Heterodox Americana

Angie goes to Prague and regales us with story of food, castles, and Eastern European delights

You may not always get what you want in a relationship, but not asking for what is and keeping your desires hidden is a surer way to not get it. In this episode we look at emotional  asymmetry in relationships and the notion of "showing up" for yourself.

We talk about how to expand the contents of your mind and, by extension, the mind itself. We deal with some possibly helpful approaches to dealing with rumination, and how to use novel mental representations to change the quality of your life.

Apparently the complicated re-emergence of people and culture now has to content with the complicated re-emergence of COVID-19. As the Delta variant spreads throughout the world, we again have to contend with the same set of spirit-sinking decisions. Nobody ever said global pandemics would be easy.

Going from quarantine to socializing again has been super weird for lots of people. That, plus... what to do about this vaccine thing, anyway? To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? That is the question.

In this episode, we talk about more than just cancel culture and wokism, we also talk about the changing nature of our economy, the impact of the gig economy, job security (career security, really) and the slow death of our universities. Where are we headed?

A continuation on our discussion of how to be thoughtful about raising daughters with an eye toward the development of their full humanity. This time we talk about the general cultural discourse around menstruation.

The first part of a 7-part series on raising emotionally healthy daughters. This first part addresses the subtle, inadvertent sexualization that happens to so many girls even at home. We talk about how to recognize it and what to do about it. An important discussion even if you don't have daughters, but especially if you do.

Whether in electoral politics or at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, how can we make sense of the seemingly irrational behavior of people who act against their own best interests. Hint: their "best" interests is not what we say it is. We explore the layers of decisions and interest in this episode.

Are we tired of doing this yet? Figuring out protocols are inherently challenging for our automatic thinking brains. How to act in a pandemic is beyond whatever intuitive mechanism has evolved in us as a species. Outside of scientific/mechanistic/strategic thinking there is simply no way to understand something as small as a virus. What we do in its presence should be informed by protocol; not hubris.
Also... Zombies!

Reflections on 2020 and the Kick-Off for season 2

A continuation of our discussion in E51 around parenting, this time we look at parental relationships with younger children where considerations of "prestige" don't necessarily apply. Instead, we ask, "What do we want for our children?", and we examine competing ideas of child happiness.

Somehow this episode morphed into a discussion about the impact of prestige and prestige-seeking behavior on kids. We started off with a wider intention of understanding the parent-child relationship, but ended up focused on this narrow aspect.

We'll continue the wider discussion (including exploration, attachment, and mirroring) in future episodes

Be Limitless!

If there's a single pernicious idea that dogs our ability to contribute, it's that the world is zero-sum and there's not "enough". We try our best to elucidate the scarcity mindset and offer ways toward a path of abundance (literally and metaphorically [and metaphysically?]). There is enough for nearly all of us but our functional fixedness prevents us from seeing the what's available.