In stories, the narrator tells you which ordinary things are portals to magic and adventure. In real life, you have to find them yourself.

This episode reveals 5 secret portals to the next version of yourself: seemingly ordinary choices, traits, and habits that are thresholds to the future version of you who lives with more courage, clarity, and freedom. It’s for you if an old version of you has died but the new one hasn’t been born yet. You might have recently experienced a big life change: a move, or a relationship ending, or a career change. Or maybe you know one is coming. It’s for you if you have an unshakeable feeling that there is a more alive version of you out there, if only you could figure out how to get to them. 

We’ll examine the work of philosophy’s greatest minds, like Nietzsche, Kant, Kafka, and the Ancient Greeks, to uncover the hidden thresholds between who you are and who you're becoming, and point out clues for how to spot them when they appear in your own life.

EPISODE OUTLINE 

00:00 Intro

04:54 I missed you

06:05 Help me keep Soul Gum ad-free

07:35 Talk to me!!! 

08:18 1. Intuition is a portal

08:49 Nietzsche’s beef with Socrates

10:44 The neuroscience of intuition (Gary Klein)  

12:31 I exist because of a woman’s intuition

13:03 The tension between ambition & intuition

14:13 Mary Oliver on reacquianting with your intuition

15:05 Small ways to reconnect with your intuition

15:42 2. Solitude is a portal (Pascal)

16:39 The fear of being alone with your thoughts

17:33 2014 study on the discomfort of being un-stimulated

18:05 Solitude as a tool in my creative process

18:58 Brain drain study: it is that d**n phone

19:30 Going phone n*k*d

20:12 3. Aligned friendship is a portal

21:36 Nietzsche: Friends should be your “best enemies”

23:06 Friendship as a mirror 

23:40 The research of social contagion 

24:18 Look for friends that show you what’s possible 

24:52 4. Nature is a portal

25:40 Our increasingly sanitized relationship with nature

26:15 Kant, the sublime, and the gorpcore of it all

28:41 The ego-interrupting power of awe

29:45 5. Action is a portal (Kafka’s Before the Law)

31:29 Mary Oliver on the most regretful people 

32:00 You deserve to know what’s on the other side of fear

32:33 Leap by Joy Sullivan

33:34 For the Ones Who Left by Me (Victoria Hutchins)

34:29 Lightning round recap

35:40 Subscribe, rate, share, talk to me!!! 

LINKS

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now

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