The Observing I Podcast

The Anti-Guru: U.G. Krishnamurti and the End of Seeking

U.G. Krishnamurti spent most of his life chasing enlightenment, then decided the entire search had been a mistake. He rejected gurus, methods and the promise that enough

Weaponising Self-Awareness: The Mind That Can Catch Itself

What happens when the mind catches itself in the act? This episode explores self-awareness, metacognition and the strange moment where a thought, reaction or impulse beco

I Never Asked for This: Anti-Natalism and the Ethics of Birth

What if having a child is a moral decision we rarely treat like one? Anti-natalism begins with an awkward fact: nobody consents to being born, every life contains some de

The Return from the Peak

You can dissolve the self, touch the infinite and return convinced you have seen behind the curtain. Then the tea goes cold, someone still deserves an apology, and the eg

Ken Wilber and the Trouble with Everything

Wilber’s four quadrants begin with a persuasive idea. A human problem has an inside and an outside, and it belongs to an individual as well as the world around them. Thi

Bernardo Kastrup: Is Consciousness Fundamental?

Bernardo Kastrup argues that consciousness may not be something the brain produces, but the reality within which brains, bodies and the physical world appear. In this epi

Donald Hoffman's Desktop of Reality

We like to believe that our eyes are honest, that the world we see is a reasonably accurate representation of what is actually there. But the math suggests a different st

Christof Koch and the Problem of Other Minds

Waking up is a slow return, a flicker of weight, a point of view, the sudden, jarring realisation that you're here again. It's the most basic fact of your existence, yet

What the scanner cannot see: David Chalmers and the hard problem of Consciousness

There is a gap between the brain scanner and the experience it measures. David Chalmers calls it the Hard Problem, and it is the question that will not go away no matter

No Exit, No Problem: Pema Chödrön’s Inner Frontier

In this episode of The Observing I, we enter the work of Pema Chödrön, exploring shenpa, groundlessness, tonglen, and the uncomfortable spiritual practice of staying pres

The Unconscious Has Bad Manners: Stanislav Grof and the Psychedelic Psyche

In this episode of The Observing I, we enter the work of Stanislav Grof, the Czech-born psychiatrist whose psychedelic research led him to a stranger view of the unconsci

When the Music Stops: Laura Huxley and Relational Consciousness

Aldous Huxley sat in his study in 1953, watched a vase of flowers become the first thing he had truly seen, and wrote it down. Millions read it. The reducing valve, he ca

The Observing I: Deconstructing My Own Philosophy

Against all odds, we have reached episode one hundred and fifty. To mark this milestone of collective survival, we are taking a brief, unannounced intermission from our R

Carlos Castaneda: Wisdom, Fiction, and the Desire to Believe

In this episode, we explore the strange and troubling legacy of Carlos Castaneda, the anthropologist and author whose books about Don Juan Matus helped shape modern psych

The Tyranny of Pleasure: Aldous Huxley and his Brave New World

We often imagine tyranny as a heavy hand from the outside, but Aldous Huxley understood a more unsettling possibility. He saw that we can be persuaded to enjoy our own co

Be Here Now: The Great Unmaking of Richard Alpert

Human beings are often drawn to transformation because we aren't entirely comfortable being ourselves. We imagine that if we can just find the right door, we can shed our

Terence McKenna and the Problem of Enchantment

In this episode of The Observing I, I explore the life and ideas of Terence McKenna, one of the most fascinating and controversial voices in psychedelic thought. More tha

Turn on, tune in, drop out: The life and ideas of Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary is often remembered as a prophet of psychedelic liberation, but his story is more complicated than that. In this episode, we look beyond the slogans, the co

Emil Cioran and the Insomnia of Being

Emil Cioran was the most honest philosopher of the twentieth century. He believed, with total intellectual sincerity and forensic rigour, that being born was a catastroph

Not Yet: The Philosophy of Ernst Bloch

Not yet. Ernst Bloch was born in a factory town on the Rhine in 1885 and spent the next ninety-two years refusing to accept that the present tense was the final word on