This episode aims at finding a happy medium between extreme detachment toward the objects of our desires and excessive attachment to them. Both are unsuited to our nature, which can neither be reduced to its dark side of suffering and death, nor can be viewed exclusively as a bright side that is forever blissful.

This episode delves into the many different forms of human happiness, from the one we find in a peaceful conscience to the one we experience when our worthy efforts are crowned by success, to the one we may fantasize about in some hypothetical afterlife.

This episode highlights our human difference in the evolution of species, as our brain’s superior plasticity affords us a great ability to learn that proportionally increases our adaptability and chances of survival in a wide variety of environments.

This episode promotes acceptance to achieve harmony with nature and virtue in society, as the necessary condition for peace and happiness. It also encourages critical thinking to avoid lapsing into laxness and servility, which are perverse forms of naturalness and sociability.

This episode opposes, on the one hand, the traditional reliance on great religions for understanding the world and guiding our conscience and, on the other hand, the modern trust in science and political philosophy for developing a credible and sensible worldview, together with rules of conduct that follow naturally from the demands of social organization.

This episode aims at striking the right balance between commitment to things that we like or love and can or must do, and detachment toward everything else.

This episode is all about adaptation, or the capacity to constantly realign our purpose with the course of life that is always changing. Misery, from this perspective, amounts to clinging to things that have become impossible or impractical, versus letting go and moving on, toward things that are both desirable and feasible.

This episode calls our attention to the process of habituation, which renders us insensitive to beneficial things that have become familiar and predictable. We need to avoid taking these things for granted and losing our ability to be thankful for them, insofar as they help us live and thrive.

This episode stresses the fact that our consciousness is a malleable interface between the world and our emotional self. Within that interface, our attitude is a software of sorts that runs on our cerebral hardware and determines how we feel about things. The key is to write this software in such a way that the focus is placed on the positive side of things, while the negative side is acknowledged, but not overemphasized.

This episode makes the point that, notwithstanding our best theoretical frameworks, be they scientific, philosophical, or religious, the universe still appears magical, unless we are so naïvely impressed by our so-called explanations that we fail to get this point.