What Are You Still Pledging Allegiance To? (S2. Chapter 38)

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 ans...

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. Th...

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 th...

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...

What does it actually mean to refuse an unlawful order—when no one’s watching, and no one’s officially in charge? In Chapter 17 of The Tao of Lloyd , Lloyd Dobler moves from a humiliating road-rage incident in a Whole Foods parking lot to a chilling national moment: U.S. lawmakers reminding the military of a long-settled legal truth—that service members are required to refuse unlawful orders, only...

What happens when road rage turns into a near-death experience? In Chapter 16 of The Tao of Lloyd , Lloyd Dobler sets out to explore stillness, emptiness, and non-reactivity, and then promptly fails in spectacular fashion at a red light. A reckless moment of political rage escalates into a real-world confrontation that nearly ends very badly, forcing Lloyd to reckon with the gap between spiritual...

Chapter 15: Let the Mud Settle  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 o...

What if the future keeps ghosting you because it doesn’t want to be predicted?  In this chapter of The Tao of Lloyd , Lloyd wanders into prediction culture, political chaos, and AI riddles, using the Tao’s reminder that you can’t know the future—but you can inhabit the present. It’s a meditation on uncertainty, refusal, and staying human while the algorithms keep guessing. Subscribe free: https://...

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 tha...

AI 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. Send a text. Ask a question & I will answer, maybe in a episode...

Lloyd Dobler returns with a guided meditation for an America that feels like it’s been written by Vince Gilligan on a bender with a quantum physicist. This chapter looks at the Tao Te Ching’s reminder that “the many” and “the one” are illusions we cling to when we’re scared, and how the Apple TV+ series Pluribus accidentally became a funhouse-mirror metaphor for our moment. Alternate selves, divid...

A rediscovered 2011 letter from Diane Court kicks off a guided-meditation crisis. Lloyd turns to Chapter 10 to sift through memory, softening, relationships, Gen X nostalgia, and the parts of himself that once believed in things like tenderness and courage. A Taoist deep dive into self-reflection, heartbreak, and emotional archaeology. Send a text. Ask a question & I will answer, maybe in a ep...

Burnout meets spiritual wisdom as Lloyd tries to follow the Tao’s advice to “step back” while TikTok insists you “go the f home.” From Black Friday chaos to yoga calamity to a Diane Court breadcrumb, he tackles unclenching, trauma alphabetizing, and resisting a culture that treats exhaustion as a patriotic duty. Send a text. Ask a question & I will answer, maybe in a episode Support the show A...

Lloyd channels the Tao Te Ching, Bruce Lee, and Standing Rock to figure out how to stay fluid in a country addicted to certainty, shouting, and weaponized confidence. A Taoist survival guide to softness, resilience, and not cracking like a ceramic mug dropped on concrete . 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 mi...

Lloyd holds Chapter 7 up to New York and accidentally walks into a borough-wide spiritual awakening involving Zohran Mamdani, a bureaucratic bull, and a matador with excellent timing. A Taoist meditation on revolution, clarity, compassion, activism, and the rare moment when capitalism finally blinks. Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TaoOfLloyd Send a text. Ask a question &...

A cryptic Taoist passage meets an AI-fueled attention storm, and Lloyd tries to loosen his grip without dropping the entire plot. Between tech hype, political theater, spiritual commentary, and soft rebellion, he explores whether small human softness can survive a system designed to monetize your nervous system before breakfast. Send a text. Ask a question & I will answer, maybe in a episode S...

Is it possible to stay centered when everything around you is engineered to panic? Lloyd attempts to meditate inside late-stage America, also known as a 24-hour anxiety carnival sponsored by lobbyists. With Lao Tzu whispering calm on one shoulder and W. B. Yeats muttering doom on the other, he searches for one breath that isn’t manufactured by crisis. A Taoist riff on clarity, culture, mindfulness...

What would the world look like if the hippies won?  Moving from nostalgia to social justice, from Reagan-era greed to democracy’s questionable taste in role models, this episode traces a quieter counterfactual: what might have happened if gentleness, softness, and care had been allowed to win—even once. Part meditation, part cultural memory, this chapter asks whether letting go isn’t retreat, but...

How do you practice letting go when the world refuses to stop escalating? Lloyd Dobler takes on wu wei —effortless action—by immediately trying far too hard to achieve it. Using the Tao Te Ching as a loose compass, he wanders through activism, moral clarity, and the temptation of spectacle, asking how to resist without burning out or becoming what you oppose. Part guided meditation, part political...

What if the more precisely you name the fight, the harder it becomes to let go? Lloyd enters Chapter 2 determined to practice wu wei —effortless action—only to discover how difficult non-reactivity becomes when the algorithm keeps lighting up his phone with ICE hiring sprees and panic-bait alerts. This episode blends Taoist philosophy, political commentary, and Gen-X nervous system management into...

What happens when you try to podcast something that can’t be explained? Season 2 of The Tao of Lloyd opens with Lloyd Dobler cracking the Tao Te Ching and immediately committing a cosmic error: trying to record the unrecordable. What follows is a duct-tape meditation, a philosophy podcast trapped inside a political commentary show, and a Gen-X attempt to stay human while democracy performs its own...

Lloyd Dobler is back. Older, grayer, and still trying to meditate through a coup. In Season 2 of The Tao of Lloyd , the Gen-X dissident and accidental anti-guru starts over—using the Tao Te Ching as both the lens and the light to find stillness in Trumplandia. Eighty-one chapters. Two episodes a week. Every Monday and Thursday. One middle-aged dissident trying to remember how to breathe in a colla...

The Department of “Defense” just dropped the act and rebranded as the Department of War. Not a glitch, not Orwellian doublespeak—just truth in advertising. In this episode, Lloyd Dobler guides you through a sort-of meditation that uses breath like a crowbar, prying open myths about defense, empire, and silence. Seven affirmations. One loud monkey mind. And a reminder that kindness, refusal, and jo...

Lloyd Dobler tours Trump’s “Museum of Lies,” where history gets rewritten and propaganda poses as public service. Then he flips the tape into a guided meditation on memory, purpose, and resistance using the four sacred questions: Who am I, what do I want, what is my purpose, and what am I grateful for? A fast, funny mix of political satire, meditation, and Taoist clarity. Send a text. Ask a questi...

What happens when Kurt Cobain's punk-rock manifesto collides with Lao Tzu's Taoist wisdom? In this episode of The Tao of Lloyd, Lloyd Dobler leads a sorta guided meditation for anyone caught between raw rebellion and calm detachment. Through breath, affirmations, and a little monkey-mind mischief, Lloyd explores what it means to "hate your enemies, save your friends, find a place, s...