PODCAST

What People Do

brendanhoward

A moment to savor intelligent conversation about ONE THING someone else is deeply invested in.

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

47:03

Episode 93: Dr. Kyra Bobinet studies why brains make...

What People Do ·

2025/08/12

You’ve experienced this before, right?You know you’re supposed to do something. You’ve learned that a good habit is what you need or a bad habit needs to be changed. You know you should spend more time on this and less time on that. You know it’d be good for your emotional health, your body, or your soul. But you don’t do it. There’s a gap. Dr. Kyra Bobinet, MD-PhD, calls it the “Know-Do” gap. It all stems from work she’s done for years studying, researching and trying to make practical information

54:11

Episode 92: Walter Stewart co-owns a game shop

What People Do ·

2025/06/29

No, not game, like deer and pheasant, but game like … board games, tabletop games, card games, miniature games. Basically, all the games of the world that happen solo, in pairs, in groups, around tables, at home, at cafes (like the one next door to his shop), and out in parks and fields and anywhere else you can roll some dice or move some tokens or share and swap some cards. Everything but the video games. The video games you go somewhere else for.Monopoly. Dungeons & Dragons. Apples to

01:11:02

Episode 91: Ken Fleisher made productivity tool...

What People Do ·

2025/05/14

I am a big fan of thinking of productivity and task management, but I’ve been through dozens of them and I no longer think that any tool is going to magically spirit away whatever issues I have with self-motivation, focused productivity, or values-based action.Buuut … I still like to toy with this stuff. Back in the day, David Allen’s book Getting Thing Done changed my life, and I still fall back on GTD’s principles every day. Because I like to experiment, I was willing to switch to Cherry Task

01:03:51

Episode 90: Rabbi Simcha Raphael studies ideas on the...

What People Do ·

2025/04/15

He's a scholar. A therapist. And a rabbi. And all three of those disciplines have touched on his work deeply studying what Judaism has to say about the supernatural and especially the afterlife.Rabbi Simcha Raphael takes me on a fascinating, personal, and well-researched dive into his decades' long work into a realm that doesn't get as much attention as it does in Christianity: what happens to us after we die. If you think about God, life and death, and the lesser-known parts of our world, "the

44:51

Episode 89: Rabbi Richard Agler writes books on...

What People Do ·

2025/03/18

After interviewing Rabbi Rifat Sonsino about a co-edited book he worked on called A God We Can Believe In, the other co-editor reached out and said he had more to say on it. Given that I peppered Rabbi Sonsino mostly about other books he'd worked on that had been influential in my understanding how pluralistic and wide-ranging Jewish views on God were, I said absolutely sure of course yes to a new interview with Rabbi Richard Agler.In this discussion, we use a little Jewish lingo (most of it

57:20

Episode 88: Dr. Samuel Brody wrote about religious...

What People Do ·

2025/02/18

Israel and Zionism: Could I have picked a hotter topic? Well, cool your jets, man.Sam Brody, PhD, an associate professor of religious studies at University of Kansas, is going to bring a nuanced view of Zionism, theology, politics, and the ever-in-the-news dilemma of the nation-state of Israel by exploring an early thinker on the topic who’s most famous these days in bookstores for his religious work alone: Martin Buber. If there are terms you don’t get as you listen, stop and look them up. It’s

38:43

Episode 87: Rabbi Rifat Sonsino writes about God

What People Do ·

2025/01/21

Religions emphasize, in different measure at different times and for different reasons, belief/theology and practice/ritual/tradition. Judaism, in general, is a religion that focuses more on practice than belief. And it famously has multiple ways to remain “tied in” to the ethnoreligious tribe: To be Jewish is to do Jewish religion, to be Jewish is to be a part of the tribal nation of Israel (as differentiated from the secular state today), and to be Jewish is to be a part of the tribe of Jewish

22:17

86: Ilana podcasts about activism for kids

What People Do ·

2024/12/17

I know Ilana from a teaching gig. Ilana's mom asked if I wanted to interview the budding podcaster. I said, of course, sure, absolutely.You can find everything they're working on around the project of helping kids make a difference in causes they care about at the very well-named Kids4Justice.org. You can also get right to the podcast The Power Pod on Spotify. Episodes are VERY short with snappy music and great guests, and Ilana actually does work to edit a podcast, which I am too much of a sloth

33:57

85: Larry Stigsell wrote an inspirational book

What People Do ·

2024/12/03

He's a dad. He's a granddad. He was a decades-long sporting goods salesman in his town. And he worries about the negativity in the world today and wanted to take a stab at sharing the philosophy that helps him.That's Larry Stigsell and his new book, Looking Through Our Eyes of Curi Osity. I knew Larry through his son; we used to work together in B2B publishing. I think you get a feel for Larry's energy and goodwill, and the evergreen sensibility at the base of his advice to everybody, in the new

56:03

84: Richard Orodenker uses commonplace books

What People Do ·

2024/08/27

It’s been a few weeks now that I’ve been keeping a commonplace book. A few hours after discovering the concept and chasing some internet rabbit holes, I found Richard Orodenker, a former Temple University faculty member, who uses a commonplace book, has studied historical examples of them, and used them as projects in some of “Intellectual Heritage” classes with college students.I immediately contacted him and asked if he’d be interviewed on the books, their use, and his practice and study with

41:24

Bonus! KJ Davis helps creatives get started

What People Do ·

2024/06/18

KJ Davis is a self-described "working neurodivergent matriach, military vet spouse, small business owner, and descriptive fantasy sci-fi author." All the aspects were interesting to me (we didn't talk the "military vet spouse" part, sorry).The idea of a small business that serves to help creatives take their burning passions to the people is a neat one. What if you're shy, nervous, inexperienced, afraid of failure, or have other social or psychological issues that make it hard to take those first

34:45

Bonus! Noah Gibbs helps organize a charity gaming...

What People Do ·

2024/06/11

Noah Gibbs is a fellow tabletop gamer and Kansas City metro local. But he’s got even stronger feelings about the local gaming and convention community than me. He’s been working with a charity convention to raise funds for local causes for a few years. He still games regularly (I’ve lapsed). And, guess what, his connections at local gaming conventions led him to the Kansas City metro years ago. Folks he’d met at Kantcon helped get him established here. He met his wife. Now he’s a proud dad,

55:18

83: Georgios has published a book on Aristotle's...

What People Do ·

2024/04/09

Georgios is a philosophy student and one who brings others along with him. Now, when I say he’s a philosophy student, you think, ahh, he’s taking a class. No. Georgios has a job. He lives in the real world with us outside academia. But he carves out time to study Aristotle and other writers and thinkers for fun and wisdom in the time he isn’t working. That’s so amazing, this is my second time interviewing him. My first one looked at Socrates, Aristotle and what to do with this life. This new one

01:02:14

82: Elliot Kanshin Kallen plays the shakuhachi

What People Do ·

2024/03/12

This episode gets into every angle of a musical instrument you’ve, for sure, heard yet may not know what it’s called. Elliot Kanshin Kallen touches on the history of this Japanese flute, the emotions you can conjure from it, how it compares to other breath instruments, and, best of all, plays some notes for us a few times to make a point. We even talk a little Zen Buddhism (because it ties into the history and use of the instrument). The angle of the mouth ... how many holes and why ... its

01:08:12

81: James Gomes re-reads the spiritual classic...

What People Do ·

2024/02/12

It’s a new year, 2024, and that means James Gomes re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse for the umpteenth time. It’s a short book, it’s in the public domain, and Gomes says he gets something new out of it every time.I know that happened for me. He set up an online book club, and I read along with him. I had read the book a few years ago, and based on my reading this time, I didn’t remember as much as I’d thought. I got new insights, but like most things in my brain, they passed away. We touch on the

01:19:36

80: Kevin works on protecting kids from active shooters

What People Do ·

2024/01/09

I interviewed Kevin Jones about soft skills in security and law enforcement work for another podcast here. I enjoyed the conversation so much, and I was so intensely curious about his work in law enforcement, that I asked him to drop in for this podcast to talk about his career in law enforcement as well, near the end, about his transition to private security at a regional airport and now overseeing safety programs in a school district. Everyone has an opinion about cops, but there aren’t many easy

47:45

79: M. D. Usher writes on ancient philosophy, animals...

What People Do ·

2023/12/12

I met the Stoics a long time ago, as an adult, sitting in a field outside a local library and reading Epictetus’ Enchiridion (the Handbook). In fact, it was probably one of these copies. Well, before Epictetus, there were the Cynics, and their philosophy was a little harder to follow. The famous Diogenes lived more like the animals than the Greeks around him, enjoying the sunshine, wearing whatever he could find, eating whatever he could find. A famous anecdote has him living in a large wine cask,

50:48

78: Adam Toon philosophizes about the mind

What People Do ·

2023/11/14

There is a beautifully un-nail-down-able question-and-answer I have been rolling around, like a stone in a rock polisher, for many years now: What is consciousness? It’s the big thing that seems to separate us from other animals: We are conscious or self-reflective or imaginative or reasoning in a way that other creatures, great and small, do not seem to be. This quest, which has carried around in the world of neurologists, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, self-help gurus, physicists and

42:37

77: David Doherty teaches sales

What People Do ·

2023/10/03

I enjoyed working for a few years with David Doherty with a multimedia publishing and events company in veterinary medicine. My favorite part was, every couple months, I'd go break into his office, sit down and ask him about sales. I thought his philosophy was fascinating. I don't like sales, but if I had to think about sales, heart about sales, wrap my head around sales ... I enjoyed doing it with Doherty. Today, Doherty is VP of Market Development with Coffman Group, a franchisee of the Sandler

50:19

76: Mike Keller collects movies

What People Do ·

2023/09/26

I used to work at a magazine for video store owners. By the time I’d gotten there, it was a vanity publication for the gigantic red-headed stepchildren of Hollywood: home entertainment companies. You know, the big money and focus went into the movies heading to cinema, and direct-to-video/DVD/Blu-ray and the home release of those movies was … not as cool, not as big, etc. My interviewee, Mike Keller, has been collecting videos, DVDs and Blu-rays for a long time now. We discuss the transition we’ve

99 results

What People Do

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Voices of Life

APG Mannheim

Promo Estereo Podcast

Promo Estereo

Talking Timelines Podcast

Talkingtimelines

גיקונומי

ראם שרמן ודורון ניר

Drømmefanger

Drømmefanger