What's the value?
253 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 months ago - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingI ask guests about the value of a strongly held belief, vision, or objective they have. This can be a business idea, a personal/spiritual belief, a political/social agenda, or a focus of their career. I want to have conversations with people who are really passionate about their belief and work through how much they've questioned and challenged it. No intent of changing their minds, but just exploring and being curious. My hope is that it will help listeners better understand the guest's perspective, while also helping the guest to better understand themselves and their belief.
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Episodes
"Family" - Tony Losacco
November 10, 2023 15:13 - 1 hour - 59.6 MBThese conversations are hard. I've listened back to this one a number of times and the only thing I can keep thinking is "nuance." These discussions are nuanced, these topics are nuanced, life is nuanced. On the one hand I feel like this is all we can do, have an open conversation with someone, hear their thoughts, ask questions, and try to understand different perspectives better. On the other hand I feel like I should have pushed back much harder. Some of the words used weren't OK and ...
"The power of philosophy to heal society" - Nikos Patedakis
November 01, 2023 20:00 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MB"Philosophy is actually the end of abstractions." Wow, what a statement to think about. How different our approach to life might become if we embrace that thought. How much more reflective and humble we might become. This conversation with Nikos was full of interesting and insightful thoughts. We talked philosophy, biology, evolution, psychology, and spirituality-- all with the same goal of trying to better understand what the hell we are doing here. Not because it is interesting to th...
"Everything is always my fault" - Chad Wittfeldt
October 25, 2023 21:29 - 42 minutes - 39.3 MBChad is a successful business person who now works to help coach others on how to be successful. What's super interesting about Chad is that: 1. He has some spiritual and religious values that underpin a lot of his thinking and his goals in life. 2. On the surface, he can seem like a bit of a "finance bro" who overemphasizes his masculinity and his drive to win at life. As we do on this show, we spent the discussion trying to reconcile that, understand who Chad really is, and why he appro...
"There is more to life than we realize" - Cory Rosenke
October 19, 2023 14:17 - 46 minutes - 43.4 MBCory is an author and a pastor, who has a deep faith in God. He believes that it is only through God that we can fulfill our inherent cravings and live a happy, peaceful, meaningful life. He has written a book, The Magnetic Heart of God - Understanding the Five Cravings of Your Soul. We spent this conversation exploring Cory's understanding of those 5 cravings, why he is confident they are spiritual and non-biological, and what it actually means to embrace God to fulfill them. I always lo...
"Understanding that your reason is everything" - Kamal X
October 11, 2023 18:39 - 53 minutes - 49.9 MBKamal is a photographer who wanted to capture the essence of what really was happening in America in 2020. He wanted to use photography to let all of the division, hate, fear, anger, sorrow, love, compassion, and humanity show its true self--the true story of what was underneath it all. As you'll hear, he is also just a really authentic, thoughtful, self-aware person. It was fascinating to hear his stories, how he became so passionate about photography, and what he learned about humanity a...
"Finding the truth" - Dana Diaz
October 06, 2023 19:06 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBDana has experienced a lot of trauma and abuse in her life by narcissists. From a young age she dealt with it from her mother and step father and even later in life at the hands of her ex-husband. She spent so much time struggling with this form of physical, verbal, and psychological abuse that it made her question the reality she was living in. As she explains in her work, narcissistic abusers create so much confusion and conflict in the mind of the abused. She's struggled with this for m...
"Reducing the number of mass shootings in America" - Gerald Schoenewolf
October 02, 2023 15:53 - 54 minutes - 50.5 MBGerald is a psychoanalyst, who has studied human behavior for a long time. He has used that expertise to formulate hypotheses about social issues, like feminism, civil rights, and most recently mass shootings in America. Some of his views have been called insensitive or offensive. For example, in trying to explore how to stop mass shootings, one of his ideas is to regulate who is allowed to parent a child. The thought being that ineffective child rearing (among other social/cultural issues...
"Balance between our 'prosocial' and 'solo actor' parts" - Kent Weishaus
September 26, 2023 21:24 - 47 minutes - 44.1 MBMy guest, Kent, believes humanity is in a crisis but he is very optimistic that we have the tools and knowledge to overcome that crisis. Much of the problem is rooted in our attachments (or lack thereof) during childhood. We are all damaged children who grow up to become damaged adults and the work Kent is doing is to help us figure out how to heal that damage and be better going forward. If you've listened to the show before, you know I tend to take a much more cynical view of humanity. I ...
"Free will doesn't exist" - Olga Tymofiyeva
September 18, 2023 14:43 - 56 minutes - 52 MBOlga has a belief that free will doesn't exist. This belief isn't rooted in spirituality or intuition, it is deeply rooted in science and reason. Olga believes if people understood that free doesn't exist, it would actually inspire us to be more humble, more caring, and increase our overall quality of life. These conversations are so rich with good discussion because there is so much to get into. Does free will really not exist, how would we know? What are the implications of free will not ...
"Fixing our economic systems" - Christopher Ellingsworth
September 12, 2023 14:19 - 1 hour - 56.4 MBChris has a bold belief that he understands the issues with our current economic systems, the ways they are hurting society and the earth, and what needs to be done to fix them. His work, with his non-profit (The Foundation of New World), is meant to build awareness and drive people to implement these fixes. At the root of the problem, Chris believes we are focusing on the wrong metrics (GDP, currency values, inflation, etc.) which are leading us to overproduce, overwork our employees, and...
"Humanity" - Hajar Yazdiha
September 08, 2023 13:48 - 57 minutes - 52.9 MBHajar cares deeply about humanity. She believes in humanity and that we can figure out ways to stop finding reasons to divide ourselves, causing suffering, and hating one another. She is also knowledgable enough to know that it won't be easy. That's why she's dedicated her life as a professor and author to try to better understand humanity and figure this thing out. This thing is messy though. If I have learned nothing else from doing this show it is that. So we dove into the messiness of i...
"Incentivize people to grow their perspective" - Radell Lewis
September 05, 2023 21:13 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBRadell's mission is to have authentic conversations, expand people's perspectives, and find a way out of the toxic political discourse that exists in our world today. He hopes to use his podcast (https://www.purplepoliticalbreakdown.com) to show people that you can use logic, reason, and understanding to work through some of the most complex and nuanced issues that society faces. This approach obviously resonates with me and I enjoyed digging into some of today's political issues to see how...
"Love and God" - Troy Hadeed
September 01, 2023 15:25 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBThere are some conversations, where you feel like you are truly examining the human experience; not for any specific reason, but just because both people are so fascinated with understanding. This discussion with Troy (https://troyhadeed.com/) was a beautiful, deep look into what this existence is really all about. Neither of us would be so naive to assume we have all the answers, but that is not the point. The point is caring enough to explore it. Troy has lived an interesting life and ...
"Freedom" Frank Salvato
August 31, 2023 01:05 - 53 minutes - 49.7 MBI am not there yet, I know that. I want to be able to have conversations with people, like my guest Frank, and actually get to the root of it. I want to be able to understand what makes people see the world so differently. I want to understand what makes one person think racism and the aftermath of slavery still loom large in our country, whereas another person thinks it is not much of an issue at all. It is hard though. Maybe it shouldn't be so hard, but I find myself trying to walk the l...
"Being open to change" - Sean Robinson
August 10, 2023 18:12 - 51 minutes - 47.2 MBSean, at one time in his life, was angry, overweight, drinking too much, and not the person he wanted to be in life. There were various reasons for these issues, but if you had to sum them up, it was that he never really believed he was capable of anything different. Sean was raised a certain way and started to form certain beliefs/habits that seemed impossible to break. This isn't some magical story of transformation, where someone went on a quest to find themselves (not there is anything...
What's the value of being cynical?
August 04, 2023 19:53 - 23 minutes - 21.8 MBA solo session where I reflect on some of the things I am learning, examine the value of cynicism, and explore how we (humans) might be better.
"Sentientism" - Jamie Woodhouse
August 01, 2023 15:32 - 1 hour - 56.5 MBJamie is developing a philosophy called sentientism (as hard to write as it is to say), which is based on the idea of using evidence and reason to determine what living beings are sentient and then showing compassion for them. This is one of those concepts that seems so obvious and hard to argue, until you get into the weeds of it. As with any philosophy, there are aspects of it that become subjective. How are we defining sentient, how are we defining compassion, what is the underlying ratio...
Sentientism - Jamie Woodhouse
August 01, 2023 15:32 - 1 hour - 56.5 MBJamie is developing a philosophy called sentientism (as hard to write as it is to say), which is based on the idea of using evidence and reason to determine what living beings are sentient and then showing compassion for them. This is one of those concepts that seems so obvious and hard to argue, until you get into the weeds of it. As with any philosophy, there are aspects of it that become subjective. How are we defining sentient, how are we defining compassion, what is the underlying ratio...
"The Importance of Western Philosophy" - Daniel Sanderson
July 28, 2023 02:42 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBDaniel is a philosopher with a strongly held belief that western philosophy is one of the most important contributions in the history of humanity. This is obviously directly in my wheel house so I was excited for this discussion, although I know for some people deep philosophical conversations can feel abstract or tough to follow. For that reason I tried to ask questions that brought the abstract concepts back down to practical terms, to make sense of how valuable they really are to humanity...
"Remembering our history to improve our future" - Dale Hutchinson
July 24, 2023 14:23 - 39 minutes - 36.8 MBDale is someone who is concerned that America is forgetting its history and as a result is dooming its future. He has a strong belief in his faith and because of that he feels compelled to speak out and take action to try to help. I do this show to have conversations with people that have strong opinions or viewpoints, because I want to take the time to understand what is really underneath them. It is very easy in today's world to see a conservative, older white male who thinks we need to g...
"Libertarianism" - Brian McWilliams
July 19, 2023 13:40 - 58 minutes - 53.7 MBBrian is a strong believer in libertarianism and the idea that both parties have their obvious flaws therefore the only thing that makes sense is minimizing government and allowing people to be free to be who they want to be. The idea of libertarianism is always intriguing to me theory, so it was really interesting to pressure test and examine what it really means, how it works, and how tolerant it actually is. Bio Provided by Brian: Brian McWilliams is a native Philadelphian currently ...
"Virtue (through conservatism)" - Josh Lewis
July 07, 2023 13:01 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBJosh is a podcaster and blogger (https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/) who has a strong belief in the tradition of conservatism in America. He believes being virtuous is the most important thing we can do and his conservative philosophy suggests, more often than not, the most virtuous thing we can do is not try to drive radical change. There are times for that, but most often we'd be better to trust in the natural course of things and the way they've worked in the past. We approached this d...
"Questioning our hidden racial biases" - Daniel Balmer
July 03, 2023 12:47 - 53 minutes - 49.6 MBMy guest, Daniel, refers to himself as a recovering racist. As he puts it, "I acknowledge that I have held racist beliefs in the past, but I am committed to unlearning them and becoming an anti-racist. I strive to constantly examine my thoughts and actions for any signs of prejudice and take steps to address them." There are a ton of interesting aspects of this to explore. What makes someone racist, how does unconscious racism work, how do we become "anti-racist", etc.? Beyond those obvious...
"The role of government in protecting children" - Lance Hillsinger
June 30, 2023 12:48 - 48 minutes - 45.2 MBThere are not a lot of topics more important than protecting abused or suffering children. Lance spent most of his career as a child welfare worker and has also wrote two books on the topic. He started the episode by discussing the importance, but also the challenges, of government being responsible for making decisions about the well being of children. I really appreciated this discussion, because Lance was able to give an inside look to the mind of a social worker. We got a peek inside to...
"Fixing schools to allow kids to be creative and entrepreneurial" - Lauren Goldstein
June 27, 2023 12:46 - 49 minutes - 45.5 MBMy guest, Lauren, feels very strongly that kids need to be able to explore, be curious, be creative, and think more like entrepreneurs. She also feels very strongly that our current school system is not allowing kids these opportunities and that is a big problem. This isn't a new sentiment, but it was really interesting to explore this issue and why Lauren felt so strongly about it. She is really thoughtful and rational in her thinking, so we uncovered some good questions and insights as we ...
"Getting a college degree" - Johnathan Drayton
June 23, 2023 12:50 - 58 minutes - 54.4 MBJohnathan has been on the show once before, in season 1, but wanted to come back for season 2 to talk about his strongly held belief on the importance of getting a college degree. His view is that although there are plenty of reasons (many of them good reasons) to not go to college anymore, there are always pro and cons to everything; and the pros of getting a college degree outweigh the cons. Johnathan believes the transformative experience you go through will prepare you to thrive in life,...
"Importance of being a career shapeshifter" - Mustafa Ammar
June 20, 2023 13:19 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBMustafa has worked as an investment banker, a diplomat, and pharmacist, and now as an author and coach (https://thepassionmba.com/). He has intentionally chosen to change careers, or be a career shapeshifter, because he believes that is what life is about. As he said it, "we are not on this earth to pay bills and die." It only makes sense to push yourself to try different things and maximize the value you bring to the world. Not only does Mustafa think it is better for the individual to ap...
"The importance of listening to mental health professionals" - Elaine Belson
June 15, 2023 09:43 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBThis was probably the most contentious conversation I've had since I've been doing this show. That is somewhat expected given the format change for season 2, but I would honestly love for you the listeners to decide where this conversation broke bad (if at all). I know people that speak in absolutes, use extreme language, and carry an air of certainty can be a trigger for me. Elaine hit on those triggers as she was trying to passionately make her case for why mental health experts should be ...
"Love God and Love Others" - Paul Granger
June 12, 2023 14:41 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBI was connected with Paul by a mutual friend and we actually had a conversation on another podcast prior to this one. This works out well sometimes, because it allows us to get deeper into the discussion since we already have a baseline understanding of each other. Paul brought "love God and love others" as his strongly held belief to discuss for the show. What I knew about Paul from our prior conversation was that he would be super thoughtful about why he believed so strongly in this idea...
"Removing the negative stigma around diabetes" - Chet Galaska
June 08, 2023 09:43 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBChet suffers from diabetes and has seen first hand the stigmas that come with this disease. He thinks it is due to a lack of awareness and knowledge, that so many people chastise people struggling with it (especially type 2 diabetes). His belief is that diabetes is unique in this way, where people are comfortable criticizing and judging people for not "being healthier" or "taking better care of themselves." So he is on a mission to try to change that perspective and remove those stigmas. I...
"Taking ownership over your outcomes in life" - William Hollis
June 05, 2023 14:00 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBMy guest, William, creates content and shares his views on self-improvement, social issues, pop culture, and many other topics (https://www.youtube.com/@talknscroll/videos). He came to the show with a strongly held belief around taking ownership/accountability of your outcomes in life. He discusses this often in his content, so we explored this belief and used the issue of sexism/the patriarchy to make it real. Season 2 of the show is still about questioning, exploring, and seeking to unde...
Season 2 Introduction and Preview
June 01, 2023 06:24 - 29 minutes - 27.7 MBI talk about some changes I am making to the show for season 2 and what to expect from the conversations going forward.
"Congruence" - Jake Ryan
May 30, 2023 14:14 - 1 hour - 65.2 MBI spend a lot of time thinking about suffering. As I work through all of the conversations on this show, it is what I keep coming back to. We live in a world where it is almost all a mystery. If you dig deep enough, nothing really makes sense, at least in the traditional logical sense. The only thing that seems real is pleasure and suffering. We know, logically, viscerally, emotionally, and intuitively the feelings of pleasure and suffering. This has lead me to a conclusion that the only c...
"Acceptance" - Sean Gill
May 26, 2023 12:56 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBSean has been playing and creating music for over 30 years. He has spent most of his working life as a self-employed freelancer, playing in a jazz trio at wine bars, editing audiobooks, creating websites, and playing electric guitar with an orchestra. As you'll hear Sean explain, towards the end of the show, he is one of those people where music just made sense to him from a very early age. There is a real magic to it that allowed him to feel some comfort in a world that otherwise seemed imp...
"Accountability" - Sandhya Jha
May 22, 2023 13:41 - 50 minutes - 47.1 MBSandhya is an author and anti-oppression consultant with 20 years of community organizing experience. She particularly loves helping organizations get Diversity/Equity/Inclusion teams off the ground. These types of topics are really interesting to me, not only for the obvious reason of how important they are to reduce unnecessary suffering, but also because they speak directly to the complexity of human nature. Trying to understand the root cause of oppression and inequity (which I think is ...
"No regrets" - Byron Morrison
May 19, 2023 13:56 - 52 minutes - 48.9 MBMy guest today, Byron, is a great illustration of what makes life so amazing, but also so tricky. He realized at some point, after spending years being overweight, bullied, and lacking self-confidence, that the key to life is to put yourself out there, try more things, and constantly seek growth. He totally transformed himself and his life. In many ways it is a beautiful story. Byron got healthy, got confident, and built his own business. He is now an author, speaker, and high-performance c...
"Integrity (and excitement)" - Tim Bui
May 16, 2023 13:04 - 53 minutes - 49.8 MBMy guest today, Tim, has a really diverse and interesting background. He's trained martial arts for most of his life, he's been a successful serial entrepreneur, he's studied under Buddhist monks, and he's now a high performance life coach. He wants to use all of these experiences and learnings to help shift the world into the most inspirational and connected place possible. That is what Tim is about, maximizing potential. As he put it during the show, humans in many ways are god-like but w...
"Self-honesty" - Matthew Garnier
May 12, 2023 12:54 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBMy guest, Matt, recently published a comedic memoir about religious upbringing, "Swept Up: Lessons From the End Times" (https://amzn.to/3I2rqB2). The book includes "tales (and lessons) from church, home-schooling, and a few strange years at a major evangelical university." This background helps explain his value of "self-honesty, because as Matt put it, he was raised to rely on certainty to guide him through life. From a very young age he was taught about God, heaven, hell, and the other v...
"Agathos" - Josh Bachynski
May 09, 2023 13:10 - 1 hour - 62.4 MBJosh (author, PhD, SEO/AI expert-- http://youtube.com/jbachyns) started the show by talking about the concept of agathos and how he is a radical optimist. Agathos is a greek word, with a lot of meanings, but Plato most famously used it to mean "the good." By "the good" he meant the ideal or most optimal good that exists. So when Josh says he values agathos or that he is radical optimist, he means there is nothing more important, nothing more logical, and nothing more obvious than focusing on...
"Morality and Integrity" - Anmol Singh
May 04, 2023 13:35 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBWhat I enjoyed about this conversation with Anmol, was the juxtaposition of the personas he seems to have. On the one hand he appears to be the prototypical "finance guy." He is a high end trader, with nice clothes, and helps people make millions of dollars using his specialized investing approach (Learn more about it and his book here- https://preppingforsuccess.com/). Money and returns appear to be his guiding stars and he isn't ashamed about it. But then, Anmol is also deeply reflective,...
"Resiliency" - Joshua Penner
May 01, 2023 14:01 - 46 minutes - 43.4 MBMy guest, Josh, and I had a really good conversation about resiliency (his most important value). His life is an example of the rewards you get from being resilient. He's an author, founder and CEO of an AI company (https://inquisio.ai/), Mayor and City Council member, and a veteran of the US Marine Corps (among other things). Josh will be the first to admit though that not all of these things came easy to him and took a lot of persistence, humility, and competitive fire to achieve. We spe...
"Reason" - Rocco Jarman
April 28, 2023 08:34 - 1 hour - 62.3 MB"Stable mutual actualization" -- that is what my guest, Rocco, is after. He believes with the use of true reason (mature, sophisticated, objective reason) we as humans, have the ability to achieve a stable state, where mutually all of us, can self actualize into what we want to be. Contrast that with the world he sees today, where most people actualize at the expense of someone else. We mostly just follow our base instincts to try to live the best life we can imagine, without acknowledging t...
"Leveling the playing field" - Aadil Mamujee (Business Edition)
April 24, 2023 15:13 - 53 minutes - 49.6 MBAadil is a friend from Harvard Business School who I've always admired, but at the same time always wondered what made him tick. He's lived an interesting life, being born and raised in Mombasa, Kenya, and then spending most of his adult life studying and working in Europe, America, and Africa. He's been successful as an entrepreneur, a product developer, and maybe most notably as an angel investor focused mainly on emerging markets (with lots of investment back into Africa). I admired Aad...
"Passion" - Jeremy Lasman
April 21, 2023 13:24 - 1 hour - 57.7 MBPassion is one of my favorite topics to discuss. Logic is my religion because I understand the power of it, but passion is something that fascinates me on a much more visceral/primal level. I can't fully explain passion but I know how attracted to it I am. I know the feeling I get when I am engaged in something I am passionate about. Maybe my guest today, Jeremy, put it best when he said "passion is the fuel of human energy." By that I think he means it is the thing that allows us to do ever...
"Changing the way humanity relates to animals" - Genie Joseph
April 18, 2023 13:02 - 50 minutes - 47 MBI've said this before, but there was a time before I started doing this show where I thought I understood the world. I thought I understood it at such a level that it was reasonable for me to judge or dismiss certain viewpoints as obviously wrong. Whether it be spiritual beliefs, different values, or an aspect of how the world worked that did not directly align with how I thought it worked. Ironically, I would not ask any questions or explicitly challenge the person (I was too much of a peop...
"Seeing inherent value in others" - Diane Hare (Business Edition - BizLove)
April 13, 2023 13:42 - 47 minutes - 44.3 MBThis is our first go at What's the value? - Business Edition and I thought no better guest to kick it off with than Diane. Diane is the founder and CEO of BizLove (https://bizlove.com/) a strategic consultancy that helps organizations transform from within and express their story to the world. They bridge the disciplines of storytelling and strategy to deliver integrated solutions for businesses. Not only that, Diane (or "D") is also my former boss. When I first decided to leave my "traditi...
"Joy" - Andrea Wilson Woods
April 11, 2023 13:13 - 1 hour - 57.2 MBMy guest, Andrea, and I spent an hour trying to make sense of a seemingly simple word-- "joy." If joy is your guiding light what happens when the thing you think you need to do does not result in joy? Does that mean you are doing the wrong thing or are you just a bad person? Is all joy the same? Is the joy of partying in college, being free, and having a good time with friends; is that joy the same as the joy you get caring for a sick loved one? Should we be using the same term to explain ...
"Honesty and Integrity" - Kiran Kumar
April 07, 2023 13:29 - 58 minutes - 54.1 MBHonesty and integrity are amazing values. When we can tap into who we truly are and are confident enough to share it with the world, it relieves a massive burden. We no longer worry about trying to be who we think we should be, but rather just are who we are. It brings on a feelings of freedom and liberation. But it begs a critical question...how do we know when we are being honest? That might seem like a silly question, but it is a really critical one. As my guest, Kiran, and I discussed, ...
"Finding a way to help others, while still helping myself" - Terry Bartley
April 04, 2023 09:54 - 1 hour - 61.8 MBTerry is a writer (https://www.terrybartleywriter.com/) who also teaches and hosts a podcast. His writing focuses on marginalized characters and communities to try and give them more of a voice and a sense of belonging. Given Terry's background, growing up in a poor, single parent home, with ADHD and as a queer person living in West Virginia; he has a deep understanding of what it means to feel marginalized and not fit in. That is why he feels so strongly about giving back and helping others...
"Trust" - Anne Donovan
March 31, 2023 13:23 - 53 minutes - 49.6 MBAnne is a Human Resources leader known for developing new programs/training and improving employee retention and leadership performance (https://donovanhrsolutions.com/). She wants to help employers realize the importance of building trust, respect, and recognition in the work place. She believes it will make for a better employee experience, better results for the organization, and frankly a better world for all of us. That is what Anne does, but as with most guests I have on this show, th...