One of my greatest character flaws is being resistant to people. When I meet new people I often assume they won’t like the ‘real me’ and this often prevents me from developing deep relationships. Sometimes this is protective, because some people might ridicule you or react negatively to who you really are. But the worst result from this type of approach is not giving people a chance. I’m not sure I did that with Paul,…
This week I’ll release the first in a series of interviews about Curiosity starting with my buddy and spiritual confidante, Paul Gadola. Paul lives in my hometown, and though we didn’t really know each other well for several years, we have bonded over our similar paths. Paul has a wealth of Knowledge (and Experience and Wisdom) about all things spiritual and is currently writing a book to share his unique vision. Fortunately he also shares…
I recorded this episode based on a story someone once related to me about her post high school goals being ‘restricted’ by her family and cultural traditions. In other words, people ‘like her’ didn’t do certain things, or more accurately, could only do certain things. There were only so many career choices, or partner choices, or even the kinds of cars she could drive. Like many things I simultaneously appreciate and despise this notion. On…
With respect to economics, people often say that you have to grow to stay in business. I heard this a lot when I tried to run my business at a static level of production (i.e., no growth). I found that we actually HAD MORE MONEY left over when we controlled expenses and held production at the level of demand. I discovered that we spent so much money on growth that we were more profitable when…
For whatever reason, it is popular to believe that growth is necessary for capitalistic businesses to succeed. I don’t know how pervasive this belief is, but I have heard it multiple times. I’ve never understood this philosophy. As a business owner this drove me crazy because I observed, time and again, that the expenses associated with growth never realized a return. In other words, growth was not only unnecessary, it was detrimental! In ecology there…
In this Episode I discussed what I think is ‘wrong’ with living in the US as of late 2020. This isn’t a rant against political parties or an attempt to argue for a particular political position. Rather, I question some of the basic beliefs we have about how our ‘system’ works. Why do we make the decisions we make? Why do we accept that ‘government is inefficient’ or that ‘capitalism is the best economic system’?…
Because I grew up without religion, I always thought faith was something you only had for religion things. Later I came to understand faith is something we have when we don’t have enough information. Or we don’t know the outcome, but we desire a certain outcome. Faith is believing. When I was becoming a scientist, I realized that faith even had a place in that world. Because science rarely proves anything, the people must decide…
I have been wondering a lot lately about trust and faith. I realized years ago that faith played a much bigger role in science than my academic colleagues were willing to admit. And I also struggle a bit with ‘trust issues’, both with respect to people and businesses. So, like most things that interest me I decided to podcast about these elements to better understand them. I consider faith to be belief in things, or…
You may recognize this title form the hit musical Hamilton. I was inspired by this piece to think about what remains after we are gone. I think we remain in other people’s memories through time, the length and intensity of which is determined by the impact we made while we were alive. In as much as our DNA has memory and facilitates a kind of immortality as we pass our genes into future generations, so…
One of the things I think about most often is how we have to have a job to earn money to buy the time we want to live our lives. It’s like the life we’re born with is secretly conditional upon participating in this loop. I’m not angry about it anymore, but I used to be. This forced agreement seemed unfair. Not that I didn’t want to work, I just felt violated having my life…