Dialogic

Dialogic

By Jake J. ThomasArts
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Dialogic episodes

  • Positive Feedback Loops: Dialogic episode 28
    Hello Folks, 
    This is Jake J. Thomas bringing you another episode of Dialogic two days before the end of the year, going to be easing into 2019. What kinds of challenges will we face, what kinds of opportunities? Now is a time for reflecting about that. I said last podcast how good I feel about going into 2019. From being a dad to working with creatives, I really enjoy my life and love how I make a living. This whole industry is so interesting and it’s a powerful time to be a creative. I look forward to making the most of it as much of the time as possible. Waves have been good, but I haven’t been on it as I’ve been sick and getting ready for the new year.
    Finally, I was able to do a full workout and broke into a really strong sweat. I ended up doing 60 minutes yesterday and today doing 720 pushups and 720 squats. I want to get to 1000 each but in 50 minutes and if I can do that every day as just a core of my fitness then I feel confident that I can be a force to reckon with in the years to come.
    I’m on an interesting self-reflective kick, but I don’t want to let it veer into narcissism. I’m not doing this because I love the way I sound; it’s a tool of self-reflection and improvement. I think that podcasts are going to be an increasingly important tool for businesses to share their stories with the public, so I think that this experience is critical in being able to help others. I’m sharing some of the technical aspects of my podcast as a map or a challenge to you. Do a half-hour podcast a day with free form but limited to 30 minutes and then you play back that podcast and you write about what you hear what you think about what comes across as interesting and then you use that writing as the description in the YouTube video, for a blog post, as the podcast description. It’s a way of being self-reflective: it’s a way of learning to speak what you mean and to mean what you speak. The act of communicating in front of the public creates apprehension that can play tricks on you and cause glitches of consciousness because you’re insecure about it. But with that feedback loop you can improve quickly. 
    What are you working on for 2019? 
    Half an hour recording, half an hour listen/ write/ upload. In one-hour you create a video and audio podcasts but you also generate copy. You have a page long blog, a description for your podcast, 20 tweets, three Instagram captions, and maybe more. It’s a very generative thing. When you set that as a goal for yourself you start to think about things in a different way, trying to make the connections stronger, finding the thing that you want to talk about because you know that you’re going to have to talk about something. This kind of self-reflective activity can really be transformative both because it provides a space for reflection and because it inspires a shift in consciousness from passive to actively looking for subjects.
    It also pushes you to come up with tactics for when you can’t think of any content. There are categories that you can invent that you can always turn to and use for a day’s content. 
    The reflective loop helps you to see what is working and what isn’t. It pushes you to be honest about how you really are. It’s one of the reasons why fitness is so important, because you can’t really fake it. You’ve either done the work or not. If you have done enough work, then your body is an amazing machine that can do more than you could imagine. That’s reason enough to keep committed to a physical routine. It’s like the runner’s high: that moment of space that’s created by the endorphins from running where you can focus your mental activity and reflect on your reality from a different perspective. 
    It’s all about finding these practices that will generate movement and will encourage self-reflection and transformation. To use it to drive ourselves in a positive direction, to give ourselves momentum to endure any storms we might encounter.
    27 min
  • Taint Nothin' But Unconditional Love: Dialogic Podcast episode 27

    Dialogic podcast, holiday check-in with the meme-savy people about the week between Xmas and NYE, the taint. Taint nothing but a weird little chunk of surreal time. It’s also a time of mass-reflection, people are pretending to get introspective; it’s resolution time. I want to think about it in a way that could be useful to myself and if it helps me it will help someone else. Upon reflection, I had feedback from a friend that seeing my sweaty selfie posts about pushups inspired her to take her fitness routine seriously and helped her to get back into shape after a back surgery. That alone made it more than worth it. I post my sweaty selfies because you can’t fake that kind of effort and with so much fronting and faking on the Internet I like to show honest moments.

    When it comes to the holidays, like with many things, I am of two minds about a lot of it. I like to think that, when this dynamic is well-balanced, it gives me flexibility in my approach to things like the holidays. Sometimes I think we should just skip it and other times I’m ready to go all-in. Meh.

    Everyone approaches the holiday with their own style. It’s different as a parent, though. Having a 5-year old daughter with a birthday two weeks before Xmas is a blast because she has such a great time. She loves her presents and she adores spending time with her family. I’m super grateful that I get to be her dad. I always knew that being a dad would be hugely important to me, which is why I waited so long to become one. I didn’t want to do that without the right situation, turns out that for me becoming a parent means that you go all in and do it the best that you can and worry about not doing it as good as you would like to, even though you understand that loving them and loving being a parent is the best thing you can do. I feel super grateful about being a dad.

    When you have a kiddo, it’s all different, so shout out to all the parents out there doing their best to figure it all out. Unconditional love, how do we do it better, more consistently?

    I like to talk because I feel that I have something to say, that I have a voice and I want to exercise my voice to become stronger, more focused on providing you with value. This podcast is going to be a daily thing, that’s my resolution. It’s going to get a little sillier, a little more focused, a little higher cardio levels, a little more footwork footwork footworkish.

    I’m not against resolutions. I think that the world is amazing but imagine if everyone improved even just a little bit. People have a spectrum of behavior, a scale of desirability. From seduction mode to sedated on cold medicine stupor everyone has a range of feelings and styles they exhibit. Resolutions are just choices to strive for one or another version of self. The desire to become more fit is a choice to solidify a version of yourself through habit. You’re choosing to go in one direction instead of another one. You’re not laying on the beach smoking herb with some beautiful friends. There are different values and benefits to any lifestyle. People get confused when making a choice into thinking that one lifestyle is better than another when really you’re just choosing the set of benefits, costs, and consequences that you prefer over the other ones. Choosing fitness means getting discipline, structure, physical ability etc.; however, choosing to be artistic and spontaneous has its own set of rewards. In certain contests between lifestyles there are definitely advantages. The lawn-laying wine drinking artist may be at a disadvantage to fight the physical fitness enthusiast, but when it comes to writing poems, vice versa.

    It's not that one way is better than the other, but that you can’t often do both at the same time. You don’t have to choose one or the other, but you have to schedule the time out. Either at a certain time of day or a certain number of weeks during the year you have to change directions, you h

    30 min
  • Discipline, Positivity, and Borders: Dialogic Podcast Episode 25
    I discuss self-discipline: what it is, how to build more of it, and why it is important. I also delve into Dale Carnegie's methodology for working with people by being positive. Finally, I give some thoughts about the situation at the border, and what a future could look like if we changed our relationship to other countries could look like. Thanks for listening. Peace!
    51 min
  • Roots of Racism: Dialogic Podcast Episode 23
    In this episode, I share some thoughts about the history of racism and my own personal experiences with it. I draw from this smart article: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/05/260006815/the-ugly-fascinating-history-of-the-word-racism
    Racism is a huge problem in our culture and understanding its roots is part of how we get rid of it. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Peace.
    29 min
  • Behave in the Cave: Dialogic Podcast Episode 22
    In this episode I discuss Plato's allegory of the cave from The Republic and talk about how philosophy and self-help books can go together to great effect and why. Excuse my voice, I've had a cold, but been staying with the pushups, baby. I hope you enjoy your listen.
    30 min
  • Show Your Sweat: Dialogic Podcast Episode 21
    A brief interlude to talk about fitness, sweaty selfies, commitment to exercise, waking up early, and sharing your grit and resolution on social media. Shouts out to Jocko Willink, who is the greatest show your sweat waking up early dude on the Interwebs.
    13 min
  • Sex, Lies and Digital Media: Dialogic Podcast Episode 20
    In this episode, Jake opens up the topic of sexuality and honesty in the digital age. Sure to be a recurring topic, he sketches out the history of social media to provide an explanation for why we are in our current situation. He also suggests embracing the concept of self-help and recommends Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as a starting point for getting better at living a principled life. Honesty, buddies. It's not easy, but it's the only way to go.
    33 min
  • So Sensitive So: Dialogic Podcast Episode 19
    In this episode, Jake does some freewheeling thinking about cultural sensitivity and being overly sensitive in the social media outrage culture era. Using the Rosanne Barr incident as an example, he discusses our need to be culturally sensitive when talking about culture and race, and also makes a case that we also should be better at accepting apologies and looking deeper into the issues than the surface disturbances.
    29 min

About Dialogic

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Conversations about art, culture and marketing in the digital age.