The Neurodivergent Professor
220 episodes - English - Latest episode: 18 days ago -Thinking outside the box. Embracing your weirdness. Making different great again.
I create content to address issues critical to our personal and collective future on Earth.
Join me in tearing down the walls of conformity, letting our freak flags fly, and normalizing diversity. Doing so will not only allow us to thrive as individuals, it will improve humanity and planet Earth.
More at www.chrisburcher.com
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Episodes
Hitting the Pause Button to Deliver Our Boat
June 27, 2024 08:00 - 5 minutes - 3.65 MBI want to let y’all know what is going on in my life. There will be a pause in my articles, podcast, and videos until at least August. For the next two weeks or so I will be delivering our boat from the BVI to the USA. Wait, WTaF? For those who don’t know, my family has been planning to live on a boat since before the pandemic. We are finally to the point of making the shift. We are selling our home and getting rid of most of our stuff. We are buying a boat and will move a very small amo...
We Can Reach Fitness by Returning to the Optimum Condition: NDP 182
June 20, 2024 08:00 - 22 minutes - 15.8 MBHave you ever sat down and thought about your values? Values are important, motivating, and provide guidance. I’ve done a lot of values work in therapy and find it challenging. I value many things, but prioritizing the top five to ten is difficult and dynamic. One thing I have learned during over a decade of values work is that many human values suck. I think a lot about universal or ‘optimum’ values Are there ‘optimum’ human values? For my purposes, optimum is an adjective meaning mo...
On Being a Good Steward of Earth: NDP 181
June 13, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBYou don’t have to look far to find something to complain about. Climate changeInequalitySuicidal ideationMalnutritionLoneliness The world is full of problems. Now, I’m no doomer. My intent is not to illuminate human suffering. Rather, I accept the Buddhist notion that there will be suffering. My issue is all the EXTRA suffering. I can’t shake the naive, hippie belief that solutions are within our reach. When it comes to the end of the world I’m an optimist. The question is, what can ...
Is Punctuated Equilibrium a Good Way to Change the World? NDP 180
June 06, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.4 MBHave you seen (or read) “2001: A Space Odyssey”? The story opens at the time of early humans. Folks are going about their business when a ginormous monolith appears. Everyone freaks out at first, but then some develop the ability to use bones as tools. At first, I didn’t understand that the monolith represented punctuated equilibrium. This is a phrase used by evolutionary biologists to describe a quick shift in the fossil record representing a significant change. Compare this to gradualis...
Making a Good Life: NDP 179
May 30, 2024 08:00 - 30 minutes - 20.7 MBThe unexamined life is not worth living — Socrates It seems natural, even innate, to want to make the most of one’s life. To have a good life seems to require examination. Examining one’s life, growing, and continuing to be aware is part of our purpose. The purpose of life has two branches. The first is the ecological purpose and the second is more metaphysical. The ecological purpose of life is to reproduce to alleviate mortality. In other words, because all life dies, life reproduces it...
If Natural Selection Determined Human Value Systems: NDP Episode 178
May 23, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBDo you suffer? Humans have problems. It’s hard to deny. Despite many pleas for ‘looking on the bright side of life’, we live in a world full of suffering. For whatever reason, I think about these problems, the causes, and potential solutions. While it is difficult to maintain a positive mental attitude and growth mindset, I strive for a balance. I consider how we might improve humanity while not getting bogged down in depression. I think existence consists of two main branches. These a...
The Beauty of Your Comfort Zone: NDP Episode 177
May 16, 2024 08:00 - 28 minutes - 19.9 MBDo you ever think about your comfort zone? I’m sure most people are at least aware of the concept. To me, our comfort zone is like an invisible egg that surrounds our physical body. Near the center, we are, well, comfortable. As we near the edges we become less comfortable. Our comfort zone is like a sixth sense. It is more a bodily feeling or awareness than an identifiable sensation. Approaching our comfort zone is unlike hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, or seeing. Why do we experi...
Is This a Testable Personal Growth Hypothesis? NDP 176
May 09, 2024 08:00 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBDoes science play a role in your life? Do you value hard data and evidence? Do you think humans are good at proving things? Or maybe you defer to religion or culture to decide what is real? I talk a lot about how science is over or undervalued. Some folks think science proves reality. Others think scientists are full of crap. Regardless of how you feel about science, the scientific method is regarded as one of the best tools we have to help us answer questions. One of my favorite questi...
Reincarnation May Not Be True but It Can Be Helpful: NDP 175
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBDo other people ever make you angry? I’d be worried about you if you said no. Or assume you are the Dalai Lama. Many of us struggle to find connections to people we disagree with. Or people who act out, are annoying, or mean. I preach a lot about how we are all connected, and how we need to love one another and participate in our communities. But it is so very hard, sometimes, to love everyone or to want to connect. If you struggle with truly feeling connected to people, this article is...
I'm Not You and You're Not Me: NDP 174
April 25, 2024 08:00 - 34 minutes - 23.8 MBHave you ever wondered how any two people can have a conversation and walk away feeling both like they were heard and believing they heard the other person? It blows my mind how limiting conversation can be. As magical as language is, it leaves so much room for error. Words mean different things to different people. We hear one thing when they mean another. Context matters. We have different life experiences. There are so many layers that make it easy to misunderstand. Language, like any t...
Can We Stop Enabling? NPD 173
April 18, 2024 09:00 - 26 minutes - 18.3 MB“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” ― Charles Bukowski Do you ever think about this? Can you think of an example from your life? Sometimes, it seems we’re surrounded by idiots. And they’re loud. We worship confidence, arrogance, and status. Why are we surprised when the greedy become gluttonous? Why do we not honor traits like kindness, empathy, and connection? A lot of this is fear. We worry abo...
Learning About Where We Goofed Up: NDP 172
April 10, 2024 14:00 - 31 minutes - 21.4 MBWhat went right? Do you ever wonder how we got here? Do you ever think about what has changed over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution? The past few decades have seen exponential growth in technology. Smartphones. Passenger trips to space. Electric vehicles. Lots of crazy new tech. In most of our lifetimes, technological advances have dominated the changes we experience. Science changed the world. Medical advances like germ theory and surgical techniques have arguably improv...
Can We Treat Death as a Mentor? NDP Episode 171
April 04, 2024 08:00 - 30 minutes - 21.3 MBOk, I know, it sounds weird but hear me out. Humans are freaked out by death. I’m not saying I’m any different, just drawing attention to this in hopes of reducing our suffering. Today I’m wondering what life would be like if we could change our relationship with death. The Toltec civilization of Central America considered death an advisor like a friend who gives advice. In this way, Toltecs navigated their lives knowing they were temporary. It is a way to try and make the most of the tim...
Will You Talk to Me?: NPD Episode 170
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutes - 23.1 MBSticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me Do you remember this nursery rhyme? When I was younger, I believed it. I thought I would rather be yelled at than physically harmed. While I feel lucky to have received more verbal bullying than actual butt-kickings, I’m not so sure the damage was less harmful. As an adult, I realize words have real power and do a lot of harm on their own. Sometimes I wonder if words hurt worse than beatings. Certainly, words don’t ‘never...
What Is The Matter? NDP Episode 169
March 21, 2024 08:00 - 30 minutes - 20.8 MBWhat IS the matter? Matter is an interesting word. It’s a noun and a verb. The noun means something of substance and can be physical or metaphysical. The verb means for something to be important. There’s matter, and there is the matter. I like words like that, but the complication of communication and understanding. The idea of something mattering, as a verb, has been on my mind lately. The last two episodes (here and here) have focused on the relationship between our experiences and our s...
NDP 168: Things We Could Care Less About
March 14, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.2 MBI couldn’t care less about that. How many times have you said that? We use this phrase as a euphemism to mean we completely don’t like, disagree with, or are opposed to whatever is being discussed. There are things in life we don’t care about, and some things we care a lot about. We pay attention to and direct our energy toward the things we care about. My argument here is caring about things is energetically expensive and we need to be careful. Caring requires attention. We use the p...
Things We Could Care Less About. NDP 168
March 14, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.2 MBI couldn’t care less about that. How many times have you said that? We use this phrase as a euphemism to mean we completely don’t like, disagree with, or are opposed to whatever is being discussed. There are things in life we don’t care about, and some things we care a lot about. We pay attention to and direct our energy toward the things we care about. My argument here is caring about things is energetically expensive and we need to be careful. Caring requires attention. We use the p...
The Cumulative Stress Hypothesis. NDP 168
March 07, 2024 09:00 - 27 minutes - 18.7 MBAre you aware of the stress in your life? Can you FEEL it when stressors are building up and you think you may pop? Do you ever feel like you’re right on the verge of a meltdown? I think most of us are familiar with these scenarios. We can only take so much stress. When I was an ecologist, I had a vision for my life’s work. I planned on studying how aquatic ecosystems resist or integrate stressors before they break down. Some streams were beautiful. Full of a diversity of life, clean wate...
NDP Episode 167: The Cumulative Stress Hypothesis
March 07, 2024 09:00 - 27 minutes - 18.7 MBAre you aware of the stress in your life? Can you FEEL it when stressors are building up and you think you may pop? Do you ever feel like you’re right on the verge of a meltdown? I think most of us are familiar with these scenarios. We can only take so much stress. When I was an ecologist, I had a vision for my life’s work. I planned on studying how aquatic ecosystems resist or integrate stressors before they break down. Some streams were beautiful. Full of a diversity of life, clean wate...
NDP 166: Trying to Predict the Future Is Like Living in the Matrix
February 29, 2024 09:00 - 33 minutes - 23 MBDo ever joke that we’re living in the Matrix? I often refer to the movie when talking about the problems of the world. Sometimes it does seem like we’re living in a computer simulation. Or does it? Anyway, I was inspired to do this episode by the idea that the future might be predetermined. Or, more to the point, that we can do anything about the future. Many of us seem to think we can. A common psychological error many of us commit is future prediction. Mind reading, catastrophic thin...
NDP Episode 165: Does Neurodivergence Empower Us to Resist Conformity?
February 22, 2024 09:00 - 29 minutes - 20.4 MBThis week I’ll skip right to the punchline. The ability to see beyond the mainstream and to understand the continuum of whatever feature it is in the world is a special gift. This is enhanced awareness. I wonder if being neurodiverse or atypical or having a sensitive or different nervous system, sort of gives us this ability. In an evolutionary context, I can see how this ability would have been selected for. Hypervigilance enabled some of us to ‘scout’ out our environments and look fo...
NDP Episode 164: Mindfulness Practice Is the Key to Human Success
February 15, 2024 09:00 - 28 minutes - 19.7 MBAre you familiar with Jon Kabat-Zinn? In short, he’s one of the people who has made meditation mainstream. While I generally don’t like words like ‘mainstream’ and ‘conformity’, anything that makes helpful tools more accessible to the masses is good in my book. Known as one of the creators of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Kabat-Zinn has written a bunch of books and helped teach meditation to all sorts of regular people. This article is inspired by Kabat-Zinn’s book, “Coming to ...
NDP Episode 163: How Neurodivergent People Can Learn Healthy Boundaries
February 08, 2024 09:00 - 32 minutes - 22.3 MBHave you ever thought about your boundaries? Maybe a therapist told you your boundaries were weak. Or maybe you read something about relationships and how some people might not respect your boundaries. I learned early on that my boundaries are weak. I tend to pay attention to other people’s needs more than my own. Some people in the world will take advantage of this. Many of us struggle to simultaneously love other people while protecting our own needs. As I learn about neurodiversity, ...
NDP Episode 162: Neurodivergence Is an Awesome Gift of Evolutionary Brilliance
February 01, 2024 09:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBHave you ever felt like you didn’t belong anywhere? Do you have a ‘sacred space’ where you do feel like you have membership? For many of us, we have our family. Whether or not we truly feel comfortable in that space, there is a membership based on genetics or time spent together. It is a difficult thing to simultaneously exist as separate and together. We are individuals. Our skin is a boundary separating us from each other. Yet we are also connected to each other in a very obligate way...
NDP Episode 161: Masking is One Way Our Amazing Minds Protect Us
January 25, 2024 09:00 - 28 minutes - 19.7 MBHow do you feel about terms like people pleaser, codependent, inauthentic, or chameleon? We use these terms to describe when we are not ‘being ourselves’ in the presence of other people. I think this probably has some evolutionary significance in ensuring we remain members of a group. We are being polite and trying not to hurt feelings or cause conflict. We want to be liked. The neurodivergent community uses terms like ‘masking’ or ‘camouflaging’ to describe this behavior. Autistic people ...
NDP Episode 160: How to Save the Planet With Neurodiversity
January 18, 2024 09:00 - 27 minutes - 19.1 MBI am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues. Dr. Seuss, The Lorax Do you have an opinion about climate change? How about abortion? Or universal basic income? We all have our concerns and our hills that we’ll die on. This week I will use climate change as an example of a polarizing issue and make an argument about how neurodiversity may provide a model for solutions. Human beings argue about many polarizing issues, but we often agree about sol...
NDP Episode 159: What This Neurodivergent Dude Gained From Therapy
January 11, 2024 09:00 - 34 minutes - 23.6 MBWhat is your experience with therapy? Have you tried it? Wanted to try it? Hesitant to try it? Overwhelmed? Did you have a bad experience? I have noticed some neurodivergent people have had negative experiences with therapy. Here I want to clarify my own story about how both therapy and neurodivergence are helping me heal and become the person I want to be. Briefly, I have been in therapy, counseling, or coaching (I use the general term therapy to describe all of these forms of help) for ...
NDP Episode 158: How Autism Blends With the World
January 04, 2024 09:00 - 31 minutes - 21.5 MBDo you love yourself? I know, it’s an extremely personal question. When a counselor first asked me this question I was taken aback. It’s offensive and puts one in a defensive position. And who likes feeling defensive? But therapy is about healing and I answered as best I could. Again, and again. I’m fairly certain every counselor, therapist, and coach I have worked with has asked me some form of this question. When my new therapist heard my answer to this question she heard something the ot...
NDP 157: The Purpose of Growth
December 28, 2023 09:00 - 29 minutes - 20.3 MBHave you ever felt like everyone understands the rules except for you? Me, too. And I’ve spent over a decade in therapy trying to figure it out. The main reason I sought help from therapists, counselors, and coaches is because I have always felt different. Like everyone else got the ‘Manual to Human Life’ except for me. As a result, I have always felt like an outsider. I think feeling different also motivates rebellion. Growing up in the 80s, we called this non-conformity. If you’re younger...
KEW Episode 156: Autism is Fitness in Darwin's Language
December 21, 2023 09:00 - 27 minutes - 18.6 MBAre you a religious person? An atheist? Agnostic? I consider myself to be agnostic. Mostly because I Don’t Know. If I had to choose any belief system to attach to, I would be a Darwinist. By this, I mean that I believe that Natural Selection is a meaningful explanation of life. When I think about ‘why we are here’, I can’t help but recognize how life persists through time. In short, I believe Darwin best explained what I think the purpose of life is. Life begets immortal individuals that...
Episode 155: Autism Self Diagnosis May Be Helpful
December 14, 2023 09:00 - 29 minutes - 20.6 MBHave you ever felt like the only person who didn’t receive a ‘How to Live Life’ handbook? Did you think everyone else understood what was going on except you? I’ve felt like that my whole life. And it isn’t that I don’t like myself. I love myself. Everything breaks down when I move from my ‘inner world’ to the ‘outer world’. I struggle to understand human interactions. I always feel like I’m different. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to be ‘happy’, whatever that means. I’m just tr...
KEW Episode 154: When Autism Feels Better Than Therapy
December 07, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes - 17.3 MBIf you are in therapy or considering psychoanalysis this episode is for you. This episode is also for you if you have been wondering about neurodivergence, autism, or ADHD. This is the beginning of what I think will be a long quest and potentially a new direction for this podcast and blog. In this episode, I lay out my experience with psychoanalysis and my recent foray into learning about ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and neurodivergence. Several episodes will follow with increasing levels...
KEW Episode 153: Is It Awesome to Be Autistic?
November 30, 2023 09:00 - 30 minutes - 20.9 MBIf you are enjoying this content, please tell your friends.
KEW Episode 152: The Mind is a Splendid Thing
November 23, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutes - 16.2 MBHave you ever thought about how complex our brains are? Or about how little we seem to really know about the way we think? Like, how can we simultaneously love our family but also they annoy us to no end? I think this dissonance, this capacity to hold to two seemingly oppositional thoughts at the same time is just something we are able to do. What’s weird it that we try to not do this. When we have two opposing thoughts we say we’re ‘confused’, or ‘demented’, or ‘senile’. We have all sort...
KEW Episode 151: I May Be Wrong, and That's OK!
November 16, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes - 17.6 MBHave you ever felt like scientists were assholes? Or at least super arrogant? I often hear scientists sound this way. And when I was in academia it seemed they surrounded me. Being an academic seemed synonymous with being so arrogant that you turned people off. I think many of us have experienced this and it does academia and science a disservice. It’s like a medical doctor with no bedside manner. If you can’t communicate with ‘normal people’, whatever level of intelligence or value you ...
KEW Episode 150: Doesn't Life Want to Live?
November 09, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutes - 16.2 MBDo you ever think about what life was like for early humans once we had our basic needs met? You know, once we figured out how to procure victuals and maintain a shelter. What was life like? Experts including historians, anthropologists, and scientists seem to disagree. Some say we were ignorant savages (I’m looking at you, director of Pocahontas) whereas others claim we actually didn’t work that much but spent a lot of time playing. I like to think we were pretty smart. I think we fairl...
KEW Episode 149: You Don't Need My Permission to Live
November 02, 2023 08:00 - 22 minutes - 15.6 MBDo you ever feel like what you want to do goes against what society ‘wants’ you to do? Like, maybe you want to be a painter, but your parents and your school tell you that you’ll never make any money. Maybe you want to take a gap year after high school but your parents fear you’ll never go to college and, thus, never ‘amount to anything’. Maybe you are attracted to people of your same sex but your religion tells you that’s wrong. I think you get what I’m saying. It’s kind of like my ‘A...
KEW Episode 148: Is This You or Your Coping Mechanism?
October 26, 2023 08:00 - 23 minutes - 15.9 MByou remember the term ‘coping mechanisms’? We used to hear this phrase often, usually when people were referring to our bad habits. Like, smoking is a coping mechanism for stress. Avoiding conflict is a coping mechanism for people who don’t want to get involved. Denial is a popular coping mechanism for avoiding hurtful truths. Though the term ‘coping mechanism’ has sort of gone out of style, we still talk about the same phenomenon. We talk about people wearing masks and changing our per...
KEW Episode 147: 100% Asshole Free
October 19, 2023 08:00 - 28 minutes - 19.8 MBIf you’re familiar with me or craft beer (or maybe both?) you may be familiar with the phrase, “The brewing industry is 99% asshole free”. This quote became famous when Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery published his book “Brewing Up a Business”. This book was an inspiration to my brewery and a big part of the craft beer explosion. The quote suggests that the beer business is more cooperative than competitive. It turns out this is not true. Like any business, breweries co...
KEW Episode 146: What Really Matters?
October 12, 2023 08:00 - 27 minutes - 19.2 MBWhat matters to you? What is important? What do you value (Episode 46 Values)? We say things matter to us when we put energy into developing, protecting, and thinking about them. Our families matter. Our relationships matter. Things that matter have meaning to us. What is meaningful to me might not be meaningful to you. But as I have said before, I think there are some things that have universal meaning. They matter to us all. Life. Peace. Calm. Justice. Love. Integrity. Many would argu...
KEW Episode 145: What if Nature Made the Rules?
October 05, 2023 08:00 - 24 minutes - 16.8 MBYou're probably not old enough to remember, but a commercial in the 70s reminds me of this episode. In the commercial, a woman who represented Earth informed the viewer, "'It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDkiq5jD5Hc I don't know if this ad made an impression on me, but my adult self agrees with it. I don't think we consult Mother Nature often enough. It might be my Evolutionary Ecology background showing, but I tend to think of things in terms of ev...
KEW Episode 144: Why Good People Do Bad Things
September 28, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutes - 22.6 MBAre humans inherently evil? There’s a popular hypothesis that says we are. It’s a great excuse for bad behavior. But believing we can’t help ourselves has never set well with me. Kind of like when some guys use ‘millions of years of evolution’ as an excuse to not be monogamous. My hypothesis is that humans aren’t inherently evil, and I’m going to tell you why. In Rutger Bregman’s ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’, he makes a convincing case for why he doesn’t think humans are evil. He cites...
KEW Episode 143: The Thing Capitalism Gets Wrong
September 21, 2023 08:00 - 25 minutes - 17.2 MBLately, I’ve been wondering about capitalism and competition. As I have mentioned in other episodes (links below), competition only occurs when resources are limited. Also, capitalism requires competition to protect consumers from monopolies. While I argue in older episodes that this protective feature often doesn’t work, the fact remains that capitalism requires competition. That competition is a requirement of capitalism is critical BECAUSE competition only occurs when resources are limit...
KEW Episode 142: Science is Not the Truth
September 14, 2023 08:00 - 26 minutes - 17.9 MBI’ll just come out and say it. I’m sick of academic arrogance. Academic. Scientific. Intelligence mafia. I don’t know why authority seems to be the foodstuffs of ego. But it sure seems like it is. I am so tired of being talked down to — as a society member — by those who are supposedly smarter than me. And it isn’t just the false dualism of ‘I’m smart and you’re not’. Or even that other people might know more about things than I do. I TOTALLY GET THAT. No, it’s an attitude. A TONE, i...
KEW Episode 141: A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Our Biosphere
September 07, 2023 08:00 - 24 minutes - 16.6 MBWould our ancestors be proud of us? When I think of the problems humans face today: suffering, anxiety, inequality, social justice issues, war, pollution . . . I try to put things in an evolutionary context. On the one hand, we have come so far. We have created many wonderful ‘science’, ‘technology’, and ‘engineering’ elements that benefit individuals and society. Clean water. Sanitation. Medicine. On the other hand, it hasn’t all been rainbows and unicorns. We can’t seem to shake our v...
KEW Episode 140: Personal Growth as a Model for Society
August 31, 2023 08:00 - 20 minutes - 14.3 MBMuch of our lives seem haphazard and disorganized. Sometimes doing our best simply means being able to get out of bed and go through the motions. As we gain awareness we learn how to better navigate life's obstacles. We learn to see the obstacles as the way. It is possible - I am living proof. As my journey - specifically the work I am doing here on my podcast - evolves I go back and forth between thinking I have no idea what's going on and an integrated theme. Does that sound familiar? So...
KEW Episode 139: Water is Vital to Being
August 24, 2023 08:00 - 25 minutes - 17.5 MBWe can’t live without water. It comprises most of our bodies and planet. Water does so many cool things. Water is pretty weird. Even though particle physics tells us we are mostly space, we seem to be mostly water. We can’t live very long without it and it surrounds us and all we do. We live on a planet that has tons of water. Literally. As ice, and liquid water, and water vapor. Water travels around our planet in predictive ways we call the hydrologic cycle. Water creates currents beca...
KEW Episode 138: The Cause is at the Source
August 17, 2023 08:00 - 20 minutes - 13.9 MBOne of the most influential papers from my former career described the ‘River Continuum Concept’. Though quite basic, this paper revolutionized how we thought about streams and rivers. Specifically how freshwater systems changed from their springs where they began to the oceans into which they drained. This paper introduced me to systems thinking and changed how I think about the world and nearly everything in it. Generally, systems are comprised of individual elements and the interaction...
KEW Episode 137: Making Room for Discomfort Leads to Growth
August 10, 2023 08:00 - 21 minutes - 14.8 MBDo you ever think about your comfort zone? You know, the thing that keeps you doing the same things over and over. And helps you stay calm, minimize anxiety, and do the things you need to do. I think of the comfort zone as being like a cocoon that surrounds our bodies. When we get into situations where we are uncomfortable, scared, or unfamiliar we start to experience negative emotions. Sometimes we’re afraid. Other times we get angry. We experience shifts in our baseline emotional state....
KEW Episode 136: Human Values are Common Sense
August 03, 2023 08:00 - 19 minutes - 13.1 MBDo you remember common sense? That people just kinda know stuff. What’s right and what’s wrong. Do you remember Common Sense? The document by Thomas Paine that was a precursor to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution? The first thing is something we think everybody we agree with has, and everybody we disagree with doesn’t have. The second thing basically said government is a necessary evil. This episode is about the first thing, and inspired by an exchange I had with a much younger pe...