Naming the Real
Episodes
The Barbaric Impulse, Part III: Where Culture Comes From (And How it Helps Make Sense of Our Lives)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyday there are things we know to do and that we avoid doing. Such norms and customs make up the stuff of culture. But where do these cultural rule...
The Barbaric Impulse, Part II: The Power of Storytelling to Transform Politics (and Everything Else)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Human beings tend to see differences as a threat, but to feel safe and secure we look for people who look like us or who we deem similar to us. These ...
The Barbaric Impulse, Part I: How Understanding Human Desire Changes Everything
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode launches a new series within the Naming the Real Podcast, which is an exploration of the nature of human desire. In this episode, we expl...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep XV: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Part III (Mass Psychosis, Totalitarianism, and the Path to Hope)
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We change the world through care and curiosity, which humanizes those around us. But there are forces of fear and anxiety at work in our culture of en...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep XIV: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Part II (From Flight to Fight, the Evolution of Fear)
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fear comes to play an important role in an over-stimulated culture of entertainment such as ours. In this episode, we explore the nature of fear and i...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep XIII: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Part I
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is even more relevant today than when first published in 1985. Its prem...
Red Pill Blue Pill, Part II: Imposter Syndrome and Life Beyond a Winning Strategy
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We all have a winning strategy to get what we want in life: an unconscious formula for success. It’s part of being human. And yet we can get stuck o...
Red Pill, Blue Pill: From Survival to Flourishing, Part I
08 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
All humans develop strategies for survival, not just physically but psychologically and emotionally. These strategies become our automatic, and even i...
Are You Happy Now? (And How to be Truly, Actually So)
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Are you happy right now? And what do we even mean when we use the word "happy"? Our society has implicit notions of what happiness is and how we attai...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep XII: Virtue Signaling and its Discontents
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Virtue signaling is another feature of a rule-keeping morality and the flip-side to our obsession with calling out the hypocrisy of others. Talk of it...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep XI: How Loneliness Drives Tribalism (and Why We Are Obsessed with Hypocrisy)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A central feature of a moral culture—like ours—which has caved to mere “rule-keeping” is an obsession with calling out the hypocrisy of others...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep X: Why the New "Morality" Creates Confusion and Dogmatism
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a culture with few moral narratives or frameworks—and in which there is increasing doubt that that human life can have any true purpose or meanin...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep IX: "Morality" by Rule-Keeping
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Virtue, classically speaking, meant doing the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way. It was highly contextual, requiring w...
New Episodes Coming in Two Weeks
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Because of a busy travel schedule (and so that episodes don't suffer in the midst of it), I'm taking a two-week pause from posting new episodes. When ...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep VIII: The Rise of Scapegoating
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With all the talk of cancel culture, we turn to an issue at the heart of our cultural crisis: the human penchant to blame and scapegoat as a means of ...
Good Grief III: The Necessity of Anger
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Grief done well means moving into wholeness, a process in which we become people who help heal the world around us. But how do we get there? In this t...
Good Grief II: A Rubric for Grieving Well
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If grieving well is so important to a flourishing life, how do we engage it? In this episode, we explore five practices (and a bonus practice) for gri...
Good Grief I: Where Joy and Sorrow Meet
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Grief is more than the loss of a loved one; it wears many faces and has many expressions. Nevertheless, grief can feel elusive, overwhelming, and misu...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep VII: Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood Cultures
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We counter polarization and anxiety with forgiveness and reconciliation. But we live in an emerging moral culture, called a Victimhood Culture, which ...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep VI: From Either-Or to Both-And
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Immaturity is marked by either-or, all-or-nothing, zero sum thinking…and our culture it steeped in it, especially in the form of false binaries. In ...
Every Bush is Burning (5 Practices to Train Your Brain and Raise Your Awareness)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In our over-stimulated world, experiencing anxiety in the form of racing thoughts and a spun-out mind is a pervasive reality. We humans already have a...
Our Cultural Crisis V: The Amish Don't Have Insurance
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1970s, America’s sense of community, measured in “social capital,” has steadily declined, resulting in what sociologists sometimes cal...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep IV: Is Michael Jordan Happy?
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Defining happiness—let alone what leads to it—is difficult, and yet the quest for happiness is at the heart of our modern cultural ethos. In this ...
Navigating Regret
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Regret is looking back and wishing something had been different—a different choice made or a different path taken. And it is often linked to shame. ...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep III: The Rise of the Enthroned Self
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore how notions of personal freedom have changed over the last 400 years, post-Enlightenment, creating a new notion of the sel...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep II: Same Words, Different Language
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Progressives and conservatives mis-understand each other's morality, that much is clear. But what exactly do they misunderstand? In this episode, we e...
Our Cultural Crisis Ep I: What Is Happening Here?
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do we understand the rise in anxiety, polarization, and division in the US? More to the point, how do we name it so that we can transcend it and l...
How Do We Change Our Habits?
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There’s an ancient paradigm for how we build our character: our desire for change can be funneled into practices. Practices, consistently engaged, ...
How Do We Change Our Thinking?
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Every issue we face in life is, to some degree, a factor of how we think. Even how we frame issues, whether we see it as a problem or an opportunity, ...
Coming Soon: The Naming the Real Podcast
28 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas