Bounce! Conversations with Larry Weeks

This discussion centers on what living with purpose actually means.

My guest is Professor William Damon.

William is a psychologist and professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He has been designated one of the fifty most influential living psychologists in the world today and is one of the world's leading scholars of human development. Bills is a pioneering researcher on the development of purpose in life and wrote the influential book The Path to Purpose. His current work includes a study exploring purpose in higher education and a study of family purpose across generations. He's been elected to the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

On this podcast, we cover these topics and more.

• The multiple definitions of purpose
• Vocations/avocations
• How purpose can change over time
• Is purpose something you find or do
• Purpose as a noun vs purpose as a verb
• On having purpose vs being purposeful
• The benefits of a Life Review
• Bill's story about his early family life and his new book A Round of Golf With my Father

For show notes and more, visit larryweeks.com/podcasts

My guests are Nathan and Susannah Fur. Nathan earned his Ph.D. from Stanford's Technology Ventures Program and is an Associate Professor of Strategy at INSEE ADD, one of the world's leading graduate business schools located in France. Susannah, a designer and art historian, founded a women's clothing line inspired by her research of the intricate embroidery of Dutch women.

Our discussion centers on the benefits of embracing uncertainty, specifically the tools outlined in their book, The Upside of Uncertainty.

I've been assembling tactics for years now, accumulating a mental toolbox of sorts for dealing with challenges. Uncertainty is challenging for what it lacks - concrete information.

How do we move forward when we don't fully know what we are dealing with?

We usually don't act; we might freeze or delay having a lack of certainty. Dealing with uncertainty has a lot to do with mindset since we may not know what to handle. What frame of mind will help us act or move forward in the face of uncertainty? We all know making decisions in a state of fear is also suboptimal.

So on this show, we discuss ...

• Uncertainty and evolutionary hard-wiring
• The relationship between stress and uncertainty
• Fragile and anti-fragile
• Upsides
• Tools for dealing with uncertainty
• Reframing
• Adjacent Possible.
• Aplomb: Doubting self-doubt.
• Uncertainty balancers
• Creating an Uncertainty manifesto.

And much more.

I think if you listen, you will come to the conclusion that things may be uncertain, but we can have a little more certainty that we can handle it.

For show notes and more, visit larryweeks.com/podcasts

"It is by squeezing your life into a single tube that you set yourself up for definitive failure. Projects fail, and people fail in them. But we have come to speak as if a person can BE a failure - as though failure were an identity, not an event" - Kieran Setiya

Kieran Setiya is a Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for his work in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Setiya is a co-editor of Philosophers' Imprint, and he is also the author of several books, including Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, and Knowing Right From Wrong.

Kieren's newest book, Life is Hard, How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, is the topic of this podcast. In this episode, Keiran challenges the idea that happiness should be life's primary pursuit. Instead, he argues that we should try to live well, and living well means how one lives in relationship to difficulty - not without difficulty.

Keiren has a great phrase, "the digressive amplitude of being alive." Life IS oscillation; it's up-down, backward-forward, and expecting anything different is a setup to suffering, adding to whatever hard thing you are experiencing.

Topics covered in the show…

• On thinking philosophically
• On consolation
• Relating to pain
• Failure and your credit report
• The Experience Machine
• Autotelic vs exotelic experience
• The metaverse
• On the profundity of the movie Groundhog Day

For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com.

On this podcast, we're going to talk about Brain Chemistry, specifically, what happens in our brains when we are traumatized, severely depressed, or anxious. And for those stuck in that state, what are the latest clinical treatments using medication, that can help someone get unstuck.

My guest on this episode is the distinguished Dr. John Krystal MD. Dr. Krystal is the Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Psychology; Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University; and Chief of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Dr. Krystal is a leading expert in the areas of alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, and depression. His work links psychopharmacology, neuroimaging, molecular genetics, and computational neuroscience to study the neurobiology and treatment of these disorders. He is best known for leading the discovery of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients.

He is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Freedom Biosciences, a clinical-stage biotechnology platform developing next-generation ketamine and psychedelic therapeutics that recently emerged from stealth in August 2022.

On this show, we cover topics that include ...

• The neurobiology of a depressed brain
• The relationship between thought and brain chemistry
• Anxiety and its connection to depression
• Pharmacology; getting into the various medications for treating depression.
• How antidepressants were discovered
• The efficacy of current antidepressants
• The neuroscience of psychedelics in the treatment of severe depression and PTSD
• Ketamine therapy; benefits, risks, and treatment protocols (the different delivery mechanisms, dosages, etc.)

Since we do talk about substances like ketamine which has psychedelic-like properties, here is a disclaimer: I'm NOT a doctor, nor do I play one on the interwebs. None of the content in this podcast constitutes medical advice or should be construed as a recommendation to use any medications mentioned. There are psychological, physical, and sometimes legal risks with usage. Please consult your doctor before considering anything we discuss in this episode.

All right, that all said, here is more information for you to consider.

Enjoy!

Much more For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com

My guest is clinical psychologist and author Dr. Lindsay Gibson.

Dr. Gibson has two graduate degrees in clinical psychology, including a Doctorate of Psychology from the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology – an Adjunct Professor for the College of William and Mary and Old Dominion University.

She has written a few best-sellers, including a series on dealing with emotionally immature people, the first of which is Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from the Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved.

On the podcast, Dr. Gibson sheds light on the high-conflict personality type and gives some great psychological and tactical advice for dealing with the emotionally immature.

On the show, we discuss

• Why she wrote the book and its origins from her practice
• EIP personality characteristics
• The single most essential factor in human relationships
• How can I be sure I am emotionally mature
• The impact an EIP might have on you emotionally
• Why an EIP is like they the way they are
• How to deal with an EIPs
• Where people go wrong in dealing with them
• What your main goal should be in interacting with an EIP (good tips generally when caught in an argument with anyone)

Much more For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com

My guest is Mary-Frances O'Connor.

Mary-Francis is a professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona and is the Director of the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress Lab, where she and her colleagues are creating new frameworks for understanding grief and the grieving process; and her book The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss is the topic of this episode.

On the show, we discuss...

• Her work at the lab and what she is learning about grief
• What happens to the brain when someone is experiencing grief
• Defining complicated grief
• An update on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's grief model
• How grief is prolonged
• We discuss the mortality rates for those who fail to adapt to loss
• General loss, death isn't the only loss type we grieve; it can be a job, an identity, or anything we are attached to
• How lost loved ones really stay with us, outside of any mystical experience

For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com

My guest is AJ jacobs

A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig. His strategy as a writer is to dive into something he's curious about and actually live it.

He has written ten books, four of which are New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self-help. His most recent book is The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.

AJ is also editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR, and a columnist for Mental Floss magazine. He has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The Dr. Oz Show, Conan, and The Colbert Report. He has given several TED talks, including ones about living biblically, creating a one-world family, and living healthily. The viewership count of the two I saw was over 6M combined.

On the podcast, I probe into his life experiments so we cover…

• How I came across his work in Esquire
• We cover some of his more notable experiments
• What he took away from reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in his quest to learn everything in the world.
• The hilarious problems with being radically honest
• What he learned from living the rules of the old testament for a year - in Manhattan
• He discusses which of his experiments was the most profound and life-changing
• We talk about why being grateful is hard and what he learned about gratitude from thanking over 1,000 people
• How we have the happiness equation backward,
• We talk about his latest book and the benefits of puzzles
• What mazes have to do with psychological flexibility

I always strive for the meaningful on the show, but sometimes that can lean toward a bit of the somber - which is fine - but it is wonderful when you can get a guest like AJ who is breezy, funny, AND profound; hard to pull that off but he does it.

I instantly liked him - I think you will too. Enjoy!

This podcast is about your relationship to time.

My guest is Oliver Burkeman. Oliver is a journalist and author. He writes and publishes a twice-monthly email newsletter called "The Imperfectionist." You can find The Guardian column he wrote from 2006 to 2020 online. It's titled "This Column Will Change Your Life." He's also the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and his most recent book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. It is also the topic of the podcast.

Four Thousand Weeks explores concepts of time and time management, arguing that our modern attempts to optimize our time leave us stressed and unhappy. The book's first sentence is: "The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." (About 4,000 weeks, on average; thus the title.). It is not your classic time-management book and in it, he explores the most profound questions we have in life.

In the book and on this podcast, Oliver prompts us to question the very idea that time is something you use in the first place."

Some of our talking points.

• On what he's learned about happiness
• What we should seek besides happiness
• Defining personal growth
• The importance of frustration tolerance
• How we relate to time
• The problems with time management
• Optimizing the wrong things
• To-do list and apps and the trap of planning
• The challenges of prioritizing
• Practical tips on project management

And Oliver certainly helped me sort through my struggles with allocating my time, so I found the conversation very useful. I think you will, too.

For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com

"Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved."― Neil Gaiman

My guest on this episode is Professor Robin Dunbar, the well-known anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist famous for his "Dunbar Number."

Robin is an Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology and head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of 22 books including his most recent Friends — Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships.

For the few of you who have never heard of Dunbar's number, it is the discovery that there exists a cognitive limit on human groups of about 150. Generally, we can only maintain stable social relationships within a limited number in which each individual knows who the other is and how that person relates to each other.

On the show, Robin breaks down that upper number into concentric circles of much smaller groups that make up our close friends and best friends, explaining how they got there - and how we can maintain and grow them.

We discuss these topics…

• The importance of friends and the huge effect they have on our health
• A summary of his famous number - and its implications for friendships
• How friendships change across a lifespan
• How best friends are created
• How and why friendships end
• The pandemics impact on friendships, a bit about proximity
• The effect of the internet, Zoom, and Social Media
• Differences in friendship between the online and real-world
• The impact of individual differences in introversion and extraversion
• Friendships between men and women, the "When Harry Met Sally" question

For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com

"I would say what would be responsible when asking yourself should I stay or should I go is, am I actively growing a core skillset that I want to harness and carry with me throughout my career?" - Ashley Stahl

The great resignation is all over the media of late; it's an economic trend born of the COVID pandemic in which employees (In the U.S. for our purposes) are voluntarily leaving jobs in huge numbers—starting around the end of 2020, ramping in 2021 and increasing now in 2022. Although many service sectors are hardest hit, it does bleed beyond those impacting many different industries.

My guest is Ashley Stahl. Ashley is a former counter-terrorism professional turned career coach and bestselling author of "You Turn: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, and Design Your Dream Career."

Ashley's helped clients in over 30 countries discover their career path and land more job offers. Her writings appear in a monthly career column in Forbes magazine, and her articles have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Self, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and more.

When you listen, I think you can tell that Ashley is on a mission to help people step into a career they're aligned with and even excited about.

I wanted Ashley on because she is an expert in career transitions and disruptive workplace phenomena. I wanted her opinion on what is happening and, more importantly, what opportunities this opens up for people. She did not disappoint.

Topics we covered on the show

• insights into what is happening at the moment across industries.
• Work and the burden of meaning, purpose and passion.
• Values first, roles second.
• Better questions to ask yourself.
• When to stay, when to leave.
• The importance of mindset.
• Assessments and determining work that is right for you.
• Hard skills and how networking works today.
• How to find unadvertised roles.

For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com