Purpose and Depression
Today's is the first episode in the nine-part series "How Purpose Heals Depression," a series based on my book The Van Gogh Blues, which has just appeared in paperback. In this series we look at the relationships among creativity, meaning, and depression and answer some fundament... Read More
Existential Magic
Today's show is the ninth in a series called "The Art of Making Meaning," a series that introduces the idea that meaning is not something to seek or something to find but rather something to make. Today's show is called "Existential Magic" and focuses on the idea that people pref... Read More
Advice for Believers
Today&’s show is the eighth in a series called "The Art of Making Meaning," a series that introduces the idea that meaning is not something to seek or something to find but rather something to make. Today&’s show is called "Advice for Believers" and focuses on the ide... Read More
Meeting Internal Objections II
Today's show is the seventh in a series called "The Art of Making Meaning," a series that introduces the idea that meaning is not something to seek or something to find but rather something to make. Today's show is called "Meeting Internal Objections to Meaning-Making" and focuse... Read More
Meeting Internal Objections I
Today's show is the sixth in a series called "The Art of Making Meaning," a series that introduces the idea that meaning is not something to seek or something to find but rather something to make. Today's show is called "Meeting Internal Objections to Meaning-Making" and focuses ... Read More
The Subjectivity of Meaning
In the fifth episode of the "art of making meaning" series, we look at why meaning is always subjective and never objective, and what that implies for personal meaning-making. The hunt for objective meaning is a source of depression, whereas an acceptance of the subjectivity of m... Read More
Creating Personal Meaning
When our younger daughter came home from college one year she gave me a coffee mug as a present. The motto on the coffee mug read: "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." "Isn't that your philosophy in a nutshell?" she laughed. She was exactly right.... Read More
Life Purpose Statement
Today's show is the third in a series called "The Art of Meaning Making," a series that introduces the idea that meaning is not something to seek or something to find but rather something to make. Meaning is a series of decisions, one after another for as long as we live, about w... Read More
Terrain
Having received zero training in meaning-making, having never heard the phrase, billions of people worldwide move from commute to drudgery to commute to dinner and a few drinks, relentlessly shut down and fairly empty-headed, not because they don't have a brain, a heart, and othe... Read More
Getting Started
Tens of millions of Americans like you—thoughtful, sensitive, book-reading Americans who bought and read Sam Harris's The End of Faith, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and who keep books like Vik... Read More