Between the Ears Podcast

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes starts with a simple question: if you go out to a restaurant, where do you go and what do you eat? He won’t say what the answer means, but he believes it says something about you and how you deal with certainty and uncertainty, so it’s worth thinking about. The quote for this episode is “People who have nothing interesting to share often resort to complaining and criticizing.” Arnold points to social media, where most people criticize what others do, saying they would have done it differently or complaining about the weather, the food, the government or big companies. These people are responsive, he says, they react to others but don’t create anything or take any initiative to make the world better for everyone. His hope is that more people ask themselves: what am I doing, what can I contribute, how can I help? Every person has a role to play and can help make a better world for all.

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Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

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In this episode, Arnold Beekes shares what he calls a first aid kit for your brain fitness, for days when your mood is low, your energy is gone and everything feels negative. You don’t have to do it all. He invites you to pick one or two items and apply them today, then try another on another day. The list: stop watching or reading the news and learn something instead, since you miss nothing and most of it is built to create fear; stop meeting toxic people and connect with inspiring ones, even if only through their writing or videos; stop focusing on the past or the future and be present now; stop being a victim and create something, anything, a drawing, a new dish or a photo of a tree in blossom; stop saying “that’s just the way I am”, because neuroplasticity means your brain can form new connections for the rest of your life; stop comparing yourself with others, whose pictures are often photoshopped and whose insides may not match the outside, and use your own uniqueness instead; stop consuming violence in horror films, thrillers and news; appreciate beauty, even a new leaf on a street tree or a cup you have ignored for years; and stop rushing, because nothing will happen if you take a nap and slow down. The episode closes with a story of everyday beauty from Germany, where volunteer teams use thermal imaging drones at dawn to find newborn fawns hiding in tall meadow grass before farmers start mowing. A ground team then carefully moves each fawn to safety, using grass or leaves rather than bare hands so the mother doesn’t reject it, and returns it once the mowing is done. Volunteer groups across Germany now save hundreds of fawns each season, and the method has spread to other countries.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #BrainFitness #Neuroplasticity #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

In this episode, Arnold Beekes talks about attention as one of the most valuable currencies we have. Where your attention goes, your energy flows, and he argues that far too much of it is triggered by fear. Fear puts you in survival mode, fight or flight, and in that state you can’t be creative, find good solutions or get real insights, because great ideas need a relaxed mind. Arnold, who was born in the Netherlands and now lives in Paraguay, points out there are no tigers around, yet fear is still the main tool for grabbing attention. In his view it is used by governments to make people comply and by almost every business to sell, through fear of war, climate, oil prices, being too fat or having an old car, and he says around 95% of social media is fear based. His advice is to not engage with anything that makes you fearful or angry, and to stop filling every gap in your day with the phone. Eat without looking at your screen, talk to people without it, keep it off your nightstand, and when you drink your tea or coffee, just drink it. That pause feels ten times better than scrolling. He also warns against the “two screens” habit, watching TV while following social media, because it splits your attention. Instead, become the guardian of your attention, listen to your heart and to what your body is telling you, like the pain in your ankle you have been ignoring. The episode closes with a story of everyday beauty about Tyler Wiebe, a motorcyclist in Brisbane who was dragged under a car that stopped on top of his sternum, so he could not breathe and his heart could not beat properly. Two employees from a nearby business, Rob and Brian, ran out, called over their colleagues and kept trying to lift the 3,000 pound vehicle until it came up just enough to pull him clear. Tyler survived and later thanked his rescuers on Australian TV, calling them certified legends, saying he gets more time with his daughters and family because of them.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Attention #Presence #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

In this episode, Arnold Beekes asks a simple question: what are you curious about? He points out that most of us were taught the opposite, with “curiosity killed the cat” as the classic example, and that school often rewards memorizing over real learning. If you were interested in pigeons, trees or the language of dolphins, you were told it was a waste of time. Arnold says curiosity is one of the most important parts of a healthy brain, a tool, a method and a way of being. Because many of us suppress curiosity the same way we suppress emotions, he asks you to take your time, keep your eyes, ears and nose open over the next few days, and notice what pulls your attention, like the tree flowering in the middle of winter that he can see right now and the questions it raises. The quote for this episode is “Most people only listen to what they want to hear.” Arnold links it to echo chambers and confirmation bias, where we surround ourselves with people and media that already agree with us. You learn far more from people who see things differently, and that doesn’t mean changing your mind every second, it means being comfortable saying “I don’t know for sure.” Once you have different points of view, you can form your own opinion, and the world needs your uniqueness.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Curiosity #ConfirmationBias #BrainHealth #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

In this episode, Arnold Beekes contrasts two fundamentally different ways of living: from the outside in, where you're constantly reacting to what other people say, what you consume, and what the world throws at you — versus from the inside out, where you start with what you notice and feel internally, and respond to the world from there. He makes the case that outside-in living means living someone else's life, always shaped by external triggers, while inside-out living means actually living your own. Arnold gets specific about how distraction functions as avoidance — the movies, the drinking, the endless scrolling we reach for precisely because we don't want to hear the inner voice quietly telling us we're unhappy at work, exhausted, or not using our potential. He uses a vivid image: trying to receive something with a closed hand that's already full — your brain works the same way, and when it's packed with other people's expectations and constant distraction, there's no space left to receive insight, intuition, or even proper sleep. His practical suggestion is disarmingly simple: when you eat, just eat. When you drink, just drink. When you walk, actually notice what you see, hear, and smell. It's a training process, not something that happens automatically. The episode closes with a genuinely lovely piece of everyday beauty: King's College Hospital in London has built a rooftop garden ICU, letting critically ill patients spend hours outdoors — fully connected to power, data, and medical gas — in a space designed by a three-time Chelsea Flower Show winner, with one patient awaiting a heart operation saying she'd want to be out there even in a thunderstorm.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #InsideOut #Presence #Mindfulness #PersonalGrowth #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness #EverydayBeauty

In this question-and-quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks a question that sounds poetic but is meant literally: what does your heart say? He points back to the idea of our three brains — head, heart, and gut — and explains that the heart brain genuinely communicates, not in a voice others can hear, but in one you can learn to hear yourself, with attention and appreciation. He pairs it with an old Zen saying: "When you walk, walk. When you eat, eat. When you sit, sit." Simple on the surface, but genuinely hard in a world where we're rarely doing just one thing — scrolling while eating, listening to a podcast while walking, watching a video while reading. His invitation is straightforward: practice doing one thing at a time, fully present, and notice what changes.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #QuestionAndQuote #Presence #Mindfulness #PersonalGrowth #ArnoldBeekes #HeartBrain #Uniqueness

In this episode, Arnold Beekes challenges the mechanistic way we're taught to see ourselves — as a collection of separate parts that doctors and schools treat individually, rather than as a genuinely interconnected whole. He introduces his framework, which he calls MESPAS-X, covering seven layers: Mental (thoughts and beliefs), Emotional (signals from the body pointing to unmet needs), Spiritual (our energy and sense of interconnectedness as electromagnetic beings), Physical (sleep, nutrition, exercise, and the visible tip of the iceberg — our words and actions), Environmental (the two-way relationship between our surroundings and our behavior, including Benjamin Hardy's point that no amount of willpower overcomes the wrong environment), Social (drawing on the 80-year Harvard Study of Adult Development, which found health and happiness come down to good relationships, not wealth or fame), and finally the "X" — the magical, mythical, and metaphysical layer, representing everything science still can't explain, illustrated by the striking fact that humans can only perceive roughly 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. Arnold's core argument is that working on just one layer barely moves the needle — someone eating perfectly healthy but stuck in a toxic relationship will still feel lousy — so real change means addressing every layer, consistently, over time. The episode closes with a story of everyday beauty: Clint Brower, who watched his father and countless other American farmers develop Parkinson's disease after decades of pesticide spraying, and who left a tech career to build Greenfield Robotics — a fleet of autonomous, herbicide-free robots that slice weeds with precision instead.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #WholeBeing #Mindset #PersonalGrowth #ArnoldBeekes #Wellbeing #EverydayBeauty

In this question-and-quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks a question that cuts deeper than it first sounds: what are you unwilling to feel? He draws a careful distinction from simple suppression — this isn't about emotions you don't even know you're avoiding, but ones you already know are there, deep down, that you're actively choosing not to sit with. He gives two grounded examples: knowing your work has stopped challenging you and you want something different, but refusing to feel that because of the mortgage and the kids' university fees standing in the way; and a 20-year friendship that's turned into constant complaining and blame, leaving you tired and frustrated every time, while you keep telling yourself loyalty means staying anyway. He pairs it with a quote — "A fast food mentality will not bring you three star meals" — using the appeal of fast food's instant gratification (tastes good, arrives fast, followed by a stomach ache and hunger two hours later) as a literal example, then widens it figuratively to anything worth having: fast results at the gym, a new language, or an early promotion. His point: three-star outcomes take time, effort, and discipline, and expecting the fast-food version of anything worthwhile will only work against you.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #QuestionAndQuote #EmotionalAwareness #Discipline #PersonalGrowth #ArnoldBeekes #Mindset #Uniqueness

In this episode, Arnold Beekes explains mirror neurons — brain cells that fire both when you take an action and when you simply watch someone else take that same action — and why understanding this changes how you should think about your own mental practices. Because the brain doesn't fully distinguish between lived, observed, and imagined experience, holding an image of yourself as healthy or capable can genuinely trigger the same neural response as actually living it. But Arnold is careful to flag what most self-help advice leaves out: it's not enough to just picture or say something, you have to feel it too. He uses affirmations as the clearest example — saying "I have a two million euro house" while feeling like you can barely afford a rented room creates a contradiction between feeling and imagination that cancels the affirmation out entirely, which is exactly why so much of that advice fails to work. He illustrates the same mechanism with two contrasting examples: watching a war movie can generate real sadness or anger even though you were never in a war, while watching a beautiful nature video can genuinely lift your mood the same way actually being in a rainforest would — meaning you don't need an expensive safari to get some of its emotional benefit, just conscious, positive use of your own mirror neurons. The episode closes with a striking piece of everyday beauty: new science on how whale populations play a far larger role in ocean carbon cycling than previously understood, with their waste fertilizing phytoplankton blooms that absorb carbon dioxide, and their carcasses sustaining deep-sea ecosystems for decades after death.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #MirrorNeurons #Neuroscience #Mindset #PersonalGrowth #ArnoldBeekes #Visualization #EverydayBeauty

In this question-and-quote episode, Arnold Beekes tackles a question many people instinctively label selfish: how am I loving myself? He makes the case that self-love isn't ego or self-interest — it's the actual precondition for loving anyone or anything else, since a self-critical inner state directly shapes the outer reality you attract. He argues this is something to practice daily, not something to arrive at once and forget, since the inner critic most of us have built up over a lifetime doesn't disappear on its own. He pairs it with a sobering quote: "The longer you allow yourself to be damaged by negative behavior from others, the more unlikely it becomes that you can fully recover." Arnold connects this to the compounding effect of constant negative inputs — 24/7 news, complaining friends, people always comparing and criticizing — becoming your normalized environment the longer you stay in it. He shares a personal, vulnerable example: his own mother, who instinctively looked for the dark side of everything, from good weather ("but it will start to rain") to anything else in front of her, believing that worry and anxiety were somehow protective, when in reality they just made everyone around her feel lousy. His closing message: while you can't always choose your circumstances, you can choose your friends, your media, and what you read — and those choices matter more than most people realize.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #QuestionAndQuote #SelfLove #SelfCompassion #PersonalGrowth #ArnoldBeekes #Mindset #Uniqueness