In this episode, we have a conversation about depression and despair. We guide ourselves by an analogy we've found useful, in which we describe our energy system as akin to a volume knob, and posit that depression is essentially a series of choices we make to turn down the volume on our lives and our … Continue reading "Episode 49: Exploring Depression and Despair"

The current situation in our world is like nothing any of us has ever lived through before, so we thought it would be worthwhile to discuss this moment and the Water We Swim In. We talk about the kinds of challenges we're experiencing right now, and offer a few strategies for dealing with them.

Last Friday night, Benjamin found himself not wanting to do anything. Nothing sounded enjoyable at all. When he took a closer look at the impulse (or anti-impulse?), he realized that what he was seeing within himself was the first steps down the dark stairway into depression. A closer look inside revealed that this incipient depression … Continue reading "Episode 47: Depression and Despair (First Thoughts)"

Benjamin had a coronavirus relapse this week. We talk about what we suspect the direct and energetic causes of this relapse might be, and talk about what the energy of the situation presages for our society going forward.

In this episode, we begin to talk about grief. We first talk about the challenge of coming to know what grief feels like, because for as big and demanding an emotion as grief is, it's also surprisingly subtle. We talk about skillful and unskillful ways of dealing with grief. We discuss a meditation practice for … Continue reading "Episode 45: Grief"

In response to what Jerry and Benjamin (and our listeners) have seen with respect to a decrease in compliance, Benjamin discusses our responsibilities to ourselves and to others as we proceed through this pandemic and lockdown, and also our responsibilities to ourselves in the event that we get sick.

Jerry and Benjamin discuss our experiences as the world deals with coronavirus, and we talk about the kinds of changes we hope this experience will push all of us to make in the interest of better lives and a more just society in the weeks, months and years ahead.

Today dawned sunny and then got dark (literally and figuratively), and so I was moved to talk about the RPE of living in the coronavirus world.

Just for today, I'm going to let myself frame how I feel like this: that the entire world is playing a big prank on us, and it's not very funny, and I wish it would stop. But reality is what it is, and so I am trying to accept it and to navigate it as … Continue reading "Episode 41: April Fools"

The math of the growth of infections in an epidemic is unequivocal, and so we can be certain that the coronavirus epidemic is not nearly over. In this episode, we talk about what that math dictates about what's to come, in both quantitative (number of infections) and qualitative (how we're going to feel) terms.