Naming the Real

Do we see desire as good or as something warranting our suspicion and judgment? In this episode, we explore the role of desire in Western history and, specifically, the different conceptions of desire within Greek and Hebrew thought. Far from being a mere academic exercise, understanding how desire has been framed in history can help us understand our own relationships to desire. This is paramount...

In this second episode on Internal Family Systems, we explore how to integrate our exiled parts. Ultimately, integration happens through conversation—through naming, labelling, and talking about the exiled parts of us, and by learning how our unwanted behavior is the very thing pointing us to the legitimate needs and desires which must be addressed if we are to live a flourishing life.

A consistent practice of gratitude will change the structure of your brain and transform the way you see the world. In this episode, we explore the gratitude ladder—a simple rubric for giving thanks no matter the challenges or circumstances you may be facing. 

No bad parts. That's the mantra of Internal Family Systems thinking, which explores the notion that each of us is made up of various parts (including exiles, managers, and firefighters), each with a different function, within our personality. This episode explores Internal Family Systems with the goal of helping you become self-aware and a fully integrated human being. And it's about how each of u...

Differentiation is the antidote to anxiety. Differentiated people refuse emotional reactivity, they stay rationally grounded, they refuse to take on the anxiety of a system, and they are able to form meaningful relationships and connections. In this episode, we explore a rubric for practicing differentiation in everyday in life, in order to live a life of courage and hope.

All communities involving human beings can be held captive by anxiety. In this episode, we explore the core ideas of Family Systems Theory: that in unhealthy systems, the entire system may orient around the anxiety of its most anxious member(s). That systems are resistant to change. That triangulation is a function of codependency. And that the only path out of anxious systems is through self-lead...

Everyday there are things we know to do and that we avoid doing. Such norms and customs make up the stuff of culture. But where do these cultural rules of engagement come from? In this episode, we explore how all culture traces back to our desire and, ultimately, to our desire to be known, included, and accepted. Far from being an academic exercise, understanding where culture comes from can chang...

Human beings tend to see differences as a threat, but to feel safe and secure we look for people who look like us or who we deem similar to us. These dynamics may be natural, but they can lock us into very low levels of relating to others and to the world. In this episode, we explore how our core, common desires are the key to establishing connection with others, no matter how different they might...

This episode launches a new series within the Naming the Real Podcast, which is an exploration of the nature of human desire. In this episode, we explore the core human desire, which we call love—the desire to know and be known with affection and without fear. And we explore the implications of human desire, because human motivation is quite simple: we act in pursuit of love or in pursuit of power...

We change the world through care and curiosity, which humanizes those around us. But there are forces of fear and anxiety at work in our culture of entertainment and endless stimulation which must be recognized and named if we are to build lives of courage and hope. In this episode, we explore the ways technology is creating a push towards tribalism and mass psychosis, and how—like totalitarianism...

Fear comes to play an important role in an over-stimulated culture of entertainment such as ours. In this episode, we explore the nature of fear and its development in our society—how it breeds a lust for certainty and ultimately breeds polarization and tribalization. Specifically, we examine the role that the internet and social media play in promulgating fear. And—most importantly—we chart a pat...

In this episode, we explore Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is even more relevant today than when first published in 1985. Its premise—that technology changes the way we experience the world and can diminish our ability to think—has profound implications for our over-stimulated culture. Indeed, technology and an addiction to entertainment is exacerbating many of our societal dysfu...

We all have a winning strategy to get what we want in life: an unconscious formula for success. It's part of being human. And yet we can get stuck or lost in our winning strategy. And winning strategies can be at the heart of imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and even self-loathing. In this episode, we explore what winning strategies are, how we can be aware of them (and grateful for them), and how w...

All humans develop strategies for survival, not just physically but psychologically and emotionally. These strategies become our automatic, and even if they make us miserable, we love the certainty and predictability that they give us. Nevertheless, as we grow older, the impulse to not simply survive but to thrive allures us, even if our inability to thrive torments us. In this episode, we discuss...

Are you happy right now? And what do we even mean when we use the word "happy"? Our society has implicit notions of what happiness is and how we attain it, but often these notions are incomplete at best and backwards at worst. In this episode, we explore a rubric for happiness and some practical steps for becoming truly, wildly happy. 

Virtue signaling is another feature of a rule-keeping morality and the flip-side to our obsession with calling out the hypocrisy of others. Talk of it is everywhere. What, then, is virtue signaling exactly and, more to the point, what drives it? In this episode (part 3 of a 3-episode arc), we explore the social science of self-justification and the human tendency towards self-flattery. Most import...

A central feature of a moral culture—like ours—which has caved to mere "rule-keeping" is an obsession with calling out the hypocrisy of others. This is part of our culture's tribalism. And yet this focus on hypocrisy is a symptom of a much larger sickness. In this episode, we explore how cynicism and loneliness ultimately drive tribalism and how our need to scapegoat hypocrites can be interrupted...

In a culture with few moral narratives or frameworks—and in which there is increasing doubt that that human life can have any true purpose or meaning at all—a huge void is created. This void is increasingly filled by a morality of rule-keeping which, while giving us a sense of purpose and community, often fails to give us a sense of real meaning. Morality-by-rule-keeping, while inviting us to chec...

Virtue, classically speaking, meant doing the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way. It was highly contextual, requiring wisdom and thoughtfulness. In contrast, we are witnessing, to our detriment, the ascendance of a "morality" based on rule-keeping. This morality (so-called) does not require the cultivation of inner goodness; rather, it simply requires adherence to an...

Because of a busy travel schedule (and so that episodes don't suffer in the midst of it), I'm taking a two-week pause from posting new episodes. When I'm back I'll be posting an episode on the rise of morality by rule-keeping as part of the Our Cultural Crisis series as well as an episode on happiness. Be back soon!

With all the talk of cancel culture, we turn to an issue at the heart of our cultural crisis: the human penchant to blame and scapegoat as a means of feeling righteous. In this episode, we explore René Girard's mimetic theory and "the scapegoating mechanism"—the human tendency to scapegoat others in order to relieve our own anxiety and demonstrate our own virtue. By understanding this mechanism, w...

Grief done well means moving into wholeness, a process in which we become people who help heal the world around us. But how do we get there? In this third and final episode about grief, we explore the role of anger and protest in moving us beyond sorrow and into meaningful action for the sake of hope and joy.

If grieving well is so important to a flourishing life, how do we engage it? In this episode, we explore five practices (and a bonus practice) for grieving well. The goal is not to avoid grief nor to wallow in it, but to become a person that can not only touch grief but ultimately be strengthened by it. If we do this with courage, we can become a bastion of joy and a source of hope for others.

Grief is more than the loss of a loved one; it wears many faces and has many expressions. Nevertheless, grief can feel elusive, overwhelming, and misunderstood, while remaining life's one inevitability. It is also one of the core practices for living an extraordinary, flourishing life. In this episode, we explore what grief is, how critical it is for living a life of joy, and begin to explore prac...

We counter polarization and anxiety with forgiveness and reconciliation. But we live in an emerging moral culture, called a Victimhood Culture, which at its worst can incentivize us to live in offense, comparison, and scapegoating. In this episode, we explore the history of three moral cultures and the implications of the emerging Culture of Victimhood.