Soul Gum

According to the existentialists, the core problem of being human is this: we are meaning-seeking creatures in a universe that is silent on meaning. But somehow, we're supposed to figure out what to major in, who to marry, and what to do with the approximately 30,000 days we get to be alive.

In this episode, we walk through six levels of living a meaningful life as described by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1947 work The Ethics of Ambiguity, moving from brainrotten aimlesness to a life driven by purpose. If you want to live a life that feels meaningful but have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing with it, this episode is for you.

EPISODE OUTLINE: THE 6 LEVELS OF LIVING A MEANINGFUL LIFE (according to 20th century existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir) 

00:00 Intro 

04:57 1. The sub-man 

10:13 2. The serious man

14:17 3. The nihilist 

16:43 4. The adventurer 

22:06 5. The passionate man

24:10 6. The compassionate person

26:27 but btw life isn’t a ladder 

27:51 Reflection questions 

30:20 Lightning round recap

32:07 When Death Comes by Mary Oliver 

MY LINKS

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠

Follow Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠

Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

The manosphere wants you to think charisma is all about dominance and control. But what if it’s actually about deep presence and social courage?

I don’t want to be like the guy who uses scarce communication to hide his lack of depth and fear of commitment. I want to be like the people who make you feel cool just by talking to them, while radiating charisma themselves.

If you’ve ever wondered why some people can have fun talking to literally anyone, struggled to know what to say when someone asks you a question, or wished you were more comfortable saying what you actually think, this episode is for you.

In today’s episode, we unpack 5 habits of highly charismatic people, from what they say when they’re getting to know someone to how they navigate disagreements. Along the way, we’ll talk about what we can learn from Socrates about swag, dive into the science of answering any question well, and use Byung-Chul Han’s concept of “the smooth” to investigate how we can stay raw and real in a world that tries to sand our edges.

EPISODE OUTLINE: HABITS OF HIGHLY CHARISMATIC PEOPLE

00:00 Intro

07:14 1. How to ask better questions 

08:18 The science of how asking questions makes people like you 

10:18 The power of follow-up questions

13:41 2. How to answer any question without freezing 

14:37 The scary thing no one tells you about writing a book 

17:11 Why your mind goes blank when someone asks you a question 

18:03 The secret to answering questions with ease 

20:21 The link between storytelling and charisma

22:40 3. Stop performing agreement in conversations 

23:18 What is backchanneling? 

23:59 Upspeak, confidence, gender, and the way we talk 

26:05 Should we actually backchannel less?

28:58 4. How charismatic people handle disagreement 

30:27 What Socrates can teach us about intellectual humility

32:14 5. Stop treating human connection like a formula

33:36 Byung-Chul Han and “the smooth”

36:13 Btw you’re not a chad for wanting to be loved

39:04  Lightning round recap

40:44 Poem: Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris

MY LINKS

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠

⁠Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠

Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

Pumpkin spice apologists wya? It’s the great lock in Charlie Brown!!!!! In this episode, I’m walking you through the exact five-step seasonal planning system that dramatically changed my life a few years back. Along the way, we’ll dive into the philosophy and psychology behind why it works. We’ll talk through Nietzsche’s philosophy on habits, Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas on how to reconcile your past and future selves, the planning fallacy, and more. Whether you want to change the trajectory of your life this fall or just set up some systems to make life a little less chaotic, this episode is for you. 

EPISODE OUTLINE: HOW TO PLAN YOUR FALL TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE 

00:00 Intro

06:21 I made you a worksheet ◡̈

09:30 STEP 1: THE AUDIT

10:36 Facticity vs. transcendence (de Beauvoir) 

11:11 The importance of considering both your past and your potential

12:55 Using self-distancing to self-reflect more effectively

13:31 How to audit your goals

14:56 How to audit your execution

18:24 STEP 2: THE PURGE 

19:07 The paradox of choice

Cleaning out digital and physical worlds

22:15 Choice architecture

25:15 STEP 3: THE CHOICE

25:55 The planning fallacy

27:54 Optimism bias & why overplanning feels good

29:00 STEP 4. THE TRADE OFF 

31:25 Nietzsche’s on the power of “brief habits” 

33:10 STEP 5. THE TIME 

34:33 Temporal landmarks and why they make you more likely to achieve goals 

35:44 the fresh start effect

36:05 Kairos: the opportune moment

37:28 Leaving room for life inside our lives

38:13 Lightning round recap

EPISODE LINKS

Get instant access to the fall planning worksheet HERE. NOTE: If you can't find it in your email, search "YOUR FALL PLANNING WORKSHEET" in your email inbox! It is likely hiding in the Social or Promotions tab.

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now

Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) 

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok

If your early twenties are for your Sylvia Plath fig tree allegory crisis, then your late twenties are for your Joan Didion Goodbye to All That crisis. In her famous 1967 essay, Didion writes, “That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”

This episode explores a strain of existential dread that often shows up in your late twenties: the possibility crisis. Sometimes it hits you after capital-S Something happens. A bad break up, a wounding professional failure, or a friendship ending that felt like betrayal. Other times, there is no one defining moment or incident. You just realize one day that you are no longer as bright eyed, bushy tailed, or hopeful as you used to be, and can’t put your finger on why. 

Using Didion’s Goodbye to All That as our guide, we break down three key signs you might be experiencing a possibility crisis and what it might be trying to teach you.  Along the way, we talk about how to cope with the realization that certain doors really do close, what to do when new people stop feeling full of promise, and how to let go of the fantasy that someday you’ll magically know what you’re doing. Consider this episode a field guide on the strange grief of growing up. 

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro 

04:23 What made Joan Didion great?

05:13 Signs of a Goodbye to All That crisis

05:46 1. You realize future you is just you

07:41 Weird girl money 

08:22 The 90s’ overly adult depiction of your 30s

10:41 2. You stop believing in new faces

11:32 Hope springs eternal on Love Island

12:09 Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first

12:58 POV you’re 28 & have met every person alive

13:55 3. Some doors are actually closing

14:52 The first time I felt a door close

16:14 When the doors start slamming left & right

17:03 It’s easy to see beginnings and harder to see ends

18:54 Perspective shifts that got me out of this crisis 

19:29 1. Idk what I’m doing but neither does anyone else

20:59 2. Trust means more when it’s a choice not an instinct

21:45 3. On “it’s never too late”

22:27 Possibility must be unactualized to exist

23:10 The U-shaped happiness curve

23:55 Has the internet made the possibility crisis start earlier? 

24:28 Socioemotional selectivity theory

25:25 The happy ending Joan Didion doesn’t tell you

EPISODE LINKS

⁠My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠

⁠Follow Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠

Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

Be honest: do you ever perform for no one? Do you spectate your own life instead of living it? Have you ever caught yourself changing pieces of you, from your clothes to your voice to your hobbies, in order to impress someone you don’t even like? 

This episode is for you if you’ve ever sucked in your stomach in a completely empty room. Or scrolled through your own social media posts, imagining someone else looking at them. It’s for you if you've ever looked at yourself through someone else's eyes for so long that you've forgotten what you look like through your own.

In it, we’ll unpack how we get trapped under the male gaze through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, and more. Then, I'll walk you through 7 rituals that have actually helped me climb out from under it.

This is not an episode about giving up on love. It is a field guide on how to stop twisting yourself into inauthentic shapes to earn validation to fill the void of love. If you want to become the subject of your own life again, I think you'll like this one.

RITUALS FOR DE-INTERNALIZING THE MALE GAZE: EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro

07:28 1. The gaze audit (Sartre)

08:40 Subject self versus object self

10:01 Foucault’s panopticon & self-surveillence 

10:54 How to do a gaze audit 

14:11 2. Photo and mirror detox (Sontag)

15:42 3. Interrogate “I do it for myself” (de Beauvoir)

16:50 de Beauvoir v. Sartre: existence precedes essence?

17:21 Do we have to stop shaving to be good feminists?

18:14 How to trace the origins of your grooming habits

18:47 The marketing origins of shaving

20:02 5. Bechdel mode

21:35 The importance of non-man focused conversation

22:25 6. Pleasure inventory (Mary Oliver)

22:56 The antidote to self-surveillance according to psychology

23:45 How to take a pleasure inventory

24:49 7. Pre-situationship prep

26:44 Love poem with apologies for my appearance (Ada Limon

27:51 The surprising unobjectifying power of being really loved and really seen

28:48 Lightning round recap

EPISODE LINKS

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now

Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) 

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok

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

Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) 

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok

See you soon - I'll miss you! Make sure you're subscribed so you know when Soul Gum is back.

WHERE TO FIND ME:

• MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠⁠
• Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
• Join the waitlist for future retreats! ⁠
• Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!⁠
• Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Everyone wants love, but no one can tell you exactly what love is. In this episode, we deep dive into seven philosophical perspectives on love, ranging from the Ancient Greeks to the existentialists. If you’re curious whether Plato thought soulmates were real or Kierkegaard would tell you to text your ex, this episode is for you. 

EPISODE OUTLINE 

00:00 Intro (the philosophy of love)

03:19 What even is love? (hypotheticals on love)

07:07 Ancient Greek philosophy on love 

07:35 Origins of the concept of soulmates (Plato’s The Symposium)

09:03 Socrates’ ladder of love 

13:03 Enlightenment thinkers on love 

13:15 Love as social performance (Rousseau)

13:58 Rousseau’s two types of self love 

15:22 How self love affects how you love others

17:31 The humanity formula (Kant)   

19:49 Practical vs. passionate love (Kant)

22:07 Love as a trick (Schopenhauer)

24:04 Why do opposites attract? (Schopenhauer)

24:28 Is love just biological encouragement to reproduce? (Schopenhauer)

26:06 Existentialists on love

26:14 The tension between love and freedom of choice (Sartre)

27:50 Love as an objectifying force (Sartre)

30:32 Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s non-monogamous love story 

31:40 The relationship between love and possession (de Beauvoir) 

33:06 How your fear of being seen impacts your ability to give and receive love (Sartre, Doestoevsky, de Beauvoir) 

36:54 Kierkegaard’s Works of Love 

37:22 Unreasonable standards in love (Kierkegaard)

42:24 Lightning round recap

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Plato, The Symposium (c. 385–370 BCE)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
• Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
• Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818)
• Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit (1944)
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
• Gordon Marino, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide (2018)

MY LINKS

• MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠⁠
• Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
• Join the waitlist for future retreats! ⁠
• Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!⁠
• Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Ever wonder why some people seem to have endless creativity while you’re stuck with half-baked ideas that never make it out of your Notes app? In this episode, we explore the habits, tips and artistic processes of creative geniuses ranging from Plato and Picasso to Mary Oliver and Rick Rubin. I reveal the 7 secrets of creative geniuses that helped me stop chasing perfection, relight my creative spark, and actually enjoy the process of making art. If you’re ready to stop gatekeeping your own creativity, this one’s for you. 

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro: Why creativity matters for everyone (not just artists)

03:58 1. Great creatives don’t let perfection be the enemy of creation (Plato’s Republic, perfection vs. forms, Ira Glass on “the gap”)

11:28 2. They separate creation, refinement, and critique (Rick Rubin, The Creative Act)

14:41 3. They focus on next possibilities, not ultimate goals (Stuart Kauffman’s adjacent possible, evolutionary biology, Bhagavad Gita, Rick Rubin on artistry vs. craftsmanship)

20:56 4. They embrace flow and anti-flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow state; Mary Oliver’s editing process; Stanley Kubrick’s many takes)

25:52 5. They thrive under constraints (Barry Schwartz’s paradox of choice; Mary Oliver writing Wild Geese as a constraint exercise; Parkinson’s Law)

30:35 6. They know that if they don’t create it, someone else will (Rick Rubin on how ideas move, Elizabeth Gilbert’s hand-off story with Ann Patchett)

34:01 7. They know that no one really knows (Socrates on knowing nothing, imposter feelings, why your contributions matter)

37:57 Lightning round recap

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 

• Plato, The Republic 

• Studies on the impact of perfectionism on performance and creativity (2022 and 2025)

• Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being 

• Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe 

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience 

• Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook; “Wild Geese”; On Being interview with Krista Tippett 

• Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice

• Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear 

MY LINKS

• ⁠MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Join the waitlist for future retreats! 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

What happens when your faith collapses? In this episode, I share my story of spiritual deconstruction and how I learned to believe again—sort of. This isn’t a “how to get your faith back” story. It’s the story of tearing my faith down to the studs, sifting through the rubble, and deciding what was worth keeping. We’ll talk god shaped holes, Kierkegaard, Camus, Pascal’s wager, and the surprising peace of not needing all the answers. This episode if for anyone who is currently filling their god-shaped hole with TikTok marathons, self-help books and spiral-inducing questions. If you started at church camp and have landed in full-blown nihilism, press play. 

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro: the story of how I lost my faith and got it back (sort of)

08:01 1. Why spiritual crises often happen at the worst possible time

10:35 How my own spiritual crisis began

18:07 Kierkegaard on despair and the self

19:47 2. Why spiritual health gets worse before it gets better

26:19 The delight of spiritual curiosity

27:43 3. Choosing how to fill the God shaped hole

29:42 Absurdism and optimistic nihilism (Camus)

30:57 Pascal’s Wager explained and what it gets wrong

32:51 Approaching belief pragmatically (belief as a choice)

33:53 What “god” means to me now 

35:33 Can you make yourself believe? Should you?

36:16 On stepping in the same river twice (Heraclitus)

36:49 Five reflection questions (Rainn Wilson)

38:14 Lightning round recap 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)

Rhett McLaughlin’s Spiritual Deconstruction Story

Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)

St. Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 CE)

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Heraclitus, Fragment 49a (c. 500 BCE)

Rainn Wilson, Soul Boom (2023)

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays (2016)

MY LINKS

• ⁠Listen to my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson on Spotify 

• ⁠Watch my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson on Youtube

• ⁠MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Join the waitlist for future retreats! 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

RESOURCES 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Chat with a Trevor Project counselor now 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ANAD helpline 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• 988 lifeline