glimpse into the experiences of his life which reach us at a moving level of beauty, truth, humility, and struggle. In this interview, you'll hear him talk about these things and the gift you'll get as a result is the knowledge and comforting feeling of knowing you are not alone in your struggles through life. You'll learn through hearing what he's learned about self-growth and self-improvement. Give yourself the gift of listening to this episode. You won't be sorry.

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This week we talk to Poe Ballantine

Poe Ballantine is a fiction and nonfiction writer known for his novels and especially his essays, many of which appear in The Sun. One of Ballantine’s short stories was included in Best American Short Stories 1998 and two of his essays have appeared in the Best American Essays series. His essays and short stories have also appeared in the Coal City Review, Kenyon Review, and Atlantic Monthly. Tom Robbins said " Poe Ballantine is the most soulful, insightful, funny, and altogether luminous “under-known” writer in America"

His books include Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere,  Guidelines for Mountain Lion Safety,  501 Minutes to Christ: Personal Essays and Things I Like About America: Personal Essays

 

In This Interview, Poe Ballantine and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Finding himself or becoming someone else
  • The Moral Mechanism of the Molecule
  • Asking, in your own experience - rather than simply in ideas, what do you know?
  • How he found his way out of despair
  • Doing enough work to exonerate yourself
  • How important it is as an artist, creator to be hyper-aware of your life and environment
  • The price of individualism in America
  • How he loves to take care of his wife and son
  • How difficult it is to be married
  • That marriage is the molecular foundation of our society
  • His book - a true crime story, Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere
 

 

 

Direct download: Poe.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:44pm EDT

Robert Thurman- Full- The One You Feed

 

Robert Thurman is the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism and he has recently written a book called Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dali Lama of Tibet. Whether you embrace the teachings of Buddhism or not, this episode will educate you on powerful approaches to growing in wisdom and it will also paint a beautiful picture of how the concepts of Tibetan Buddhism apply in today's world. More than meditation and mindfulness, Robert Thurman gets to the heart of what the Dali Lama is working to achieve for all beings to have peace and enlightenment.

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This week we talk to Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. The New York Times recently hailed him as "the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism."

The first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk and a personal friend of the Dalai Lama for over 40 years, Professor Thurman is a passionate advocate and spokesperson for the truth regarding the current Tibet-China situation and the human rights violations suffered by the Tibetan people under Chinese rule. Professor Thurman also translates important Tibetan and Sanskrit philosophical writings and lectures and writes on Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism; on Asian history, particularly the history of the monastic institution in the Asian civilization; and on critical philosophy, with a focus on the dialogue between the material and inner sciences of the world's religious traditions.

Popularizing the Buddha's teachings is just one of Thurman's creative talents. He is a riveting speaker and an author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, including Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,  Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well, Inner Revolution, The Jewel Tree of Tibet, and Why the Dalai Lama Matters.

His latest book is a graphic biography of the Dalai Lama called Man of Peace: the illustrated life story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet

 

In This Interview, Robert Thurman and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book Man of Peace: the illustrated life story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet
  • Buddha Nature and Buddhahood
  • Enlightenment: When you get it, you realize that you've always had it
  • Whether or not we can actually reach enlightenment in this lifetime
  • His experience of tasting enlightenment
  • Clear light of bliss
  • The Buddha's mind in us
  • We are the Buddha's reality body
  • That the Buddha is pure love
  • That the future Buddha is currently manifesting as dogs
  • Kalachakra
  • That we can find a way to talk with our enemies and find peace
  • The common theme of "Love Thine Enemy" across religions and traditions
  • How the current Dali Lama is working to lay the path for all beings to reach enlightenment
 

 

 

Direct download: Robert_Thurman_Final_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:27pm EDT

In the first of a new series, Eric talks with good friend and Ph.D. Jon Mills.

Today we talk about a seminal paper in our understanding of how adverse childhood experiences can influence our lives decades later. We first explored this work in the conversation with Gabor Mate.

More about the study can be found here.

 

 

Direct download: Jon_Mills-_Trauma_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:57am EDT

Tim Urban - Full- The One You Feed

 
 
Tim Urban writes a pretty famous blog called Wait But Why - have you read it? Whether you have or you've never heard of it before, this episode will not only thoroughly entertain you but it will also help you implement a playful yet powerful approach to growing in wisdom. When it comes to concepts like "the consciousness staircase" or mindfulness about your moment to moment tasks, nothing helps your self-confidence more than reaping the benefits of making good decisions, "out of the fog", in the clarity of awareness. In this episode, Tim Urban teaches you hacks to do just that and you'll chuckle a lot along the way.

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This week we talk to Tim Urban

Tim Urban has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. With wry stick-figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence, Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk

His recent Ted talk has been watched almost 15 million times.

His articles have been regularly republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME, Business Insider and Gizmodo. In 2015, Fast Company wrote that “Wait But Why is disproving the notion that thoughtful, long-form content and virality are mutually exclusive.”

Urban has gained a number of prominent readers as well: authors Sam Harris and Susan Cain, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, TED curator Chris Anderson and Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova.

Recently, Urban received a call from Elon Musk, who told Urban he liked his writing and asked Urban if he’d like to interview him and write about his companies. Urban accepted, and spent the next six months writing a thorough blog series that Vox’s David Roberts called “the meatiest, most fascinating, most satisfying posts I’ve read in ages.” Since then, Urban’s relationship with Musk has continued: Musk invited him to host SpaceX’s launch webcast, solicited Urban’s input and slide illustrations in a talk he did at the December 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris, and recently granted him early access to information about SpaceX's interplanetary transport system for use in a post on Wait But Why.

 

In This Interview, Tim Urban and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • The consciousness staircase
  • That wisdom doesn't correlate with age
  • Step 1: Being in the Fog
  • Step 2: Thinning the fog to reveal context
  • How meditation can help
  • Step 3: Whoa Moments
  • Step 4: We Don't Know What's Going On
  • How he's an agnostic about reality
  • The value of humility
  • How ludicrous certainty can be
 

 

 

Direct download: TimUrbanPart2_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:49pm EDT

Tim Urban - Full- The One You Feed

 
 
Tim Urban writes a pretty famous blog called Wait But Why - have you read it? Whether you have or you've never heard of it before, this episode will not only thoroughly entertain you but it will also help you implement a playful yet powerful approach to ending procrastination and augmenting your productivity on a daily basis. When it comes to things like building habits or mindfulness about your moment to moment tasks, nothing helps your self-confidence more than following through on something you told yourself or others that you were going to do. In this episode, Time Urban teaches you lots of hacks to do just that and you'll chuckle a lot along the way. Get ready to meet these cast of characters: the rational decision maker, the instant gratification monkey, and the panic monster.

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This week we talk to Tim Urban

Tim Urban has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. With wry stick-figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence, Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk
 
His recent Ted talk has been watched almost 15 million times.

His articles have been regularly republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME, Business Insider and Gizmodo. In 2015, Fast Company wrote that “Wait But Why is disproving the notion that thoughtful, long-form content and virality are mutually exclusive.”

Urban has gained a number of prominent readers as well: authors Sam Harris and Susan Cain, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, TED curator Chris Anderson and Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova.

Recently, Urban received a call from Elon Musk, who told Urban he liked his writing and asked Urban if he’d like to interview him and write about his companies. Urban accepted, and spent the next six months writing a thorough blog series that Vox’s David Roberts called “the meatiest, most fascinating, most satisfying posts I’ve read in ages.” Since then, Urban’s relationship with Musk has continued: Musk invited him to host SpaceX’s launch webcast, solicited Urban’s input and slide illustrations in a talk he did at the December 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris, and recently granted him early access to information about SpaceX's interplanetary transport system for use in a post on Wait But Why.

 

In This Interview, Tim Urban and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His blog, Wait But Why
  • The image of the rational mind being trapped inside with an animal
  • How it would be easier if we were just the "animal"
  • How procrastination works: a metaphor
  • Rational decision maker vs the Instant gratification monkey
  • Who has control of the wheel
  • The one thing that the monkey is terrified of: the panic monster
  • Creating your own panic monster by setting external deadlines
  • Which is the alpha character?
  • Chronic procrastinators
  • That when there are no deadlines, you don't really see procrastination happening - and with big life things, this can be very destructive
  • Icky daunting tasks
  • That a building is just a bunch of bricks
  • A book is just a bunch of individual pages 
  • The glorious, large achievement is just a bunch of small, mundane tasks combined
  • The danger of making the bricks too big
  • The importance of keeping promises to ourselves and seeing that track record
  • The power of intentionally starting the day with little wins over the monkey to shift the power dynamic a bit
  • That little steps taken in the right direction gets you there
  • The impact of a habit over time
  • The dark playground vs the dark woods
  • The air is filled with guilt and self-loathing, you're miserable while you're there, rational decision maker asking whyyyy??
  • The happy playground on the other side of the dark woods
  • The various rides in the dark playground 

 

 

Direct download: TimUrbanPart1Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:21pm EDT

Florence Williams- Full- The One You Feed

 
 
Florence Williams shares the scientific research behind the benefit to our mood and our health when we spend time in nature as part of our daily lives. Her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative is full of practical, intuitive wisdom that can be applied regardless of your lifestyle or circumstances. To that point, you'll be surprised at how little time it takes to have a significant impact on things like depression, anxiety, and stress as well as things like blood pressure and cortisol levels. You may have noticed feeling better after a walk in the woods; this episode will explain why by way of some fascinating research.

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This week we talk to Florence Williams

Florence Williams is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books,  and numerous other publications.

She is also the writer and host of the new Audible Original series, Breasts Unbound. She is fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University, her work focuses on the environment, health and science.

Her first book, BREASTS: A Natural and Unnatural History received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science and technology. Her latest book is called: The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative.

 

In This Interview, Florence Williams and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative.
  • The research that supports the fact that when we spend time in nature it can boost our mood
  • That 15 minutes in a forest environment can reduce our cortisol levels
  • Natural Killer Cells (T-cells)
  • The roll of Cypress aerosols
  • Taking in nature as a whole as the benefit
  • That the benefit of nature as a whole being greater than the sum of its parts
  • Nature Deficit Disorder and trying to fill it with other more modern-day things
  • Nature being a better option for some people than meditation
  • Paying attention to our surroundings
  • Achieving a more relaxed, restorative state
  • The effect of the sound of birds
  • The benefits of walking alone in nature
  • The benefits of walking with others in nature
  • Attention Restoration Theory
  • The effects of spending time in nature on different parts of the brain
  • The amount of time we should spend in nature
  • Biophilia
     

 

 

Direct download: Florence_Williams_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:21pm EDT

Danielle Laporte -Full - The One You Feed

Danielle LaPorte is all about being honest when it comes to her experiences on the path to self-improvement, self-growth, and self-empowerment. In this interview, she shares so much of herself that you will remark how brave, vulnerable and real she is and how much you can relate to what she's felt, thought and been through. If you've ever struggled with feeling overwhelmed by the obligations in your life or if walking on a spiritual path has felt like another item on an ever-growing checklist, then this episode is a must listen for you.

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This week we talk to Danielle Laporte

Danielle LaPorte is an invited member of Oprah’s inaugural SuperSoul 100, a group who, in Oprah Winfrey’s words, “is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.” She is also the author of The Fire Starters Sessions: A Guide to Creating Success On Your Own Terms, and The Desire Map: A Guide to Creating Goals With Soul.

Her latest book is White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it Real On Your Spiritual Path— From One Seeker To Another. Millions of visitors go to DanielleLaPorte.com every month for her daily #Truthbombs. It has been named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes, and called “the best place online for kick-ass spirituality.” Danielle’s multi-million dollar company is made up of nine women and one lucky guy, working virtually from five countries. A powerful speaker and poet, and a former business strategist and Washington, DC think-tank exec, Entrepreneur magazine calls Danielle “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.

 

In This Interview, Danielle Laporte and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Her book,White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it Real On Your Spiritual Path— From One Seeker To Another
  • Reframing your obligations into conscious choices
  • Bringing our artistic or creative spirit into everything we do
  • Loosening up under the weight of obligation
  • Spiritual path as yet another thing to achieve, another obligation
  • The practice itself having some delight to it
  • Pain as a motivator, laziness as an obstacle
  • That devotion isn't easy but it's worth it
  • The distinction between pain and suffering
  • That the world is not comprehensible but it is embraceable by embracing the things that are in it
  • Transformation begins with the acceptance of what is
  • Short circuiting the healing process
  • That what's repressed finds a way to sneak out
  • How we have more in common than we have differences
     

 

Direct download: Danielle_Laporte_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:51pm EDT

Scott Stabile- Full- The One You Feed

 

Scott Stabile has lived through some very difficult things in his lifetime, from feeling shame about his sexuality to the murder of his parents when he was just 14 years old. He can verify that life can be very hard. Yet, he has gone on to live a life full of love, empathy, compassion, and forgiveness. Learn some very practical, applicable wisdom in this episode. You will leave the conversation armed with steps to take towards a happier life for yourself.
 

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This week we talk to Scott Stabile

Scott Stabile’s inspirational posts and videos have attracted a huge and devoted social media following. His previous works include Just Love, Iris, and the Li’l Pet Hospital series. Scott also wrote the feature film The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, an eye-opening experience he writes about in his new book, Big Love.

A passionate speaker and love advocate, Scott runs day long empowerment workshops nationally and internationally. He lives in his home state of Michigan with his partner.

 

In This Interview, Scott Stabile and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide Open Heart
  • How shame thrives on secrecy
  • How and when he came out as gay
  • How you help others by being yourself
  • To consider making more and more choices in your life from a place of love
  • That awareness is hard work
  • Asking yourself "what does love invite me to do in this moment?"
  • Love as an energy
  • How his parents were murdered when he was 14 years old
  • That love is an action, more so than it is a feeling
  • Choosing to act from a place of love can be an extraordinarily difficult thing as well as an extraordinarily powerful thing to do in the moment
  • The path of empathy
  • Doing your best to connect with the humanity of others, especially when they have opposing views and they're right in front of you
  • How toxic it is to believe that something is unforgivable and that the pathway to it is empathy and compassion
  • Forgiving because not doing so takes a toll on you as a person
  • How good it feels to be loving
  • The importance of self-care
  • That there is choice in sobriety
  • Depression as a syndrome vs a disease
  • How we are all riding the fine line of addiction all the time
  • The importance of building a more fulfilling life
  • How happiness (and all feelings) is not simply a choice
  • Choosing actions that stand a chance to serve our happiness
  • That action helps assuage fear
     

 

Direct download: Scott_Stabile_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:11pm EDT

Lisa Feldman Barrett - Full- The One You Feed 

Have you ever wondered how emotions are made in our brains? This conversation with Lisa Feldman Barrett will explain this and more and as a result, you will be astounded. Full of scientifically backed concepts that you've probably never heard before, your view on how your brain manages how you feel at any given moment will be totally changed after hearing what this author and researcher has to say. 

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This week we talk to Lisa Feldman Barrett

Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to the book How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Dr. Barrett has published over 200 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.

Dr. Barrett received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multi-million dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Barrett has testified before Congress, presented her research to the FBI, consulted to the National Cancer Institute, appeared on Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and been a featured guest on public television and worldwide radio programs. She is also an elected fellow of Canada’s most prestigious national organization of scholars, the Royal Society of Canada (analogous to the National Academy in the United States).

 

In This Interview, Lisa Feldman Barrett and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Her book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
  • The myth of the lizard brain
  • Emotions don't live anywhere in the brain 
  • Neurons being multi purpose
  • The idea of degeneracy
  • How complex emotions are
  • Multi purpose ingredients in your brain (like in recipes)
  • Our brains predict, rather than react, to the next immediate moment (those are our emotions and subsequent actions) 
  • Confirming or Correcting those guesses (or concepts) based on your past experiences
  • How this process is your brain is trying to make sense of the sensory input of your body in the world
  • How it's more efficient to guess in advance and correct in response than it is to react
  • The importance of keeping your body's energy budget in balance
  • We see the world as we believe it to be, through our concepts
  • Interoception - feedback from your body on how it's systems are working
  • Your brain is trying to anticipate what your body is going to need and then provide what's necessary to meet those needs before they arise
  • Tragic Embodiment
  • Most of the time you don't feel sensations from your body in a very precise way and if you do, you feel them in simple terms - "affect"
  • More intense sensations are used to make emotions whereas less intense ones are used to make thoughts and other things
  • How illness is an imbalance in systems in your body and how we experience it
  • How basic body sensations are the cause of our emotions and how we feel
  • How every waking moment of your life is simultaneously physical and mental
  • When your body budget is out of balance/disrupted, you will feel distressed
  • Reframing the feeling of anxiety as "preparing for something tough" and this is a good sign that your body is preparing for something tough
  • Take care of yourself and your body to feel better (sleep, eat, nutrition)
  • Understanding emotion and being more granular in our description is helpful because we better know what to do or not to do about it
  • When you're depressed or anxious, the distress is not helpful if you personalize it
     

 

Direct download: Lisa_Feldman_Barrett_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:39pm EDT

Sean Carroll- Full- The One You Feed

Think theoretical physics is irrelevant to your everyday life and way over your head? You'll think differently after listening to this interview with Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist, poetic naturalist, and author.The meaning of life, the finitude of life, the choices we make and our experience of happiness and suffering all have a connection back to the scientific realm that will both fascinate and provoke thought in you. 

 

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This week we talk to Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Harvard University. His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe. Recently, Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and the emergence of complexity. Carroll is the author of The Particle at the End of the Universe and From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time,

He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of London. He has appeared on TV shows such as The Colbert Report, PBS's NOVA, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and frequently serves as a science consultant for film and television.
 

In This Interview, Sean Carroll and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, The Big Picture; On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself
  • That who we become is a combination of the choices we make and what the Universe gives us
  • The philosophy of Poetic Naturalism - 1 world, many ways of talking about it
  • 3 Levels of Stories: Fundamental, Emergent, Comprehensive
  • What it means to be real
  • You can't make "ought" out of "is"
  • That facts and moral values are different things
  • His perspective on life mattering - that it comes from within, that it's not imposed on us from the outside
  • The fact that we care is the origin of things mattering in this life and world
  • Life is a process, it's something that's happening - always moving and changing - and that there's always something else that we want
  • How his book lays out the design for you to decide how to live your life and what kind of person you want to be
  • The mistake of fetishizing happiness
  • How you cannot separate happiness and suffering in life - especially a life well lived
  • That our goal shouldn't be to reach some state of happiness and stay there because life is a dynamic process and it doesn't work like that
  • The finitude of life
  • The average human lives for three billion heartbeats
  • That the difference between right and wrong is up to us to decide and that can be scary
  • That the world - including us - is only really made up of 3 basic particles and 3 basic forces
  • That the big bang isn't necessarily the beginning of the universe but it's as far back as we can go
  • Physics books for the non-science people - look for books by either Brian Greene or Lisa Randall
  • Life's Ratchet by Peter Hoffman is another interesting book for a non-science person
     

 

Direct download: Sean_Carroll_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:17pm EDT

Spring Washam - Full- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Spring Washam

Spring Washam is a well-known meditation and dharma teacher based in Oakland, California. She is a founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center located in downtown Oakland. She is the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. In addition to being a teacher, she is also a healer, facilitator, spiritual activist, and writer. Her upcoming book entitled, A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment, will be available in stores on November 7th, 2017. She has studied numerous meditation practices and Buddhist philosophy since 1997. She has practiced and studied under some of the most preeminent meditation masters in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism. She has studied indigenous healing practices and works with students individually from around the world. She has completed a six -year teacher-training program under the guidance of Jack Kornfield and is now on the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness based healing practices into diverse communities and is committed to enriching the lives of disenfranchised people everywhere. She currently travels and teaches workshops, classes, and retreats worldwide.

 

In This Interview, Spring Washam and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment
  • How she became a meditation teacher
  • How self-compassion is at the heart of Buddhist teachings
  • How being with ourselves in difficult times is an act of mercy
  • How a synonym for mindfulness is remembering
  • How we are always trying to change consciousness
  • Her controversial Peru ayahuasca retreats
  • How meditation and mindfulness was not enough to deal with her trauma
  • Her first ayahuasca ceremony
  • What ayahuasca is
  • The risks of using entheogens
  • The debate in the Buddhist community about this approach
  • Whether you need to go to the jungle for this
  • How we often need multiple approaches to healing ourselves
  • How feeling like you are innately good changes the whole path
     

 

 

Direct download: Spring_Washam_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:40pm EDT

Eric is interviewed on Awesome at Your Job podcast.  Lot's of the key ideas from the show are discussed here.

Direct download: Awesome_at_your_Job_Featuring_Eric_Zimmer.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:06pm EDT

Akshay Nanavati- Full- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Akshay Nanavati

After overcoming drug addiction, alcoholism, PTSD from fighting the war in Iraq and recovering from the brink of suicide, Akshay Nanavati has since explored the most hostile environments on the planet and built a business helping people live limitless lifestyles. Combining his life experience with years of research in science and spirituality, he wrote a book called “Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear Into Health, Wealth and Happiness.” Of the book, The Dalai Lama said “Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives.”

 

In This Interview, Akshay Nanavati and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, Fearvana: The revolutionary science of how to turn fear into health, wealth, and happiness
  • How he got the Dali Lama to write the forward for his book
  • That we don't control what first shows up in our brain
  • How if you feel fear and stress is not your fault
  • The second dart/arrow parable
  • Acting your way into right thinking literally restructures the pathways in your brain
  • The ability to develop a positive relationship to suffering
  • Committing yourself to the worthy struggle
  • Reducing life to the simplest next step
  • Dealing with fear - it's ok to be scared
  • Bringing the rational mind into fearful situations
  • The challenge response
  • Fear is a gift if you believe it to be
  • The growth mindset vs The fixed mindset
  • If you want to be great you have to believe that you are
  • How ego can be both helpful and unhelpful
  • The worthy struggle
  • Keeping things automated in your day so that you can save self-discipline or willpower for the times you need it
     
     

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Direct download: Akshay_Nanavati_2_Final_V2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:43pm EDT

Eric Barker- Full - The One You Feed

 

 

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This week we talk to Eric Barker

Eric is a thought leader in the field of success. His humorous but practical blog, Barking up the Wrong Tree, presents science-based answers and expert insight on success in life. Over 270,000 people subscribe to his weekly email update and his content is syndicated by Time, The Week, and Business Insider. He has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and he was a columnist for Wired. With a writing career spanning over twenty years, Eric is also a sought-after speaker and interview subject and has been invited to speak at MIT, West Point, NPR affiliates, and on morning television.

His first book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong is available now.

In This Interview, Eric Barker and I Discuss...

  • His book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
  • How he defines success
  • Achievement, Happiness, Significance, Legacy
  • The dangers of only using one metric for happiness
  • How money is a lever to something else that makes you happy rather than the thing that makes you happy in and of itself
  • There's no finish line in the quest of what makes me feel good
  • We must decide what is "enough"
  • New and novel make our brains happy
  • We must decide what really is going to make us happy in the long run
  • Turning what we do in our lives into games can be helpful in increasing our persistence and grit
  • Games have these attributes: Winnable, Novelty, Goals, Instantaneous Feedback
  • A feeling of progress and meaningful work keeps us engaged
  • Challenging yourself in a familiar task
  • True burnout is when you start to feel pessimistic about your job so you withdraw and then you get poor feedback so you finally disengage
  • Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
  • A change is as good as a rest
  • That we are telling ourselves stories about what's has meaning and what doesn't
  • How telling your children about their lineage will increase the likelihood they stay away from drugs, stay in school etc
  • Therapy as editing the story we're telling about our lives
  • Cognitive reappraisal
  • The role of positive self-talk
  • I can do it vs I can't take this anymore
  • If you break your arm you wouldn't say "I am broken" you'd say "My arm is broken"
  • Listening to our thoughts from a distance and asking "is this useful?" to be more mindful about what thoughts we identify with
  • We don't choose what makes us happy, we choose what's easy
  • The role of a plan
  • How anticipation is happiness
     
     

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m is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.

The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”

The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feed 

The Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable.

This parable goes by many names including:

The Tale of Two Wolves

The Parable of the Two Wolves

Two Wolves

Which Wolf Do You Feed

Which Wolf are You Feeding

Which Wolf Will You Feed

It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.

Direct download: Eric_Barker_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:03pm EDT

Gregg Krech- Full- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Gregg Krech

GREGG KRECH is an author, poet, and one of the leading authorities on Japanese Psychology in North America. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and Experience Life. His books include Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection, A Natural Approach to Mental Wellness, and  The Art of Taking Action.  His newest book, Question Your Life, will be available soon.

Gregg and his wife, Linda, founded the ToDo Institute (http://www.todoinstitute.org), a non-profit center in Vermont that uses Japanese Psychology as an alternative to traditional Western approaches to psychology. Over the past 25 years, Gregg has introduced Japanese Psychology, particularly Naikan Therapy, Morita Therapy and Kaizen, to thousands of people through his workshops and online courses. His work supports a blend of the psychological, the spiritual and the practical, and helps individuals to clarify purpose, cultivate gratitude, develop compassion and engage in meaningful action. He is a member of the North American Naikan Counsel and Editor in Chief for the quarterly journal "Thirty Thousand Days: A Journal for Purposeful Living.

 

In This Interview, Gregg Krech and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, The Art of Taking Actions: Lessons from Japanese Psychology
  • How Eastern wisdom is directed towards taking action, as well as contemplation
  • Taking your practice off your cushion
  • The misguided premise that we have to figure things out in our life before we can act
  • The power of momentum in action when small steps are taken
  • Cultivating gratitude
  • Avoidance, resignation, complaining
  • How accepting things as they are isn't necessarily passive
  • That complaining keeps us stuck in focusing on the trouble in our lives
  • The overlap between ACT and Japenese Therapy
  • Feelings and thoughts are uncontrollable by our will
  • Allowing feelings to be what they are but not letting them inhibit our ability to move forward and take action
  • Taking action based on the needs of the situation rather than just on the feelings we have
  •  How essential it is to step back from our lives and reflect and then make choices on how you need to move forward
  • How most of the time we do not feel like doing the things that need to be done
  • Exercise being an example!
  • The maxim: Lead with the body
  • How if you don't feel like something now, you're probably never really going to want to do it so get it done now
  • That the anticipation is often worse than the consummation
  • His next book that focuses on self-reflection
 

 

 

Direct download: Gregg_Krech_Final_V2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:23pm EDT

Matthew Quick - Full -The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Matthew Quick

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film; The Good Luck of Right Now; Love May Fail; The Reason You Are Alive; and four young adult novels: Sorta Like a Rock Star; Boy21; Forgive Me Leonard Peacock; and Every Exquisite Thing. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an LA Times Book Prize finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, a Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis 2016 (German Youth Literature Prize) nominee, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer’s Best Books for NPR. The Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. All of his books have been optioned for film.

In This Interview, Matthew Quick and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His new book, The Reason You're Alive
  • ICATS - what it means and why limiting it in your life is helpful to anxiety
  • How public speaking causes him to have anxiety
  • His calming practices to manage his anxiety
  • Why dismissing whole groups of people is a mistake
  • The importance and benefit of meeting people who are different than you
  • Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comforted
  • Generational tendencies in worldviews
  • The damage that's done when we shame others about their thoughts
  • The relationship between anger and fear
  • How silencing people is un-American and frustrating
  • The transparency of the main character in his new book
  • Humor is experiencing the unexpected
  • Laughing and Crying give relief to tension
  • The major life changes he has made over the past 3 years and their impact
  • Believing he couldn't function without alcohol and Rxs
  • The long-term benefit of passing on some forms of short term relief
  • The power of the past to continue to live on
  • Every experience leaves an impact on you and affects the rest of your life
  • The power of focusing on process and not result
 

 

 

Direct download: Matthew_Quick_3_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:32pm EDT

Russ Harris- Full - The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Russ Harris

Russ Harris is a medical practitioner, psychotherapist, and leading expert in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). His books include ACT with Love, ACT Made Simple, The Confidence Gap, and The Happiness Trap, which has now been translated into twenty-two languages. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, and travels internationally to train mental health professionals in the ACT approach.

In This Interview, Russ Harris and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • The principle of connection in ACT
  • Practicing attention in the shower
  • The exercise of "notice 5 things"
  • How to notice the person you come home to in a new way
  • The physical practices of yoga and tai chi
  • The observing self vs the thinking self
  • The scientific study of spirituality
  • Living a spiritual life even if it's not a religious life
  • Values = desired qualities of action
  • The difference between goals and values
  • Examples of how you can live your values on your way to your goals
  • Committed Action
  • Examining your life to identify areas where your behavior is not reflecting your values
  • The basic ACT formula of "Be Present, Open Up, Do What Matters"
 

 

 

Direct download: Russ_Harris_2_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:57pm EDT

Russ Harris- Full - The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Russ Harris

Russ Harris is a medical practitioner, psychotherapist, and leading expert in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). His books include ACT with Love, ACT Made Simple, The Confidence Gap, and The Happiness Trap, which has now been translated into twenty-two languages. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, and travels internationally to train mental health professionals in the ACT approach.

In This Interview, Russ Harris and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Getting the wolves to cooperate and not battle
  • Embracing even our most difficult feelings
  • The Reality Slap and the Reality Gap
  • An overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
  • The Serenity Challenge
  • How we always have a chance to improve our situation 
  • Taking the action that is needed regardless of what we feel
  • What "psychological flexibility" is
  • Cognitive defusion techniques
  • Recognizing that are thoughts are not facts
  • Asking the question "Is this thought useful"?
  • Noticing and Naming our thoughts and feelings
  • "The Greatest Hits" approach
  • The "I'm not good enough" story"
  • "I'm having the thought that" de-fusion method
  • The artificial distinction between thoughts and emotions
  • The Struggle Switch
 
 

 

Direct download: Russ_Harris_1_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:43pm EDT

Justin Stenstrom - Full- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Justin Stenstrom

Justin Stenstrom the founder of EliteManMagazine.com, the host of the Elite Man Podcast on iTunes, a best-selling author, life coach, and speaker.

He has been featured on major news websites like The Huffington Post, Maxim, The Good Men Project, Lifehack, Elite Daily, and many more.

In This Interview, Justin Stenstrom and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His podcast, The Elite Man
  • Taking control of the thoughts in your head
  • Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)
  • Hypnosis
  • How he has battled anxiety, panic attacks, and depression in his life
  • The powerful, subconscious mind vs the conscious mind
  • The role of positive affirmations and suggestions
  • Reprogramming the subconscious mind to be happier
  • What a successful hypnotic session feels like
  • How some people can be hypnotized and others cannot
  • The key learnings from his podcast
  • The guests from his podcast who stick out to him
  • The power of failure or rejection to propel people forward in their lives and/or careers
  • The supplements that he recommends for depression
  • Fish Oil with DHA and EPA
  • Omega 6 and Omega 3 ratio
  • Vitamin D
  • B complex
  • Magnesium Citrate
 
 
Direct download: Justin_Stenstrom_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:42pm EDT

Heather Havrilesky -Full- The One You Feed
LA Times- Michael Owen Baker

 

 

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This week we talk to Heather Havrilesky

Heather Havrilesky writes the popular advice column Ask Polly for New York Magazine’s The Cut. She is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness and the new advice book How to Be a Person in the World. She writes The Best Seller List column for Book Forum and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Los Angeles Times, NPR's All Things Considered, and many other publications.

In This Interview, Heather Havrilesky and I Discuss...

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Her book, How to Be a Person in the World
  • Coming to peace with your flaws
  • Finding a place within yourself where who you are is enough
  • What a beautiful life is to her
  • How she is constantly checking and rebalancing areas of her life
  • The serenity prayer
  • "Is the juice worth the squeeze?"
  • That touching the same flame can be dangerous to some people
  • Seeing your life as a series of problems instead of a patchwork of things to savor
  • That there isn't an objectively "good way to be"
  • How people are far more complex than we give them credit for
  • The question of "does it serve you" is a good one to ask yourself in relationships
  • Not knowing how to get below the surface with people
  • How she has finally learned to relax around other people
  • That people are trapped in their head
  • To not beat yourself up for falling into the same "pot holes" over and over
 
 

 

 

Direct download: Heather_Havrileskly_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:20pm EDT

Colin Gawel Full The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Colin Gawel

Colin Gawel is the guitarist of the American rock band, Watershed. Colin also has a solo career both with and without his backing band - Colin Gawel and the Lonely  Bones. The album Superior - The Best of Colin Gawel was released in Dec 2016. Colin also lead writer, editor, and founder of the website Pencilstorm and the owner of the legendary Colin's Coffee in Columbus, Ohio.

This conversation was recorded live in Colin's kitchen and is focused on fatherhood in honor of Father's Day this weekend.

In This Interview, Colin Gawel and I Discuss...

  • Father's Day
  • His song, Dad Can't Help You Now
  • The challenge of watching your child live life beyond your protection
  • What it feels like as a parent for your child to leave home
  • Talking to your children about addiction in their family history
  • Being on the little league baseball team together as kids
  • How important it is to come back from adversity
  • Doing things for the love of doing them rather than for the anticipated outcome
  • His time in the band, Watershed
  • Keeping things in balance in life
  • That time is precious
  • How we find resilience in life
  • The importance of the people you surround yourself with
  • How he writes about what it's like to be an adult in his music
  • His song, The Words We Say
  • How different people react and interpret his songs differently
  • How unusual it is that as a musician, he prefers to perform sober rather than high on something
  • That he's conscious of how his son sees him consuming alcohol
  • Our mutual love of music
  • His song, Try a Little Faith
 
 

 

 

Direct download: Colin_Gawel_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:50pm EDT

Chris Niebauer - Full The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Chris Niebauer

Chris Niebauer received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuropsychology from the University of Toledo where he specialized in left-right brain differences. He has conducted research on consciousness, handedness, beliefs and the sense of self and is currently an associate professor of cognitive psychology at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. When he is not teaching, Chris likes to play guitar, spend time with his family, and work on new books. His new book is called The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left Brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement

In This Interview, Chris Niebauer and I Discuss...

  • His book, The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left Brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement
  • That your thoughts and behaviors should match and when they don't you look to make it happen - Cognitive Dissonance
  • Confirmation Bias
  • The power of gratitude
  • The mechanics of thoughts themselves
  • The law of opposition
  • Why if you accept a bad mood, it begins to dissipate
  • That the universe is always becoming something that it isn't
  • The good and bad news about the ego
  • The impermanence of "things"
  • The eternal nature of "verbs"
  • The often incorrect storytelling, or pattern finding nature of the left brain
  • The left brain interpreter
  • The ego as a story that we tell ourselves
  • The challenge of finding consciousness in the brain
  • "Doing" rather than "having" consciousness
  • The analogy of jogging to consciousness or ego: if you stop jogging and pat yourself down trying to find the "jogging" in you. It's a verb, not a noun
  • The connection between pattern finding and depression vs anxiety
  • A state of enlightenment and the left, pattern-finding brain
  • How we want the universe to be a mystery
 
 

 

 

Direct download: Chris_Niebauer_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:13pm EDT

Thomas Sterner Full1 The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Thomas Sterner

Thomas Sterner is the founder and CEO of The Practicing Mind Institute. He is considered an expert in Present Moment Functioning. He is a popular and in-demand speaker who works with high-performance individuals including, athletes, industry groups and individuals, helping them to operate effectively within high-stress situations so that they can break through to new levels of mastery.

He has been featured in top media outlets such as NPR and Fox News. He is the author of the best seller The Practicing Mind. His latest book is called Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life

In This Interview, Thomas Sterner and I Discuss...

  • His newest book, Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life
  • How you can't change anything that you're not aware of
  • That most of us spend our day as someone in their thoughts as opposed to someone who is having thoughts
  • Meditation being the vehicle for growing in self-awareness
  • Learning to recognize the truth that "I am not my thoughts, I am the one who has thoughts"
  • The strengths of being observer oriented rather than in a state of reactivity
  • That people who think they've had a "bad meditation" have actually had a very good meditation
  • That meditation is never a done task
  • The value of thinking of meditation like you do exercising
  • The innate sense in us that is misinterpreted
  • That the desire to expand is built into our DNA
  • The power of the question, 'And then what?"
  • That real perfection is the ability to expand infinitely
  • It's the interpretation of the experience that makes it feel the way it does
  • Making decisions about how to handle a "road block" beforehand
  • How we can control our emotions and doing so is a skill
  • The difference between a feeling and the truth
  • The importance of setting goals with accurate information
  • How you have to be in a situation to learn how to function in that situation
  • That struggle is a sign that we are expanding and learning and up against our threshold

 

 

Direct download: Thomas_Sterner_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:26pm EDT

Dani Shapiro Full - The One You Feed
Credit Kwaku Alston

 

 

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This week we talk to Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of three memoirs and 5 novels.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House. The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on NPR's “This American Life”.  Her newest book is Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage

 

In This Interview, Dani Shapiro and I Discuss...

  • Her newest book, Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
  • Her book, Devotion: A Memoir
  • How we are all connected
  • Her history with Orthodox Judaism
  • This sense that she had to pray though she didn't know who or what she was praying to
  • Her process of figuring out what she believes in a spiritual realm
  • Living inside the questions, exploring spiritual wisdom
  • How she moved away from an all or nothing mentality
  • That if her only two choices are "all or nothing", she's going with nothing
  • With her book Devotion: A Memoir, she wrote the book so that she could go on the journey, not the other way around
  • "If you want to do something, begin it, because action has magic, grace and power in it." - Goethe
  • The "third thing" that's essential in relationships
  • What it means to walk through life with another person
  • What it is like to be comfortable not knowing things in life
  • The saying "we can make the best out of everything that happens" vs "everything happens for a reason"
  • Her parents terrible accident
  • The death of her father and it's effect on her life

 

 

Direct download: Dani_Shapiro_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:51pm EDT

Peter Singer Full1- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer, is an Australian moral philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book Animal Liberation, in which he argues in favor of vegetarianism, and his essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality, in which he argues in favor of donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he announced in The Point of View of the Universe that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian.

On two occasions, Singer served as chair of the philosophy department at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996 he stood unsuccessfully as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004 Singer was recognized as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies, and in 2006 he was voted one of Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals. Singer is a cofounder of Animals Australia and the founder of The Life You Can Save.

In This Interview, Peter Singer and I Discuss...

  • His book, Ethics and the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
  • How he's widely considered the most famous living philosopher
  • Utilitarian philosophy
  • The importance of preventing unnecessary suffering
  • How the world is better today than it's ever been
  • The reasons why we don't donate to help save children across the world
  • Where to find highly vetted charity organizations to donate to
  • How we've evolved to respond to help the person right in front of us but not yet to respond to someone who needs help on the other side of the world
  • The science of measuring happiness
  • Which is a better, more important question: asking people if they're satisfied with their lives or enjoying their lives moment to moment
  • Reducing unavoidable suffering vs. making people happier
  • The link between happiness and money at various levels of society
  • The importance of living in accordance with your values
  • The importance of believing that your life has some purpose
  • Personal identity or the idea of self
  • The public good as a value and then individual liberty as another value
  • Physician-assisted suicide
  • His views on animal rights
  • The value of starting new things later in life and taking on things you may not be great at

 

It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.

Direct download: Peter_Singer_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:25pm EDT

Kurt Gray- Full- The One You Feed
Photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office


 

 

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This week we talk to Kurt Gray

Kurt Gray is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He received his BSc from the University of Waterloo and his Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. He studies the mysteries of subjective experience and asks such deep philosophical questions as: Why are humanoid robots creepy? Why do ghosts always have unfinished business? Why do grandma's cookies taste the best? And why do adult film stars seem stupid? His research suggests that these questions—and many more—are rooted in the phenomenon of mind perception. Mind perception also forms the essence of moral cognition.

In science, he likes to wield Occam's razor to defend parsimony, asking whether complex phenomena can be simplified and understood through basic processes. These phenomena include moral judgment, group genesis, and psychopathology. He has been named an APS Rising Star and was awarded the Janet Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Research.  He was also given the SPSP Theoretical Innovation Award for the article "Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality." His work has been generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He recently published the book,  The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters

In This Interview, Kurt Gray and I Discuss...

  • His book, The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters
  • People who we perceive as having a mind similar to ours
  • The uncertainty about the minds of others
  • The two fundamentally different factors in how we see minds
  • Agency: the capacity to act and to do
  • Experience: the capacity to feel and to sense
  • The moral responsibility connected to these two things
  • Thinking doers
  • Vulnerable feelers
  • Didactic completion
  • The objectification of women
  • That child abuse often occurs with parents who view their children as having a higher agency than they are capable of having
  • The danger of inferring intention
  • Moral typecasting
  • That we treat our heroes poorly
  • The Just World theory
  • How we rationalize our behavior
  • That we give more sympathy to people who are at a greater distance from us
  • The poorer you are, the more likely you are to believe in God
  • Seeking control as a motivation
  • How to increase self-control
  • The implementation intention study
  • The when and the then and how it takes away self-control entirely
  • What the self is from the perspective of his work
  • The analogy of particle board for the self
  • The way people respond morally is the most essential to our perception of who they are (vs physical traits)
  • That we perceive the world rather than understand it directly

 

 

Direct download: Kurt_Gray_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:16am EDT

Sam Weinman- Full- The One You Feed
 

 

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This week we talk to Sam Weinman about losing

Sam Weinman is Golf Digest’s digital editor. He previously covered professional golf and the NHL for Gannett Newspapers. His first book is called WIN AT LOSING: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead To Our Greatest Gains

In This Interview, Sam Weinman and I Discuss...

  • His book, Win at Losing: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead to Our Greatest Gains
  • The truth that we learn more from losing than we do from winning
  • That you're far better served listening to those who have lost constructively than those who've simply won
  • How you can learn to lose and fail better
  • That sports are a window into everything else in life
  • The difference between losing and failure
  • The '87 Masters lesson
  • How to find the balance between being hard on yourself and beating the sh*t out of yourself
  • The power of talking to yourself like you would a really good friend
  • Shifting the emphasis away from the results and more towards an ongoing process
  • That if you're always the victim, there's nothing you can do about your circumstances
  • The relationship between a growth and a fixed mindset and focusing on the goal vs the results
  • Counterfactual thinking: Focusing on what could have been vs what is
  • The fact that losing teaches you more about who you are than winning teaches you
  • How your past doesn't define you, it prepares you
  • What "not this but that" means
  • Post Traumatic Growth
  • Ways to foster resilience in yourself
  • Cognitive Restructuring
  • How important context and mindset is

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Direct download: Sam_Weinman_FINAL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:42pm EDT

Tom Asacker Full The One You Feed 1 

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This week we talk to Tom Asacker

Tom Asacker, a popular speaker and acclaimed author, is recognized by Inc. Magazine, M.I.T., and Y.E.O. as a past member of their Birthing of Giants executive leadership program. He is a former General Electric executive, recipient of the George Land Innovator of the Year Award, and a former high-tech business owner. Asacker has been a strategic adviser to startups and Fortune-listed companies. He is the author of critically acclaimed books including his latest, I Am Keats. 

In This Interview, Tom Asacker and I Discuss...

  • His book, I am Keats: Escape Your Mind and Free Yourself
  • John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • That once you have a story, that's the end of any change
  • How limiting a story is
  • That we are spinning stories all of the time
  • The difference between fact vs truth
  • How attached we are to our perception of the world
  • That technology promotes the myth that we are in control
  • The truth that you can't learn about life by merely reading about it, you can only truly learn about life by living it
  • Our reasoning mind that differentiates us as animals
  • That life is a journey of paradoxes and ambiguity
  • The importance of being empathizing and being mindful throughout this journey
  • The desire for meaning
  • How everyone is looking for meaning externally in their lives
  • How that won't work because our culture is broken
  • That it is a personal discovery journey to live life
  • How we always have the opportunity to make other people's lives better but we have to be awake in life to do so
  • The importance of control and certainty in our lives
  • How to differentiate the voices in our heads
  • That the end result of anything that we're seeking is a feeling
  • Human nature is to be curious, compassionate and creative
  • What would happen if characters in movies could control their scenes? The result would be crushingly boring movies. Can you see the correlation between this idea and life itself?

 

 

Direct download: TomAsackerFinal.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:40pm EDT

 Sarah Kaufman- Full- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Sarah Kaufman about grace

SARAH L. KAUFMAN is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, author, journalist and educator. For more than 30 years, she has focused on the union of art and everyday living. She is the dance critic and senior arts writer of the Washington Post, where she has written about the performing arts, pop culture, sports and body language since 1993. Her book, THE ART OF GRACE: On Moving Well Through Life, won a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, was a Washington Post Notable Book of 2015 and has been featured on NPR’s “On Point with Tom Ashbrook.” Sarah Kaufman recently appeared at the South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival, speaking on a panel inspired by her book, titled, "Can Grace Survive in the Digital Age?" She has taught and lectured at universities and institutes around the country. In 2010 she became the first dance critic in 35 years to win the Pulitzer Prize.

In This Interview, Sarah Kaufman and I Discuss...

  • Her book, The Art of Grace on Moving Well Through Life
  • How she defines grace
  • The idea of ease at it relates to grace
  • The three different types of grace that she looks at in her book
  • Physical Grace
  • Social Grace
  • Spiritual Grace
  • That grace exists where we forget ourselves and aim instead to bring pleasure to others
  • The fact that we have a "grace gap" in our current culture
  • The religious take on grace
  • The relationship between overload and grace
  • That grace is a worldview and a philosophy that allows us to take care of ourselves and others
  • Considering the idea of "defying gravity" when considering the idea of grace
  • The paradox of grace
  • That practice makes graceful
  • The graceful balance skill with ease
  • The role of movement in grace
  • Posture - how do you do it and why is it important
  • The grace of a smooth running commercial kitchen
  • How being present is crucial to observing grace
  • That grace doesn't demand perfection, it simply means that we lean into our humanity
  • Tips to practice grace

 

 

Direct download: Sarah_Kaufman_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:00pm EDT

 

Joey Svendsen- Full- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Joey Svendsen

Joey Svendsen grew up in Charleston, SC and received a degree in Elementary Education from Winthrop University in 1999. After graduation, he taught school for 5 years and served as a youth minister at New Beginnings Church in James Island.

He is now the campus pastor Joey for the James Island Campus of Seacoast Church.

His book is called Fundamentalist and describes his journey of growing up in a fundamentalist church while having OCD and depression.

He is also part of the popular The Bad Christian Podcast

 In This Interview, Joey Svendsen and I Discuss...

  • How the rigid do's and don'ts found in Christianity are so contrary to Jesus
  • How he found a form of Christianity that worked for him, so much so that he became a pastor
  • His podcast, Bad Christian
  • How he grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church as a child with OCD and depression
  • How we can accept that as humans we're flawed and also move forward with a good life
  • Scrupulosity
  • That you can train your brain to be consumed with fear, self-loathing and punishment
  • How his goal is to be a catalyst to unity and understanding
  • That we the people make the country regardless of what's happening in the government
  • The stupidity and ignorance of assuming your beliefs are 100% right and the beliefs of the other side is 100% wrong
  • His beautiful description of depression
  • That it's hard to properly evaluate a situation when your brain is the problem
  • How he manages his periods of depression
  • The importance of having grace with those suffering from depression
  • Thinking of the brain as a physical organ when it comes to depression
  • How important it is to give people the benefit of the doubt
  • How his view of depression has evolved
  • How to be open

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Direct download: Joey_Svendsen_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:52pm EDT

Direct download: Fighting_Depression_Mini-_Episode_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:53pm EDT

 

Mark Shapiro Full The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Mark Shapiro about being authentic

Mark Shapiro is a former marketing director at Showtime Networks Inc., Mark left his six-figure corporate job after 12 years and is on a mission to bring more of what’s real & authentic to the world. He is the founder of AreYouBeingReal.com, the Host of The One & Only Podcast, and a heralded transformational trainer, coach, and speaker.

 In This Interview, Mark Shapiro and I Discuss...

  • His podcast, The One and Only
  • What "authenticity" means to him
  • What it means to live "authentically"
  • Why authenticity is important
  • How focusing on authenticity can build confidence, liberate you and fulfill you
  • How living authentically can bring huge value to the world
  • That it can be hard not to live authentically
  • His choice to leave corporate America
  • People who are not afraid to be themselves
  • People who are afraid to be themselves
  • How living in alignment with your core values can contribute to living authentically
  • That we're either growing or we're dying
  • To always keep the door open to growth and redefining who we are
  • How to remain flexible to new ideas as we age
  • That though we don't like to be uncomfortable, it's rewarding when we take smart risks and try something new
  • How setting goals and being held accountable supports living outside our comfort zones
  • Doing the thing that scares you the most first thing in the day
  • The questions we can ask ourselves to see if we're living authentically

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Direct download: Mark_Shapiro_Final_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:13pm EDT

 

Charles Fernyhough-Full- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Charles Fernyhough about the voices in our heads

Charles Fernyhough is a writer and psychologist. His non-fiction book about his daughter’s psychological development, A Thousand Days of Wonder, was translated into eight languages. His book on autobiographical memory, Pieces of Light was shortlisted for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. 

His latest non-fiction book is called The Voices Within. He is the author of two novels, The Auctioneer and A Box Of Birds. He has written for TIME Ideas, Nature, New Scientist, BBC Focus, Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Literary Review, Sunday Telegraph, Lancet, Scotland on Sunday, Huffington Post, Daily Beast and Sydney Morning Herald. He blogs for the US magazine Psychology Today and has made numerous radio appearances in the UK and US. He has acted as consultant on theatre productions on Broadway and the West End (‘The River’, Royal Court, 2012, and The Circle in the Square, 2014; ‘Old Times’, Harold Pinter Theatre, 2013), numerous TV (BBC1 and Channel 4) and radio documentaries and several other artistic projects. 

He was shortlisted for the 2015 Transmission Prize for the communication of ideas. He is a part-time chair in psychology at Durham University, UK, where he leads the interdisciplinary Hearing the Voice project, investigating the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations. 

 In This Interview, Charles Fernyhough and I Discuss...

  • His new book, The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves
  • The stages of speech in childhood development and how it relates to our inner voice in life
  • The theory that says that our internal speech comes from external speech that we hear/the dialogue we hear as a child which we eventually move inward and it becomes our internal speech
  • Vygotsky's theory
  • What inner speech does for us
  • Inner speech plays a role in regulating behavior
  • It has a role in imagination and creativity
  • It has a role in creating a self
  • That the fact that we create and construct a self, doesn't mean that it is an illusion
  • The theory that says that inner speech is how we bring different parts of our brain together into a coherent narrative
  • How using inner speech skillfully can give us significant advantages in life
  • That talking out loud to yourself actually probably serves some useful function
  • Social speech - private speech - inner speech
  • As the task gets more difficult, children and adults move from inner speech to more private speech
  • How difficult it is to study inner speech
  • The dialogic thinking model
  • How his research that shows it can be helpful to teach mentally ill people who hear voices in their head to think differently about this form of inner speech
  • Theories about why people hear different voices in their head
  • That there is a strong correlation between childhood trauma and hearing voices in one's head as an adult
  • That people hear the voices of the people in books that they've read
  • Experiential crossing
  • How to work with your inner speech to improve the quality of the experience of your life
  • How difficult it is to silence your inner voice so it's better to learn how to productively interact with it, even dialogue with it

 

 

 

Direct download: Charles_Fernyhough_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:20pm EDT

 

Daniel Levitin Full The One You Feed
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This week we talk to Daniel Levitin

Daniel Levitin is an award-winning scientist, musician, author and record producer.

He is the author of three consecutive #1 bestselling books: This Is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind. He is also the James McGill Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, where he runs the Laboratory for Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise.

Dr. Daniel Levitin earned his B.A. in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science at Stanford University, and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Oregon.

He has consulted on audio sound source separation for the U.S. Navy, and on audio quality for several rock bands and record labels (including the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan), and served as one of the “Golden Ears” expert listeners in the original Dolby AC3 compression tests. 

He taught at Stanford University in the Department of Computer Science, the Program in Human-Computer Interaction, and the Departments of Psychology, Anthropology, Computer Music, and History of Science. Currently, he is a James McGill Professor of Psychology, Behavioural Neuroscience, and Music at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec), and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI.

His latest book is called Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era

 

 In This Interview, Daniel Levitin and I Discuss...

  • His new book,Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era
  • Evidence-based thinking
  • Critical Thinking
  • The myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism
  • The difference between correlation and causation
  • Belief Perseverance
  • The danger of adopting a belief before all of the evidence is in
  • That we tend to make decisions emotionally rather than based on evidence
  • Persuasion by association
  • How important it is to question the status quo
  • Information overload
  • His book, The Organized Mind
  • What's wrong with multitasking
  • The effect of multitasking
  • Rapid task switching
  • Decision fatigue
  • The benefits of restorative time for the brain
  • His book, This is Your Brain on Music
  • The 6 songs Daniel Levitin gave his friend who didn't really get rock 'n roll
  • The songs he would add to that list now
  • The role of music in our brains
  • How music and the arts can regulate our mood
  • The power of the arts to re-contextualize things for us
  • Music therapy vs Music and emotion
  • The role of opioids in experiencing musical pleasure

 

 

 

Direct download: Daniel_Levitin_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:07pm EDT

 Richard Rohr and Eric The One You Feed Full

 

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This week we talk to Richard Rohr, again

Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard’s teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy—practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.

Fr. Richard is the author of numerous books, including  The Naked Now, Falling UpwardImmortal Diamond, His newest book is The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation.

In This Interview, Richard Rohr and I Discuss...

  • That the normal two paths for expanding the soul are great love and great suffering
  • Suffering = whenever you're not in control
  • That Jesus is a map of the human journey
  • That if there's no good reason for suffering you have every right to be negative and cynical
  • How the honeymoon period and the grief period are non-dual states
  • What you're learning in these times is how to stay there and if you don't do this you loose the wisdom that comes with suffering
  • If you don't transform your suffering you transmit it
  • That growth occurs when an individual has just the right amount of feeling safe and ok within the conflict
  • And friendship and love give us this safety to hold us
  • Order - Disorder - Reorder
  • How we don't really want to see the pattern of loss and renewal in life
  • When you hear truth, don't ask "who said it?" Just ask, "is it true?" And if it's true, it's always from the Holy Spirit
  • How important the undeserved nature of Jesus' suffering is
  • Grief = Unfinished hurt
  • How we grow up in a world that is disenchanted
  • That it's hard to heal individually when the culture one lives in is so dysfunctional
  • Clear seeing means seeing the whole picture without our filters in place
  • How love applies to imperfect things, and it's a terrible mistake to wait for things that are "worthy" of our love and perfect
  • The reality and wisdom of "carrying the burden of the self"
  • The greek word for sin literally means when you're shooting the arrow and you miss the bullseye which doesn't mean a culpable thing that makes God not like you
  • How the clergy haven't been very motivated to move beyond a simple, punitive version of God because it keeps the laity codependant on the church
  • Relationships based on Guilt and Shame and You Owe Me are largely co-dependent in nature - it passes for love but it isn't
  • Much of religion - the church, catholic and protestant is built on codependence between the laity and the clergy
  • It has been job security for clergy to keep things this way because you keep people coming back on shame and guilt (the lowest level of motivation)
  • The truth is that God is infinite love. Any other version of God cannot continue and it doesn't lead to God's true nature
  • Evil is almost always absolutely sure of itself - it suffers no self-doubt
  • That faith is balancing the knowing and the not knowing
  • How fundamentalist Christians have moved too far away from this
  • That the great sin of America is superficiality
  • How democracy only works if the people have some degree of awareness and critical thinking
  • The incarnation is finding God IN things, in this world
  • Christian meditation is freeing yourself of yourself so that you can see God in everything
  • The "true self" is unique for every person and is also completely united
  • The "false self" (not the bad self) is the raw material God uses to break you through to your true self. It's cultural, it's passing

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Direct download: Richard_Rohr_2_Final_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:08pm EDT

Many people could benefit from a 12 Step program to help handle their addictions but the issue of not believing in God can be a real blocker for them.

I discuss a way to use 12 Step programs while not believing in God.

Direct download: 12_step_God_mini_episode.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:36pm EDT

 Richard Rohr and Eric The One You Feed Full

 

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This week we talk to Richard Rohr

 

Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard’s teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy—practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.

Fr. Richard is the author of numerous books, including  The Naked Now, Falling UpwardImmortal Diamond, His newest book is The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation.

In This Interview, Richard Rohr and I Discuss...

  • Non-dualistic thinking
  • That non-dualistic thinking is not a balancing act, but rather it's about holding the tension of opposites
  • The difficulty of living without resolution
  • The human psyche identifies with things - it searches for an identity
  • The story of the tree from the garden of Eden is a warning against thinking one knows what perfect good and perfect evil is. It's a warning against dualistic thinking.
  • Trans-rational thinking is beyond access to the rational mind
  • The 6 things that require trans-rational thinking
  • How we can be active in our world but not hate our enemies
  • That we've confused information with transformation
  • Soft Prophecy
  • That the message of the prophets is only about 2% about foretelling Jesus
  • How important it is to change your mind
  • How we've confused cleaning up, growing up, waking up and showing up in our lives
  • That the ego wants 2 things: to be separate and superior
  • Projectors vs Introjectors
  • That prayer is about changing you, not changing God
  • You'll be as hard on other people as you are hard on yourself

 

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Direct download: Richard_Rohr_1_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:50pm EDT

Erik Vance Full The One You Feed a

 

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This week we talk to Erik Vance about the power of our expectations

Erik Vance is a native Bay Area writer replanted in Mexico as a non-native species. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator.

His work focuses on the human element of science – the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. He has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, National Geographic, and a number of other local and national outlets.

His first book, Suggestible You, about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities was inspired by his feature in Discover.

 

In This Interview, Erik Vance and I Discuss...

  • All the ways that our brain twists reality in order to make what it expects into reality
  • How our brains are driven by expectations
  • How we take the past, apply it to the present to predict the future
  • Whether we were alive at the same time as saber tooth tigers
  • How powerful the placebo effect
  • How the placebo effect actually generates the neurochemicals in our brain we would expect to see
  • It's not that we imagine we feel a certain way; we really do feel it.
  • "It's All in Your Mind" is totally true
  • How we have a wave of information from our brain, and a wave of information from our body; where they meet is what we feel
  • His experience of being electro-shocked at the NIH
  • How our brains don't want to be wrong
  • How we all have different responses to placebo and type of placebos
  • The gene that helps predict whether you might be a placebo responder
  • Placebo and chronic pain
  • Belief and expectation play a large role in chronic pain
  • The trouble to create new drugs given such high placebo response rates
  • How nocebo's work
  • How much of our pain is create by our expectations
  • The power of hypnosis
  • Hypnosis compared to meditation
  • How fallible our memories are
  • How easy it is to create false memories in people

 

It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.

Direct download: Erik_Vance_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:03pm EDT

Adyshanti Full- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Adyashanti about waking up

Adyashanti, author of The Way of Liberation, Resurrecting Jesus, Falling into Grace, and The End of Your World, is an American-born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence.

Asked to teach in 1996 by his Zen teacher of 14 years, Adyashanti offers teachings that are free of any tradition or ideology. “The Truth I point to is not confined within any religious point of view, belief system, or doctrine, but is open to all and found within all.” Based in California, Adyashanti teaches throughout the U.S. and in Canada, Europe, and Australia.

 

In This Interview, Adyashanti and I Discuss...

  • That our work as humans is on the journey from a walking contradiction to a walking paradox
  • That if we see something out of alignment with our value system we feel it in our body as tension
  • That our bodies are our best aid when it comes to navigating our inner consciousness
  • That there are different types of awakening
  • That awakening is a fundamental shift of identity
  • The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions but to question your answers
  • What to do when you WANT to change but then you can't seem to change
  • The 5 foundations of spirituality
  • What is my aspiration?
  • That wanting to feel pleasure can only take us so far
  • When we start feeling better we'll stop looking deeper
  • Never abdicate your authority
  • That "true" meditation is the art of allowing everything to be exactly as it is
  • That meditation is there for us to get experiential insight into the nature of our being, our consciousness
  • The importance of bringing your intelligence along for the ride in meditation
  • To let go of what the outcome should be in meditation
  • Our whole body is a sensory instrument through which we experience life
  • That self-inquiry is joining the intellectual mind with the contemplative spirit
  • An unresolved deep question is often what sparks an awakening
  • How contemplation is different from meditation and inquiry
  • The three means of evoking insight: contemplation, meditation, and inquiry
  • The Jesus story is a map for awakening
  • How the Jesus story is so compelling
  • What life is like for awakened people
  • That awakening can be sudden and/or it can be a gradual unfolding
  • How enlightenment is the end of one game and the beginning of another
  • The difference between exploration and seeking
  • Whether or not psychedelic drugs play a role in awakening

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Direct download: Adyashanti_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:35pm EDT

Dean Quick Full Final- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Dean Quick about the healing power of music

Dean Quick, MT-BC is the Program Director and Board Certified Music Therapist for TranscendED, a treatment center for eating disorders. He also provides broader music therapy through his personal practice. He is also a member of the Music Therapy Association of North Carolina.

 

In This Interview, Dean Quick and I Discuss...

  • His work as a music therapist for people with mental illness
  • How he works with clients who have no musical ability or skill
  • That live music is most effective as well as the client's preferred music in music therapy
  • That music bypasses the cognitive processes of trauma and allows a person to reach a place within themselves that might otherwise be difficult to access
  • How Gabby Giffords has used music to retrain her language
  • That music can ignite the brain unlike anything else
  • Where someone would go to explore music therapy as a patient
  • That music can be used as therapy for children with developmental disabilities
  • How music can be used by anyone as therapy on their own as therapy with some simple approaches
  • Being mindful of the power of music in your own daily life
  • Honoring the feeling in the moment with music
  • Asking yourself "how am I honoring my feeling in this present moment"
  • How we can engage with music in a mindful way to increase the power it has in our lives
  • Using music to pace your practice of progressive muscle relaxation
  • Why it's better to choose our own music rather than buying music playlists that are "for relaxation"

 

 

Direct download: Dean_Quick_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:08pm EDT

Emma Seppälä - Full The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Emma Seppälä about success and happiness

Emma Seppälä, Ph.D is Science Director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and the author of The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success. She is also Co-Director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a Lecturer at Yale College where she teaches The Psychology of Happiness.  She consults with Fortune 500 leaders and employees on building a positive organization and teaches in the Yale School of Management’s Executive Education program.  She graduated from Yale (BA), Columbia (MA), and Stanford (PhD).

 

In This Interview, Emma Seppälä and I Discuss...

  • Her book, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success
  • The false notion that in order to be successful you have to work so hard that you postpone your happiness
  • The 6 major false theories that are behind our current notions of success
  • The false theory of "You can't have success without stress"
  • That our stress response is only meant to be fight or flight, not "most of the time"
  • That high adrenaline compromises our immune system, our ability to focus, make good decisions
  • The role of meditation in one's success
  • What prevents us from getting into a creative mindset
  • How to manage your energy vs managing your time
  • What we can learn from the resilience in children and animals
  • Where veterans and civilians can go to learn the art of breathing to recover from trauma
  • For Veterans: Project Welcome Home Troops
  • For Civilians: Art of Living
  • How "looking out for #1" can actually be harmful to you
  • Why workplaces are incorporating compassion training

 

 

Direct download: Emma_Seppala_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:26pm EDT

Srini Rao Full- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Srini Rao about being unmistakable

Srini Rao is the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative podcast. He has written multiple books including the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Art of Being Unmistakable; and his latest book: Unmistakable: Why Only Is Better Than Best

He is the creator of the 60-person conference called the Instigator Experience; He has an economics degree from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

In This Interview, Srini Rao and I Discuss...

  • His book, Unmistakable: Why Only is Better than Best
  • That the process holds so much joy and that there really is no moment of arrival
  • How doing the work itself is the reward and the importance of being present
  • The temptation of trying to copy something that works and expect the same result
  • The three layers under which everyone's unmistakable nature lies
  • Stories, Labels, and Masks
  • The story of I have enough and the story of I don't have enough
  • That labels limit our capacity
  • The importance of constructing environments
  • That 96% of personal development projects fail
  • Just because it's a best practice doesn't mean it's best for you
  • That life is basically just one giant experiment
  • The idea of being ready and how it gets in our way
  • How crucial it is to commit to the process rather than the outcome
  • The insidious nature of validation
  • Our warped perception of longevity

 

 

 

Direct download: Srinivas_Rao_Final_V2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:50pm EDT

The Middle Way- The One You Feed

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The Middle Way

One of the wisest teachings I have found is the middle way. Both Aristotle and the Buddha taught it. The Middle Way has been used as a wisdom tool in many traditions.

 

 

 

Which Wolf are You Feeding

Which Wolf Will You Feed

It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.

Direct download: Mini_Episode-_The_Middle_Way_1-001.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:58pm EDT

Greg Marcus Full The One You Feed

 

 

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This week we talk to Greg Marcus about the spiritual practice of Mussar

Greg Marcus has a BA in Biology from Cornell University, and earned his Ph.D. in biology from MIT.  He worked for ten years as a marketer in the Silicon Valley genomics industry, after which he became a stay-at-home dad, writer, life balance coach, and biotech consultant. Greg’s first book, Busting Your Corporate Idol: Self-Help for the Chronically Overworked, is a five star Amazon best seller. His latest book is called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar

In This Interview, Greg Marcus and I Discuss...

  • The One You Feed parable
  • His book, The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar
  • Mussar: A Thousand Year Old Hebrew Spiritual Practice
  • Soul Traits
  • That you can be too truthful and it can  be counter productive
  • That being untruthful to spare yourself embarrassment is not ok
  • That being untruthful to spare someone else's feelings can be ok
  • And the intention is the most important determiner of whether or not to tell the truth
  • Choice points
  • The evil inclination and the good inclination
  • Mussar helps us by opening the space between "the match and the fuse"
  • That we all have free will but it's not always accessible to us
  • What qualifies as an act of kindness
  • Mussar = "Extreme Spiritual Fitness"
  • Morning Mantra, Daily observations and practices, Evening journaling
  • Mussar helps you specialize and deepen your knowledge and practice of the Soul Traits
  • The four assumptions of Mussar:
  • We all have a divine spark that is occluded by our baggage
  • We all have the same Soul Traits but we have different amounts of each
  • We have a conflict between the good inclination and the evil inclination
  • We all have free will and it's not always accessible to us
  • That patience is the cure for helplessness
  • Mussar: repairing the Soul Traits within us and how it can help the world

 

 

Direct download: Greg_Marcus_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:50pm EDT

Brian Tom O'Connor Full

 

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This week we talk to Brian Tom O'Connor

Brian Tom O’Connor is an actor, theatre director, cabaret performer, and formerly depressed guy who stumbled onto the source of joy and happiness in the background of all experience. 

In This Interview, Brian Tom O'Connor and I Discuss...

  • The One You Feed parable
  • His new book, Awareness Games: Playing with Your Mind to Create Joy
  • Real reality vs Virtual reality
  • Why games are a more effective approach than questions to exploring awareness
  • The fact that you don't have to believe anything to play a game
  • That trying to reproduce an experience isn't doable
  • That trying to get rid of an unpleasant feeling isn't doable
  • That the mind is an excellent servant but a poor master
  • The power of noticing "the whiteboard itself" rather than what's written on it
  • The three basic questions: What's in awareness now? What is awareness? Who/what is aware?
  • The Future Fishing game
  • The Past Catching game
  • The game, Slippery Mind
  • That awareness games can be a good break from a serious meditation practice
  • The benefit of allowing emotions to flow through you
  • The game, Include Include Include
Direct download: Brian_OConner_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:01pm EDT

Emily Esfahani Smith Full The One You Feed
 

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This week we talk to Emily Esfahani Smith

Emily Esfahani Smith is the author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters

She graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a master of applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

She writes about psychology, culture, and relationships. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times,TimeThe Atlantic, and other publications. Emily is also a columnist for The New Criterion, as well as an editor at the Stanford University's Hoover Institution,

 

In This Interview, Emily Esfahani Smith and I Discuss...

  • The One You Feed parable
  • Her new book: The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters
  • The difference between happiness and meaning
  • That the defining feature of a meaningful life is connecting and contributing to something that lies beyond the self
  • The three criteria of a meaningful life: feeling that one's life is significant in some way, feeling that one's life is driven by a sense of purpose and feeling that one's life is coherent
  • That human beings are meaning-seeking creatures
  • That there's more to life than feeling happy
  • That our current culture doesn't emphasize meaning and purpose
  • Victor Frankel's important work related to the role of meaning in our lives
  • The role of meaning when facing adversity
  • That responsibility and duty are wellsprings of meaning
  • That the wellsprings of meaning are all around us
  • The four pillars of a meaningful life: Belonging, Purpose, Storytelling, and Transcendence
  • The wisdom in what George Eliot has to say about the people that keep the world going in small yet indispensable ways: that the goodness of the world is dependent on their unhistoric acts
  • What kind of relationships lead to a sense of belonging
  • That purpose can come in all shapes and sizes
  • That reflecting on the story of your life can lead to a greater sense of meaning in your life
  • The two different types of storytelling
  • That transcendent experiences are crucial to having a greater sense of meaning in life
  • The good news about what's happening to us as a species
     

 

Direct download: EmilyEsfahaniSmithFinal.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:48pm EDT

Koshin Paley Ellison- Full- The One You Feed 

 

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This week we talk to Koshin Paley Ellison

Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, cofounded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care,  which delivers contemplative approaches to care through education, direct service, and meditation practice. 

Koshin is the co-editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care . He received his clinical training at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center and the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association. He began is formal Zen training in 1987. He is a senior Zen monk, Soto Zen teacher, ACPE supervisor, and Jungian psychotherapist.

 

In This Interview, Koshin Paley Ellison and I Discuss...

  • The One You Feed parable
  • His new book: Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care
  • The influence of his grandmother on his life and his work
  • The story that changed his life forever
  • That to truly love someone means to love all of the parts of them, even the ones you don't understand or like
  • The importance of asking "where am I contracting away from things around me?"
  • How we get into trouble because of our aversion
  • The power of asking "I'm so curious about why you are angry?"
  • Learning how to feel the feeling without becoming the feeling
  • How his job is not to change people but to be with people
  • That it's difficult for someone to move until their cry has been fully heard and received
  • The healing connection with other people
  • That dying people reflect on how well they loved and who loved them in their lives
  • The recipe of resiliency: Including ourselves in how we care, the importance of community and having a contemplative practice with a group
  • The relationship between having a contemplative practice and caring for the dying
  • Learning how to give and receive freely = generosity
  • To show up with beginners mind, to bear witness and identifying the loving action are the three important teachings for service
  • Operationalized meditation
     
     

 

 

Direct download: Koshin_Paley_Ellison.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:11pm EDT

Rick Hanson- The One You Feed

 

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This week we talk to Dr. Rick Hanson about hardwiring happiness into our brain

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and author of Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence as well as Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love  and Wisdom and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time.

He is the Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and an Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he's been an invited speaker at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and taught in meditation centers worldwide.

An authority on self-directed neuroplasticity, Dr. Hanson's work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, CBC, Fox Business, Consumer Reports Health, U.S. News and World Report, and O Magazine, and his articles have appeared in Tricycle Magazine, Insight Journal, and Inquiring Mind.

In This Interview Rick and I Discuss...

  • The One You Feed parable.
  • His latest book: Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence.
  • That feeding the good wolf is a daily habit.
  • How it's our responsibility to feed our good wolf- no one can do it for us.
  • How frequently our brain changes.
  • Experience-dependent neuroplasticity.
  • That our brains are like velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good.
  • Deciding what we cultivate and what do you restrain.
  • The human tendency to overlearn from our bad experiences and under learn from our good ones.
  • Learning to "install" our beneficial experiences.
  • His practice of "taking in the good".
  • The difference between positive thinking and taking in the good.
  • The benefits of realistic thinking over positive thinking.
  • Moving positive memories into longer term memory.
  • How neurons that fire together wire together.
  • Ways to deepen our experiences: Duration, Intensity, Multimodality, Novelty and Salience.
  • The fundamental neuropsychology of learning,
  • Taking on the good in four words: Have it, Enjoy It.
  • How self hate and harshness are not motivating in the long term.
  • Being numb from the neck down.
  • The three-step way to working with negative emotions.
  • The analogy of a garden for how we tend to our minds: Be with the Garden, Pull the Weeds, Plan Flowers.

 

 

 

 

Direct download: Rick_Hanson_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30pm EDT

glennon doyle melton the one you feed

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This week we talk to Glennon Doyle Melton about staying open to life

 

 In This Interview Glennon and I Discuss...

  • The One You Feed parable.
  • Having to get through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff.
  • Being terrified of pain.
  • If we work with our negative emotions we can transform them into something beautiful.
  • The benefit of sitting with our negative emotions.
  • Learning to use envy as a positive tool.
  • Losing ourselves to pretending and addition.
  • The continuous journey of valleys and mountains.
  • Being "brutiful".
  • How pain is a harsh but great teacher.
  • How a broken heart is not the end of anything, it's the beginning.
  • Using pain as fuel.
  • The mantra "staying open".
  • The power of service and art.
  • We can numb our feelings and hide or feel our feelings and share.
  • The power of the words "Me Too".
  • How getting sober is like recovering from frostbite.
  • Getting sober is hard but being sober is wonderful.
  • The benefit of being forced to our knees.
  • How no one is allowed to try and give you perspective in the middle of your pain.
  • Bringing our whole selves to all our roles in lives.
  • Surface conversations leave us lonely all the time because everyones surface is different, at deeper levels we are all the same.
  • The fear of being honest about who we are.

 

 

 

 

Direct download: Holiday_Bonus_Re-Issue-_Glennon_Doyle_Melton.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:27am EDT

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