We discuss the new year, the information bubbles we live in, and ask what we want to choose to focus on in the midst of the forces that desire our attention. This leads to a conversation about the necessity of death, and the life that deaths realization inspires.

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 179: Learning to Die, Learning to Live

From the structures of a relationship to the games that we play, how do we discover and use rules for better or for worse. When done well, a script can be flipped, and a life can be transformed.

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 184: Old men should be explorers

"Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become... What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task."

- Viktor Frankl

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 185: Open the churches and close the bars

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 186: Be open to the tension

We celebrate the birth of Matt's daughter, Eletta Claire. 

You came like a sure fire, with unpredictable timing, unstoppable intent, and precise aim. You joined us with a calm precision entering space and time, relaxed, as if arriving pre-curtain.
Eletta - Truth - Veritas
If that is your banner, what is there to fear?
You are the boundary between anticipation and completion.
I look forward to applauding your curtain draw.
Love, 
Dad

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 187: Verity, Truth, Footloose & Free

Life can be at once wonderful and frustrating, full of joy and full of war. What are we to make of all of that, and how are we to live? We suggest that the answer has something to do with faith.

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 188: In Good Faith

Inflation sucks, bitcoin is the answer.

Links referenced in the show:
Sovereign Threads - http://sovereignthreads.shop
Broken Money - Lyn Alden - https://a.co/d/dgZ7yPh
The Hidden Cost of Money - https://a.co/d/66xAsrE
The Bitcoin Standard - https://a.co/d/36kniqY
Bitcoin is Time - https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 189: Bitcoin Is Hope

Truth, fact, science, religion. We're all bothered. What is ending, and what have we missed in our arrogance?

SOI on relationship - https://on.soundcloud.com/uNyo7eavFUow3LwU8
SOI on objectivity - https://on.soundcloud.com/ksCqptaSiUW9sVxG7  
Veritasium The man who killed millions and saved billions- https://youtu.be/QQkmJI63ykI?si=4ZWPbiPekeah9oPr
Sovereign Goods - http://sovereignthreads.shop/
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 190: We're coming to the end of something

From Covid to Gaza to your parents divorce, what is the difference between truth and fiction, or a lie and pretend? In a world of conflicting stories, how do you know which story is true?

Sovereign Goods - http://sovereignthreads.shop/
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 191: How do you know which story is true?

“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
— Hunter S. Thompson

Sovereign Goods - https://sovereignthreadgoods.etsy.com?coupon=SHORES
All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 192: Declare and be judged

(Note: 3 minutes in Matt’s mic stops recording, so his voice is a little quiet. We realize this and turn it back on at minute 8)

Life cannot be understood, it can only be lived, and related to.

“[I]n our own time and place, [avoiding God] is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation . . .”
- C.S. Lewis

“It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get -- the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke - - that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It's hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it's good they
don't "get" Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don't know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens...and it opens
outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch."
- David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

All Matt’s Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey
All Michael’s Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav

Ep 193: Knock knock knockin’ on Kafka’s door

A podcast by Matt McCloskey and Michael Vaclav

Ep 179: Learning to Die, Learning to Live

Shores of Ignorance

Related tracks