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Mindfulness for the Thinking Mind. A soothing, soporific voice with which to calm and center yourself. Episodes on themes as diverse as walking, sleeping, stretching, anxiety, worldly possessions, positive affirmations, lunch hours, and morning commutes. Meditations and sleep stories for every occasion at any stage of life. From Shakespeare to the Stoics, Coleridge to the Platonists, the Buddha to the Transcendentalists, we'll borrow our wisdom from the best who have ever thought, and streng ...
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Finneran's Wake

Daniel Ethan Finneran

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Finneran’s Wake – where the ART OF CONVERSATION lives. Here, no topic is untouchable, no idea inadmissible, and no one too heretical to be heard. As the great French essayist Montaigne once said, “To my taste, the most fruitful and natural exercise of our minds is CONVERSATION. I find the practice of it the most delightful activity in our lives”. It certainly is the most delightful activity in my life. I want it to be so in yours as well. To that end, I humbly welcome you to my channel. Here ...
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Wondrous tales of heroes and myths for your child’s enlightenment (and your entertainment!) Gather your little ones, ready your minds, and join me, as we embark together (all of us!—parents included!) on fantastic adventures in distant lands. Here, on Finneran’s Wake, you’ll find THE greatest stories ever told, the stories passed down from one generation to the next since the dawn of time, by which our great culture has been raised, and your child will be too.
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“Distracted from distraction by distraction” Look around: we’re in an inescapable loop of distraction. How do we liberate ourselves from this endless cycle? Borrowing from the great poet TS Eliot, this episode offers some advice. I hope that it’s helpful! Check out my sister channel Finneran’s Wake for profound, long-form conversations. Like, subsc…
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“As I in hoary winter night stood shivering in the snow, Surprised was I with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near A Pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear.” Robert Southwell I hope that you enjoy this bite-sized Pneuma Nugget! Please consider sharing this episode with a frie…
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John Eisenberg is a sports columnist and an author. His latest book, Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football is an eye-opening account of the history of black quarterbacks in the NFL. It’s available for purchase everywhere books are sold. In this episode, John and I discuss: The intersection of race and sports; Is the NFL…
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“A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it”. - George Moore I hope that you enjoy this bite-sized Pneuma Nugget! Please consider sharing this episode with a friend and subscribing to the channel for more sleep stories, meditations, and soothing content! Visit my YouTube page @pneumabydanielfinneran. Email me at …
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“We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others…” Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, inventor, and philosopher, came to this realization about humankind in the 17th century. It remains as true today as it was back then. In this episode, we discuss li…
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Marcus Collins is a marketer, cultural translator, professor, and an author. His first book, For the Culture: The power behind what we buy, what we do, and who we want to be is now available for purchase. I strongly recommend it! In this episode, Marcus and I discuss: The definition of “culture”; The difference between “fast” and “slow” culture; Is…
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Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was a Polish-English novelist. He was born in 1857 and died in 1924. His twenty years spent as a sailor in the British merchant navy inspired many of his literary works, among which Heart of Darkness is most highly acclaimed. In this episode of “Fall Asleep with Me”, I read this work’s opening s…
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James Ellman is an investor and author. His latest book, “MacArthur Reconsidered” treats its subject in a refreshingly unbiased way. With a steady hand, James carves away the hero-worship, and leaves us with a true picture of America’s most controversial general, the iconic Douglas MacArthur. For those of you interested in military history and poli…
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The inspiration for this episode is a sonnet–a Shakespearean sonnet–with which you’re unlikely to be familiar; Sonnet 30, you see, isn’t commonly ranked among Shakespeare’s finest works. It’s neither read to romantic lovers, inscribed on elegant tombstones, nor quoted in popular films. Indeed, you’ll very seldom hear a recitation of its fourteen fo…
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Scott Shane is a reporter, a research fellow, a lecturer, and an author. His latest book, Flee North, tells the story of the two men responsible for freeing hundreds of enslaved people and establishing the Underground Railroad: Thomas Smallwood and Charles Turner Torrey. In this episode, Scott and I discuss: Thomas Smallwood; Charles Turner Torrey;…
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Dean King is an author, a journalist, and a documentarian. His latest book, Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that saved Yosemite is available at all reputable booksellers. This book, of which I strongly urge you all to get a copy, tells the fascinating story of John Muir, Robert Underwood Johnson, and their historic effort to p…
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“How interesting (it is) to trace the history of a single raindrop!” In this guided meditation, we’ll join the American outdoorsman, conservationist, and writer John Muir as we contemplate the dramatic life story of a single raindrop. Muir was a man of extraordinary depth. In this episode, we’ll accompany him to lofty poetic heights–high, in fact, …
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Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 - 1965) was an Anglo-American poet. A devout Christian, Eliot was an important figure in the Modernist movement that sprang to life in the first quarter of the 20th century. "Four Quartets", a uniquely sublime work by which all his other poems are eclipsed, addresses the theme of time. It's a theme on which, as you doubtl…
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Logan Wright is the founder of Greco Gum. Greco Gum sells a premium mastic gum sourced from the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean Sea. Chewed since time immemorial, mastic gum offers a plethora of health and aesthetic benefits: it satiates hunger, cleanses the teeth, sharpens the mind, strengthens the muscles of mastication (those with which you …
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John Banks is an author, editor, a journalist, and a Civil War aficionado. His latest book, A Civil War Road Trip of a Lifetime is now available for purchase! The book is a really fun travelogue-cum-history that you’ll definitely want to add to your shelf. In this wide-ranging episode, John and I discuss: Being an aficionado v. being an academic; E…
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Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Toward the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. This is an excerpt from the first poem of TS Eliot’s masterpiece, “Four Quartets”. It is, in my opinion, the most memorable part of “Burnt Norton”. In this episode, we’re going to meditate on the theme that Eliot presents: Regre…
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Martin Hogue is an author, architect, and a professor at Cornell University. Martin’s latest book, Making Camp: A Visual History of Camping’s Most Essential Items and Activities is available everywhere fine books are sold. I can assure you, this conversation will inspire you to unfold your tent, unroll your sleeping bag, throw some logs on the fire…
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Alan Paul is an author, a journalist, and a musician. He was the founding member of the Beijing-based blues group, Woodie Alan, for which he served as the frontman. Along with a delightful autobiography about his life as an expat living in China, Alan has written oral histories about Stevie Ray Vaughn and The Allman Brothers Band. His latest work, …
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Charlotte Brontë (nom de plume "Currer Bell") was an English novelist. She lived between 1816 - 1855. She was the eldest (and most gifted) of an immensely talented trio of sisters, which included Emily and Anne. Her most famous work, “Jane Eyre” is also one of the finest in the English language. In this episode of “Fall Asleep With Me”, I read one …
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“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.” In Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 masterpiece, “Jane Eyre”, Mr. Rochester issues this stark warning to young Jane, the novel’s titular character and heroine. In this episode, we’ll focus on remorse, contrast it with regret, and implement techniques to relieve us of its …
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Scott Schilke is a photographer who specializes in capturing breathtaking images of rocket ships, race cars, and extreme weather events. At the youthful age of sixty-two, after having worked in property management for four decades, Scott spurned retirement and embarked upon a new career. When all his buddies were slipping into the long-deferred idl…
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Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. She is the author of many books, including Why Trust Science?, The Collapse of Western Civilization, Merchants of Doubt (upon which an acclaimed documentary was based), and, her most recent work, The Big Myth. Professor Oreskes is a veritable mine of i…
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J. Randy Taraborrelli is an author, editor, reporter, journalist, and biographer whose latest work, “Jackie: Public, Private, Secret” is now available for purchase. (For what it’s worth, I strongly encourage you to get yourself a copy!) Some of Randy’s other popular works include, Madonna: An Intimate Biography; Jackie, Janet, and Lee; The Hiltons;…
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Sally Fallon Morell is an author, a farmer, a businesswoman, and the founder of multiple organizations dedicated to human flourishing. And how, as humans, do we flourish, you might ask? Simple: it all begins with our nutrition! Inspired by the under-acknowledged genius of Dr. Weston A. Price, Sally has popularized the “Wise Traditions” Diet, a natu…
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Join me for an Alternate Nostril Breathing Session! This simple breathing technique, to which I commit a few minutes every single day, is deceptively powerful. Not only does it invigorate me with fresh oxygen and vital energy, but it helps to balance my body–the left side with the right. This episode is a simple tutorial to which anyone can follow …
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George Eliot (the manly nom de plume behind which Mary Ann Evans cloaked her true identity) was an English novelist. She lived between 1819-1880. Her most famous work, “Middlemarch” is also one of the finest in the English language. In this episode of “Fall Asleep With Me”, I read one of my favorite scenes: that in which Will Ladislaw and Dorothea …
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Dr. Robert Kiltz is a physician, businessman, YouTuber, potter, pilot, and poet. (I challenge you to repeat those last three words as quickly as you can without stumbling!) One of America’s leading experts on the Carnivore Diet (of which he’s been both an advocate and adherent for the past decade), Dr. Kiltz has bravely questioned the dietary guide…
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Dan Levitt is a director, documentarian, and an author. His latest book, What’s Gotten Into You: The Story Of Your Body’s Atoms, From The Big Bang Through Last Night’s Dinner, is now available for purchase! For the promulgation of good science to the general public–in a format and a language that is accessible to all–we look, now more than ever, to…
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Barry Brown is an author, cowboy, horse breaker, bull rider, and rodeo competitor to whom the nickname, “The Bionic Bull Rider” has been, I think, very fittingly applied. Barry began competing as a bull rider at the tender age of 15. Despite its perils, he fell in love with the sport, in which he continued to participate (either as a competitor or …
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Reid Mitenbuler is an author, a journalist, and an Air Force veteran. His latest book, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, An Epic Journey, A Lost Age tells the untold story of the twentieth century’s most interesting man. Peter Freuchen was a Danish explorer, globetrotter, novelist, journalist, actor, and game show contestant. An imposingly large m…
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Alas... How quickly (and imperceptibly!) the years accrue! Before you know it, you're departing your second, and entering your third (or fourth, or fifth…) decade of life and wondering, as you pass another milestone, celebrate another birthday, and add another number to anno domini: "How should I tailor my fitness regimen to my (advancing) age?" In…
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The beard is back! Recurring (and undeniably burly) guest James Flood joins me to discuss the five most important things you can do outside the gym in order to optimize your performance once you re-enter. In brief, he advises you to focus on: 1. Hydration (with electrolytes) 2. Nutrition 3. Sun exposure 4. Cold exposure 5. Sleep Or if, like me, you…
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James Charney is a psychiatrist, cinephile, professor, and author. His latest book, “Madness at the Movies” examines the mental disorders by which Hollywood’s most infamously deranged characters (Travis Bickle from Scorcese’s “Taxi Driver”; Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s “Psycho”) are afflicted. The book, written for a popular audience, is an extens…
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What if you had to live your life not only once, but innumerable times over? Would this be a blessing? A curse? Would you delight in the opportunity to live it again? Or, if you haven't lived such a good life thus far, would you bewail the prospect? In his work, "The Gay Science", Friedrich Nietzsche explores this idea. He does so through his doctr…
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Welcome to Finneran’s Wake – where the ART OF CONVERSATION lives. Here, no topic is untouchable, no idea inadmissible, and no one too heretical to be heard. As the great French essayist Montaigne once said, “To my taste, the most fruitful and natural exercise of our minds is CONVERSATION. I find the practice of it the most delightful activity in ou…
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The concept of the Unimaginable “I” is one to which, so far as I can tell, the Czech-French writer, Milan Kundera, is chiefly responsible for having given life. Kundera, twice expelled from the Czech Communist Party (of which he was, in his youth, a devout member) published a book in 1984 entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being, about which I ta…
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I realized, while reflecting on the last few conversations of which I partook, that I twice made reference to one special book: “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera. Kundera, a Czech-French author who is (at the time of this posting) an incredible 94 years of age, is an extraordinary man. Twice expelled from the Czech Communist Part…
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Svetlana Slapšak is an author, editor, anthropologist, philologist, expert in gender studies and the history of the Balkans. Born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1948, she now resides and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Svetlana is the type of person to whom I could talk for hours: the breadth of her experiences is exceeded only by the depth of her reading (w…
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Glenn Ellmers is an author, journalist, political scientist, and fellow at the Claremont Institute. The late Harry Jaffa–of whom Glenn was a student–is the subject of his excellent 2021 book, The Soul of Politics (of which I strongly urge you to buy a copy!) His forthcoming work, The Narrow Passage, will be released in the Summer of 2023. Glenn is …
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Dan Willingham is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of many celebrated articles and books. His latest work, Outsmart Your Brain, offers invaluable advice for the student whose goal is to maximize his or her fullest learning potential. But you don’t have to be a student–enrolled at a prestigious university or an …
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zzzzZZZZzzzz 😴😴😴 Hello everyone! Welcome to this latest installment of “Fall Asleep With Me”. In this series, I read classic bedtime stories and great works of literature to which you can (and most assuredly WILL) fall asleep! Tonight’s episode is a sleepy, dream-inducing reading of “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh. Please subscribe to this c…
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Neema Naz is a comedian, an actor, and the creator of The Estupid Club and NeemaNazTV. This conversation–my first with a REAL, card-carrying comedian–was an absolute delight! Of course, if you’re among his quarter-million followers on Instagram, this will come as no surprise; Neema is not only an immensely talented actor, but a refreshingly candid …
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To breathe deeply into the abdomen with the diaphragm–that’s precisely the way in which Nature intended us to breathe! And yet… We’ve unlearned this simple technique (for which a remedial lesson is urgently needed!) Together, let’s relearn how to breathe properly. Follow along, and–within a few minutes’ time–you’ll significantly improve the quality…
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Edward Larson is a lawyer, historian, professor, and Pulitzer-Prize winning author. A distinguished professor at Pepperdine University, his most recent work, American Inheritance explores the tension between liberty and slavery in America’s founding era. In this episode, Professor Larson and I discuss: The importance of April 19th, the day on which…
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Since its inception in Autumn of 2022, Pneuma has accumulated 50,000 downloads (almost exclusively on Spotify)! I just want to take this opportunity to THANK everyone for supporting this channel and for helping our community grow. Behind every number is a person, a deeply complex and unique human being, to whom I extend my sincerest gratitude. It’s…
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In this inaugural episode of “Finn and Flood” (a segment focused on vitality, fitness, and wellbeing!), I sit down with my good pal, James Flood! Aside from being an all-around swell (*swole*) guy and a dear friend, James is one of the most knowledgeable trainers I know, with many years of experience in the gym upon which he never hesitates to draw…
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Are you ready? Here’s the secret: Gaining mastery over your emotions is as simple as replacing one word with another. When angry, do you say: “I am angry”? Try this: the next time that you’re visited by the emotion of anger, simply substitute the word “feel” for “am”. “I feel angry” is much different from “I am angry”. Feelings are fleeting. They a…
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Marty Gallagher is an author, powerlifter, trainer, and coach. Bearing nicknames such as the “Iron Monk”, the “Carefree Psychotic”, and the “Hibernian Hulk” (okay…I just made that last one up!) Marty is one of those rare specimens around whom legends are formed. A champion powerlifter before the age of twenty, Marty has spent the entirety of his ca…
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Grounding (or mindfully connecting your bare feet to the earth) is one of the simplest, least expensive, and most powerful things that you can do for your health. And guess what? With a little guidance, it’s something at which you can become an expert in just a few minutes’ time! In this episode, I’ll help you to become a “grounding” pro! I’ll lead…
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Noah Charney is an art historian, lecturer, author, and expert on art thievery. His latest book, The 12-Hour Art Expert, is the perfect entree for the layperson (like me!) who’s interested in learning more about art, but doesn’t quite know where to begin. It’s scholarly, but not abstruse; simple, but not condescending; thorough, but not tedious. Oh…
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