Today, I had a conversation with Fengzheng Gao. Fengzheng is a researcher specializing in Microalgal Biotechnology, and he holds two doctorates, one in Bioprocess Engineering and another one in Aquatic Product Processing and Storage Engineering. He has contributed to over 20 scientific publications. We talked about the potential of microalgae in op…

Abel Abelson, a neurodivergent writer and YouTuber, has navigated the unique challenges of being distinct from the majority, on which our conversation focuses mainly. He was recognized by Mensa with an IQ of 133, which places him in the 98th percentile in terms of cognitive ability. Today we talked about whether every problem can be solved through …

Today I am joined by my friend Abdi. In this conversation we talked about: that what causes suffering is the interpretation of the facts, not the facts themselves, framing free will as the ability to ditch a vice, how we don't choose to choose-proving the inexistence of free will as unconstrained decisions, how uncaused behavior is an incoherent co…

Today I had a conversation with Lukas S, he is a personal coach that focuses on human performance and mindset training. Check him out on Instagram at ⁠⁠otokstrength⁠⁠ or online at ⁠⁠otokstrength.com⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠theprotocol.life⁠⁠ We talked about how complaining is useless but it feels good to us, how finding common ground with people who believe opposi…

Today I had the pleasure to have a conversation with Harvey Silverglate, he is an American attorney, author, and civil liberties advocate. He is best known for his work in defending individual rights and freedom of speech. Silverglate has been involved in numerous high-profile cases and has written extensively on issues related to civil liberties a…

Victor Dover is an innovator in city planning, neighborhood design and street design, he serves as president of the Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade and as a board member of the National Recreation & Parks Association. We talk about how the cost of car dependency is hidden from the individual by governmental subsidies, how the promised ‘’car freedom’…

Today I had a conversation with David E. Feldman, he is an author of mysteries, crime fiction and the occasional standalone novel, which might be called literary fiction, historical drama or family saga.David has overcome drug addiction, spinal problems that were heading for paralysis, 2 hip replacements, intestinal resection with colostomy and can…

I am joined today by my friend Emilio to discuss the inevitable end of our journey, the value of noticing your own mortality, the dichotomy between life and death, the process of appreciating things and people while they are around us, the need for acting in a virtuous manner while we can, how the Stoics dealt with death and whether developing an o…

Jeevan Matharu is a wealth management partner at True Potential LLP and transformational coach at Vanquish transformational coaching. We discussed limiting thoughts, imposter syndrome, unconditional commitments leading to deeper consequences(as in marriage, the externalization of justice through the legal system and not stealing organs) not foresee…

My good friend Luca joins me to discuss the difference between what FEELS good and what IS good, a doughnut feels good but is not good(in the long term), our feelings fool us. We talk about the trueness and fakeness of different feelings which is in the bullseye of effective altruism’s principal flaw: that what feels the best when doing good is not…

I am joined by my friend Patric for a second time (we discussed what failure is on a previous occasion)to discuss the limits of self-improvement and why everyone should try it. Improving yourself is actually worth the effort. We talk about how dopamine is the ultimate currency, that discipline is consistently doing what is known to be good even if …

Roman Mironov is a coach, he helps men get their act together by getting them out of their porn addiction, he himself wasted many years addicted to porn. You don’t have to make his same mistake. Roman and I talked about: 1: How porn is to sex as McDonald’s is to food. 2: That any male can now see more naked females in 1 day than kings did in their …

Brett Hoffstadt is an aerospace Engineer, Innovator and a prolific Author. His books are mainly focused in inspiring children’s curiosity in STEM fields, he has authored titles such as "Exploring Smart Cities for Kids","Goodnight Moon Base" and "How To Be a Rocket Scientist: 10 Powerful Tips to Enter the Aerospace Field and Launch the Career of You…

I explain in this bonus episode my views on how incompatible simultaneously stating that a public library and copyright laws are a good thing is. It is socially accepted for public libraries to exist so that in principle everyone has access to any book without paying for it in the moment, but this is not coherent with another belief that society si…

Jan Goss is the Founder of Show Up Well Consulting, an Austin based firm specializing in personal and professional development. On this episode we talked about grief, the process of healing from it, how achieving success in spite of social pressure dragging you to mediocrity can happen if you have enough drive and know how to play your cards, what …

I am joined today by Dr. Jay Garfield, Jay is a professor in the humanities, philosophy, logic and buddhist studies at Smith College, he specialized in Tibetan Buddhism, the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics and hermeneutics, he is also a visiting professor for buddhist philosophy at Ha…

Victoria is an Internal Medicine Physician, she claims that medicine is how we eat, think, feel, our relationships and more, that there’s no one pill solution. During her first 6 months of residency she quickly realized that traditional medicine was not addressing the root of the problem. She became intrigued in addressing the root of the problem t…

On this occasion I chat with Chef Dennis over food, its omnipresence among all cultures due to the shared biology of the human condition, how the obesity epidemic could be ameliorated returning to the diet of our grandparents, the importance of taking into account personal differences when looking for the optimal diet, the unfortunate fact that the…

Mark Henick is a mental health activist and advocate, author, host and public speaker who has appeared on tv, radio and online podcasts on multiple occasions, he is especially well known for his popular TedX talk on YouTube which now has had more than 6 million views. We talk about: Suicide, why some people choose it and how to avoid it, the meanin…

Julius H. Grey is a Canadian lawyer and university professor, he was born in Poland. He is particularly known for his expertise in constitutional and human rights law. He is a senior partner at the law firm Grey Casgrain, s.e.n.c. I talk with Julius about the importance of freedom of speech in correcting incorrect thoughts-opinions, the threats to …

Peter Christian was an engineer, consultant and teacher of management, worked in Crayola Corporation and he is also the author of two business books Influences and Influencers: How Our Relationships Affect and Shape Us and What About the Vermin Problem: A Guide to Avoiding Damaging Business Practices. We chat over why businesses succeed or fail, po…

US citizens spend double per capita than most of the Europeans do on healthcare. Far from being due to the inherent nature of free markets and the corruptness of capitalism, this is due to unfair privileges given to pharmaceutical companies by the regulators and the externalization of costs and the internalization of benefits (like overeating when …

Steve Braker is an author of a series of 5 books, was born in the United Kingdom but his desire for adventure drove him 20 years ago to Mombasa, Kenya. We discuss the differences between western and central african countries, from the economy, safety nets, police, corruption, infrastructure, to governance. Steve’s Web Page Buy Steve’s Books Follow …

Paul Matt Sutter is an Astrophysicist, podcast host and science communicator. The universe is big, but how big? Well... how does 8.8×10^26 m in diameter feel? Alienating? Good! That's why I am today accompanied by Sutter to put into perspective how bizarre the universe is. In this conversation we cover the cosmic microwave background and how the bi…

Avigail Gimpel is an author, mother of six and special educator. She has examined the current research relating to ADHD and has conducted 25 years of her own research, culminating in her book ''HyperHealing: The Empowered Parent’s Complete Guide to Raising a Healthy Child with ADHD Symptoms'' We discuss parenting, how on many occasions medical pres…

Terry Tucker has been a SWAT Hostage Negotiator and Hospital administrator, he is currently an author, father of 2 and as he likes calling it a ''Cancer Warrior''. There is much more nuance in life than we would like to admit, in this conversation Terry and I go through a wide range of topics, from endurance to meaning to conflict of interests in p…

Noah Healy is a recreational mathematician that has developed CDM(Coordinated Discovery Markets), this new method has the potential to substantially reduce the cost overheads of commodity trading in the market, he is the first person in centuries to offer an alternative to the system which rules large-scale markets, in this episode we discuss the f…

What is it that makes something good or bad? Are we all condemned to interpret our intuitive perceptions (built through natural selection)of what ought to be done as either Good or Evil? In this episode Baer joins me to reflect over what the origin of our moral perceptions is. We talk about the morality in relationship to determinism and how being …

We all know that state in which time seems to fly by while you are achieving at the highest rate, that is Flow State and it has a lot to do with not being aware of being aware of what you are doing, it's just doing in the purest form, 0 abstractions from what you are doing. The State of Flow is highly joyful and makes what you are doing seem really…

Modifying your speech deliberately in order to conceal a deeper intent, to gather further information about the state of other people or to adapt the message to the intended purpose is a widely used technique that is mainly used implicitly, in this episode Baer and Alex discuss the topic with a critical perspective. There are situations in which th…

Do beauty standards vary with time? If this is the case… What is the standard that encompasses all of them? Baer and I present here a theory that makes sense of the subjective sense of beauty, social trends and the status signaling through an evolutionary lens relating to the seeking of fitness maximization. Even if this is in the expense of collec…

Why is it that we develop imposter syndrome? Why would nature equip us with the common feeling that we are not well prepared to deal with the situation we are facing? In this conversation with life coach Denise Garrett we discuss the origin of feeling inadequate, how society expects us to be consistent with previous performance, generating a self-f…

Robert Boog, is the author of 7 books among which ''Shakey's Madness: Does a Mental Disorder Reveal the "Real" William Shakespeare?'' is located, he bravely posits the thesis that Shakespeare was only a pen name to avoid backlash from contemporary royalty, backed by rigorous evidence gathered by the aforementioned author. Boog started considering t…

Germinal G. Van is an author, economist, political scientist, and scholar. He is a member of the National Association of Business Economics and the Economic History Association. His works mainly focus on Public Choice Theory, Economic History, Econometrics, Statistics, and Mathematical Economics. He has written more than a dozen books in Economic H…

I am accompanied by Phil Ladbrook on this occasion, he is a professional English teacher with experience in marketing, he has resided in the Basque Country for 20 years. We discuss: The process of skill acquisition, how engagement is vital for it, what hinders and what helps the process backed by prolonged experience in english teaching from the pa…

Does karma exist? Is Moral Nihilism true? Is dogmatism always something bad? Alex Buxeda and Emilio discuss in this episode the existence of karma, the surprising rigor of moral nihilism, what it leads to, its unlivableness and dogma as the antidote to the perpetual skepticism, itself an antidote to moral nihilism.…

Brad Seeman is a PhD in philosophy and an associate professor at Taylor university. Seeman’s own areas of research include metaethical questions about the ways in which God grounds moral obligations, difficulties facing Materialists who seek to ground objective moral obligations in a world without God, and how Christians can respond to the tough qu…

In this episode I am accompanied by Patric Schiess in order to discuss the meaning of failure and how this is a relative perception of the accomplishment of one's ambitions which are highly influenced by our social environment and to what we (as a social animal) perceive will contribute status to our inner out of phase ancestral 24h-status-counter,…

When it comes to approaching problems we tend to dogmatically assume that either empiricism or rationalism is the proper way to go, I question this natural bipartisan assumption in order to favor staying alert for nuances that will favor one system vs the other depending on the situation, requiring criteria in order to distinguish successfully what…

What can be attributed to our general inadequacy when it comes to do the ''right'' things and avoid doing the ''bad'' things? In this episode my friend Emilio and I do a deep dive into how the lack of complex and intangible concepts in the evolutionary process leading to us caused our current incapacity to do the things we know are good but require…

Me and my friend Emilio argue about the third category that most things fall into when it comes to judging things in terms of Fairness, this third option is non-intuitive due to our predisposition to judge things as being binary(as in fair or unfair). The third category: the lack of fairness or unfairness(or extrajudicial), takes into account that …

Are atheists left without meaning by ditching the meaning-building machine of religion?Does life have any ultimate value?Is the scientific method the way to go in order to defeat our biases and achieve truth?Can we create our own meaning out of the apparent meaninglessness of life?What is the value standard from which we start for judging things in…

In this episode my friend Baer and I talked about what rationality is, the impossibility of being rational without taking into account other people's irrationality in order to achieve your goals, how the ego is detrimental to your long term flourishing and how it is correlated with the influence the instinct has in our lives and our willingness to …

The existence of altruism as doing something selflessly is discussed deeply in this episode by my good friend Baer and me.Our theses are not too misaligned as we both agree on most of the nuances, but we came to new conclusions and were able to distill the essence of the debate.By Alex Buxeda