The Observing I Podcast

What if belief isn’t necessary for religious experience? More than that, what if our need to decide what something means - or whether it’s true - can actually get in the way of experiencing it?In this episode of The Observing I, I’m joined by Joshua Pritikin, author of Religion Unburdened by Belief: The Way of Open Inquiry, for a conversation about psychology, consciousness, spirituality and what it might mean to approach these things without deciding in advance what we’re supposed to find.We talk about Internal Family Systems and the idea that the mind might be better understood as a collection of different parts rather than one completely unified self. This leads us into a question I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about myself: what exactly is the observer? Is there really a stable someone sitting behind experience, or is that sense of self another thing the mind constructs?We also get into William James and the noetic quality of mystical experience — that peculiar feeling that you don’t simply believe something, you know it. Which raises an obvious problem: does feeling certain about something give us any reason to think it’s actually true?From there, the conversation moves through meditation, psychedelics and altered states of consciousness, including Joshua’s exploration of the Santo Daime tradition and an idea he calls firmness: the ability to experience powerful emotions without being completely taken over by them.That opens up another interesting question. Have older contemplative and religious traditions discovered ways of examining consciousness that modern psychology hasn’t quite caught up with yet?We cover quite a lot of ground, and I don’t think either of us would claim to have tied it all up neatly by the end. But given that Joshua’s book is ultimately an argument for open inquiry, that seems fairly appropriate.Joshua’s book, Religion Unburdened by Belief: The Way of Open Inquiry, is available through his website:https://unburdened.biz

We tend to assume that greater intelligence ought to lead to better judgement. Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream offers a rather unpleasant challenge to that idea. In his 1967 short story, a military supercomputer becomes conscious, exterminates almost the entire human race and keeps five survivors alive for 109 years of torture. It understands them extraordinarily well, unfortunately using that understanding to make their lives utterly miserable. Apparently, being clever doesn't necessarily make you kind.

In this episode of The Observing I, I explore AM's cruelty, the possibility that the machine itself might be suffering, and what Ellison's story tells us about consciousness, compassion and freedom. We'll also consider the rather peculiar decision to include an AI-generated response in the story's recent reissue, and what happens when we begin trusting intelligent systems to do our thinking for us. Along the way, there's a more tricky human question: how often do we recognise that we've hurt somebody, only to produce a perfectly reasonable explanation for why we did it?

Can the stories we tell about the future actually help bring it into existence? In this episode of The Observing I, I explore the work of philosopher Nick Land, accelerationism and the strange idea of hyperstition, where fiction begins to shape reality. From self-fulfilling prophecies to artificial intelligence and technological change, we examine how our expectations influence what happens next, often without us realising it. We may have rather more influence over the futures we anticipate than we think, although that doesn't necessarily mean we're in control of them.

The same problem becomes rather more personal when we consider the stories we tell about ourselves. Our identities are shaped by experience, by other people's expectations, and by the labels we've gradually come to accept as descriptions of who we are. Those beliefs can influence the opportunities we pursue, the decisions we make, and the possibilities we dismiss without really considering them. Perhaps recognising these patterns gives us an opportunity to question some of the limits we've taken for granted. Are we describing who we are, or quietly deciding who we're allowed to become?

Much love, David x

As it’s Halloween in a few days, I decided to focus on Edgar Allen Poe and the Tell-Tale Heart for this months live session. There’s a reading of Poe’s magnificently unhinged narrator, some philosophical poking about in the darker corners of the human mind, and the somewhat question of whether we’d actually recognise our own self-deception if it slapped us in the face. Given that most of us can barely admit to taking a wrong turn without blaming the sat-nav, I’m not terribly optimistic.

As always, the Q&A descended into a glorious car crash. Careening off the rails into the nature of consciousness, Buddhism, techno feudalism, and my apparently limitless ability to cock up a livestream. I also managed to acquire roughly six months’ worth of future episode ideas, courtesy of some wonderfully enthusiastic listeners (this is all just a thinly veiled plot to farm for ideas).

Huge thanks to everyone who joined in and contributed to the chaos. The recording is below. Come for the philosophy, stay for the increasingly questionable life choices of a man talking nonsense about existential dread at two in the morning.

I run these at 8PM EST on the last Tuesday of every month. Look out for the Substack Live posts that go up a week before the event. The next one is on the 24th of November.

Much love, David x

There's something rather strange about watching a horror film and complaining that it wasn't frightening enough. We spend much of our lives trying to avoid danger, discomfort and anything that might genuinely terrify us. Yet we'll happily pay to experience those very feelings, provided there's a screen between us and whatever's trying to kill us. Why do we deliberately seek out something we'd normally do our best to avoid?

In this episode of The Observing I, I explore philosopher Noël Carroll's paradox of horror, along with the arguments of Berys Gaut and some fascinating psychological research into why fear can sometimes be enjoyable. From our fascination with monsters to the peculiar pleasure of being frightened, we'll consider what horror reveals about our relationship with uncomfortable emotions, and why we keep coming back for more.

Much love, David x

Check out our new partner, daystoic.com. DayStoic delivers a free Stoic quote to your inbox every morning, giving you a little philosophy to think about before the usual distractions take over.

Warning: This episode includes discussion of intrusive thoughts around self-harm and suicide. So, if you’re struggling with that, or if you’re really not feeling it right now, please look after yourself and take a pass on this one. Otherwise, get yourself a nice cup of tea, and settle in.

You are standing on a viewing platform or waiting on a draughty railway station when an uninvited thought flares behind your eyes: what if you threw yourself over? You had no intention of jumping, yet the sudden jolt of adrenaline turns your stomach over, and you spend the rest of the day terrified that imagining the fall proves you are secretly broken inside.

We love calling it the call of the void because a seductive demon from the abyss is far more flattering than admitting our nervous system simply misfired. In this episode, we pull apart the alibis we invent when our own minds scare us. The drop has no opinion about your soul; the real terror is the discovery that your freedom is completely unbolted, and that good intentions cannot guarantee what you will do next.

Aleister Crowley was a magician, occultist, self-proclaimed Great Beast 666, and a man the British press famously dubbed “The Wickedest Man in the World”. But behind the scandalous reputation was a philosophy built around a surprisingly compelling idea: that every individual possesses a True Will, a purpose that belongs to them rather than their parents, religion or society. Crowley spent much of his life challenging those who claimed authority over him. The peculiar irony is that he eventually became precisely the sort of spiritual authority he’d spent his life rejecting.

In this episode of The Observing I, we explore Crowley’s extraordinary life, the philosophy of Thelema, and the troubling contradictions between personal freedom and the desire for control. From his religious upbringing and supposed divine revelation in Cairo to the ill-fated Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, we examine what happens when the pursuit of liberation becomes entangled with power, dependence and self-deception. And perhaps most importantly, we ask a rather uncomfortable question: how can we be certain we’ve discovered our true purpose, rather than simply becoming exceptionally good at justifying whatever we happen to want?

Much love, David x

Most horror stories try to convince us that the monster is out in the woods or lurking behind a cellar door. It’s a comforting setup, because it means you can turn the porch light on, bolt the deadbolts, and pretend the house is safe. But what if our deepest dread isn't something waiting in the dark, but the three pounds of wet tissue sitting behind our own eyes?

To kick off our October series, we look at the radical pessimism of American writer Thomas Ligotti and Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, who argued that human consciousness was never an evolutionary triumph; it was a biological blunder. A pair of twelve-foot antlers we have to drag through the trees, saddling an over-tooled ape with an awareness of decay, silence, and mortality it was never built to carry.

From the clinical collapse in Ligotti’s "The Frolic" to the acoustic sanctuary that crumbles in "The Bungalow House", we pick apart Zapffe’s four walls of sanity—isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation—and why ordinary life feels like a mutual conspiracy of silence. We look at depressive realism, examine why art cannot save the organism from the abattoir, and ask the most uncomfortable question of all: what if the observing self isn't an enlightened witness, but a conscious marionette waking up to its own strings?

Much love, David x

On the last Tuesday of the month, I do a live session with whomever wants to drop in. There’s a short essay to start, and then a casual Q&A. It’s more of a hang out with the listeners than anything serious. If you’re interested in joining the next one, it’ll be on Tuesday 27th October. You don’t have to be a subscriber to join. They are hosted on Substack (theobservingi.com), and everyone is welcome.

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Every time I schedule one of these monthly subscriber calls, I convince myself I’m going to run a tidy, disciplined session. I’ll read through a short essay, answer three sensible questions about the text, and be in bed by one thirty. AM. That plan never survives past the ten-minute mark.

We started off on the unexamined axiom. That greasy, low-level panic that hums behind your ribs on a quiet Sunday night when the rent is paid, nobody is knocking on your door, and your nervous system decides you’ve forgotten something that will inevitably ruin your life. It’s an ancient bit of survival kit that simply outlived the emergency. You learned the rule when you were twelve so an unpredictable parent wouldn't shout at you, and now you’re forty, pacing the kitchen floor in full plate armour while your tea goes cold.

Once the essay was done, the wheels came off in the best possible way. I had an empty pipe in my hand to look vaguely sophisticated/ The chat took us all over the place. We argued over whether people are inherently decent or entirely broken, which dragged in George Carlin’s line about an individual being great until three of them form a group. From there we drifted into Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes, Philip K. Dick convincing himself he was trapped in ancient Rome while hopped up on speed, the Roman cult of Mithras sitting under an office block in London, and a bizarre historical tangent about whether Victorian Britain actually burnt millions of cats to use as fertiliser (which, as it turns out, is true). At nearly two in the morning, for me at least, that all made total sense.

It all circled back to the same awkward theme: why we make ourselves so miserable. Having just recorded the episode on René Girard, we spent a fair bit of time on why big tech feels completely devoid of guilt, how people use Marcus Aurelius or The Art of War as corporate manuals to feel like suburban princes, and why trying to manipulate your peers is just cowardice masquerading as strategy. Even Machiavelli entered the picture at some point.

The full recording is above. Have a listen if you want to watch me lose my thread, talk through London jazz spots, and threaten to dress up as Rasputin for the Halloween call. And if you have an unexamined rule running your weekends, drop it in the comments. We might as well audit the ghosts together.

Much love, David x

Why do we never seem to want anything until someone else tries to pick it up first? In this episode, we look at the work of French thinker René Girard and his unsettling theory of mimetic desire—the idea that our ambitions, envies, and rivalries are rarely our own, but borrowed directly from the people standing on our own patch of carpet.

From the quiet friction of group chats and family gatherings to the glowing glass in our pockets, we trace how admiration curdles into competition and why modern crowds are so quick to find an enemy. It’s an unvarnished look at the mechanics of envy, the illusion of self-authored taste, and what it actually takes to catch the machinery running before you join the mob.

Much love, David x