I'm deep in the Amazon rainforest, sleeping on an open platform with just a thin mosquito net between me and the jungle. The sounds of the rainforest weave into my dreams and eventually wake me up. Long version at https://youtu.be/GsZG1ggSQFw

Amazon Rainforest Waking Up

Имя Ивана Ильина, вероятно, самое известное философское имя в сегодняшней России. Государственник, монархист, пассажир философского парохода, идеолог белого движения, пропагандист национал-социализма в первой половине 30-х и беглец от Гитлера в конце 30-х, противленец злу силою, умный человек, яркий публицист. И как это часто бывает, наследие Ильина прочитано поверхностно, а биография полна белых пятен. И сегодня благодаря архивным изысканиям историка Игоря Петрова мы познакомимся с любопытными страницами жизни Ивана Александровича.

Неизвестный Иван Ильин

Are we stuck with our memories – or can we fix them? Pia is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on changing the way we process traumatic experiences. Will Pia’s emotionally distant mother - who survived the Khmer Rouge in 1970’s Cambodia – benefit from her daughter’s work? Or are some things just too terrible to remember?

"What You Are Now" is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series of science-themed plays. Lead funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, bridging science and the arts in the modern world.

Recorded at The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood in November 2022

Directed by Anna Lyse Erikson

Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg

An L.A. Theatre Works Full-Cast Performance Featuring:

Carie Kawa as Pia

Tess Lina as Chantrea

Joe Ngo as Darany

Samantha Quan as Siobhan

Mark Jude Sullivan as Evan

Greg Watanabe as the Narrator

Senior Producer: Anna Lyse Erikson

Prepared for Audio by Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood

Recording Engineer, Editor and Mixer: Charles Carroll

Sound Design: David Wilson and Charles Carroll

Senior Radio Producer: Ronn Lipkin

Foley Artist: Jeff Gardner

The original song “What You Are Now” is by Him Sophy, founder of the Him Sophy School of Music in Pnomh Penh.

Special thanks to Professor Craig Woodson and Dr. Terry Miller for their recording of “The Sorrowful King” from “Roots of Rhythm.net.”

What You Are Now (Part 2)

You struggle with being productive. So you decide you need to establish a routine for yourself. You get real gung-ho about this routine — this is going to be the thing that changes everything! But then you fail to stick to it. So you flagellate yourself for that failure and decide what you need is a different routine. But then you don’t stick with that routine either. The cycle then repeats itself, leaving you no more productive than you were at the start.

My guest, Madeleine Dore, found herself stuck in this cycle. So she decided to start interviewing successful creative types to get their secrets to an optimal routine. Yet these folks would confide to her a different secret: they actually didn’t have a routine either.

Madeleine has come to believe something that I’ve discovered too: routines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and you can actually still be very creative and productive even if you go about each day in a looser, more ad-hoc fashion.

Today on the show, I talk to Madeleine, who’s the author of I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt, about how the all-or-nothing thinking which surrounds routines can actually sabotage our effectiveness. We then discuss alternatives to keeping a strict routine that still allow you to get stuff done, including moving to a “portable routine,” taking advantage of “splodge time,” and embracing cycles and seasons in your work. We also discuss other ways to let go of unuseful productivity guilt, including setting realistic expectations and not eating the frog first.

#821: Routines Are Overrated

Matthew Dicks wears a lot of hats. Among other things, he’s a storyteller, communications consultant, writer, and schoolteacher. In order to excel in his professional life, as well as do what he loves in his personal life, he’s developed a set of strategies that help him be more creative and productive, and can be used by anyone who wants to start making the most of life.

Matt writes about these tactics and mindset shifts in his latest book Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life, and he shares some of them with us today on the show, including why you need to think in minutes, be an eagle rather than a mouse, practice deliberate incuriosity, and always do your best to act like a decent human being. Along the way, Matt and I talk about why you should floss in the shower and how restaurants that make guacamole at your table are a great example of the folly of making a thing, a thing.

#825: Tactics and Mindset Shifts for Making the Most of Life

Do you feel stuck in life? Inwardly you keep repeating the same thoughts, outwardly you keep repeating the same routine, and on and on a cycle of unhappy disappointment goes.

To break the cycle, maybe what you need to do is watch a film that has become synonymous with this kind of stuck-ness — Groundhog Day — which my guest says contains the roadmap to escaping a life lived on autopilot. His name is Paul Hannam, he’s the author of The Wisdom of Groundhog Day: How to Improve Your Life One Day at a Time, and today on the show, Paul unpacks the deeper philosophical layers of what’s considered one of the best movies of all time. Paul explains how the film teaches us that to escape the ruts of what he calls the “Groundhog Day condition,” we must first make an inner change where we learn to approach life in a more grateful, present-focused, engaged way. From there, we can embrace the film’s unique strategy for change, which is to experiment with doing something new every day, thereby refining and improving our lives through the process of trial, error, and progressive improvement.

#828: The Groundhog Day Roadmap for Changing Your Life

ou’re working under a boss who really rubs you the wrong way. So you quit your job and take another. But in your new office, you find yourself stuck with a co-worker who bugs the tar out of you.

The presence of annoying, incompetent, and underhanded people isn’t a particular workplace problem, but a universal human problem. In any and every group of people, there are going to be bothersome and troublesome personalities.

So if you can’t entirely escape them, how do you get along with your fellow humans at work? My guest today has some research-backed advice. Her name is Tessa West, and she’s a professor of psychology and the author of Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them. Today on the show, Tessa describes the seven types of jerks you run into at work — the kiss-up/kick-downer, credit stealer, bulldozer, free rider, micromanager, neglectful boss, and gaslighter — and shares what drives their respective behaviors and how to deal with them.

#834: The 7 Types of Work Jerks (And How to Deal With Them)

The ancient Greeks and Romans thought a lot about what it means to live a virtuous life. They believed that good character was essential for achieving both individual excellence and a healthy, well-functioning society. For this reason, they also thought a lot about whether virtue could be taught to citizens, and philosophers put this thinking into practice by attempting to educate the moral ideals of leaders.

My guest, professor of philosophy Massimo Pigliucci, explores what the Greco-Romans discovered about the nature and teachability of virtue in his new book: The Quest for Character. Today on the show, Massimo and I discuss how the ancient Greeks and Romans defined virtue, and what it meant to them to live with arete, or excellence. We then look at case studies of philosophers who tried to shape men into being better leaders, including Socrates teaching Alcibiades, Aristotle tutoring Alexander the Great, and Seneca mentoring Nero. Massimo explains how these field experiments turned out, and the takeaways they offer on the question of whether virtue can be taught. We end our conversation with the ancient insights that have been confirmed by modern research that can help us become better people.

#838: Can Virtue Be Taught?

460 - Terence McKenna: "Our planetary birth process"

Psychedelic Salon

562 - Terence McKenna: "What It's Like To Be Loaded"

Slowhill - Slowjazz
Smooth One - A Warmer Spot
Third Person Lurkin - Churning Vapours
DJ Vadim - Beyond Thought (Feat. Daniel Pemberton)
Mobster - Les temps gris
Blue Monk - Smokescope
MF Love - Rainy Sundays
Afternoons In Stereo - The Kelly Affair
Groove Armada - Dusk You and Me
Frane - I Am Dreaming
Handsome Boy Modeling School Ft. Julee Cruise - Class System
Emapea - Strange Seed
Apollo 440 - The Machine in the Ghost
Angelo Badalamenti - Falling

#828: The Groundhog Day Roadmap for Changing Your Life

The Art of Manliness

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