What's Wrong With This Place?

The finale episode in season 1 of this podcast! Here is my take on the 5 biggest problems in the world right now. With an emphasis on the biggest problem of them all. Since I will be referring to a lot of the content, points and arguments from the previous episodes, you will get the most out of this final episode if you have listened to many of the previous episodes. … let’s dig in!

How do you approach other people? Ruthless or polite? Too nasty or too nice? Both approaches create distance between us. Ruthless is obviously hurtful - but too polite or too nice keeps us from the interesting space that lives close to our personal limits and boundaries. But it is in this space all the interesting authentic human stuff between us happens! It's about finding the middle path. In...

Are AI-tools making us more creative or are we outsourcing our creativity to them? The many AI-tools around us have been touted as creative abundance tools, but in fact, they are reducing our ability to be creative and original - and they will deprive us more and more of the human originality and authenticity that we carry with us in our human edge, the human peculiarities and quirky subtleties. T...

The world today is full of so many things, options, distractions, choices, products, inputs and other stuff that tries to get our attention. All this, and more, is the overwhelming “too-much-ness” that swamps the world around us. It exhausts our mental energy, it ruins many simple human pleasures and it is currently breeding a young generation of people who are getting a sub-optimal emotional foun...

Statistics, gossip from your friends, scientific articles, YouTube videos, influencers, the media, podcasts and many more - all of these constantly give you information that might be true, might not be true, or something in between. No matter what - these pieces of information are going to shape your mind, just like a bar of chocolate is going to shape your belly. And you will try to fight against...

Trying to predict the future is such an intertwined ability in us humans. An ability and a focus that permeates more of our lives than we think. The ability and the focus we have on predicting the future, is very much connected to our happiness.  The future is just a collection of now-moments that are yet to come. And by being able to predict it, we pull in the future so that it becomes a mere ext...

The present or the “now” is a fuzzy and fleeting moment that hits us so fast. Many people try to live in the moment, the present, the now. But we often live just as much in the now after it’s over, than we do in it, because we define what happened in the now-moment afterwards - and if you live so simple that nothing new ever happens to you, then you are just living unauthentically backwards in the...

In this episode I will take you behind the curtain, and give you my in-depth analysis of why Denmark is one of the happiest countries in the world. What’s in the secret sauce? There are so many layers of reasons, causes and values that we never talk about that all contribute to the larger explanation behind Danish happiness - and I want, as a native Danish person, to try and give you these invisib...

It’s said that “opinions are like assholes - everybody has one”. But honestly, we often don’t just have one. The question is not if we have opinions or not. The question is how we defend them and do we see them as an intricate part of ourselves? In this episode we are going deep into something profoundly human. I will take you through the quirks of opinions, reasoning and heuristics. Why do we rea...

The podcast has come to religion! The greatest conflict and war starter of them all. In this episode I give my 7 death blows to religion - the 7 reasons why I think religion is useless, why I am not religious, and why we are all atheists. Religion not only has a track record of being an accomplice to many wars, conflicts and lack of understanding during the years, but it has also tried to fill out...

We have all seen or maybe even done great deeds before. But what are they exactly and what are they good for? In this episode I will make the case that we need to do more great deeds, and what kind of mechanism or role they play in creating a good life. We will cross topics like computers, sports, Trump and politics, breaking bad group dynamics, taking or giving credit, game theory, praising peopl...

The first best advice on how to reduce climate change the most, is also an advice that taps right into living a good life. Instead of stopping doing things that we actually like to do - in order to reduce climate change - we should instead focus on reducing or removing all the things that we don’t need or wouldn’t miss if they weren’t here. But these things are almost impossible to barricade in a...

You are not going to get the answer for: “What is the meaning of life?” And when you hear this episode, you will know why. ‘Meaning’ is a powerful concept that fills our lives in almost every thinkable way. Perhaps even in ways you didn’t imagine. ‘Meaning’ is a solid part of the foundation for a good life, but it also has a dark side. In this episode I will take you on an adventurous and ‘meaning...

Words can either be used to better understand the world and the people around us, and to make it easier to conceptualize abstract concepts or feelings. But words can also be used to disgrace, belittle or break the people we don’t share the same world view with. In this episode I will take you through the quirky and powerful world of words, and give examples on how words differ from country to coun...

What is creativity? And what keeps us from being more creative? Creativity plays a natural part in a good and beautiful life. In this episode I will take you through the 4 axioms/rules of creativity. When you understand these 4 axioms, you will understand the nature of creativity, and be able to appreciate and better handle the mechanisms behind it. This tour into the fuzzy foundation of creativit...

A well nourished ecosystem around science beginning with the early school system, the high shool, up to university and the proper funding and attention to science at the high academic levels is one of the backbones of creating wealth and prosperity in a society. Science can make smaller countries and societies punch above their weight class - but what happens when societies don't invest in sci...

Hygge is a safe and comfortable atmosphere of being together with other people, connecting and enjoying the simple pleasures in life. The Danish concept of hygge is so intertwined and deeply woven into the fabric of Danish culture and language - but hygge can be applied in so many other places, situations and aspects of life. In this episode I will take you through the fascinating quirks of hygge...

What is luck? Luck is NOT magical. Your luck is just everything that you are not in control of, that has a beneficial effect on you. In this episode I make the case that despite our hard work, luck still plays a part in everyone's success story - and acknowledging this makes us stronger and more humble, and it creates the understanding that luck is something we can’t buy or create ourselves. I...

School can either be the sick old man of society or the mother of future solutions. There are so many valuable things that we could teach kids in school. In this episode I give you what I think are the 5 most important active skills that we should teach kids, in order to create the more robust, good, adaptive and future-ready kids. Forward to 6:30 if you want to skip directly to the prioritized 5-...

Let me take you behind the curtain of science - into the more hidden and unknown ethical and moral workings of science. Some people think that science is detached and even deprived from ethics and morals. But nothing could be further from the truth. In this episode I will take you through ethics, morals, religion, the Enlightenment, the connections between democracy and science, the softening of p...

Randomness can seem chaotic. But randomness in the "just right" amounts is a potent driver of beneficial change, a creator of healthy diversity and variety - and we humans don't appreciate it nearly enough compared to all the good things that it has given us. Randomness is nature's life insurance. In this episode I will cover many cases of randomness in health, in nature, in histor...

In this episode I open the door to the peculiar and irrational (but still somewhat understandable) world of our eating habits. Would you eat insects to reduce the carbon/methane footprint? Is there a good reason to why most of us consider insects a disgusting and weird thing to eat? But what about all the other weird things we eat? Things that we are totally fine with - but are just as weird. Let...

What is the scientific approach to life, and why is it different from the religious approach? In this episode I will take you through what happens when science is given religious connotations and why this is a problem. You will hear about COVID, research institutions, the scientific method, science shows, science education, alternative medicine, scientific papers, religion, why 10 philosophical di...

One of the major hidden sources of problems in the world today are "super stimuli". Let me take you within viewing distance of the evolutionary short circuit that is humans' true kryptonite. In this episode I will cover animals, candy, IT, the DDR times of East-Germany, reading, breast milk, parenting, models and much more. Stay turned for one of mankind's biggest "killers and...

If a scientist put a piece of candy in front of you. And before leaving the room the scientist told you that if the candy is still there when she gets back - then you will get 5 extra pieces of candy. Could you stand the temptation for 10 minutes? In this episode I will tell you why most adults can't do this in real life. And why this missing ability is keeping many of us from making the healt...