Where Wonder Went

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Six years ago today, I published the first issue of Down The Rabbit Hole. That same day, my grandmother Maisie passed away. She was born in 1917, lived through two pandemics, and was 40 days shy of her 103rd birthday.

1 year ago today, in the first episode of this podcast, I promised to try to recover a file from a laptop I thought was dead: a recording of the last conversation I ever had with her. This is the story of what happened next. The repairman told me the recovery would work on what would have been her 108th birthday. Then I finally pressed play and heard our last "I love you" again. I also heard something I had forgotten.

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What if wonder isn't something we've lost, but something that's always knocking at our door and we've simply stopped answering? In this episode, I share my personal definition of wonder and explore why the very busyness of modern life might be obscuring what's already reaching toward us.

I dig into:

• Why wonder is an encounter with frontiers, not a feeling to chase
• The "elsewhere IV drip" of constant digital distraction that pulls us from presence
• How the outrage-attention media complex fragments our ability to focus on what matters
• The wisdom of "tending to the part of the garden you can touch"
• The difference between mystery (to live in) and riddles (to solve)
• How wonder uses the raw material of our everyday busyness—if we know how to look

For anyone feeling like they're living in a chronic state of distraction, perpetually elsewhere while life passes by, this episode offers a way back to presence. Not through adding more to your schedule, but through recognizing that wonder is already woven into the fabric of your daily experience.

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Why do children naturally experience wonder while adults feel threatened by it? In this conversation with my dear friend Dan Garfield, we explore how the very systems meant to educate us can actually suppress our ability to experience the world as it is.

We dig into:

• The difference between curiosity and wonder
• Why "I don't know" might be the most honest stance anyone can take
• Why meanings aren't fixed objects but living things that unfold over time
• What happens when you stop filtering out weird experiences that don't fit your worldview
• How language cuts reality into the speakable and unspeakable—with most of life in the part we can't name
• The practice of paying attention without needing to understand

For anyone feeling like life has become a series of familiar categories rather than an ongoing mystery, this episode offers both a diagnosis of how we got here and a surprisingly practical path back—not through magical thinking, but through the simple, difficult practice of actually paying attention.

If you enjoyed listening to Dan, I encourage you to subscribe to his substack. A few pieces I recommend are Radical Empiricism and Where is my mind?

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In this first episode of Where Wonder Went, I reflect on five years of publishing my newsletter Down the Rabbit Hole  and why I decided to launch this new podcast. I explore the central question behind the series: where did our sense of wonder go? Drawing from my own journey as a sleight of hand magician and curator of wonderful things, I share why wonder often fades as we grow older, the five forces behind its erasure, and why I believe rediscovering it is essential for living with reverence and aliveness.

This episode sets the stage for the conversations and explorations to come as I invite you to join me in the practice of re-enchantment and in finding the extraordinary hidden in everyday life.