The Isaac Morehouse Podcast

Author and blogger on careers, entrepreneurship, and education, as well as founder of four companies, Penelope Trunk joins me to talk about her past and current projects. We talk about writing, unschooling, startup mentality, trends in career development, and how to be honest with yourself when it comes to your future. Her latest startup provides online courses that help people manage their career...

I take some great questions submitted via isaacmorehouse.com/ask-isaac: You went to college — when and how did you decide it wasn't the best path for most people? Reading list for someone who is interested both in philosophy and business? Do you think startup is becoming a buzzword? Would it be better to just create a business? Challenges you face as an unschooling parent? Surprises?

Is recycling getting out of hand? Yes.

Why have superhero movies gotten so good in recent years? How has Marvel managed to bring the genre to a mass audience while keeping comic purists (mostly) happy? Where is the trend going? My good friend and comic book aficionado Chris Nelson joins to discuss these weighty matters.

I interview Chad Grills, a tech entrepreneur and the curator of the Medium publication Life Learning, about his three core passions: Accelerated learning, antifragility, and definite optimism.

I take a real-time stab at a host of diverse audience questions via Facebook.

Michael Gibson was pursuing a PhD in philosophy when it struck him that the really big ideas weren't being advanced within the walls of academia. He left, got into the tech world, and found himself running investor Peter Thiel's fellowship program for young college droupouts. He's recently co-founded his own venture capital fund to support young people who want to work on big ideas outside of the...

I'm always impressed and fascinated by comedians. It's a tough gig. Jeremy McLellan is a comedian in Charleston, SC who never stops writing material. In addition to performing several times a week he is constantly sharing bits and jokes (there is a difference) on Facebook. He's also running for mayor of Charleston on a popular platform of issues like the need to re-institute prohibition and seal o...

Author, illustrator, cafe owner, world traveler, and unschool mom Lehla Eldridge joins me to talk about raising kids in another country and taking big, adventurous leaps. Lehla and her husband run the website unschoolingthekids.com and are the authors the book Unschooling: The 6 Keys to Our Children's Future. They are both from England, but spent 15 years in South Africa working in the film indust...

Historian and author of "A Renegade History of the United States" Thaddeus Russell joins me to discuss his work and the notion that the "renegades" might be the ones to thank for our freedom, not the puritanical political busybodies.

Asked about my most embarrassing moment, I finally come clean.

Sam Patterson works on the OpenBazaar project, building a distributed, peer-to-peer marketplace for the world. His team recently received media attention for landing a $1m investment from prominent VC firms Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. We discuss what OpenBazaar is, how it differs from traditional online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, and from others like Silk Road. We also t...

Blake Boles is an author, entrepreneur, and self-directed learning advocate. He's written several books on education beyond school and runs a program to help unschoolers to travel the world. He joins me to discuss his own education and career journey and what he's learned along the way.

Joseph Cambell is famous for saying, "Follow your bliss". It's common to hear people say things like, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Yet lately the most popular advice seems to be, "Follow your passion is terrible advice", or, "Just work hard and get good at something and you'll learn to love it". Who's right? TK joins me to discuss in what ways both sides are right a...

Today I take a crack at the following questions: -What do you say to a young person who wants to forge their own path but is butting heads with their parents? E.g., a young person wants to go work and eventually start their own company, but their parents are adamant about them going to college. -Future of social networks: How to ride the wave and use it rather than get swept up underneath it. And...

Jerry Brito is the Executive Director of Coin Center, a cryptocurrency research and advocacy organization. He talks about how he found himself at the intersection of policy and tech, the regulatory challenges facing Bitcoin, and whether or not it's a bad idea to have a "seat at the table" in Washington.

Author, TV personality, and rabble-rouser Michael Malice joins me to discuss what it was like to have award winning graphic novelist Harvey Pekar write a book about him, why he quit a lucrative career to be a writer (even though he doesn't love writing), the experience of self-publishing a "true" unauthorized autobiography of Kim Jong Il, and why he's like Batman. You can find Michael's work at mi...

Economist Pete Leeson believes everything can be explained using the economic assumption of rational behavior. He is a prolific academic and his work covers a wide variety of fascinating and sometimes bizarre phenomena - from insect trials to witch burning, piracy, and everything in between - and provides rational explanations for seemingly irrational behavior. We discuss what inspired him to beco...

I take questions on: -What I'd do if my kids adopted radically different beliefs -Whether social change is due to movements or outside forces -What's up with learned helplessness -Is physical health important to mental health -How to combat apathy -What jobs will be important in the future

My 10 year old son asked to join me on an episode and talk about his experience as an unschooler. We chat about the pros and cons, a typical day, and whether he worries about not knowing things he'll need to succeed.

A listener points out that I sometimes talk about how failure isn't so bad. He challenges the idea and presents arguments made by Peter Thiel about how awful failure really is. I give my response to the question of whether failure is really good or bad.

Reason.com staff editor Robby Soave joins me to talk about how he got into journalism, what it's like to write for maximum clicks while keeping content genuine, how to stay optimistic when reporting on scandal every day, and what TV shows to watch,

If you think of imagining as a kind of lazy, fun form of escapism, you're missing something profound.

Harris Kenny, Marketing Manager for Aleph Objects joins me to discuss their popular Lulzbot line of 3D printers, and the radical IP-free way the company is run.

Rapid fire through a handful of questions posed by Facebook followers.