The Examined Life

This week, Kenny Primrose re-releases an early Examined Life conversation with Dr. Lisa Miller, clinical psychologist at Columbia University and author of The Awakened Brain, originally published in 2023. It’s a companion to last week’s episode with Philip Goff on mystical experience, approaching the same territory through psychology rather than philosophy.

Miller argues that humans are innately capable of transcendent awareness, and that ignoring it leads to existential pain. She shares how the despair of infertility, followed by a run of striking synchronicities, led her to adoption, and reflects on what it means to be “trail angels” for one another through intuitive nudges.

Drawing on epidemiological and MRI research, Miller explains why spirituality appears to protect strongly against addiction and despair. She describes it as partly innate and largely shaped by environment, and calls on universities and institutions, including the US Army, to support young adults’ spiritual development through inclusive, pluralistic practices. Near the end, she guides Kenny through a short exercise that gives the question “What is life showing me now?” room to breathe. It’s worth setting aside a quiet moment to try it yourself.

Chapters

• 00:00 Spiritual Hunger Awakens
• 00:27 Episode Re-Release Intro
• 03:12 Point and Wave Metaphor
• 04:44 Beyond Billiard Ball Reality
• 06:51 Infertility and Ego Death
• 10:35 Synchronicity on the Bus
• 12:37 Messengers and Loving Guidance
• 15:56 Achieving vs. Awakened Awareness
• 19:09 Science of Spiritual Protection
• 21:27 Children’s Innate Spirituality
• 24:37 Isaiah’s Direct Knowing Stories
• 27:05 Kenny’s Synchronicity Memory
• 27:49 Trail Angel Meaning
• 28:50 Materialist Friend Challenge
• 30:59 Red Door, Yellow Door
• 35:01 Synchronicity Proof
• 35:38 Personality and Openness
• 37:21 Young Adult Spiritual Hunger
• 40:17 Universities as Guides
• 43:40 Making Spiritual Talk Normal
• 46:24 Pluralism and Practice
• 49:23 Table of Love Exercise
• 52:02 Birthright and Safety
• 55:03 Closing Trail Angel Farewell

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In this episode I sit down with philosopher Philip Goff to ask what makes a belief rational when your most vivid evidence is your own inner life. We explore how mystical experience, priors, and philosophical clarity shape what we trust about consciousness, religion, and even AI. It's a fascinating conversation that moves between philosophical reasoning and personal experience, and tries to pull the two together in some kind of harmony.

As ever, if you do enjoy listening, then please send it on to somebody else who might enjoy it. Share it on social media, leave a review, a comment.

Relevant Links

Kenny's/Examined Life substack - https://thisexaminedlife.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

Examined Life on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@ExaminedLifePodcast

Philip’s book ‘Why? The Purpose of the Universe’:  https://www.amazon.com/Why-Purpose-Universe-Philip-Goff/dp/0198883765/

Philip’s book ‘Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness’: https://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Error-Foundations-Science-Consciousness/dp/1524747963

Philip’s channel https://www.youtube.com/@philipgoffphilosophy
Philip’s Substack https://philipgoff.substack.com/

Philip’s X: https://x.com/Philip_Goff

Philip’s website: https://philipgoffphilosophy.com/  

The Beliefless Spirituality Project: https://www.belieflessspirituality.com/

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In this episode Michael Sacasas explores what humans should keep doing even when machines can do it faster, cheaper, and “better,” and why convenience can quietly erode competence, attention, and relationship. We explore how friction, effort, and embodied practice can be part of flourishing rather than a problem to eliminate. 

• the guiding question of what remains good for humans to do even when tasks can be automated 
• Albert Borgmann’s focal things versus devices and what central heating replaces in home life 
• the myth of time saving technology and how efficiency can multiply work 
• what generative AI changes about writing and why the drafting process shapes thinking 
• dishwashing, cooking, and other manual tasks as spaces for reflection and conversation 
• why care for children and the elderly raises the deepest limits on delegation 
• camping and “measured deprivation” as a way to recover presence and appreciation 
• grounds for hope through local choices, better questions, and community deliberation 
• hospitality and weak ties as a humanizing counterweight to online mediation 
• practical habits for families including outdoor time, naming the natural world, reading, saying no, and shared meal prep 

If you do enjoy the episode, please send it on to someone who might find it interesting or leave a review. It will help other people find it. 

The Examined Life Substack - https://thisexaminedlife.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

Michael's Substack - https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/

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In this episode I speak to Sherry Turkle about why generative AI feels intimate, why that intimacy is often a simulation, and what we lose when we outsource love, care, and growth to machines. We keep returning to one question: what is the end game of letting AI become a friend, therapist, teacher, or companion, especially for children and for civic life.

• AI as an attachment technology that comes for the heart 
• the lure of friction-free connection and why we are “cheap dates” 
• why pretend empathy can reduce real-world support and community investment 
• therapy as an embodied relationship with consequences that a chatbot cannot replicate 
• a practical litmus test: does AI help us grow resilience and inner life 
• childhood development and the risks of AI speaking in the first person 
• how validation-driven systems can de-skill us as citizens and weaken democracy 
• a closing story about illness, prayer, and what real care feels like 

If you did enjoy listening, then do please subscribe, like, share it on social media, share it with a friend, leave a comment or review, it will help other people find it. And sign up for the Substack This Examined Life, where I publish a newsletter and very much invite any kind of engagement and conversation with you people about what it means to live well at this moment and what the questions are that we should be asking ourselves.

Relevant links

The Examined Life Substack - https://substack.com/@kennyprimrose?utm_source=user-menu

Sherry Turkle - https://sherryturkle.mit.edu/

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We pull together the strongest takeaways from months of conversations on death, grief, and loss, and we share why these topics reach so many people despite how easy they are to avoid. We explore how facing finitude can sharpen our values, deepen our love of life, and help us become more grounded and emotionally mature. 

• why death and grief conversations feel taboo and why they matter 
• how chasing immortality can be a way to avoid finitude 
• Katherine Mannix’s question about mortality as threat or catalyst 
• learning to sit with sorrow instead of suppressing it 
• what end-of-life “life audits” reveal about buried regret 
• B.J. Miller’s view of grief as a metabolic force 
• how loss can distort into blame when we do not process it 
• grief and death as teachers that clarify values and purpose 
• living and grieving at the same time without being overwhelmed 
• growing up past Peter Pan patterns toward grounded elderhood 
Please do reach out. Stay up to date on Substack, where I've published periodic newsletters. That's at this examine life. Links are in the show notes. 

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What does death reveal about who we really are?

This week I'm joined by Professor Douglas Davies, Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University and one of the world's leading scholars of death, ritual, and belief. His work spans decades and disciplines — from the anthropology of funerals to digital legacy, from woodland burial to the theology of grief — and his central conviction runs through all of it: the dead live within us, and recognising that can help us live better.

We talk about the ways death strips away the myth of the self-made individual, revealing that we are fundamentally relational beings — shaped by the people, places, and memories we carry. Along the way, we cover the full arc of how societies and individuals make meaning in the face of mortality.

We talk about:

• Résumé virtues versus eulogy virtues — and why the gap between them matters
• The concept of "dividual" personhood, and why the idea of a fixed, separate self breaks down when we actually look at how people live and grieve
• How grief theory has shifted from letting go to continuing bonds — and what that means for how we mourn
• Why funerals work: their role as social containers for emotion and meaning
• The rise of celebration of life services and direct cremation, and what those trends tell us
• Woodland burial, the scattering of ashes, and the pull of relational places
• Dying alone, shame, dignity, and what COVID forced us to confront about community
• Digital death platforms, online memorials, and why offline ritual still does something different
• New body disposition options, including alkaline hydrolysis
• Pets, suicide, and the ways love complicates every tidy theory of grief

For further reading, Douglas's book Death, Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites (now in its third edition) is a rich and authoritative guide to everything this conversation touches — available from Blackwell's and other independent bookshops.

If this episode resonated with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone. Word of mouth is genuinely how the podcast finds new listeners. And if you haven't already, leaving a review is hugely appreciated.

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What does it mean to try to change the world — without losing yourself, or everyone else, in the process?

This week I'm joined by Anthea Lawson: activist, writer, former journalist, and campaigner who has spent three decades working on issues from the arms trade to financial secrecy. Her new book, How Not to Save the World: Doing Good Without Annoying Everyone (Oneworld, 2026), is a candid and hopeful look at the traps that well-meaning people fall into — and how to find a better way through.

We explore the hidden "save the world" script that pushes so many of us toward either frantic overwork or numb despair, and why both tend to backfire. Anthea maps out a third path — grounded in humility, relationship, and local people power — that turns out to be more effective, and more sustaining, than heroic effort alone.

We talk about:

• The two default responses when the world feels overwhelming: compulsion and shutdown
• What "script messages" are, and how unconscious patterns quietly drive activism culture
• How a genuine commitment to good can tip into righteousness that pushes people away
• Why the protest voice often fails in everyday relationships — and what listening can do instead
• How purity tests and perfectionism raise the barrier to entry and shrink movements
• Overwhelm as a structural tactic that keeps communities divided and reactive
• "I know better" dynamics, lived experience, and the legacy of class and white saviour thinking
• Why meaningful change now requires people power over individual heroics
• Antidotes: service, bridge-building, showing up without ego, and the value of genuine relationship
• Regulating the nervous system through embodiment and co-regulation
• Making space for grief — not as defeat, but as something shared that creates breathing room

How Not to Save the World is available from independent bookshops — you can order it through Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers directly.

Follow Anthea's writing and thinking on Substack at anthealawson.substack.com.

If you enjoyed this episode, a rating or review goes a long way — and do sign up on Substack for This Examined Life, where you'll find updates, newsletters, and reflections between episodes.

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Gavin Francis is a GP in Edinburgh, and also one of the best writers I know of on what it means to be a body moving through a life. In this conversation we got into territory I didn't quite expect — how much of modern spiritual hunger ends up in the consulting room, why a diagnosis can be both a relief and a trap, and what it actually looks like to help someone climb out of a dark period without reaching straight for a prescription.

He has a ten-point list he shares with patients in despair. It's practical without being glib, and I think it's quietly one of the most useful things in this episode.

We also talked about attention — how flow and deep engagement are being quietly eroded, what AI convenience might be costing us in terms of capability and friction, and why awe and equanimity aren't soft ideas but things that actually hold communities together.

He's thoughtful, unhurried, and genuinely humble about what medicine can and can't do. I came away with a clearer sense of what flourishing actually means — which is not the same thing as happiness, and is worth distinguishing.

If it resonates, please pass it on. You can find more conversations like this at This Examined Life — and if you'd like updates and new episodes delivered to you, sign up on Substack.

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Stephen Cave is a philosopher, writer, and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. His work sits at the intersection of philosophy, religion, ethics, and technology, exploring humanity’s oldest questions about death, meaning, immortality, and what it means to live well in a rapidly changing world.

Before entering academia, Stephen worked as a diplomat for the British Foreign Office. He is an internationally recognised public philosopher whose research and writing examine how human beings confront mortality, and how emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, are reshaping those responses.

In this conversation, we explore why the awareness of death may be the defining feature of being human, and how our attempts to escape mortality continue to shape culture, religion, science, and modern technological ambition.

In This Episode We Explore:

• The evolutionary roots of the survival instinct paired with a uniquely human awareness of death
• Terror Management Theory and why immortality beliefs appear across cultures
• Religion, legacy, fame, and technology as competing “immortality stories”
• The wisdom tradition: gratitude for the sheer unlikeliness of being alive
• Serving others as an antidote to self-focused mortality anxiety
• Presence, mindfulness, and practices that reduce future-oriented fear
• Near-death experiences — and how naturalistic explanations can still preserve meaning
• Why living “forever” might collapse identity, values, and purpose
• Life-expectancy myths, real medical progress, and the limits of longevity optimism
• AI and biological technologies accelerating anti-ageing research
• Modern abundance alongside a growing crisis of meaning
• Population pressure, carrying capacity, and what it would take for longer lives to go well

Stephen Cave’s Books

• Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization
  A widely acclaimed philosophical exploration of humanity’s enduring attempts to overcome death.
• Should You Choose to Live Forever?
  A concise introduction to one of philosophy’s most provocative questions: would immortality actually be good for us?
• AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines (with Kanta Dihal)
  An exploration of how stories, myths, and cultural imagination shape our understanding of artificial intelligence.

Podcast Links:

www.examined-life.com

https://thisexaminedlife.substack.com/

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Mortality: Threat or Catalyst? A Conversation with Dr. Kathryn Mannix

In this episode of The Examined Life, Kenny Primrose is in conversation with writer, speaker, and retired palliative care physician Dr. Kathryn Mannix about whether mortality is experienced as a threat or a catalyst for living. Mannix describes how early fear and resentment of death drew her to caring for dying patients, what she observed as medical abandonment, and how nurses taught her that the most important thing at the bedside is “how you are.” She argues that modern culture has lost “death literacy,” fueling fears shaped by Hollywood depictions and that talking about death through storytelling helps people to understand ordinary dying and what to expect. The discussion covers loss of control, end-of-life “audits,” regret as a processed, safer place than rage or shame, emotional literacy, and companionship that makes space for distress. Mannix suggests accepting finitude can clarify values and cultivate gratitude.

00:00 Mortality As Catalyst

01:27 Meet Dr Mannix

04:01 Threat Or Catalyst

04:32 Learning To Be Present

11:22 Magical Thinking Fears

16:56 What Dying Looks Like

23:11 End Of Life Audit

27:38 Rethinking Regret

32:25 Regrets and Joys

34:05 Regret as Wisdom

35:01 Emotional Literacy Work

38:35 Guilt Shame Reframing

40:50 Self Compassion Voices

43:33 Holding Space Culture

48:52 Telling the Story

51:22 End of Life Audit

53:28 Death Catalyst Gratitude

58:59 Closing Reflections

Relevant Links:

https://www.kathrynmannix.com/

www.examined-life.com

https://thisexaminedlife.substack.com/

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