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PODCAST

The Tao of Lloyd

Zen-punk mixtape meditations from iconic Gen X Everyman Lloyd Dobler. Think Ram Dass by way of Rage Against the Machine, filtered through a VHS tape of Say Anything left to melt on the dashboard of American decline.Imagine Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything as a middle-aged dissident: still romantic, still defiant, and thumbing through the Tao Te Ching to turn ancient philosophy into an anti-fascist dharma mixtape for the Trump 2.0 era; on a mission to craft a field guide for late-stage everything.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

9:13

S2. CHAPTER 21: Late Stage Everything (a Zen-Punk...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2026/01/05

If Late Stage Everything is when the system still runs—just not for humans, have we arrived there yet? In Chapter 21 of the Tao of Lloyd, Lloyd Dobler (yes, that Lloyd Dobler) drops a zen-punk mixtape meditation for doomscroll times. When your phone buzzes like a casino slot machine designed by a sociopath, your nervous system is getting hit with endless war + climate catastrophe + AI apocalypse before coffee, and “normal life” feels like a group project run by billionaires. Chapter 21 is ...

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7:55

Morning Meditation: Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2026/01/01

A morning meditation with Lloyd Dobler—yes, from Say Anything—all grown up and trying (imperfectly) to become a dissident sorta-guru. This is a repeatable ~10-minute practice for mornings when you woke up tired, hit snooze too many times, or you’re already commuting to the capitalist timeclock circus. Built around four “sacred questions” (popularized by Deepak Chopra): Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? Expect breath cues, monkey mind interruptions, cultural...

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9:05

S2. Chapter 20: Late-Stage Compliance

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/29

What rules are you still following that no one is enforcing anymore? Chapter 20 of the Tao of Lloyd takes on burnout culture: late-stage compliance, people-pleasing, and self-policing disguised as “professionalism.” Then a calm, deadpan guided meditation on opting out quietly, imperfectly, and without needing to prove anything today. With Lloyd Dobler. Send a text. Ask a question & I will answer, maybe in a episode Support the show ABOUT / The Tao of Lloyd is a Zen-punk mixtape for ...

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15:04

S2. Chapter 19: Who’s Stealing Your Time?

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/25

What happens when we mistake overworked and exhausted for virtue? Lloyd Dobler turns to the Tao Te Ching to examine why Americans are so tired, so rushed, and so starved for time with the people they love. Blending spiritual commentary, political critique, and dry Gen X humor, Lloyd asks what it would mean to design a life—and a society—where human beings matter more than productivity metrics. This is not a productivity hack. It’s a meditation on refusal, presence, and reclaiming time.&...

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8:10

Meditation to Let Go of 2025 (a Lloyd Dobler meditation)

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/22

Ready to let go of 2025? This special episode of The Tao of Lloyd is a short, unorthodox guided meditation for anyone crossing the finish line of the year feeling braced, exhausted, and still carrying more than they meant to. Lloyd Dobler (yes, that Lloyd) all grown up—leads a calm, dry, anti-guru meditation built around four simple questions: what you’re still bracing for, what you’re carrying that you don’t need, what you can set down without forgetting, and what presence feels like without...

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12:27

S2. Chapter 18: We Got the Guillotine, You Better Run

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/18

Why do powerful men keep fantasizing about public punishment? Lloyd Dobler riffs on “The Guillotine” by The Coup, written by Boots Riley, using the song’s provocation to examine how structural violence gets normalized under capitalism. In Chapter 18 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu suggests that when a society forgets the Great Tao, fear hardens into spectacle—and power starts mistaking cruelty for strength. This episode was sparked by comments from Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir, who recen...

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15:51

S2. Chapter 17: On Refusing Orders

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/15

Support The Tao of Lloyd on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/taooflloyd/membership In Chapter 17 of The Tao of Lloyd, Lloyd Dobler unpacks the Tao Te Ching’s most unsettling insight about leadership: the best leaders are barely noticed—and the worst are despised. The episode opens with Lloyd still spiritually bruised from last week’s road-rage failure, before pivoting to a chilling news story about members of Congress being threatened for reminding U.S. service members of their legal obliga...

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16:27

S2. Chapter 16: About My Road Rage, a Sorta Guided...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/11

Lloyd Dobler returns with a confession: he lost a street-level spiritual battle at a red light and ended up in a Wes Anderson–directed Fast & Furious showdown with a MAGA pickup truck. A near death experience. A sorta guided meditation for anyone who’s ever tried to stay calm behind the wheel and failed beautifully. Send a text. Ask a question & I will answer, maybe in a episode Monthly supporters get the bonus universe:https://www.patreon.com/taooflloyd/membership or Subscribe f...

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12:36

S2. Chapter 15: Do You Have the Patience to Wait Till...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/08

Subscribe free: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd Monthly supporters get the bonus universe: https://www.patreon.com/taooflloyd/membership Lloyd aims the Tao Te Ching at Trumplandia like a spiritual weather report for a country vibrating itself into madness. Using Chapter 15, he explores three versions of where he comes from: Seattle, the Big Bang, and a VHS copy of Say Anything that slipped into the multiverse. This is a guided meditation for people who metabolize news like caffeine, a poli...

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13:19

S2. Chapter 14: The Future Keeps Ghosting Us

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/05

Subscribe free: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd | Monthly supporters get the bonus universe: https://www.patreon.com/taooflloyd/membership Chapter 14 of The Tao of Lloyd dives into the fog: prediction culture, political chaos, AI riddling like a digital monk, and the Tao’s reminder that “you can’t know it — but you can be it.” Lloyd unpacks hope, fear, empire-time weirdness, and the quiet rebellion of refusing to let algorithms script your life. Send a text. Ask a questi...

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10:44

S2. Chapter 13: The Slow-Drip Seepage of Fascism

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/12/02

Send us a text Lloyd Dobler uses the Tao Te Ching to make sense of a tragedy in Washington DC: a National Guard member killed, another critically wounded, and a political system that turned grief into ammunition before the scene was even cleared. Lloyd traces the scapegoating of Afghan refugees, Trump’s threat to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries,” and the creeping authoritarianism that arrives not with a bang but a slow-drip leak no one bothers to patch. Wha...

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9:55

S2. Chapter 12: A Trojan Horse Walks Into Open AI

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/28

Send us a textAI acceleration meets sensory overload meets the eerie quiet that appears when you finally silence your notifications. Lloyd uses the Tao Te Ching to navigate machine-learning hype, Gen X dread, and the possibility that enlightenment may just be your brain in airplane mode. A Taoist meditation on clarity in late-stage everything.Support the showSupport the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd link tree: https://linktr.ee/TaoofLloyd Season 2:

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10:17

S2. Chapter 11: Pluribus. We Is Us | Tao of Lloyd

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/25

Send us a text In Chapter Eleven of The Tao of Lloyd, we step into the strange glow of Pluribus — Vince Gilligan’s hive-mind drama where humanity upgrades into cosmic teamwork whether we want it or not. From alien RNA to America’s real-time ideological hive mind, Lloyd unpacks the tension between individuality and interdependence, between the “We Is Us” of a sci-fi contagion and the Taoist reminder that the useful part is the empty center. This episode blends: • Pluribus analysis (no sp...

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117:21

Be Kind, Rewind: A Recap of Season 2, Chapters 1–10 |...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/21

Send us a text Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/taooflloyd/membership New to Season 2? Behind on a few episodes? Need a long exhale? This is your on-ramp. About Season 2: Lloyd Dobler is back, reimagined in an unauthorized sequel to the film Say Anything, as a middle-aged dissident with a podcast and a political axe to grind. Like the Tao Te Ching, Season 2 of The Tao of Lloyd unfolds across 81 chapters. But where Lao Tzu offers timeless wisdom in a few spare li...

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14:17

S2. Chapter 10: I Gave Her My Heart. She Gave Me a...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/18

Send us a text Lloyd Dobler sits with one of the most personal moments of his past: a letter from Diane Court, written in 2011 and rediscovered in a box labeled IMPORTANT. What begins as a relic from an old life becomes a catalyst for self-recognition, softening, and stumbling toward the version of himself he thought he’d lost. This episode weaves the questions of Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching—“Can you soften? Can you step back from your own mind?”—into Lloyd's attempt to reconnect with the ...

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10:11

S2. Chapter 9: Do Your Job and Go the F* Home | Tao...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/14

Send us a text Somewhere in the multiverse, Lloyd Dobler is calm. This episode is… not that timeline. In Chapter 9 of The Tao of Lloyd, Lloyd digs into the ancient wisdom of “Do your work, then step back,” and discovers it pairs surprisingly well with a viral TikTok urging everyone to “do your job and go the f— home.” From Black Friday brain spirals to red-light enlightenment, Lloyd wrestles with the art of not overfilling the bowl, unclenching the jaw, and resisting the urge to reorganize yo...

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11:01

S2. Chapter 8: Be Water, My Friend (And Other Ways to...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/11

Send us a text Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd In Chapter 8, Lloyd Dobler channels Lao Tzu, Bruce Lee, and Standing Rock to ask: how do we stay liquid in a country obsessed with hard takes? Be Water, My Friend is a meditation on softness as strength, ego as ice, and the radical art of flowing through empire. Support the show Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd link tree: https://linktr.ee/TaoofLloyd Season 2: https://www.taoofllo...

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11:25

S2. Chapter 7: Zohran Mamdani v. Donald Trump — TURN...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/07

Send us a text Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd Lloyd Dobler reads Chapter 7 of the Tao Te Ching and finds himself caught between a matador and a bull. Zohran Mamdani just moon-walked into City Hall like the Bronx was the birthplace of the Bodhisattva, Queens was the crucible of revolution, Brooklyn is the block-party of rebirth, Staten Island suddenly saw through the static, and like Manhattan was no longer the monument to money’s moral bankruptcy, but the bonf...

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9:43

S2. Chapter 6: The Tao of Lloyd | The Algorithm in a...

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/11/04

Send us a text The Tao says: “The Great Mother is empty yet inexhaustible.” Lloyd Dobler says: Cool, but try telling that to the Algorithm in a long swinging red tie. In this chapter, Lloyd reads Chapter 6 of the Tao Te Ching and wrestles with what it means to let go in an age where everything is engineered to keep you holding on. From AI hype and Trump-era theatrics to the quiet rebellion of washing one dish instead of arguing about it online, this episode finds softness in the absurd. It’s ...

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8:00

S2. Chapter 5: Does the Center Hold?

The Tao of Lloyd ·

2025/10/31

Send us a text Lloyd Dobler cracks open Chapter 5 of the Tao Te Ching and ends up between Lao Tzu and Yeats, trying to breathe through the noise of late-stage empire. It’s a mixtape meditation on balance, burnout, and what it means to “hold the center” when every voice is a megaphone pointed at itself. From baristas on Adderall to monks in Margaritaville, Lloyd searches for stillness that isn’t performative—and discovers that sometimes the center only holds when you stop trying to own it. k...

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41 results

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