Well, it's been over a year since our last episode! As a COVID-19 pandemic project, sticking to a consistent publishing schedule for this podcast has been tough. But we've always said that even if our focus on it fades and drifts, we'll continue putting out content as long as we have something to say. So, we threw this episode together on New Year's Eve to at least say that we put out one episode in 2024. Enjoy our lessons, observations, and reflections on 2024, which includes topics we hope to ...
Jan 01, 2025•53 min•Ep. 40
In this episode—especially since it has been so long since our last one—we decided to revisit the concept of kodawari and how it has changed for us over the three years of doing this podcast/blog. Over time we encounter more knowledge and have more life experiences. And as we attempt to integrate those into a coherent life philosophy, our ideas about life change and update. I believe we have a duty to regularly bring a beginner's mind to our ideas so that we can "rediscover" them with novelty. T...
Mar 05, 2023•40 min•Ep. 39
“‘I shall take the heart,’ returned the Tin Woodsman; ‘for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.’” —L. Frank Baum The topic of this episode is happiness and hedonic adaptation, otherwise known as the hedonic treadmill. Hedonic adaptation is a phenomenon of our psychology and physiology that keeps us at a stable level of happiness over time. This adaptation is like an immune system that desensitizes us in relation to negative and positive experiences, making ...
Aug 24, 2022•54 min•Ep. 38
In this episode, we explore the art of orchestral conducting with guest Chad Goodman. Chad is currently the conducting fellow of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, and he has also had fellowships at Festival Napa Valley and the Atlantic Music Festival. Since 2018, he has served as an assistant conductor to the San Francisco Symphony, and he also founded Elevate Ensemble in the Bay Area. Chad is also a good friend of ours, and so we used this conversation as an opportunity to get a more perso...
Jun 11, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 37
"Written fifteen years ago, in 1940, amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism . In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction. Although “The Myth of Sisyphus” poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert." —Albert Camus This episode is part two of our exploration of n...
Jan 15, 2022•43 min•Ep. 36
“What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; 'why?' finds no answer.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power This episode, Part 1 of our exploration of nihilism, gets into the justifications for nihilism and why it's important to give nihilism its due as a philosophy. We discuss Nietzsche and existential nihilism as well as the playful cosmic nihilism of people like Alan Watts or Kurt Vonnegut. We also explore whether or not nihilism is on the rise...
Jan 10, 2022•46 min•Ep. 35
What is metacognition? Metacognition is a modern term coined in 1979 by the American developmental psychologist John H. Flavell. He defined it as “cognition about cognitive phenomena,” or “thinking about thinking”. But the concept of metacognition has been around long before that in philosophy. "Meta", meaning beyond or above, signals that metacognition is a form of thinking above our usual cognitive processes. And in this podcast episode, we work through the varying layers of metacognition and ...
Oct 08, 2021•59 min•Ep. 34
"Many of us have been persuaded that happiness is something that someone else, a therapist or a politician, must confer on us. Stoicism rejects this notion. It teaches us that we are very much responsible for our happiness as well as our unhappiness. It also teaches us that it is only when we assume responsibility for our happiness that we will have a reasonable chance of gaining it. This, to be sure, is a message that many people, having been indoctrinated by therapists and politicians, don't w...
Aug 02, 2021•40 min•Ep. 33
"Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it." —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Stoicism as a philosophy is not the same as being lowercase s stoical. It is not about blocking our difficult feelings and emotions. Instead, Stoicism is an approach to life that teaches us how to handle our negative emotions in psychologically healthier ways. Timestamps: [04:11] What is Stoicism? Zeno of Citium and the beginnings ...
Jul 28, 2021•53 min•Ep. 32
This episode is our conversation with Katherine Bormann, a violinist with The Cleveland Orchestra since 2011. Katherine has degrees from Rice University and The Juilliard School and studied with Kathleen Winkler, Joel Smirnoff, and Ronald Copes. She has made appearances at Strings Music Festival, Mainly Mozart Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and Tanglewood Music Festival, where she was also a member of the contemporary music ensemble, New Fromm Players. She was also a member of the New World Sym...
May 17, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 31
We recently published a new page on our website organizing all of our mental models (aka mental frameworks) into one place. We explain what a mental model is and how you can use them to better understand the world. Mental Frameworks: Your Toolbox For Thinking More Clearly In short, mental models are ways of thinking that help to simplify the world. They block out the noise so that we can better pay attention to the signal. And the most fundamental mental model—the most fundamental way of categor...
May 01, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 30
In this episode, we speak with author and motivational speaker Terry Tucker. Terry has lived all over the country and worked in many different fields. After playing NCAA Division I basketball in college, he worked in a marketing department and as a hospital administrator. After that, he worked as a police officer, both as a SWAT Hostage Negotiator and an undercover narcotics investigator. But in 2012, Terry began a very different path when he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Acral...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 29
For this episode, we were joined by trumpet player Scott Moore, who has been principal trumpet of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra since 1988. He has performed with the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony, and the Toronto Symphony. He has also recorded and performed with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, and with I Fiamminghi, the Orchestra of Flanders. As a teacher, Scott has served as a Mentor with the Hot Springs Music Festival (which is where ...
Mar 18, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 28
“At every single stage [of processing information]—from its biased arrival, to its biased encoding, to organizing it around false logic, to misremembering and then misrepresenting it to others—the mind continually acts to distort information flow in favor of the usual goal of appearing better than one really is.” —Robert Trivers In this episode, I speak with author and intellectual Robin Hanson. Robin is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at t...
Mar 09, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 27
"Any model of communication is at the same time a model of trans-lation, of a vertical or horizontal transfer of significance. No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings [...] Thus a human being performs an act of translation, in the full sense of the word, when receiving a speech-message from any other human being. [...] 'Translation,...
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 26
Why do people do what they do? This fascinating question is the foundation of behavioral science, and in this episode, we speak about exactly that with behavioral scientist Dr. Kurt Nelson. Kurt has a Ph.D. in Industrial & Organizational Psychology and is the founder of The Lantern Group, which uses behavioral science to help optimize companies and organizations. He is also the co-host of the podcast Behavioral Grooves where he—along with his co-host Tim Houlihan—interview experts in psychol...
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 25
We are finally back! Sorry for the delay in getting episodes out—we just moved from New York to Florida and couldn't find the time to podcast. But we are settled in now, and for our first episode of 2021, we decided to tackle the psychology of new year's resolutions. Why do we make new year's resolutions, and why do so few of us actually keep them? Statistically, 80 percent of people will drop their resolutions by February, and the exercise app Strava has deemed January 19th "Quitter's Day" beca...
Jan 26, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 24
This bonus/end of the year holiday episode is a looser and more fun episode all about the psychedelic mushroom history of Santa Claus. According to this theory, our modern Santa is based on ancient shamans in the Scandinavian and Siberian regions who would pass out hallucinogenic mushrooms on the winter solstice. While it is just a theory, it does explain many of the weird traditions around Christmas—the red and white outfit, putting presents under a conifer tree, entering through the chimney, e...
Dec 21, 2020•1 hr 29 min
In this episode, we speak with composer, arranger, and trumpet player Brandon Dicks. Brandon is currently pursuing a doctorate in Trumpet Performance at Arizona State University, but he caught my attention with his impressive videography skills on his Youtube channel. Brandon arranges just about any type of music for trumpet ensemble—for example, he has arrangements of Vivaldi, Mozart, Super Mario, Zelda, Jurassic Park, etc—and then performs all of the parts separately before editing it all toge...
Dec 15, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 23
The answer to whether or not the self is an illusion is tricky—it really depends on what you mean by both self and illusion. In this episode, we challenge the sense of self that we all feel from the first-person subjective experience. We all feel like we are riding around inside of our heads looking out at the world. We don't feel like we are identical to our bodies, but instead that we have bodies—we look down at them from up here inside of our heads. Nondualism: Most people would say that they...
Dec 08, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 22
“The well-told story seems to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion.” —William Boyd Our mission for this episode was to capture the beauty and art of the short story. And to help us out with this we were joined by author and writing professor Joe Labriola. Besides speaking mor...
Nov 17, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 21
The first evidence of marriage ceremonies dates back to 2350 BC in ancient Mesopotamia, and since then cultures around the world have had their various interpretations of this practice. So in this episode, we (Luke and Yankı) have a conversation about the meaning of marriage—both specifically for us but also more generally as a cultural phenomenon. We talk about marriage rates, divorce rates, and how the general view towards marriage has changed in our cultures over time. We also wondered what t...
Nov 03, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 20
This episode is our conversation with the speaker, author, and advocate for sobriety Stephen Hill. Stephen suffered from addiction for over a decade and his life was out of control. But in 2012 he began a journey to recovery, and on September 30th 2020 he celebrated eight years of sobriety. He also started an organization called Speak Sobriety where he spreads his message and life lessons at schools, community events, conferences, etc. He says this in his memoir: " After several years of drug us...
Oct 20, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 19
This episode is Part 2 of our conversation with software engineer Drew Shapiro. If you stumbled into this episode before hearing Part 1, I recommend going one episode back and listening to that one first ...it will be kind of hard to connect the dots of where we land in this episode without hearing Part 1 first. In this part, we continue to analyze the magic (aka science) of how sound technology works. We continue the meta journey of how my voice is reaching your ears, and talk about how digital...
Oct 09, 2020•46 min•Ep. 18
This episode can be summed up with two competing quotes: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!” The first quote is by the famous science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. The second quote is unknown, but points out that the spell books for such magic are to be found in the methods and tools of science. So how does sound work? What is the difference between analog and digital audio? How does a comp...
Oct 06, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 17
This episode is Part 2 of our conversation with trumpeter Chris Coletti. If you haven't already, you can listen to Part 1 of the conversation here . In Part 2, we get a bit more geekier about trumpet specific topics. We talk about sound production, flexibility, and the difficulties of teaching trumpet. But if you're not a trumpet player, don't worry! We also talk about the mentalist Derren Brown, consciousness, whistling, Buddhism, spaceships, and many other random topics. Enjoy! **This episode ...
Sep 29, 2020•50 min•Ep. 16
For this episode, we were joined by internationally acclaimed trumpet player Chris Coletti. Chris is most well known for his ten years of playing with the famous Canadian Brass which he left in 2019. More recently, he has become an Assistant Professor at Ithaca College School of Music. In the episode, we discussed many topics music and otherwise. We talked about what it was like performing and touring with Canadian Brass as well as teaching life in his new position at Ithaca College. But Chris i...
Sep 22, 2020•56 min•Ep. 15
When is it okay to break an oath? How do we deal with the tension between honor and duty on the one hand versus love and doing the right thing on the other? This episode is essentially a conversation about life philosophy, and we tried to answer difficult questions such as those. Specifically, we did this by examining the concepts of oaths, honor, duty, and love in the hit HBO series Game of Thrones. If you have not seen Game of Thrones and don't plan to, this should still be an interesting conv...
Sep 15, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 14
In this episode, we sat down with Turkish violinist Emre Engin. Emre is the recipient of many awards and he's an active soloist in both the US and Turkey. Although we both come from Turkey, we did not actually meet officially and become friends until meeting at Stony Brook University in New York, where he and I are both completing doctorate degrees in music. In the episode we talked about his music career as well as his experience living in Turkey, the UK and the US. In the US he was a student o...
Sep 03, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 13
The topic of this episode is the work of Dr. John Sarno and his theory of TMS or Tension Myoneural Syndrome. This is a diagnosis for people with chronic pain, especially lower back pain, for whom no physical cause or explanation of their pain could be found. The concept is basically that unconscious emotional issues, primarily anger, manifests itself through the autonomic nervous system to create psychosomatic pain. The research is controversial, but there are many who swear by its effectiveness...
Aug 27, 2020•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 12
