The Observing I Podcast

00:39:18

The Malignant Malfunction: Thomas Ligotti and the...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/10/06

Most horror stories try to convince us that the monster is out in the woods or lurking behind a cellar door. It’s a comforting setup, because it means you can turn the porch light on, bolt the deadbolts, and pretend the house is safe. But what if our deepest dread isn't something waiting in the dark, but the three pounds of wet tissue sitting behind our own eyes?To kick off our October series, we look at the radical pessimism of American writer Thomas Ligotti and Norwegian philosopher Peter

en

01:08:00

September Live Hangout

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/10/01

On the last Tuesday of the month, I do a live session with whomever wants to drop in. There’s a short essay to start, and then a casual Q&A. It’s more of a hang out with the listeners than anything serious. If you’re interested in joining the next one, it’ll be on Tuesday 27th October. You don’t have to be a subscriber to join. They are hosted on Substack (theobservingi.com), and everyone is welcome.---Every time I schedule one of these monthly subscriber calls, I convince myself I’m going to

en

00:41:46

René Girard and the Trouble with Other People’s Desires

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/09/29

Why do we never seem to want anything until someone else tries to pick it up first? In this episode, we look at the work of French thinker René Girard and his unsettling theory of mimetic desire—the idea that our ambitions, envies, and rivalries are rarely our own, but borrowed directly from the people standing on our own patch of carpet.From the quiet friction of group chats and family gatherings to the glowing glass in our pockets, we trace how admiration curdles into competition and why modern

en

00:35:52

Epictetus and the Things You Can’t Control

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/09/22

Epictetus is usually reduced to one clean Stoic idea: focus on what you can control and let go of the rest. But his actual philosophy is stranger than that, especially once you start asking what is really “up to us” when even our thoughts, emotions and circumstances refuse to cooperate.In this episode, I look at Epictetus through the gap between what happens and what we decide it means, from unanswered messages and broken relationships to coercion, injustice and the limits of inner freedom. The

en

00:38:51

The Anti-Guru: U.G. Krishnamurti and the End of Seeking

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/09/15

U.G. Krishnamurti spent most of his life chasing enlightenment, then decided the entire search had been a mistake. He rejected gurus, methods and the promise that enough spiritual work would eventually produce a better version of you. What interested him instead was the seeker itself: the part of us constantly comparing who we are with who we think we ought to become.Some of U.G.’s claims are difficult to defend, particularly his account of the biological transformation he called the “calamity”. But

en

00:38:44

Weaponising Self-Awareness: The Mind That Can Catch...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/09/08

What happens when the mind catches itself in the act? This episode explores self-awareness, metacognition and the strange moment where a thought, reaction or impulse becomes visible before it turns into behaviour.But more self-awareness isn’t always better. We look at rumination, cognitive defusion, choice blindness and the limits of introspection, asking whether noticing the mind gives us any real control over it, or simply gives us another layer of thought to get trapped inside.Much love,

en

00:39:46

I Never Asked for This: Anti-Natalism and the Ethics...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/09/01

What if having a child is a moral decision we rarely treat like one? Anti-natalism begins with an awkward fact: nobody consents to being born, every life contains some degree of suffering, and the person who will live with the consequences has no say in the decision that creates them. In this episode of The Observing I, I look at the philosophy behind that argument, from Schopenhauer’s pessimism to David Benatar’s claim that coming into existence is always a harm. Benatar’s case is more difficult to

en

00:38:23

The Return from the Peak

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/07/28

You can dissolve the self, touch the infinite and return convinced you have seen behind the curtain. Then the tea goes cold, someone still deserves an apology, and the ego quietly promotes itself to “the awakened one”. This season finale asks what altered states are worth once the visions fade, and where spiritual insight ends and psychological crisis begins.Stanislav and Christina Grof, William James and Jack Kornfield guide us through the difficult return to ordinary life. The real test is not how

en

00:40:17

Ken Wilber and the Trouble with Everything

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/07/21

Wilber’s four quadrants begin with a persuasive idea. A human problem has an inside and an outside, and it belongs to an individual as well as the world around them.This episode explores Integral Theory, the difference between waking up and growing up, and the danger of mistaking a comprehensive explanation for the person it claims to understand.That danger becomes painfully real in Grace and Grit, Wilber’s account of his wife Treya’s cancer and death. Her story leaves us with a difficult question:

en

00:44:13

Bernardo Kastrup: Is Consciousness Fundamental?

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/07/14

Bernardo Kastrup argues that consciousness may not be something the brain produces, but the reality within which brains, bodies and the physical world appear. In this episode, I follow his route from computer engineering into analytic idealism, and examine why he believes physicalism has mistaken a successful scientific model for a final account of what reality is.We look at the hard problem of consciousness, Kastrup’s idea that individual minds are dissociated centres within a larger field, and

en

00:42:01

Donald Hoffman's Desktop of Reality

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/07/07

We like to believe that our eyes are honest, that the world we see is a reasonably accurate representation of what is actually there. But the math suggests a different story. We aren't observers of a physical world; we are users of a biological interface. From the green of an apple to the distance between two people, we are navigating a system of simplified icons designed to keep us alive by keeping us blind.In this exploration of Donald Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception, we look past the

en

00:40:58

Christof Koch and the Problem of Other Minds

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/06/30

Waking up is a slow return, a flicker of weight, a point of view, the sudden, jarring realisation that you're here again. It's the most basic fact of your existence, yet the one thing you can never hand to another person.For decades, neuroscientist Christof Koch has tried to break that lock, attempting to turn the most private experience in the universe into a public science. It is an exploration of the 'Problem of Other Minds,' that quiet, enduring horror that suggests you're

en

00:41:54

What the scanner cannot see: David Chalmers and the...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/06/23

There is a gap between the brain scanner and the experience it measures. David Chalmers calls it the Hard Problem, and it is the question that will not go away no matter how precise our maps become. Why does it feel like something to be you?We travel through the psychonaut's testimony, the philosophical zombie, and the possibility that consciousness is not something the brain produces but something it taps into. And we end up somewhere unexpected, standing in a queue at the post office, staring

en

00:40:35

No Exit, No Problem: Pema Chödrön’s Inner Frontier

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/06/09

In this episode of The Observing I, we enter the work of Pema Chödrön, exploring shenpa, groundlessness, tonglen, and the uncomfortable spiritual practice of staying present when everything in us wants to escape.Rather than treating awakening as a way to rise above pain, Pema points us back into the exact moment we get hooked: the tight chest, the old story, the message we want to send, and the small space where something other than habit can begin.Much love, David x

en

00:43:11

The Unconscious Has Bad Manners: Stanislav Grof and...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/06/02

In this episode of The Observing I, we enter the work of Stanislav Grof, the Czech-born psychiatrist whose psychedelic research led him to a stranger view of the unconscious: one shaped not only by childhood and memory, but by birth, death, the body, symbols, and non-ordinary states of consciousness. We explore what Grof’s maps of the psyche still offer, where they overreach, and why powerful experiences can feel true even when their meaning remains uncertain.Much love, David x

en

00:35:49

When the Music Stops: Laura Huxley and Relational...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/05/26

Aldous Huxley sat in his study in 1953, watched a vase of flowers become the first thing he had truly seen, and wrote it down. Millions read it. The reducing valve, he called it. The brain filtering out vastness to keep us sane. A beautiful theory. And like most beautiful theories, it has a limit. Huxley could describe the territory. What he couldn't do was enter it.Laura Archera could. She had spent her life learning how to be in a room with another person without flinching. A violinist whose

en

00:48:32

The Observing I: Deconstructing My Own Philosophy

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/05/19

Against all odds, we have reached episode one hundred and fifty. To mark this milestone of collective survival, we are taking a brief, unannounced intermission from our Realm of the Psychonauts season to turn the lens completely inward and dissect the core philosophy behind this entire show. We spend the vast majority of our lives acting out scripts written by people we have never met, frantically curating a hyper-efficient corporate avatar for an audience that isn’t actually paying attention. We

en

00:49:08

Carlos Castaneda: Wisdom, Fiction, and the Desire to...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/05/12

In this episode, we explore the strange and troubling legacy of Carlos Castaneda, the anthropologist and author whose books about Don Juan Matus helped shape modern psychedelic spirituality and the New Age movement.Castaneda claimed to have been apprenticed to a Yaqui “man of knowledge,” learning a path of sorcery, discipline, altered perception, and spiritual transformation. But as his influence grew, so did the questions around his work. Did Don Juan ever exist? Was this anthropology, fiction,

en

00:45:10

The Tyranny of Pleasure: Aldous Huxley and his Brave...

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/05/05

We often imagine tyranny as a heavy hand from the outside, but Aldous Huxley understood a more unsettling possibility. He saw that we can be persuaded to enjoy our own containment. In this episode, we follow Huxley’s journey from the clinical satire of Brave New World to the mystical search for a conscious culture in his final novel, Island.We explore the "reducing valve" of the brain, the modern versions of soma that keep us distracted, and the fragile possibility of a truly humane

en

00:41:43

Be Here Now: The Great Unmaking of Richard Alpert

The Observing I Podcast ·

2026/04/28

Human beings are often drawn to transformation because we aren't entirely comfortable being ourselves. We imagine that if we can just find the right door, we can shed our old personality like a heavy coat and step into a hidden room behind ordinary consciousness.This week, we explore the life of Richard Alpert, the man who became Ram Dass. His story is a map of the return journey from the head to the heart. From the rigid prestige of Harvard to the "fierce grace" of his final years,

en

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

She"s in the Weeds - Pop Culture and The Female Experience

Sam and Hollis - Millennial Women with...

Avec philosophie

France Culture

National Day Spotlight | Presented By National Day Calendar

National Day Calendar

Not Aspirational with Hannah Aaron Brown

Hannah Aaron Brown