In this week’s episode, I am joined by Nate Klemp!

Nate is a New York Times bestselling author, philosopher, founding partner at Mindful Magazine, and is coauthor of both The 80/80 Marriage and the new book OPEN.

It was while studying at Stanford that Nate got hooked on jazz and philosophy. He made the "pragmatic" decision to become a philosopher in an attempt to learn how to live the good life.

After 10 years of intense philosophical training, he didn't exactly achieve his goal of realizing human flourishing through philosophy. Instead, he burned out.

He worked as an assistant professor at Pepperdine for four years, where he wrote The Morality of Spin, a book about the ethics of political rhetoric. Then, he left his cushy tenure-track job in 2012 to continue exploring this crazy idea of philosophy as a way of life. 

That's when he met Eric Langshur, the cofounder at LifeXT, a mindfulness training company that brings optimal wellbeing to the workplace.

After 8 years, they ended up merging with Mindful Magazine to become Mindful (the world's leading mindfulness media and training company)/ Together, Eric and Nate coauthored the NYT bestseller Start Here: Master The Lifelong Skill of Wellbeing. 

In 2021, he and his wife Kaley Klemp wrote a book about relationships in the modern age called The 80/80 Marriage: A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Marriage.

His brand new book OPEN: Living With an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World, was released in Feb, 2024.

Key Points

• Smartphones: Pleasure machines or pain triggers?

• Dopamine Dessert: Scheduled Distraction Time

• Meditation: A street-smart mindfulness hack

• Embrace discomfort for deeper experiences

• Failure by choice fortifies freedom

Best Quotes

02:24 - 02:34

• "The problem of our time because we're all experiencing it and yet it's somewhat invisible. It's happening beneath the radar of awareness."

04:27 - 04:34

• "Yeah, and it's super hard because I think for me, I've always been someone who's curious."

08:44 - 08:53

• "I think of that as like the most profound mindfulness practice in my lexicon. I call that street meditation or street opening."

13:27 - 13:36

• "It's such an awareness and that tilt towards awareness is such an advantage the older we get if we execute, if we actually do something with it."

13:56 - 14:01

• "And one of the assumptions of that conversation is that like, longer is always better."

20:11 - 20:18

• "Your life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. That is it. And I think that's true of our mind and our life in general."

34:04 - 34:10

• "We can play with the restraint side. That's super powerful. But the indulgence side I think is super interesting too."

 

For more about Nate: https://www.nateklemp.com/