You may think of anxiety as a reaction, a feeling, or a disorder. My guest today says that perhaps the best way to think about anxiety, especially if you want to treat it effectively, is as a habit.

His name is Dr. Judson Brewer, and he's a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and the author of Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind. Dr. Jud and I begin our conversation with what anxiety is, and how it gets connected into a habit loop that can lead to other maladaptive behaviors like drinking, overeating, and worrying. Dr. Jud then explains how to hack the anxiety habit loop by mapping it out, disenchanting your anxiety-driven behaviors, and giving your brain "a bigger, better offer" by getting curious about your anxiety. We also talk about why asking why you're anxious is not part of this process, and end our conversation with how this habit-based approach to behavior change can also work for things like depression and anger.

#782: Anxiety Is a Habit — Here's How to Break It

Running is a gloriously democratic and accessible sport. All you need is a pair of shoes and the will to start moving your legs. It's so seemingly simple, that you may never think to figure out how you might get better at it — you just follow what your peers may be doing (who may not know anything more than you do), or pick up tips that percolate through social media (which may not be accurate), or 100% wing it, just vaguely trying to get a little faster each time you run.

My guest says that, rather than taking a willy-nilly approach to your recreational running, you can greatly improve your performance by learning from the professionals who actually run for a living.

His name is Matt Fitzgerald and he's a sports writer, a running coach, and the co-author of Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow): Elite Tools and Tips for Runners at Every Level. Today on the show Matt translates the best practices of elite runners into tactics the amateur can incorporate into their training, beginning with why you need to follow a well-programmed running plan, how to find the sweet spot for your running volume — including why you actually should concentrate more on the amount of time you run rather than the miles — and the number of hours Matt recommends trying to work up to running each week if you'd like to really see what you can do as a runner. We then discuss the ratio of low intensity to high intensity workouts you should be doing, the surprisingly small emphasis pros put on running form, what the pros know about what works best for recovery, and the edge you can get through cross-training. We end our conversation with the difference in mindset that marks elite runners, including how they're probably better quitters than you are.

#787: Run Like a Pro Even If You're Slow

Gordon Deal asks questions about inflation to Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip about its impact on the United States.

On Inflation, Economics Has Some Explaining to Do

Bill rambles from his car about announcers, paving paradise, and eating his balls at the Comedy Store.

Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast

TAMMP 6-23-22

Do you ever feel like the time we live in feels flat, complacent, timid, conformist, populated by people who are focused on playing it safe and are inwardly empty?

A century and a half ago, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard felt the same way about the period in which he lived, and posited that there are two kinds of ages: the revolutionary, decisive, and passionate, and the sensible, rational, and reflective.

Here to unpack Kierkegaard’s ideas on these two kinds of ages is Jacob Howland, retired professor of philosophy and author of Kierkegaard and Socrates. Today on the show, Jacob and I first discuss some background on Kierkegaard and his existential philosophy. We then get into the differences between an age of passion and an age of reflection. We discuss how in a passionate age, an individual stands as an individual, possesses an energy which focuses on truth and ideals, and has the courage to take bold leaps of faith, while in a reflective age, the individual is subsumed by the crowd, is afraid of public opinion, and gets so lost in analysis and abstraction that he never makes a decisive move. All along the way, we delve into how Kierkegaard’s description of his age parallels our own, and Kierkegaard’s evergreen call to be an individual, embrace risk, and own your opinions and actions.

Kierkegaard on the Present (Passionless) Age

Why do corrupt people end up in power?

By way of an answer, you probably think of that famous quote from Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." But my guest today, Brian Klaas, would say that's only one part of what leads to corrupt individuals and cultures, the other being that people who are already corrupt are more likely to seek power in the first place. Brian argues that if we ever hope to develop better systems, from our national governments to our office hierarchies, we have to work on both prongs of this dynamic, not only preventing people who gain power from going bad, but encouraging good people to seek power as well.

Brian is the author of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, and today on the show, he and I discuss how people who possess the so-called "dark triad" of traits are more attracted to positions of power, how the framing around those positions can either amplify or alter this self-selection effect, and what a tyrannical homeowners' association president and a psychopathic school janitor show us about these dynamics. We also discuss why power does indeed corrupt people and can in fact change their very brain chemistry. Brian explains the importance of accountability in keeping a system clean, and how you can serve in positions of power without becoming corrupted yourself.

#792: How Power Corrupts

In a city filled with dangerous yet heavily regulated alchemical magic, a man from the slums discovers he may be its only hope to survive certain destruction in this wickedly entertaining fantasy. 

Welcome to Bezim, where sword-slinging bravi race through the night and rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing and measuring the four planes of reality.

Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city’s alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits an act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight—which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send Bezim into the sea.

It will take a miracle to save the city. Good thing Siyon has pulled off the impossible before. Now he just has to master it.

A dazzling fantasy bursting with wild magic, chaotic sword-fighting street gangs, brazen flirting, malevolent harpies, and one defiant alchemist.

"From the razor-sharp social climbing to the glimmering alchemist's library to the hidden realms beneath it all, I loved getting lost in this dazzling debut." —Shannon Chakraborty

Available September 13, 2022 from Hachette Audio as a digital download, and in Print and Ebook from Orbit. 

Download: 
https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/notorious-sorcerer/id1624503357
https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781668620007-notorious-sorcerer
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/notorious-sorcerer-3
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/notorious-sorcerer/593122
https://audiobookstore.com/audiobooks/notorious-sorcerer.aspx
https://www.audible.com/pd/Notorious-Sorcerer-Audiobook/B0B26KLGYQ?qid=1661529559&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=B5NY9QHFDTJX19NFWDFH
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Davinia_Evans_Notorious_Sorcerer?id=AQAAAECC9Cu0uM
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/notorious-sorcerer-davinia-evans/1140838511?ean=2940175745000
https://www.estories.com/audiobook/599432/Davinia-Evans/Notorious-Sorcerer

Check out our other great titles and more at:
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Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans Read by Kirsten Foster - Audiobook Excerpt

Avery Pennarun was previously on FLOSS Weekly discussing his startup Tailscale as it aims to make creating secure network connections super easy. Since Pennarun's last appearance, Tailscale has received $100 million in funding to push the service into the mainstream further, all while honoring open source values. Doc Searls and Aaron Newcomb have a great conversation with Pennarun about Tailscale's journey. 
Hosts: <a href="https://twit.tv/people/doc-searls">Doc Searls</a> and <a href="https://twit.tv/people/aaron-newcomb">Aaron Newcomb</a> 
Guest: <a href="https://twitter.com/apenwarr" target="_blank">Avery Pennarun</a> 
Download or subscribe to this show at <a href="https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly">https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly</a> 
Think your open source project should be on FLOSS Weekly? Email <a href="mailto:floss@twit.tv">floss@twit.tv</a>. 
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FLOSS Weekly 696: Tailscale Gets Hot

“We were young citizen-soldiers, terribly naive and gullible about what we would be confronted with in the air war over Europe and the profound effect it would have upon every fiber of our being for the rest of our lives. We were all afraid, but it was beyond our power to quit. We volunteered for the service and, once trained and overseas, felt we had no choice but to fulfill the mission assigned. My hope is that this book honors the men with whom I served by telling the truth about what it took to climb into the cold blue and fight for our lives over and over again.”

So writes the 100-year-old World War II veteran John “Lucky” Luckadoo in the new book he co-authored with Kevin Maurer: Damn Lucky: One Man’s Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History. Kevin is my guest today, and will share Lucky’s story, and with it, the story of WWII’s famous B-17 bomber.

During the war, airmen in the 100th Bomb Group could finish their combat service and return home after flying 25 missions. Yet with a 1 in 10 chance of becoming a casualty, few were able to reach this milestone. Lucky was one of the, well, lucky few who did, and Kevin traces how he got there, from trying to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as a teenager, to learning to fly the B-17 on the job, to his harrowing daylight bombing missions over Germany, to the life he made for himself after the war. Along the way, Kevin describes the brutal conditions inside a B-17 and the bomber’s role in winning the war.

#798: The Harrowing Life of a World War II B-17 Pilot

This is a series about what happens when someone who knows nothing about business starts one. It's called StartUp.  In episode one, Alex Blumberg botches his pitch to Silicon Valley billionaire Chris Sacca.

#1 How Not to Pitch a Billionaire

Doug reads your message. Yes, one message.

#787: Run Like a Pro Even If You're Slow

The Art of Manliness