• 4 hours 21 minutes
    E202 - Donald Robertson: 2,400-Year-Old Stoic Wisdom To Conquer Your Ego & Live a Virtuous Life

    Donald Robertson is a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, author of over nine books, and one of the founding voices in the modern Stoicism movement. He has spent over 30 years studying how ancient Greek and Roman philosophy intersects with contemporary psychology, and in this conversation we start where it all begins: the maxim carved into the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Know thyself. We explore what it actually meant, who said it, and why it still matters more than most self-help advice written in the last century.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. The Stoics drew a sharp line between what actually happens and the value judgments we add on top of it. To say something "is awful" treats our emotional reaction as a fact about the world.

    2. Of all the emotions that derail a life, anger gets the least attention in therapy, self-help, and honest self-reflection.

    3. In the ancient world, wisdom was not something you consumed or memorized. It was something you practiced daily. Collecting insights without changing your behavior is closer to what the Sophists sold than to what Socrates taught.


    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.

    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com


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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    01:53 Know Thyself: The Three Sayings at Delphi

    07:44 What Philosophy Actually Means

    11:17 Socrates vs. the Sophists: Wisdom vs. Appearance

    18:05 The Stoic U-Turn: Reorienting What We Value

    23:59 Self-Knowledge as a Mirror for the Soul

    26:59 Values Clarification and the Eulogy Exercise

    35:02 Ad: LMNT

    36:03 Eudaimonia: Flourishing, Not Just Happiness

    39:40 Hardship as Opportunity for Character

    45:31 A Brief History of Stoicism

    53:22 Ad: Timeline Mitopure

    54:33 The Stoics Were Way Ahead of Their Time

    59:30 Stoicism, India, and Alexander the Great

    1:06:31 Early Christianity and Greek Philosophy

    1:14:03 Marcus Aurelius: The Man Behind the Meditations

    1:19:17 Philosophy Born from Injury: Marcus and Donald

    1:32:52 Uppercase vs. Lowercase Stoicism

    1:38:28 The Two Phases of Emotion

    1:45:47 Prosoché: The Practice of Paying Attention

    1:50:40 Appearance vs. Reality: The Stoic Core

    1:56:34 Turning the Chinese Proverb into a Practice

    2:02:44 The View from Above and the Acropolis

    2:11:28 Premeditatio Malorum: Rehearsing Adversity

    2:17:27 Anger as Temporary Madness

    2:23:26 De-Romanticizing Desire

    2:36:58 Sophists, Rhetoric, and Modern Influencers

    2:44:47 Why Self-Help Isn't More Helpful

    2:56:17 The Socratic Method as Cure for Conceit

    3:13:19 The King Who Rules Himself

    3:17:50 The Oracle of Delphi and Socrates' Mission

    3:33:44 Injustice Harms the Perpetrator More

    3:36:51 Donald's Own Life: Philosophy as a Path

    3:38:46 The Eleusinian Mysteries and Marcus's Initiation

    3:48:21 Learning to Die as Liberation

    3:55:29 Marcus's Naked Soul: Transparency as Practice

    3:58:07 What the Stoics Taught About Love

    4:02:05 Rapid Fire: The Great Philosophers

    4:16:00 Closing Message: You Underestimate Your Resilience

    ___________


    ✨MORE FROM DONALD ROBERTSON↳Substack: https://donaldrobertson.substack.com/↳Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1732050.Donald_J_Robertson

    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donaldjrobertson/↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DonaldJRobertsonAuthor/featured↳https://donaldrobertson.name


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    7 July 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 2 hours 23 minutes
    E201 - Dandapani: A Monk's Warning "Distraction Is Costing You Your Life"

    Dandapani is a Hindu priest who spent over ten years as a celibate monk before devoting his life to teaching the world how to master focus. His central claim is simple but unsettling: most of us are not distracted by accident, we have spent years actively practicing distraction, often more hours a day than most people practice anything else they care about. In this conversation, we unpack what it actually costs to live a physically present, mentally absent life, and why that cost compounds with every passing year.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. Whatever you do for hours a day, every day, you get good at. Most people have unintentionally practiced distraction more than they have practiced anything else, which is why concentration feels so foreign and difficult by comparison.

    2. You cannot practice being present directly. Presence is simply the outcome of keeping your awareness fixed on one thing without it wandering. Trying to "be present" without training focus is chasing an effect while ignoring its cause.

    3. When your attention bounces between unfinished tasks, each unresolved jump adds a small charge of anxiety that accumulates over the day. Learning to hold awareness in one place, even briefly, interrupts that buildup before it becomes stress.


    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.

    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com


    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

    https://oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF

    Code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off


    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    01:29 What Distraction Costs Us

    07:29 The Law of Practice

    13:19 Life Is Finite, Not Short

    24:08 Money, Purpose, and the Path of the Householder

    28:08 Tasting the Super Conscious

    32:21 Awareness, Anxiety, and the Roots of Stress

    39:42 How to Train Focus: The Ball of Light

    50:11 Eliminating Fear by Controlling Awareness

    55:43 The Greatest Gift: Undivided Attention

    1:01:36 Becoming a Monk: The Search for a Real Teacher

    1:11:20 Choosing a Philosophy Before the Practice

    1:23:26 Signs of a Maturing Soul

    1:30:21 A Day in the Monastery: Practicing All Day Long

    1:36:38 Intuition, Psychic Sensitivity, and Its Dangers

    1:43:28 Going Narrow and Deep on One Path

    1:50:14 Filtering the Mind Like a Kitchen Strainer

    1:58:44 Building Willpower: Finish What You Begin

    2:03:04 Reincarnation, Compassion, and Unresolved Baggage

    2:13:29 How to Spot a Fake Guru

    2:17:42 Ambition, Peace, and the Final Message

    ___________


    ✨MORE FROM DANDAPANI

    ↳https://dandapani.org/know-thyself-podcast

    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dandapanillc

    ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dandapanillc


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    30 June 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 3 hours 5 minutes
    E200 - Ido Portal: The Body Knows What the Mind Can't

    Ido Portal is one of the most original movement thinkers alive. He has spent decades studying the body across martial arts, acrobatics, yoga, dance, and ancient movement traditions, not to master any one of them, but to ask a deeper question: what does it actually mean to move well, and what does the body reveal when you finally start listening to it? In this conversation, we go long, covering ground that most movement conversations never reach.


    What We Dive Into:

    1.Most of us treat the body like a car to maintain, something we service occasionally for performance or appearance. Ido's entire framework starts from the opposite premise: the body is not a tool you use, it is what you are. That shift alone changes what practice means.

    2.What we attend to grows. What we neglect crumbles. Ido applies this principle everywhere, from babies in hospitals to athletes on the field. Bringing undivided attention to even one part of your body for one minute, with no music, no phone, no audience, begins a transformation most people have never experienced.

    3.The most important moment in Ido's own journey was admitting he didn't have what he was looking for. Not as defeat, but as a beginning. The person who thinks they already have a connection to their body is the one most closed off to finding it. Not knowing, and staying there, is the actual practice.


    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.

    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com


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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    01:44 How Most People Relate to Their Body

    09:22 Movement vs. Practice vs. Exercise

    10:27 Life Is for Practicing, Not Just Living

    20:13 Attention as the Primary Tool

    23:49 Stop Practicing for Exposure

    28:12 How to Begin: Removing Leakage

    35:22 Diagnostic Play and the Art of Seeing

    37:30 The Ancient Schools of Practice

    43:33 Tensegrity and the Body's Inner Models

    49:28 Proprioception, Sensing, and the Pain of Feeling

    1:02:05 Tension, Connection, and What the Body Actually Needs

    1:08:00 Ido's Journey: Searching for a Real Teacher

    1:13:15 Why Real Teachers Refuse to Give Clean Answers

    1:23:49 What Am I Before Who Am I

    1:29:23 The Chariot Analogy: Body, Emotion, and Intellect

    1:36:42 Feeding the Emotional Body

    1:40:14 The Weber-Fechner Law and Reducing Inner Noise

    1:52:29 How the Body Reveals What We Hide

    2:02:15 Pursuing Weakness Over Strength

    2:05:46 Discipline, Motivation, and Real Will

    2:16:02 The Practice of Sitting and Choiceless Awareness

    2:37:22 What Inner Work Without the Body Misses

    2:41:31 The Heart as the Missing Path

    2:45:55 Community Questions: Practical Tools for the Body

    2:57:18 On Animals, Archetypes, and the Spirit of Movement

    3:03:02 Closing Message: Become a Practice

    ___________


    ✨MORE FROM IDO

    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portal.ido/↳https://www.idoportal.com


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    23 June 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 30 minutes
    E199 - Dr. Caroline Leaf: How to Stop Your Brain From Holding You Back

    Dr. Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist and bestselling author who has spent over 40 years studying the relationship between the mind and the brain. At a time when neuroplasticity was still emerging as a field, she was already building clinical tools to help patients recover from brain injuries, trauma, and conditions that conventional medicine had written off as permanent. In this conversation, we go deep into a distinction that changes everything: the mind is not the brain, and once you understand that, you stop being a victim of your own biology.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. The brain does not generate thoughts. It responds to the mind. Everything you think, feel, and choose originates in the mind and then gets coded into the brain and body.

    2. Depression, anxiety, and other mental health labels are not diseases you have. They are signals pointing to an underlying thought that needs to be found and restructured.

    3. You cannot change what happened, but you can change the impact it has on your present and future. Through a process of deconstructing and reconstructing toxic thought networks, the grip of the past loosens.


    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.

    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com


    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

    https://www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyself

    Use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% at checkout


    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    03:11 The Difference Between Mind and Brain

    07:17 Why the Brain-Is-Boss Model Gets It Wrong

    12:25 Consciousness Beyond the Physical Body

    14:25 Quantum Physics, Microtubules, and the Mind

    21:24 Science and Spirituality Converging

    23:41 Early Research: Neuroplasticity and Traumatic Brain Injury

    28:50 Mind-Driven Change: Telomeres and Cellular Health

    31:56 Working in South Africa: Healing Through Mental Frameworks

    34:31 The Origin of the Neurocycle

    40:13 The Non-Conscious, Subconscious, and Conscious Mind

    49:35 How Thoughts and Memories Build Into the Brain and Body

    51:59 The Five Steps of the Neurocycle

    57:01 Step One: Gather Awareness

    01:00:24 Step Two: Reflect

    01:02:10 Steps Three to Five: Mindstorm, Recheck, Active Reach

    01:09:28 Community Questions: Fear of Losing Your Identity

    01:14:32 Working Through Shame, Grief, and Emotional Signals

    01:15:46 Retroactive Causation: Changing the Past Through the Present

    01:19:28 Intelligent Design, Choice, and the Source Behind Life

    01:22:45 Mindsets, Patterns, and Teaching Children

    01:25:58 Stress as Intelligence: The New Book

    ___________


    ✨MORE FROM DR. LEAF

    ↳Website (for books, courses, 1:1 coaching): https://drleaf.com/

    ↳Neurocycle app: https://drleaf.com/neurocycle-app

    ↳Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-leaf-show/id1334767397

    ↳Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DrCarolineLeaf

    ↳Neurocycle Certification: https://drleaf.com/certified-strategist


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    16 June 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 56 minutes
    E198 - Dr. Todd Rose: Why Your Desires Aren't Actually Yours (Here's Who Planted Them)

    Join our online community ↓

    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com


    Todd Rose is a Harvard-trained social scientist, former high school dropout with a 0.9 GPA, and co-founder of the think tank Populace. His research centers on the gap between what people privately believe and what they publicly say, and the profound consequences of that gap for individuals and for society. This is one of those conversations that reframes something you thought you understood and doesn't let you go back.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. Your brain estimates group consensus using a simple shortcut: the loudest voices repeated most often. On social media, that is 10% of users creating 80% of content.

    2. Belonging means being accepted for who you actually are. Fitting in means changing who you are to be accepted.

    3. Authenticity is not about being perfectly accurate about who you are. It is about making choices you genuinely believe align with who you are right now.


    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

    https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself

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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    01:27 What Are Collective Illusions?

    02:05 The Cost of Self-Silencing

    05:06 How We're Hardwired to Conform

    07:40 Why the Brain Is Easily Fooled About Group Consensus

    09:13 Social Media and the Amplification of Fringe Views

    13:20 What Americans Actually Want in Private

    21:01 Who Profits from Keeping Us Divided

    23:52 Foreign Manipulation and AI Bot Farms

    29:37 The Most Consequential Collective Illusions

    36:38 What Authenticity Actually Means

    41:15 The Coming Age of Courage

    42:14 Belonging vs. Fitting In

    49:44 René Girard and Mimetic Desire

    59:43 How Collective Illusions Can Shatter Overnight

    1:05:58 The Velvet Revolution and the Power of Authenticity

    1:12:09 How to Build the Muscle of Living in Truth

    1:20:25 Todd's Personal Collective Illusion: Faith and Identity

    1:24:34 Spiritual Exploration and Holding Beliefs Lightly

    1:32:23 Certainty and Knowledge Are Inversely Correlated

    1:41:42 Fulfillment Over Achievement

    1:50:31 Small Actions That Raise Collective Consciousness

    ___________


    ✨MORE FROM TODD

    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ltoddrose/

    ↳Populace: https://populace.org

    ↳https://www.toddrose.com/


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    9 June 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 22 minutes
    E197 - 9 Great Thinkers on the Inner Work That Frees You

    Join our online community ↓

    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com


    This is a compilation episode, and it draws from some of the most honest and clarifying moments across recent conversations on the show. Nine different voices, each approaching the same territory from a different angle: what it means to stop being ruled by the outside world, to understand the patterns we inherited, and to come back to something more real inside ourselves.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. ​ Thoughts arise whether you choose them or not. The shift is learning to observe them rather than be pulled by them.
    2. ​ The nervous system learns what safety feels like early, and it keeps returning to that baseline even when it no longer serves.
    3. ​ Your body, your beliefs, your identity, all of it was accumulated over time. Setting it aside, even briefly, creates the space to touch something underneath that is more stable.


    THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

    https://www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyself

    Use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% at checkout


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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    02:12 Shi Heng Yi: Master Yourself, Not the World

    11:10 Dr. Sue Morter: The Hidden Truth Behind Your Triggers

    19:04 Emily McDonald: Living from Feeling States, Not Outcomes

    24:58 Joe Hudson: This is Your Sign To Be More Vulnerable

    31:53 Sadhguru: How To Make True Impact

    48:20 Henry Shukman: Tasting Awakening for Yourself

    1:00:29 Nicole LePera: Your Childhood Beliefs Might Be Holding You Back

    1:13:19 Lucy Hale: Remember To Accept Your Own Timeline

    1:17:23 Wim Hof: It's Time for Love

    ___________


    MORE FROM OUR SPEAKERS

    ✨Shi Heng Yi: https://youtu.be/Yg_vu7MelmU

    ✨Dr. Sue Morter: https://youtu.be/NAdU39m1Oxo

    ✨Emily McDonald: https://youtu.be/BS80CB3fgS8

    ✨Joe Hudson: https://youtu.be/vF4R9uDje0E

    ✨Sadhguru: https://youtu.be/FMoXXb-wKE8

    ✨Henry Shukman: https://youtu.be/ZMk3ztb66mc

    ✨Nicole LePera: https://youtu.be/BlpyzG5vV_o

    ✨Lucy Hale: https://youtu.be/MkNjs5vbG9M

    ✨Wim Hof: https://youtu.be/yjKoAXOFNqw


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    2 June 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 31 minutes
    E196 - Dr. Vasant Lad: The Doctor From India: The Forgotten 5,000-Year-Old Science of the Human Body (Ayurveda

    Dr. Vasant Lad is the founder of the Ayurvedic Institute and the man most responsible for bringing Ayurveda to the West. He has spent over 40 years teaching this 5,000-year-old science of life to practitioners across the world, and in this conversation, we sat down together at SoHum Mountain Healing Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where I had just completed a week-long Panchakarma. What unfolded was one of the most quietly profound conversations I have had on this show.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. ​ Why unprocessed emotions don’t simply pass — and how grief settles in the heart, anger in the liver, and fear in the kidneys until they’re physically released.
    2. ​ How your tongue, pulse, and face reveal what’s happening inside your body, often before any symptom appears.
    3. ​ Why your original constitution (prakruti) shapes everything from your digestion to your temperament — and how modern life pulls you away from it.
    4. ​ The gap between two breaths, and why Dr. Lad calls it an ocean of awareness available to anyone willing to sit in it.



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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    01:58 What Ayurveda Actually Means

    02:40 The Five Elements, Three Doshas, and the Body

    06:18 Prakruti, Vikruti, and the Root of Disease

    08:00 The Sankhya Philosophy Behind Ayurveda

    13:33 The Goal of Ayurveda

    15:26 Dr. Lad's Path: Guru, Calling, and Coming West

    18:06 Where Western Medicine Falls Short

    22:05 Ama, Agni, and the Ayurvedic View of Disease

    25:56 Pulse, Tongue, and Face: The Art of Diagnosis

    34:29 Reading Psychological Nature Through the Pulse

    39:00 The Gap Between Breaths: Awareness and Mysticism

    44:37 How Repressed Emotions Crystallize in the Body

    47:39 Panchakarma: Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Cleansing

    51:52 Ojas, Tejas, and Prana: The Vital Essences

    56:18 Sexual Energy, Celibacy, and the Cultivation of Ojas

    1:00:07 Life as Meditation: The Unified Field

    1:06:00 The Ayurvedic View of Death and Dying

    1:14:56 Dinacharya: The Daily Routine as Spiritual Practice

    1:18:48 The Doshic Clock and the Yugas

    1:25:22 Relationship, Self-Knowledge, and the Closing Message

    ___________


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    ✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvasantlad

    🌐https://ayurveda.com/about-vasant-lad/


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    26 May 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 34 minutes
    E195 - Dr. Mei Rui: The Science of Sound & Music as Medicine

    Dr. Mei Rui is a Yale-trained molecular biophysicist, concert pianist, and clinical researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she runs trials on the measurable effects of music on the human body. In this conversation, we explore what actually happens in the brain the moment music enters it, why the auditory system is the first sense to develop in the womb and the last to go when we die, and how something as accessible as a curated playlist can outperform FDA-approved pharmaceuticals in reducing cortisol.


    What We Dive Into:

    1. Music is not a supplement to healing. In the right context, it is the intervention.

    2. The brain responds differently when you actually show up for the music.

    3. A longitudinal study in twins showed that three to four years of musical training reduced the risk of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline by 64%, an effect size found in no other single activity.


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    ___________

    00:00 Introduction: Dr. Mei Rui

    01:44 A Life Between Music and Science

    05:26 What Happens When Music Enters the Brain

    07:26 How the Brain Processes Sound and Music

    11:32 Why Minor Keys Feel Sad: The Science of Tonality

    14:37 Live Piano Demo: Matching Music to Mood

    19:06 Music in the Operating Room

    27:41 Music as Medicine: Clinical Applications

    29:10 The 32% Cortisol Study

    31:19 The 16 Compositional Elements of Healing Music

    35:11 Oxytocin, Familiarity, and the Parasympathetic Response

    36:18 Timbre and the Cello's Resemblance to a Mother's Voice

    42:31 Cymatics: Sound Made Visible

    45:16 The Ancient Roots of Music as Healing

    47:09 Listening vs. Playing an Instrument

    55:33 The Musician's Brain: Structural Differences

    57:46 Music Training and Protection Against Alzheimer's

    59:44 Music, Empathy, and Neural Synchrony

    1:01:36 The EEG Experiment: Reading André's Brain Live

    1:18:21 What the EEG Data Revealed

    1:22:26 Music, Flow State, and the Disappearance of Self

    1:26:55 Music as Spiritual Medicine

    1:30:23 How to Listen More Intentionally

    ___________


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    📚Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    19 May 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 59 minutes
    E194 - Arthur Brooks: How To Find The Meaning of Your Life

    Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor, social scientist, and three-time New York Times bestselling author whose life's work centers on a single, urgent question: what actually makes a human life feel meaningful? In this conversation, we explore why depression and anxiety have surged since 2008, how technology has hijacked the part of the brain responsible for wonder and meaning, and what it looks like to live, as Arthur puts it, like his great-grandfather Leroy, present, bored at times, and genuinely alive.


    What moved me most in this conversation is how Arthur bridges the ancient and the scientific without losing either. We get into the three components of meaning, coherence, purpose, and significance, as well as the dangers of extrinsic reward, the psychology of calling, and why the formula most of us are running on is just slightly off. His answer to the meaning crisis is not complicated. Use things, love people, worship the divine. But getting there requires honest self-examination, and this conversation is a strong beginning.


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    ___________

    00:00 Introduction: Arthur Brooks

    01:54 The Modern Meaning Crisis

    02:47 Coherence, Purpose, and Significance

    06:17 Why Meaning Collapsed After 2008

    14:19 The Doom Loop of Technology

    20:22 The Death of Boredom

    25:13 Ad: Mudwtr

    26:34 Living Like Leroy: The Case for Real Life

    30:05 Six Practices for the Right Hemisphere

    36:22 The Morning Routine and Brahma Mahurta

    43:35 Ad: LMNT

    44:39 Ad: BiOptimizers

    45:47 Breaking Free from Your Phone

    49:07 Romantic Love and the Paradox of Choice

    54:59 Finding Your Calling

    1:01:29 Progress, Arrival Fallacy, and Living Now

    1:17:22 Enjoyment, Satisfaction, and Meaning

    1:19:36 The External Scoreboard and Love Is Not Earned

    1:25:10 The Four Idols

    1:29:49 Self-Transcendence and the Divine

    1:37:40 Marriage, Adoption, and Walking to Heaven

    1:45:03 Suffering, Beauty, and Meaning

    1:53:59 Use Things, Love People, Worship the Divine

    ___________


    Episode Resources:

    https://www.arthurbrooks.com/

    https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/


    https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

    https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/

    https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast

    https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

    12 May 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 45 minutes
    E193 - Dr. Paul Conti: A Psychiatrist's Guide to Understanding Your Mind

    Dr. Paul Conti is a psychiatrist, trauma specialist, and author whose work centers on one deceptively simple idea: that understanding yourself is the most powerful thing you can do for your mental health. In this conversation, we explore how the unconscious mind quietly sets the boundaries for how we think, feel, and move through life, and how much of what we assume is just "who we are" was actually formed long before we had the words for it.


    What struck me most in this conversation is Paul's insistence that looking inward doesn't have to be frightening. He introduces the concept of the generative drive, the part of us that moves toward creativity, altruism, and genuine contribution, and makes a compelling case that this is what separates a life that feels full from one that simply accumulates. We also get into the myths we build from isolated facts, why the traditional psychiatric model falls short, and what it actually means to bring compassionate curiosity to yourself.


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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    02:05 Assessing Mental Health Like Physical Health

    03:04 The Unconscious Mind and Its Hidden Influence

    06:30 How Identity Forms in Early Childhood

    08:23 Compassionate Curiosity as a Practice

    11:02 Empowerment, Agency, and the Healthy Self

    15:34 The Assertion, Pleasure, and Generative Drives

    24:26 What Humility Actually Means

    27:09 Ad: BiOptimizers

    28:18 Shame, Feelings, and the Lessons We Carry

    35:10 How Memories Build the Myth of Self

    42:32 Ad: LMNT

    43:41 Waking Up vs. Growing Up

    48:10 The Limits of Diagnosis-Driven Psychiatry

    51:07 What We're Really Striving For

    58:18 Self-Worth and External Achievement

    1:02:12 Anxiety as Adaptive and Maladaptive

    1:09:52 Defense Mechanisms and How They Shape Us

    1:16:51 Tools for Self-Inquiry and Lasting Change

    1:25:52 Repeated Patterns and Relational Wounds

    1:29:45 Hard-Won Growth and Gratitude

    1:32:12 Paul's Personal Story: Loss and the Path to Medicine

    1:37:17 Presence, Suffering, and the Art of Helping

    1:41:35 Closing Message: Your Mind Is Your Friend

    ___________


    Episode Resources:

    https://www.drpaulconti.com/

    https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Going-Right-Powerful-Optimizing/dp/1538776049


    https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

    https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/

    https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast

    https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

    5 May 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 48 minutes
    E192 - Emily McDonald: The Neuroscience of Transforming Yourself

    Emily McDonald holds two degrees in neuroscience and has become one of the fastest-growing science communicators on social media. In this conversation, we explore how the brain constructs reality from the inside out — not as a passive receiver of the world, but as a constant prediction machine shaped by memory, belief, emotion, and past experience. From color vision to the kitten experiment, Emily brings the science to life in a way that makes you ask: where am I the kitten in my own life?


    What I love about this conversation is that it doesn't stop at the intellectual. Emily shares how understanding neuroplasticity moved her from skeptic to someone who radically rewired her relationship with identity, money, and what it means to pursue something with passion. We get into the difference between harmonious and obsessive passion, how identity sets a ceiling on what we're willing to receive, and why processing time — the unstructured silence we've largely lost — may be one of the most important things we can reclaim.


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    ___________

    00:00 Intro

    02:14 How the Brain Constructs Reality

    13:50 Rewiring Beliefs Around Abundance

    20:12 The Brain as a Prediction Machine

    21:35 The Default Mode Network and Self-Concept

    24:15 Science and Spirituality as Complementary Lenses

    27:09 Ad: One Skin

    30:19 Identity Beyond the Thinking Mind

    41:44 Ad: BiOptimizers

    42:52 Identity as the Set Point of Your Life

    45:39 The Neuroscience of Habit Change

    47:39 Desire, Fear, and the Energy Behind Goals

    1:07:03 Living from Feeling States, Not Outcomes

    1:13:58 Purpose Beyond the Self

    1:24:21 Nervous System Regulation as a Foundation

    1:27:52 Discipline as Self-Trust

    1:33:51 The Three M's Morning Routine

    1:39:05 Environment, Association, and Chemo Signals

    1:42:20 The Necessity of Processing Time

    ___________


    Episode Resources:

    https://www.instagram.com/emonthebrain/

    https://www.instagram.com/planetempodcast/


    https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

    https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/

    https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast

    https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

    28 April 2026, 1:00 pm
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