July 31, 2025 • 17 mins
Welcome to Rest for the Revolution.
In this first episode, I share why I started this podcast—as a personal project to explore rest in a world that constantly demands more. Rest isn’t optional; it’s a basic human right. Through conversations with amazing people, I’ve uncovered how rest is deeply tied to our wellbeing, privilege, and the fight for justice. This is the beginning of a journey to rethink how we value rest—and why it’s vital for revolution.
Thanks for listening! Please like, subscribe, and share.
To see all of Alex's active projects: www.alexmufson.com To download your Human Design Chart: https://www.humandesigninpractice.com/human-design-chart Those mentioned: Jenn Morgan: www.businessoperationsconsultant.com Dan Bradner: Since this episode Dan has discontinued his Meta accounts in peaceful protest. Please find him directly at https://www.danbradner.com Wilson Raska: https://www.blackhammercompany.com/ Chris Wilson: https://www.chrislwilsoncoaching.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This is rest for the revolution.
A projector's dilemma.
Hi everybody.
Welcome to not at all the first recorded episode of Rest for the Revolution, but the first that you'll hear, um, I recorded this in late 2024, early 2025, at least the episodes, that are interviews that we will release over the coming months.
(00:28):
I recorded it as a.
Personal project for myself.
I was in between, major projects for the first time in a really long time, and I wanted to do something that was really just for me and didn't have any sort of financial result attached to it.
(00:49):
And something that really is always on my mind, but um, has been on my mind is the idea of rest.
And the idea of how we all as humans are going to get ourselves out of the pretty dire situation that I know us to be in and how we're gonna do that when we're all so tired and so.
(01:17):
I decided I was gonna record this for no other reason and with no agenda other than to learn, and I thought that I was gonna be learning almost like fundamentals of how to rest.
I asked a lot of people a lot smarter than me to come and chat with me and I thought, oh man, these people.
(01:40):
Some of whom have been through dark periods of their life that I knew about.
Some I didn't know their stories.
Well, they'll teach me, they'll know things and I'll, I'll learn because the basic premise that I was operating under was that, um.
In this world of capitalism, those of us with privilege like myself, I have the privilege that I have safety to sleep in a bed.
(02:07):
I have resources that I don't need to be moving or work through the night.
Um.
Those of us with those sorts of privileges are still exhausted and still burnt out because we don't know how to rest.
And so I thought, oh, well, I'll crowdsource it.
(02:27):
I'll learn from all these beautiful people that I'm gonna ask to answer my questions.
And what I realized through the course of, I don't know, a dozen interviews or something like that, was that my basic.
Premise, the whole hypothesis while true that, the intersectionality of all of our identities, whether it's, financial safety, physical safety, health, um, geography, whether and literally every nuance to our lives does.
(03:06):
Absolutely in reality, in real terms, impact our ability and our relationship to rest.
What I didn't, what I didn't prepare for was that I was missing something deeply fundamental to the conversation.
(03:28):
I, as an individual, was missing the fact that rest.
Is a human right.
It is a basic need.
It is the thing that allows us to restore and stay alive.
It is the way that we keep our bodies healing and growing and our creativity flowing.
(03:53):
Rest is as not optional as food and oxygen.
And while I feel like I've been very, uh, prepared and able to talk about things like.
(04:16):
Food and oxygen and healthcare as human rights.
Um, for some reason it never occurred to me that rest is one of the deepest fundamental human rights that we.
And by we, I mean Western society.
'cause that's typically who I interviewed.
(04:38):
We're just out here treating like it's optional.
We're just out here.
Like if you don't have enough privilege, like you just don't get to rest.
And if you do have a lot of privilege, you should probably still feel like you're not doing enough because we really want you to be more whatever, productive.
It's really just produce more capital for capitalism and.
(05:01):
I didn't expect.
I didn't expect the people that I asked to join me and sit with me to be as radically.
Real and vulnerable and honest as they all were.
Like, that was such a gift.
And as I, I sat there and as our conversations went everywhere, um, I talked a lot more about expectations and shoulds and enough and.
(05:29):
Productivity and feelings of shame and addiction than I anticipated.
I didn't, I, I don't know what I anticipated, but I talked a lot more about those things than I thought I would be talking about when the first question I ask in every interview is, what is your relationship to rest? What has it been throughout your life? And.
(05:52):
The deep feelings that emerged from that question.
Um, you could see, I mean, some people shrunk, some people cringe.
Some people laughed.
Some people, immediately felt sad.
Other people immediately giggled like it's a raw question.
I got a lot of like, oh shit, I wasn't expecting that.
(06:13):
And I'm truly grateful.
For all the people that I spoke with, um, for bringing me along with them because it allowed me to rethink my personal relationship with rest and how perhaps this is when I conceived of rest for the revolution.
I'm like, guys, we're at a tipping point.
We all need to not be so exhausted and burnt out so that we can actually revolt, like clean and simple, but.
(06:40):
But I think I, uh, I missed something huge, which is that until we deconstruct our relationship with our bodies, our relationship to time, our relationship to what we do with our life with, and I don't mean do with our life like this professional scale.
(07:00):
I mean like what we do with the fact that we are alive, do we honor the fact that.
We are alive and we require things like sleep and processing time and downtime and creative time and active rest and passive rest, and all of these things like.
This is not optional, and I realized that rest for the revolution was also a huge deconditioning process for me, and I think I am a product of a society that taught me this, that rest isn't optional, that rest it is, and cannot be connected to privilege in a true revolution because.
(07:47):
Because we're alive, 'cause we're bodies, because we, we have to treat it like the revolution is in demanding that we are seen as alive and as humans in the same way that the revolution will require all of us to have food and healthcare.
(08:09):
Um, but space.
Time freedom to let our minds wander.
Freedom to sleep in an undisturbed fashion.
Freedom to think about something that isn't prescribed to us and doesn't make us money.
Like all of this is rest.
And until we restructure.
(08:33):
That we actually care about human rights, and then we add this one to the list.
Um, because I never had, I, I, I, I never had any problem saying like, reproductive rights or f or food or healthcare, like, it just slipped off the tongue so easily.
And yet.
It was never a question if someone was choosing or being forced either one, to not say sleep enough.
(09:02):
I just, I didn't see that as a place to advocate in the way that I saw those other things.
And, and now seeing where that one question, what is your relationship to rest has led me in all of these conversations.
It's all together.
It's all the same.
So I recorded this, um, I recorded most of these interviews in very late 2024 and very early 2025 for the most part.
(09:26):
If you hear me come in and out with individual, podcasts like today, I don't know if I'll do many of them, but I might.
Um, 'cause I'm gonna listen again to all these with, with you all.
So if I pop in, those are recorded after today, which is July 29th.
And that was also an experience for me to.
(09:49):
Do a project that wasn't for anyone else, and it wasn't really for any financial gain.
Um, sure visibility is visibility.
I do know that.
But, I recorded this out of a deep.
Curiosity, like, first I really wanted to learn, literally teach me how to rest.
Um, and then I was like, oh shit.,
(10:10):
I have missed something completely in my worldview.
And so this is just for me.
I hope that you'll experience it, in the way that I did, which was.
With a lot of reverence and a lot of, gratitude for the people who shared so much.
(10:31):
I don't know if I'll do more of them.
I suspect I might.
Uh, but I don't, I don't know.
I don't have a plan for that.
You'll always see, you know, links in the bios to the people who were generous enough to be interviewed.
Um, I'm not that hard to find, but this is not a promotion for service or anything like that.
It's just.
(10:51):
Something that I did for myself in between projects that truly turned my world upside down when I really took the time to listen to people that I know and I respect.
So.
I encourage you to use this as I have used it, uh, as a way to explore your own relationship.
For me, I had to, I had to stop and think about what I even valued or why I had so much trouble with space with nothingness.
(11:28):
Um, I changed how I.
Go to sleep at night.
I changed how I wake up in the morning and enter the world.
Maybe I'll talk about that in the future.
I don't know.
I shifted how I make choices around what I wanna do in my career.
I shifted.
I am shifting the others.
I have made concrete changes, but I am shifting what I value and how quickly I attune to my body and my needs.
(11:55):
That one I'll probably come back on and talk about some more 'cause that's a work in progress.
But I really, I really realized that.
Yeah, we are preparing for the fucking revolution and I don't wanna be exhausted because there's a long fight ahead of us.
There's always been a fight, um, but also an act of revolution that I know I can do regardless, of a lot of other circumstances is actually being in my body and actually listening and actually valuing that there are other metrics.
(12:33):
Within which to live our lives and the ability and the willingness to untangle my own conditioning and enter rest from a different space, not from a place of need and desperation and fatigue, but a place of like, this is what bodies need, and I refuse for my humanity to be erased by the systems.
(13:00):
That seemingly govern us.
And so I urge you to, to find that for yourselves, whatever that means.
Um, a lot of these people have gone through, incredible stories and are incredibly generous to share them.
So I hope that you will find that inspiring.
Um, and some of them have incredible.
(13:23):
Words of wisdom.
Some more cautionary tales depending on how they choose to frame it.
But I really, I really enjoyed listening.
Some of these are more conversational and others I listen a lot.
Um, that was not planned.
I just really enjoyed learning how to sit with people and I don't think I'm releasing this in the order that they were recorded, simply because I don't remember the order that they were recorded.
(13:45):
So, um, you'll hear them kind of as it feels right to release them, and I really encourage you to reach out every single person, is somehow, Self-employed and also an entrepreneur and doing their own thing in the world that I interview.
So I really, really encourage you to find them.
At the very least, figure out where they're sharing information, whether that's socials or an email blast, or a website, and follow them because they're all worth listening to, and they're all worth learning from.
(14:13):
I think with that.
I'll just let this unfold and we'll all listen to it together and I might pop in to share my thoughts periodically.
I would like to thank, Jen Morgan who.
Is actually getting these uploaded.
I did the editing.
I interviewed a ton of podcast editing people and realized that this was just for me.
(14:37):
And so you'll see the editing is sloppy because I just wanted to sit with the information and I didn't wanna give it away, and I didn't want someone else's lens.
They're not heavily edited, but they are edited.
Um, but Jen is so kind to actually get them from the editing platform onto whatever you're hearing this on.
I would like to thank Dan Bradner.
(14:58):
He created the intro and the outro music that is so beautiful, and I'm so grateful that I have something original to take us in and out of these conversations.
He's also a, one of the initial interviews you'll hear, and I was deeply inspired, by what he shared with me.
Wilson Raska from Black Hammer Company did the art that you will see, on the cover of all of the, you know, whatever the podcast platform thumbnails that is original.
(15:28):
And that is something that we went back and forth together for quite a while, and you'll notice like it's not like.
Most of my other branding because it's just for this.
Um, again, this wasn't a part of a bigger, a bigger plan.
I just love the piece.
And, there's a level of depth to it that, I urge you to sit with the image for a while.
'cause there's a lot there.
(15:49):
Um, and as always, I could not do any of this without my beautiful partner, Chris Wilson, who you will hear from later in the series.
I did interview him.
And he has been a model, for someone who is, unapologetically stepping away from capitalism in the way that it was defined for him.
(16:10):
And, honoring his own needs.
And his story of reclaiming his rest is actually one of the first stories that really woke me up to the fact that I could reclaim mine.
Plus he is always there, for.
Both creativity and intellectually stimulating conversation and making sure that I eat enough protein so I could not be more grateful for his love and care.
(16:33):
With that, I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did.
Um, rest and we all have to be ready for the revolution, so please take care of yourselves.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to like and subscribe, and if you know someone who might find value in what you've heard, please share.
This is rest for the revolution.
A projector's dilemma.
Hi everybody.
Welcome to not at all the first recorded episode of Rest for the Revolution, but the first that you'll hear, um, I recorded this in late 2024, early 2025, at least the episodes, that are interviews that we will release over the coming months.
(00:28):
I recorded it as a.
Personal project for myself.
I was in between, major projects for the first time in a really long time, and I wanted to do something that was really just for me and didn't have any sort of financial result attached to it.
(00:49):
And something that really is always on my mind, but um, has been on my mind is the idea of rest.
And the idea of how we all as humans are going to get ourselves out of the pretty dire situation that I know us to be in and how we're gonna do that when we're all so tired and so.
(01:17):
I decided I was gonna record this for no other reason and with no agenda other than to learn, and I thought that I was gonna be learning almost like fundamentals of how to rest.
I asked a lot of people a lot smarter than me to come and chat with me and I thought, oh man, these people.
(01:40):
Some of whom have been through dark periods of their life that I knew about.
Some I didn't know their stories.
Well, they'll teach me, they'll know things and I'll, I'll learn because the basic premise that I was operating under was that, um.
In this world of capitalism, those of us with privilege like myself, I have the privilege that I have safety to sleep in a bed.
(02:07):
I have resources that I don't need to be moving or work through the night.
Um.
Those of us with those sorts of privileges are still exhausted and still burnt out because we don't know how to rest.
And so I thought, oh, well, I'll crowdsource it.
(02:27):
I'll learn from all these beautiful people that I'm gonna ask to answer my questions.
And what I realized through the course of, I don't know, a dozen interviews or something like that, was that my basic.
Premise, the whole hypothesis while true that, the intersectionality of all of our identities, whether it's, financial safety, physical safety, health, um, geography, whether and literally every nuance to our lives does.
(03:06):
Absolutely in reality, in real terms, impact our ability and our relationship to rest.
What I didn't, what I didn't prepare for was that I was missing something deeply fundamental to the conversation.
(03:28):
I, as an individual, was missing the fact that rest.
Is a human right.
It is a basic need.
It is the thing that allows us to restore and stay alive.
It is the way that we keep our bodies healing and growing and our creativity flowing.
(03:53):
Rest is as not optional as food and oxygen.
And while I feel like I've been very, uh, prepared and able to talk about things like.
(04:16):
Food and oxygen and healthcare as human rights.
Um, for some reason it never occurred to me that rest is one of the deepest fundamental human rights that we.
And by we, I mean Western society.
'cause that's typically who I interviewed.
(04:38):
We're just out here treating like it's optional.
We're just out here.
Like if you don't have enough privilege, like you just don't get to rest.
And if you do have a lot of privilege, you should probably still feel like you're not doing enough because we really want you to be more whatever, productive.
It's really just produce more capital for capitalism and.
(05:01):
I didn't expect.
I didn't expect the people that I asked to join me and sit with me to be as radically.
Real and vulnerable and honest as they all were.
Like, that was such a gift.
And as I, I sat there and as our conversations went everywhere, um, I talked a lot more about expectations and shoulds and enough and.
(05:29):
Productivity and feelings of shame and addiction than I anticipated.
I didn't, I, I don't know what I anticipated, but I talked a lot more about those things than I thought I would be talking about when the first question I ask in every interview is, what is your relationship to rest? What has it been throughout your life? And.
(05:52):
The deep feelings that emerged from that question.
Um, you could see, I mean, some people shrunk, some people cringe.
Some people laughed.
Some people, immediately felt sad.
Other people immediately giggled like it's a raw question.
I got a lot of like, oh shit, I wasn't expecting that.
(06:13):
And I'm truly grateful.
For all the people that I spoke with, um, for bringing me along with them because it allowed me to rethink my personal relationship with rest and how perhaps this is when I conceived of rest for the revolution.
I'm like, guys, we're at a tipping point.
We all need to not be so exhausted and burnt out so that we can actually revolt, like clean and simple, but.
(06:40):
But I think I, uh, I missed something huge, which is that until we deconstruct our relationship with our bodies, our relationship to time, our relationship to what we do with our life with, and I don't mean do with our life like this professional scale.
(07:00):
I mean like what we do with the fact that we are alive, do we honor the fact that.
We are alive and we require things like sleep and processing time and downtime and creative time and active rest and passive rest, and all of these things like.
This is not optional, and I realized that rest for the revolution was also a huge deconditioning process for me, and I think I am a product of a society that taught me this, that rest isn't optional, that rest it is, and cannot be connected to privilege in a true revolution because.
(07:47):
Because we're alive, 'cause we're bodies, because we, we have to treat it like the revolution is in demanding that we are seen as alive and as humans in the same way that the revolution will require all of us to have food and healthcare.
(08:09):
Um, but space.
Time freedom to let our minds wander.
Freedom to sleep in an undisturbed fashion.
Freedom to think about something that isn't prescribed to us and doesn't make us money.
Like all of this is rest.
And until we restructure.
(08:33):
That we actually care about human rights, and then we add this one to the list.
Um, because I never had, I, I, I, I never had any problem saying like, reproductive rights or f or food or healthcare, like, it just slipped off the tongue so easily.
And yet.
It was never a question if someone was choosing or being forced either one, to not say sleep enough.
(09:02):
I just, I didn't see that as a place to advocate in the way that I saw those other things.
And, and now seeing where that one question, what is your relationship to rest has led me in all of these conversations.
It's all together.
It's all the same.
So I recorded this, um, I recorded most of these interviews in very late 2024 and very early 2025 for the most part.
(09:26):
If you hear me come in and out with individual, podcasts like today, I don't know if I'll do many of them, but I might.
Um, 'cause I'm gonna listen again to all these with, with you all.
So if I pop in, those are recorded after today, which is July 29th.
And that was also an experience for me to.
(09:49):
Do a project that wasn't for anyone else, and it wasn't really for any financial gain.
Um, sure visibility is visibility.
I do know that.
But, I recorded this out of a deep.
Curiosity, like, first I really wanted to learn, literally teach me how to rest.
Um, and then I was like, oh shit.,
(10:10):
I have missed something completely in my worldview.
And so this is just for me.
I hope that you'll experience it, in the way that I did, which was.
With a lot of reverence and a lot of, gratitude for the people who shared so much.
(10:31):
I don't know if I'll do more of them.
I suspect I might.
Uh, but I don't, I don't know.
I don't have a plan for that.
You'll always see, you know, links in the bios to the people who were generous enough to be interviewed.
Um, I'm not that hard to find, but this is not a promotion for service or anything like that.
It's just.
(10:51):
Something that I did for myself in between projects that truly turned my world upside down when I really took the time to listen to people that I know and I respect.
So.
I encourage you to use this as I have used it, uh, as a way to explore your own relationship.
For me, I had to, I had to stop and think about what I even valued or why I had so much trouble with space with nothingness.
(11:28):
Um, I changed how I.
Go to sleep at night.
I changed how I wake up in the morning and enter the world.
Maybe I'll talk about that in the future.
I don't know.
I shifted how I make choices around what I wanna do in my career.
I shifted.
I am shifting the others.
I have made concrete changes, but I am shifting what I value and how quickly I attune to my body and my needs.
(11:55):
That one I'll probably come back on and talk about some more 'cause that's a work in progress.
But I really, I really realized that.
Yeah, we are preparing for the fucking revolution and I don't wanna be exhausted because there's a long fight ahead of us.
There's always been a fight, um, but also an act of revolution that I know I can do regardless, of a lot of other circumstances is actually being in my body and actually listening and actually valuing that there are other metrics.
(12:33):
Within which to live our lives and the ability and the willingness to untangle my own conditioning and enter rest from a different space, not from a place of need and desperation and fatigue, but a place of like, this is what bodies need, and I refuse for my humanity to be erased by the systems.
(13:00):
That seemingly govern us.
And so I urge you to, to find that for yourselves, whatever that means.
Um, a lot of these people have gone through, incredible stories and are incredibly generous to share them.
So I hope that you will find that inspiring.
Um, and some of them have incredible.
(13:23):
Words of wisdom.
Some more cautionary tales depending on how they choose to frame it.
But I really, I really enjoyed listening.
Some of these are more conversational and others I listen a lot.
Um, that was not planned.
I just really enjoyed learning how to sit with people and I don't think I'm releasing this in the order that they were recorded, simply because I don't remember the order that they were recorded.
(13:45):
So, um, you'll hear them kind of as it feels right to release them, and I really encourage you to reach out every single person, is somehow, Self-employed and also an entrepreneur and doing their own thing in the world that I interview.
So I really, really encourage you to find them.
At the very least, figure out where they're sharing information, whether that's socials or an email blast, or a website, and follow them because they're all worth listening to, and they're all worth learning from.
(14:13):
I think with that.
I'll just let this unfold and we'll all listen to it together and I might pop in to share my thoughts periodically.
I would like to thank, Jen Morgan who.
Is actually getting these uploaded.
I did the editing.
I interviewed a ton of podcast editing people and realized that this was just for me.
(14:37):
And so you'll see the editing is sloppy because I just wanted to sit with the information and I didn't wanna give it away, and I didn't want someone else's lens.
They're not heavily edited, but they are edited.
Um, but Jen is so kind to actually get them from the editing platform onto whatever you're hearing this on.
I would like to thank Dan Bradner.
(14:58):
He created the intro and the outro music that is so beautiful, and I'm so grateful that I have something original to take us in and out of these conversations.
He's also a, one of the initial interviews you'll hear, and I was deeply inspired, by what he shared with me.
Wilson Raska from Black Hammer Company did the art that you will see, on the cover of all of the, you know, whatever the podcast platform thumbnails that is original.
(15:28):
And that is something that we went back and forth together for quite a while, and you'll notice like it's not like.
Most of my other branding because it's just for this.
Um, again, this wasn't a part of a bigger, a bigger plan.
I just love the piece.
And, there's a level of depth to it that, I urge you to sit with the image for a while.
'cause there's a lot there.
(15:49):
Um, and as always, I could not do any of this without my beautiful partner, Chris Wilson, who you will hear from later in the series.
I did interview him.
And he has been a model, for someone who is, unapologetically stepping away from capitalism in the way that it was defined for him.
(16:10):
And, honoring his own needs.
And his story of reclaiming his rest is actually one of the first stories that really woke me up to the fact that I could reclaim mine.
Plus he is always there, for.
Both creativity and intellectually stimulating conversation and making sure that I eat enough protein so I could not be more grateful for his love and care.
(16:33):
With that, I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did.
Um, rest and we all have to be ready for the revolution, so please take care of yourselves.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to like and subscribe, and if you know someone who might find value in what you've heard, please share.
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