#parenting #children #family

These days, the average parent tends to feel unfairly judged, like they are constantly under a microscope. This is understandable, given how much more we know now, psychologically speaking, about the significance and impact of a person’s early childhood. But how much of that early childhood is actually influenced by parents, and how much of it is determined by genetics, friends, and other factors completely outside a parent’s control? Are we being too hard on parents? And what does it even mean to be a “responsible parent” in the first place?

Sage, Sam, Cristina, Charlotte, Dallas, and others join me in this episode to discuss this sensitive topic. Ironically, several children and other distracting noises were in the background as we held our online meeting. I’ve done what I could to edit most of that out, but I wanted to let you know that listening to this episode will be a bit more turbulent than usual. Nevertheless, I’m sure you’ll agree that the honesty, experience, and advice shared about raising children is well worth the listen!

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#meditation #LaoTzu #yinyang

On one hand, we consider what is. This is the present moment, life as we currently understand it. On the other hand, we consider the future, what will be, the real consequences of our actions. What connects these two moments in time? For a Taoist, one of the hundreds of millions who follow the Tao Te Ching and the other books on Taoism, the answer is primarily, “The Tao.” The Tao is the underlying flow of causality in nature. When we act in harmony with the Tao, by living simply and with compassion, life is great! But when we stubbornly try to force things to be the way we want them, we continually fail and face unforeseen consequences.

I’m joined by Sam, Sage, Walter, Connie, and our new friend Dallas in this episode to discuss some of the moral gems that we can all adopt from this ancient Chinese religion. We hope that we accurately represent these beliefs, but if any Toaist listening out there has comments or corrections for us, we will be happy to add them to a pinned comment below our blog and Youtube video for everyone to see. Take a deep breath and come with us on a meandering discussion on the Tao!

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#spacetime #einstein #cosmology

By the end of your life, your feet will have passed through about one second of time more than your head. Likewise, if you work on the top floor of a skyscraper, you will age slightly slower than your twin who works on the ground floor. This isn’t all just theoretical math and equations, mind you, it’s a real and measurable consequence of the curved and warped fabric of the cosmos that links gravity, space, and time.

In this episode, I’m joined by Connie, Sam, Alice, Walter, and Sage in an exploration of the science of TIME. In our conversation, we consider how humans experience the flow of time, the speed of light, the possibilities of time travel, the so-called “Twin Paradox,” the illusion of a force of gravity, entropy, and what happens when we stretch Einstein’s laws of relativity to their breaking point.

Like our last episode on how we can reduce stress by simplifying our lives, the following is a recording of the first half of a live online meeting of the Free Thought Forum. None of us involved are professional physicists or experts on the subject, but we nevertheless see the value in talking about things at the edge of our comprehension. It’s an educational exercise and one that I’m happy to share with those of you listening in the future.

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#organized #stress #minimalism

Chronic stress is a big problem in our modern world. It can sap our energy, positivity, focus, patience, and motivation. It can lead to procrastination and depression as it negatively impacts almost every aspect of our lives. Sometimes, we can do something about the things that stress us out. Other times, however, we can’t. So how can we deal with the corrosive anxiety that can loom over us, day after day? Well, we can start by taking back some control by better organizing our lives, planning out our days, cleaning our living spaces, and by using the practical knowledge gained through the science of human psychology!

Sage, Cristina, Sam, and Jacob have returned to help me explore this week’s topic. Our last conversation on John Stewart Mill’s Utilitarianism went so well that we’ve opted to record another one of our public online meetings. I am happy to say that we were also joined by our new friends Alice, Walter, and Irene who stopped by to give one of our meetings a try! I was impressed by the breadth and depth of the advice shared in this discussion and I’m sure you will be too. Many insights and experiences were also shared with stunning honesty, something I find refreshing and fitting in a discussion on such important issues.

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#Utilitarianism #JohnStuartMill #freespeech

We’ve all heard of Aristotle and Kant, but are you familiar with Jeremy Bentham, John Stewart Mill, or Harriet Taylor Mill? If you’ve ever waved a rainbow flag at a pride parade, attended a Libertarian conference, or listened to an American rant about free speech, then you already have some sense of the powerful influence of Utilitarianism, an approach to ethics popularized by these great philosophers. They asked questions like, “Do the results of our choices matter more than our intent?” “When is it permissible for a government to force a citizen to do something?” and “Should maximizing individual liberty, happiness, and well-being be the primary objective of our society?”

Cristina, Sage, Sam, Ian, and others have joined me to discuss these fascinating topics. After several months, you’ve all finally talked me into recording the first half of our weekly online meetings. So I gave it a try! The recording began, with the permission of all involved, just after our announcements and ended a few minutes into the 2nd half of the meeting. Since this is our first attempt at capturing a typical weekly discussion, the audio quality isn’t ideal. Technical hiccups and user error notwithstanding, I was impressed with the quality of the comments and perspectives shared (and I hope you will be too), especially as we consider how relevant these ideas still are!

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#courage #virtue #brave #stoicism #freethought -- Every June, the Free Thought Forum celebrates the stoic cardinal virtue of Courage, also known as “Fortitude” or “Bravery.” In this episode, I’ll share some of the new traditions observed in our “Courage Festival.” But first, I’d like to dive deep into what it means to be courageous. How does a brave person behave? How can we become more courageous people? Come with me as we consider these and other questions unfit for the faint of heart.

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Created by: The Free Thought Forum (2020)

#stoics #stoicism #stoic #philosophy -- How can we deal with the terrible injustices of life? How can we carry on when we are asked to do the impossible? Does your happiness depend more on your circumstances or your attitude? The ancient Stoics, including Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus had some powerful answers to these questions that have survived since ancient Greece and Rome. Today, I'm accompanied by my friend Sam Wagner for a six-part conversation about this fascinating philosophy and what freethinkers like you can learn from it.

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Created by: The Free Thought Initiative (2020)

#COVID-19 #coronavirus #pandemic -- Wow! I can’t get this episode out fast enough! Things are changing crazy fast out there, but I’m sure I have a few things to share here that will still be useful long after this pandemic has run its course. For those listening further into the future, our Folding@Home Team code is 236268. If you don’t yet know what I’m talking about, stay tuned!

The Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 has now become a global pandemic that is hitting the United States particularly hard. While we can criticize the government or stockpile toilet paper all day, that isn’t really doing much about the pandemic itself. In this episode, I will give you a quick recap on how bad the coronavirus is, why it is going to get worse, and what average citizens like you and I can do to slow its spread and even help scientists discover a cure by volunteering some of our computers’ processing power to disease research.

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Created by: The Free Thought Initiative (2020)

Volunteering in your community is a great way to meet awesome people, gain some perspective from those who may be less fortunate, make a positive difference, and even help to further the frontier of science. It looks great on your resume when you are between jobs and makes for some memorable dates, family activities, and forum events. However, not all volunteers help as much as they think! Are you contributing in a meaningful way? How can you ensure that you are serving where your skills are needed the most? How can you avoid burnout?

To answer all these questions and more, the Free Thought Forum has put together this “Elite Volunteer Training,” a set of seven guidelines that you can use in your community, workplace, teams, and anywhere else some common sense professionalism is needed.

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Created by: The Free Thought Initiative (2020)

We are, each of us, bombarded every day by the nonsensical claims of advertisers, alternative-medicine gurus, the news media, conspiracy theorists, cult leaders, politicians, and so on. What can we do to sense nonsense before it gets past our defenses? Can we improve our individual powers of nonsense detection? In this episode, we will go over a few things you can do to tune, sharpen, and develop your personal nonsense detection kit, a set of critical thinking skills that allow you to better recognize fraud, woo-woo, BS, baloney, and pseudoscience for what they all really are.

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