John Allen returns with what is:

0:00 People over 60 should not go out.

3:00 Millions of people will die. Get used to it.

6:00 Dancing at the Apocolypse.

8:30 How we reacted to 911.

10:00 At any moment it’s bye-bye.

13:00 Trump is making people uncomfortable.

14:00 There is no living forever. You might as well pay attention as opposed to trying to fix the chess pieces.

15:00 Don’t try to be happy. Try to find joy.

16:00 I have a lot of gratitude these days. I’ve done a lot of work and had a lot of suffering.

18:00 Krishnamurti - Truth is a pathless land.

19:00 The cough.

24:00 911 was a bubble of humanism - a system that is off.

25:00 The concept of privacy is now over.

27:00 We will tolerate anything. Any draconian measure will be just fine.

29:00 On International Women’s Day John says his only reason to live is girls.

30:00 When the world ends - we won’t have to pay copyright. Nisgardatta - You are not in the world, the world is in you.

32:00 Loving having the car back.

35:00 Biden

37:00 Amazon’s Hunters series is bizarre. A comic. Batman.

41:00 Battle of Midway.

45:00 Intervention is worse than letting things happen.

48:00 John is Trump - a spoiled brat.

51:00 Coveting the mic - a Blue Yeti.

54:00 The problem with this work is that it works: ROI.

55:00 Before a game you feel a certain way just like an actor feels before they go on stage.

The first thing you have to do is check in and be with who you are.

Jumping the joke.

57:00 Be with how you’re playing. What is happening right now?

59:00: Paying attention to your breath: “Ball, ball, ball… in, out, in, out…”

1:01:00 Tired and not feeling like dancing. Closing the eyes. Shut up and listen.

1:02:00 Here is a really wonderful, wonderful place because that’s who we really are.

1:04:00 I’ve got to get my suit pressed because I think I’m going to be going to a lot of funerals and I think I might be in a funeral - the corpse, waving.

1:05:00 Virus is an existential threat to Trump.

1:07:00 A Very Stable Genius: Trump is unhinged.

1:09:00 A bunch of babies: The Silent Majority.

1:11:00 There’s so much noise that nobody gets heard.

…

Recommended:

A Lazy Man’s Guide To Happiness

Krishnamurti: 100 Years

Purell

The Essential Nisgardatta

Hunters

Blue Yeti microphone

A Very Stable Genius

John Allen returns with What Is:

0:00 Being censored. Where is freedom of speech?

3:00 Telling women they look hot. Angry birds.

6:00 Government waste.

7:30 Beautiful cat enters pod zone and upstages John.

12:00 Entertainment vs journalism.

17:00 Big John gets distracted by text from daughter.

21:00 Victim culture.

27:00 Gretzky and what’s going on.

29:00 Authortity, leadership, order and chaos.

32:00 FINALLY: SUPER TUESDAY.

35:00 As a player I just want attention.

37:00 American politics is the Greatest Show On Earth.

39:00 Getting dominated.

42:00 Biden: Everybody loves a comeback story.

45:00 Existential threat to African Americans: the Clyburn Speech.

48:00 Politics is about the future.

54:00 Bernie is going to get killed.

59:00 Problem with Harvard/Obama leadership model is the vacuum it can create.

1:01:00 Justin’s leadering solved the First Nations rail blockade problem.

1:09:00 Wanting to get other people’s approval.

1:11:00 Without the car - no gym, no dancing.

1:13:00 Waking up once a day is everything. Wake the fuck up. What’s happening now?

…

References

Clyburn Speech

John Allen returns with what is - even though it feels a bit off.

0:00 Nespresso machines.

2:00 Getting out of the house.

3:30 Getting pole-axed by the Ex.

5:00 There is no woman you don’t want to have sex with.

6:00 Always something attractive about a woman.

7:30 Women who disappear withinside themselves.

10:00 Unrequited love.

11:30 Wanting to f*** the woman in the parking ticket line. The elephant in the room.

13:00 The guy who won’t shut the f*** up.

18:30 If you’re going to be present you have to be present with all of it.

22:00 Shaking hands with Iranian dancers.

28:00 Cynical United Nations

30:00 Soft Power

32:00 Supply chains: McDonalds vs McDonalds

36:00 Korean cadavers: advance cardio disease from NA diet. Diseases of Affluence.

41:00 Confrontation is exhausting like going to war.

44:00 Can’t improve this moment

49:00 Shocking Meditation

57:00 Independent White Women

1:09:00 One more Zen story from there

1:17:00 Accept how you’re feeling before you go on. Uta: go with what is actually happening.

1:19:00 What’s important to ask right now is what is happening now…

…

References

Uta Hagen

John Allen returns with what is:

0:00 John has a big voice because growing up in his family they fought all of the time.

3:00 First Nations blockades are an “inconvenience”.

6:00 Cultural appropriation in the arts.

10:00 Deconstructing the apparent flatness in the previous pod.

13:00 Needing to get stoned in order to play board games with your kids.

15:00 Stopping drinking because you feel bad.

17:00 There isn’t a national camp fire anymore. Stove-piping everything we hear.

20:00 Poor Brian Williams of MSNBC who lost his job because he exaggerated. We liked him because he was good on TV.

23:00 The first web cams.

28:00 Misogynistic songs at dance clubs.

29:00 Getting back on track: How can First Nations block commerce?

33:00 1491 book - where the scholarship has progressed to on what was happening before we were here in the Americas: the Plains, the Amazon, the huge ancient city on Mississippi.

39:00 The car is back. It gives so much joy.

41:00 The debate. Bernie has got the mo.

44:00 The simulated one-shot in 1917 movie. The Big Question: if something calls atttention to the artist or the technique is there an issue?

48:00 Ramy Malek in the Pacific is like watching Michael Jackson do the moon dance.

51:00 Trust your impulse. If you feel like saying something, say something. There’s nothing that’s going to happen that’s wrong. Allow what’s happening in the moment to happen in the moment.

57:00 I would do that work for nothing.

59:00 Podcasts are a bit like selfies.

1:03:00 People are terrified of losing their jobs on the pyramid.

1:06:00 The Great T-Shirt Story.

1:10:00 Suffering is not a glitch.

1:12:00 Hating and loving bike lanes. Positions are so mutable.

1:17:00 If you think of your life as practice, as a computer game, it becomes kind of a gas. Living as that dance, that game: Lila: the dance.

1:19:00 Not giving a fuck about listeners.

…

Clicks:

1492

John Lennon Revolution

The Who Same boss as the old boss

1491

Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now

1917

Ramy Malek in the Pacific

Saving Private Ryan

Chekov Uncle Vanya

Lila

And...

Stairway to Heaven

John Allen returns with what is. He talks about:

0:00 The car.

4:00 Conversations can be tiring.

8:00 Acting out of awareness not conditioning.

11:00 Living in a world of labels.

14:00 Proselytizing.

15:30 Childhood forced him to question a lot of stuff.

22:00 When he first got married it felt like one of the low points in his existence.

26:00 Preferring to spend my time in the basement.

32:00 His Dad's romance about the movies. The Allen theatres were the only theatres in North America. Huge distributors.

36:00 Why dentists commit suicide.

40:00 How Freud and Jung were horny guys.

43:00 How we never have a serious cultural conversation about sex

45:00 How not knowing is the only creative place.

47:00 The car getting towed away makes him want it more.

49:00 Selling his mother's ring and sobbing in front of the jewelery store.

51:00 Guy pals always come through.

54:00 Suburban women will dictate US election.

1:04:00 Democratic race is almost done.

1:19:00 The pharmaceutical industry tries to co-opt you first before they come after you

1:21:00 Taking the subway to dancing.

1:23:00 Looking around for the pills. For an exit.

1:27:00 Interchanging driving the kids with driving the girlfriend.

1:32:00 Looking forward to the car returning from the shop.

1:39:00 This is virtual reality.

1:42:00 Big John’s anger at the Leafs losing to a Zamboni driver.

1:46:00 The Harvard notion of “leadering”. Mourinho getting lost in technical solutions - coaching like he did five years ago.

1:48:00 Deconstruction for everything is how we see.

1:56:00 Depression - writing it down and pulling on the thread.

—

References:

The Tao

Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy

Krishnamurti

Joseph Campbell

The Last Waltz

Jordan Petersen

Jung's Princeton Letters

Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow

Freud

Saving Private Ryan

Camus' L’Etranger

Samuel Coleridge

John Allen returns with what is.

John Allen returns with what is.

Time Stamps:

0:00 This is a new form.

2:00 Big John’s Mini explodes.

5:00 Difference between authority and leadership.

5:30 Case in point teaching.

6:30 90% of what is going on is thinking. To be great is to stop thinking.

7:30 A dreamscape that is exhausting.

10:00 Darkness, the Void, No Thing. The sound of the bell is the thing that becomes no thing.

11:00 There is always this moment and there is always space.

12:00 Turning off screens.

13:30 The rug is constantly being pulled out.

14:00 There is no winning.

17:30 The Great Undoing. What is going on?

22:30 The Mind isn’t you. It’s a tool. It’s not us. Us - is no thing and now.

26:30 The Mind has characteristics. We’re always not knowing.

28:00 Assumptions or Fairy Tales? Better to not question, to suffer.

28:30 There’s only one thing to do - dance. My body is always present. To connect. My body is never not here.

32:00 Kobe and flying in the fog. The weak pilot? A metaphor for your life. It’s all about me. Always. Look at your life. The life situation is always bad.

35:00 Lear - you don’t get pats on the back for your good decisions. The famous CIA thing - you never know about the ones we stopped.

36:30 Caught in the fog. If you pull the threads you will always get to space, freedom. It’s about you not about Kobe. The edifice falls. You don’t have that costume. Once that noise goes away you’re not nearly as tired.

39:00 Those moments when you’re happily dancing - Isn’t that winning too? When I’m happily dancing. I’m just there. That’s why I love conversations - because I’m just there.

42:00 Meaning according to Viktor Frankl - is given.

45:00 Me - everything I’m experiencing in this moment.

47:00 - Dancing at the bottom of the mountain with graven images and having a great time in the Charlton Heston movie. The rules are always about us.

49:00 Kobe’s life was probably identical to yours. He had to get his kids to practice. He had a thing he wanted to do and he had an obstacle to doing it. And that’s our day.

51:00 The experience of living in this moment is the same. There’s no winning. Even Kobe is not going to win.

53:00 Leaving the phone at home. In Jamaica on my bike I noticed stuff.

54:00 There is no hassle when there is no possession.

55:30 Everything is doing this dance all of the time and we’ve just go to dance with it.

56:00 Get used to uncomfortableness of not knowing. Joy as opposed to happiness.

References:

Eckhart Tolle

King Lear

Heidegger

Viktor Frankl

Thou is That - Joseph Campbell

John Allen returns with what is. He talks about: writing in cafes, the Greek classics, who the host of the pod is, his prediction of Bloomberg's rise, of not wanting to go dancing, and more.

0:00 John has to go out tonight | 2:30 The car thing. Everything has good or bad consequences | 3:30 The two-seater Triumph TR7 | 4:30 A Confession (Tolstoy?): For his 16th Birthday present John received a brand new white Jaguar | 5:30 Only difference between John and Trump is that John’s Dad went to jail | 7:00 It doesn’t matter what the country is. One man one vote would have made US a city-centric country | 10:00 Bloomberg is a data guy. It’s The What Bloomberg is interested in | 13:30 Agony of The Car disappearing. Loss. The Other Side | 18:00 Obama in 2008 | Obama caused the Tea Party | 22:00 Working all day | 3 performances a day every day | 24:00 CBT: Writing shit down | 26:00 John is very practical | 32:00 Constantly fighting against What Is | 34:00 My mind is constantly yapping away | 35:30 The Reason You Write Stuff Down: Freeze the Thought: I Shouldn’t Be Here | You’ve got to write them down to TAKE THEM OUT | 37:00 The culture of labels | 38:00 Hitting the tape and joining The Team | Religion and Nationalism are not very big | 39:30 The map is not the territory | Tree label | Living through labels instead of what is happening | What you’re doing is what you’re doing | 42:00 Labels forced on you | Can’t say this can’t say that | 44:00 Lenny Bruce: violence is ok but sex is not | 45:00 ANGER 247 | The World of Should | Everything burns you | Truth is a pathless land | 47:00 Luckily my dad went to jail | Car-less and free | Loss teaches the most | 51:00 John Allen Guarantee (tm) | 53:00 Why can’t they just leave me alone? | 54:00 The Beautiful Cat In The Room | 56:00 Laundry List | New Hampshire | Bernie | Amy gets on my nerves | Biden is gone | 1:02:00 How serious it is to be black in the US under Trump | African Americans going to Bloomberg | Turn out is everything | Rachel Bitecofer predicts 2020 Dem win based on demographics - bonus link: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944 | Anything makes sense | The mind is like a dog | 1:10:00 Analytics and data has been honed | 1:14:00 Bloomberg has figured it out | 1:19:00 Can you tell me what this is about in one or two phrases | A compulsion to talk | John’s last opportunity to talk | The same stuff | 1:23:00 The argument with what is - is so simple | 1:28:00 pressence & ROI | 1:31:00 Those who know are silent and those who aren’t speak | Daddy: Rolls Royce to jail cell | 1:34 Presence through migraine (pain) | There is no I when in intense pain | 1:37:00 Say no and you’re fucked | Tired | Relief: John will be dead | Embrace the suffering…