A tech founder tried the same dark retreat as Nate and tapped out after three hours. One of favourite friends of the show - Nate Green, did over a hundred, straight, alone, and with a real risk of losing his grip on reality. He walks us through what a hundred hours in blackout darkness does to your sense of time, your sense of self, and your ability to tell whether you're living or dying. Then faces the Reckoning of Self, my closing gauntlet of questions on fear, death, and regret. 

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What if Nirvana isn't a mountaintop, monastery thing, but something available to you right now wherever you are. Stephen Batchelor spent ten years as a monk chasing exactly that, including three-month stretches sitting in silence asking "what is this?" He came out the other side as a controversial figure with his own brand of secular Buddhism that requires no mythical beliefs - essentially, we've been overcomplicating the whole path. Today on The Overexamined Life Podcast: a modern attainable definition of Nirvana, what "embracing suffering" really means, and how to get there without leaving your house. 

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Buckle up you philosophy degenerates for one of our more "out there" ones. Richard Lang has spent his life teaching Douglas Harding's "Headless Way" — a philosophy that starts with a genuinely disorienting perceptual experiment and ends up somewhere close to boundlessness, reduced stress, and a different relationship with your own self-consciousness. We talk through the exercise itself, what people report feeling when it lands, and why something this simple has stuck with people for seventy years.

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Paul Sagar was a world-class rock climber until a freak accident left him tetraplegic overnight, paralysed in all four limbs, torso, and pelvic organs, losing not just his body but the identity and dreams built around it. Paul is also a Cambridge-trained philosopher who teaches political theory at King's College London, and he brings that same rigour to unpacking his own experience, from the physical horror of his new reality to the depression that came with it. Somehow, and against every expectation, he's emerged with an ease around words like "lucky" and "happy" that most people couldn't muster on their best day. This is a hard listen that goes to some dark places before it climbs back out, but what Paul finds on the other side might change how you think about what actually matters.

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Can you actually do anything to change your dopamine levels? The "Dopamine Detox" is trending, but today we look into some studies to help figure out what's true and what's bollocks. I also go into some strategies that have really helped me enjoy every day life a bit more.

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Today I'm chatting with Anne Jolles who has built an entire movement around the idea that help people access gratitude, courage, and inner wisdom through walking rather than stillness. We'll explore why walking in nature seems to calm the nervous system, whether self-compassion is really worth all the hype, and Anne will even guide us through a virtual Grace Trail that you can follow along with as you listen.

Grace Trail | Wellness Trails That Inspire Reflection & Resilience

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If you deal with addiction of any kind, or really any behaviour you find unhelpful, that you wish you had more control over, that you perhaps wouldn't tell your friends or family about, this is for you. Today we largely look at addiction through the lens of pornography, but really the way pornography is entwined with shame, pleasure, boredom and trauma means that while listening you can subsititute porn for whatever dopamine shortcut you take on a regular basis. Booze, Sleeve of timtams, online shopping, social media, so on.

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Spiritual mentor Dianne Horton, claims she doesn't suffer…not because she was born that way, but because it's a skill she learned and believes anyone can develop. At one point she even says she enjoys eating an ice cream as much as being in a car crash, so I challenged Dianne harder than I usually would to understand how she cultivates this state of mind, whether a life without suffering is really teachable, and whether we'd actually want a world without suffering if it also meant losing some of the drive behind progress, productivity, and innovation 

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After 100 interviews with gurus, doctors, and scientists chasing the same question...what actually makes happiness stick...I've landed on four things we can do to win at life. And by win at life, I mean not be depressed. It's working. I call it the Proof of Life. Have a squiz at this one, I think it's really helpful.

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MUSIC - "Recollections" by Asher Fulero.

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This episode has been de-monetized out of respect for the Viveka Hermitage.

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I seek council from one of the wisest people I know, Jitindriyā, a Buddhist nun. Jitindriyā helps me out with understanding death, depression, love, karma, apologising, and much more.

If you are navigating depression, anger, anxiety, grief, fear, you can check out more of Jitindriya's work below.

https://vivekahermitage.com/embodying-awareness-metta/

https://vivekahermitage.com/working-with-challenging-emotions/

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