Dinner with the Dead!

This episode is a conversation about the local economics and politics of the AI build-out. Working from the essay "The Statehouse Is the Story," it argues that whether AI infrastructure gets built, and on whose terms, is decided less in Washington than in statehouses, utility commissions and county meeting rooms.It starts on a long drive home to St. Louis from Florida's 30A, with one realization: the real question isn't what AI stocks do next, but who pays for the land, power and water these projects need. From there it gets into grid upgrades folded into everyone's utility rates, tax breaks without clawbacks, and "rate freezes" that may just push costs down the road. It also covers a seven-step citizen's checklist and why a confident AI summary is a tool, not proof.It closes with Plato's cave, where the headlines are the shadows and the local deals are the machinery. It leaves one question open: when states compete to land these projects, who pays when the bills come due?

Why Personality Is a Verb: Jordan Peterson on Becoming Who You Could Be

Personality isn’t just who you are—it’s who you’re becoming.

In this episode, we explore the central ideas of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s Personality and Its Transformations course: how human character takes shape, why meaningful change can be painful, and what it takes to move beyond the patterns that keep us stuck.

Drawing together psychoanalysis, neuroscience, existential philosophy, and religious traditions, this discussion examines personality as both a relatively stable structure and an ongoing process of conscious transformation. Rather than treating competing psychological schools as mutually exclusive, Peterson places them within a hierarchical framework—different perspectives illuminating different levels of the same human experience.

Along the way, we explore:

• Why mental well-being involves adaptation, not simply maintaining stability.
• How symbolic death and rebirth describe the surrender of outdated beliefs and identities.
• Why voluntarily confronting difficulty matters for psychological maturation.
• How personal aims can develop beyond immediate self-interest toward a higher, more inclusive good.

At the heart of the discussion is a challenging question: What must you let go of to become who you could be?

An exploration of Peterson’s ideas—not a lecture delivered by Dr. Peterson.

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Why Secular Culture Still Acts Religious

What happens when every generation tears down the traditions the next generation will long to recover?

Drawing on a conversation featuring Paul VanderKlay and his collaborators, this episode explores America’s recurring cycle of religious rejection and rediscovery. People leave inherited Christianity behind, yet often continue judging the world through moral assumptions Christianity helped shape. Meanwhile, as churches and other enduring institutions lose influence, social media supplies a revolving door of identities, causes, and substitute communities.

From the “worship wars” between traditional and contemporary services to younger generations’ attraction to ancient liturgies, the discussion asks a difficult question: Are we recovering spiritual roots—or simply shopping for a different religious aesthetic?

At its heart is the tension between faith as a personal preference and faith as an inheritance that asks something of us. The speakers make the case for historical continuity, spiritual maturity, and local relationships strong enough to survive real disagreement.

When everything online encourages us to reinvent ourselves, perhaps the deeper challenge is learning how to belong.

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This text provides an overview of the spiritual teachings found in Polishing the Mirror, a book by Ram Dass that synthesizes his fifty years of wisdom on living from the spiritual heart. The core metaphor describes the human ego and mind as a dusty mirror that requires consistent cleaning through meditation, service, and devotion to reflect one's true, loving nature. By cultivating a witness consciousness, individuals can observe their internal "melodramas" without being consumed by them, eventually transitioning from a role-based identity to a state of pure soul. The source also connects these Eastern traditions to modern psychology, exploring how mindfulness and acceptance can transform experiences of aging, suffering, and death into opportunities for grace. Ultimately, the material serves as a guide for using daily life as a curriculum to foster unconditional love and presence in the face of inevitable change.

This lecture focuses on social influence, exploring how the fundamental human desires to be right and be liked drive our behavior within groups. Dr. Campbell details the mechanisms of persuasion, contrasting the central route of logical arguments with the peripheral route of emotional and superficial cues. He further examines the pressures of conformity, compliance, and obedience, highlighting classic psychological studies that demonstrate how easily individuals can be swayed by authority or the desire to fit in. Ultimately, the text illustrates that while humans are naturally social animals, navigating the powerful forces of group identity and social pressure requires conscious discernment to maintain personal integrity.

PSYC 101: Introduction to PsychologyDr. W. Keith Campbell | Peterson Academy: This lecture provides a comprehensive introduction to clinical psychology, framing psychopathology not merely as a series of sudden illnesses but as extreme, inflexible manifestations of underlying personality traits. The text begins by distinguishing between academic psychologists and licensed clinicians, then transitions into a modern organizational framework called HiTOP, which categorizes mental disorders into six distinct spectra such as internalizing, thought, and externalizing disorders. 

PSYC 101: Introduction to PsychologyDr. W. Keith Campbell | Peterson Academy : This lecture explores the complex psychology of human relationships, transitioning from individual identity to the formation of a dyadic unit. Dr. Campbell examines how couples develop relational schemas and transactive memory systems, while navigating the fundamental tension between individual autonomy and deep connection.

PSYC 101: Introduction to PsychologyDr. W. Keith Campbell | Peterson Academy In this class, I wanted to talk about personality psychology, and the nature of the self, which are—it's a lot of dissertations in this quick lecture, but I thought I'd hit some of the high parts and give you an overview.

This lecture explores the psychological landscape of human motivation, defining motives as the internal energies that either pull individuals toward rewards or push them away from threats.

This lecture explores the landscape of developmental psychology, tracing the ways humans transform across their entire lifespan from infancy to old age.