This one goes deep.

Tom talks about watching, in real time, a family member’s final days.

Tim and Tom agree the topic is how to live life as if these moments- where real emotion and real connection- matter more than “day to day life".” Tim brings up the movie Equus and The Bacchae we both talk about the religious impulse that follows the moment our imagination and emotions connect and how that can lead to clarity and madness.

Timestamps!

00:00 - Tom starts talking about the imminent death of a family member by first talking about Pink Floyd, and what shared experiences mean

03:04 - The fabric of the shared world

08:16 - “What is it about human connections that is so powerful and important?”

11:22 - Tom talks about how his family member is dealing gracefully and wisely with the reality of their own death; and how they have never shied away from dealing with the death of other family members in the past

17:35 - “Nothing matters more than our internal world.”

20:35 - More about shared experiences and intensity; Tom mentions a Japanese comic strip, and Tim tells a story about Yoko Ono

26:50 - Tom gets the crux of the episode: the death of his family member (and the memory of when his mother was sick years ago) is throwing so much of his life and experience into intense relief that he wonders: How can we re-orient our daily lives to have these intense experiences more often? Is that possible?

28:00 - Tim realizes this is the perennial theme of the podcast; he tells a story from work, where the chance to break through to a human connection is almost always blocked

32:55 - Tim says that while we can try to be more meaningful and focused, the intensity of memorable experiences cannot be lived in all the time. Primo Levi, Anne Frank

34:11 - Tim talks about the humorous fears he experienced while attending funerals as a child

36:30 - Tom tells a story about wasps and horses from one of his favorite podcasts, The Blindboy Podcast, and playing with the experience of feelings in the moment.

41:40 - The topic of horses gets Tim to talk about how these ideas underpin Peter Shaffer’s play (and movie), “Equus”

46:35 - Tom responds to Equus by asking for ancient stories like it; Tim tells the story of Euripides’s play, The Bacchae --which again, focuses on how unable people are to live at peaks of intensity for long periods of time

51:30 - Tim talks about how Judaism deals with this, trying to hem in and control the intensity of experience with laws and ritual

54:10 - Tim talks about Equus some more (slightly misremembering details of it!)

53:30 - Tom closes the episode by talking about Justin Green book, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, and how Green ended up finding a way to control his own intense experiences by becoming a sign painter.

1:00:00 - For his reading corner, Tim reads some passages from Leon Wieseltier’s book “Kaddish,” about the year he spent saying the Jewish prayer for mourning following his father’s death

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