The Absurd World Podcast

Throughout my career as a psychotherapist, I’ve worked closely with people healing from trauma. It’s been one of the main focuses of my practice, and in this week’s episode, we’re diving deep into that very topic, asking the question: how much can trauma be treated philosophically? With insights from thinkers like Judith Herman, Peter Levine, Robert Jackman, and David Spiegel, we’ll peel back the...

After 31 episodes of exploring what it means to be human, we’ve finally arrived at one of the most difficult questions of all: why do we suffer? And maybe even harder, does anything good actually come out of it? Suffering is something everyone experiences, yet most of us spend our lives trying to avoid it, numb it, or make sense of it. But what if, as painful as it is, suffering might hold a kind...

What actually are human rights? Do they come naturally, or are they something we invented? Do they exist to define what it means to be human, or to control how humans behave? Are they legal, moral, or something cosmic? And most importantly… do they even work? In this week’s episode, I explore what a “human right” really is, how we’re meant to use them, and whether they actually serve the people th...

Technology. From hammers and shovels to smartphones and the AI best friend I beg for validation from (because asking a real human is apparently harder than rocket science). It’s shaped our lives for basically forever. But does it really free us to build the world we want, or quietly trap us in a cage we’ve built ourselves? With the help of thinkers Paulo Freire and Martin Heidegger, I explore whet...

Do I have a problem? Am I too dependent on this? Am I an addict? These are questions I hear often in my work, and questions that rarely come with simple answers. Even when they do, there aren’t always easy fixes, because dependency isn’t just about chemicals, it’s also about who we are. In this episode, we dive into addiction from an existential perspective: what it means when your very sense of s...

Grief — the ache we’re left with after a loss, the pit we fear we’ll never climb out of, and one of the hardest existential challenges we can face. In the third and final episode of our mini-series on death, we examine this painful aspect of mortality: what it means to be the one left behind. Joined by thinkers like Andrew Solomon, Kierkegaard, Rollo May, and Viktor Frankl, we try to make sense of...

Suicide — the topic we avoid. The conversation new therapists are trained to face despite discomfort and fear. The nightmare for families and loved ones. Yet it’s something that has weighed heavily on humanity’s mind since the beginning of time. How do we confront it? How do we talk about it? And perhaps most importantly, should it be considered a human right? In this episode, I wade into the dark...

Death — the thing so many of us fear most. Hardwired into nearly every living creature is the instinct to fight against it, yet it remains the one certainty we cannot escape. The opposite of survival, and still, the end awaiting us all. What kind of cruel joke is that? And why does it terrify us so deeply? In this episode, I open a new mini-series on death by asking: why do we fear it so much? And...

Oh money. The thing that buys us what we want and what we need. The thing that seems to do everything for us. People love to say, “money can’t buy happiness”—yet most of us can’t even imagine happiness without it somehow being involved. Sometimes, having money feels just as essential as food and water. Maybe even more. But what is it, really? In this episode, I get a little help from one of modern...

What are labels, really? Are they made by us, or are they something bigger than us? Do they help define who we are, or just confuse us about the truth? Should we fear them, reject them, fight them—or embrace them and make peace with them? In this episode, I dig into what labels actually mean, how they function, and whether we truly embrace the ones we carry—or if they never really fit us at all. W...

What is art? How do we make it? What does it mean to see it, hear it, experience it? And who does it really belong to—the artist, the audience, or something else entirely? In this particularly pretentious and confusing episode (your words, not mine), I turn to existentialists of the past—like Martin Heidegger and Rollo May—to help untangle what art is supposed to mean, why it matters, and how it i...

Am I crazy? Would I even know if I were? Should I rely on others to tell me? Could that be dangerous? Who could I really trust to decide what’s wrong with me? In this episode, I get to the heart of something many of us fear, misunderstand, or even go to therapy to wrestle with: the feeling that something must be wrong with me. That there’s something that sets me apart from everyone else... in a ba...

In today’s world, we face fears, uncertainty, and living conditions that many have grown deeply tired of. Political terrors, social estrangement, and a good dose of paranoia — for many, it feels like the perfect time to rebel… or at least to demand serious change. In this episode, I focus on exactly how we can do that. People often find themselves lost at the starting line of what it takes to spar...

Mysticism… What is it, really? Is it tarot cards, crystals, and reading the stars? Potions, curses, and chatting with spirits? Magic spells? Or is it just some nerds hanging out in basements, eating mushrooms, and flipping through ancient books? In this episode, we wrap up our three-part series on spirituality by exploring these spiritually adventurous souls who exist on the fringes of religious i...

What does it mean to have a religious experience? Do I have to talk to God? Do I have to be touched by the divine? Or… could it be more than that? Maybe I’ve already had one and didn’t even realize it. In this episode, we dive into what it really means to be religious—and to be open to having a religious experience at all. With a little help from psychologist, philosopher, and father of pragmatism...

What does it mean to have faith? Is it something reserved for those who believe in a god (or gods)? For the religious only? Or is it something everyone takes part in, whether we realize it or not? In this week’s episode, we kick off the first in a three-part series on spirituality. I start us off with a headfirst dive into the meaning of faith. With the help of the great grandpapa of existentialis...

What’s right and what’s wrong? How do I know if I’m doing the right thing — or if I’m just being a bad person? Jesse told me morality is all human-made… but then why do I feel so bad when I do something I think is wrong? In today’s episode, we dive into the concept of morality — not to brush it off as just another social construct, but to explore the deeper, human side of ethics beneath all the ph...

What does it mean to have control—and to be under someone else’s? And do we really know how to tell the difference? In today’s episode, I dive into the elusive, slippery concept of control and how it shows up in our daily lives, often in ways we don’t even notice. Along the way, we’ll turn to one of the most celebrated psychotherapists of the 20th century—often mentioned alongside Freud and Adler—...

What’s true? What’s false? Who can I trust, and who should I question? Do I even know when I’m being lied to or fed misinformation? In this episode, I dive into the increasingly unsettling reality of our time: in a world where anyone can say anything and call it “truth,” how are we supposed to know what to believe? With the help of two major figures in the history of education and personal autonom...

We’ve got AI, electric cars, photos of black holes, and—most importantly—a runaway alarm clock named Clocky. We are officially living in the future. But despite all this progress… do we actually understand ourselves any better than we did centuries ago? In this episode, I dig into the big question: Can science really answer life’s biggest, most human questions? And is that even what science is mea...

Can I say that I’ve ever truly been heard—really understood? That when I speak, others are actually listening from my perspective? Can you say that? It might not be so simple. In this episode, I explore just how complicated—and downright competitively messy—communication can be when it comes to truly seeing from another person’s point of view. To help me out, I call on philosopher Ludwig Wittgenst...

What does it really mean to perceive something? How do I get someone to understand my point of view? And how do I even know if what I perceived was real? In this episode, I journey deep into the phenomenological roots of modern existentialism to explore what it actually means to experience anything—whether it's drinking a cup of coffee or genuinely seeing a unicorn. Along the way, I’ll touch on ps...

Is happiness something we create, something we chase, or something that sneaks up on us when we least expect it? In this episode, I dive into the tangled world of joy, pleasure, freedom... and suffering? With a little help from our Russian friend Fyodor Dostoevsky, maybe we can start to make some sense of it all. Side note: when’s the last time you went to the dentist?

What is love? How do I know if I am feeling it? How do I know if someone is truly in love with me? And more importantly, how do I find my soulmate in a sea of fish I don’t trust? In this episode I ask for help from mid 20th century psychotherapist, Erich Fromm, as I attempt to understand how love can be seen as an art form and not something you demand from others. Hopefully it won’t be too radical...

Am I a good friend? Are you? Would I even know one if I saw one—or is friendship just a feeling? In this episode, I dive into the mysterious and difficult process of forming and maintaining true friendships in a world so polarized that just meeting someone new can feel scary. With help from the philosophies (and complicated personal lives’) of Albert Camus and Simone Weil, I explore the existentia...