Speaking Generally

George and Steve catch up before George heads on a road trip across the good old USA! Topics include: - Steve's new YouTube channel (check it out + subscribe!) - Elena Ferrante's "Days of Abandonment" - What to call fiction when it's based on real life - Bo Burnham's Inside

A Guardian article recently claimed that bookish men are at a premium on dating sites. What does this mean for our bibliomaniac hosts? Plus, Steve worries he's spreading himself too thin...

Steve takes a writing class, and we ask whether creative work is worth it if you don't think it will be successful.

It's Spring, and Steve just finished speaking on a virtual retreat. In this episode, we talk: - Tips on public speaking (and why it matters) - Thoughts on millenial house buying vs. investing - VR and the future of live events - Understanding the Western mindset through the recent book "The Weirdest People In The World" --- Email us at shhussey@gmail.com Follow Steve on Instagram: @stephenhhussey

Sometimes it takes art to reflect the deepest truths of our lives back to us. And nowhere is this more true than the challenges of relationships. Join us for a talk about favourite relationships in books and what we might dare to learn from them. -- Books mentioned: Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee) Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh) The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Possession (A.S. Byatt) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Phillip K. Dick) Alone in Berlin (Hans Fallada) Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) Normal People (Sally Rooney) Northern Lights Trilogy (Phillip Pullman)

Our 30 days are up...so it's time to check the results. Did we stick to our new habits? What have we learnt going forward into the rest of 2021? Also... George has also been crashing through EVERY Best Picture winning movie since 1950. Which are his top recommendations, and what are the great stinkers? Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and Stitcher. And don't forget to join our mailing list at SpeakingGenerally.com!

Maybe you think you know what virtues make for a good person: - Kindness - Moral courage - Honesty But do we all ACTUALLY agree on what makes for praiseworthy character? And are some of these values restrictive and overrated? Join us for a chat as we wrestle with Aristotle and grapple with the problem of goodness. Follow Stephen (@stephenhhussey) on Instagram and let us know your thoughts.

How do you decide what to read? Should you go 50/50 with fiction vs. non-fiction? Is it better to be led by your gut, or plan your books in advance? We talk all this and more in this new booky-wooky episode!

At the end of bad things, you can always begin something new. So that's what we're gonna do. We talk about 4 brand new habits we want to adopt for January to control our own precious little slice of 2021.

It's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid...

Another lockdown? Another podcast. Join us as we talk: - How to "get hunkered" - Books we recommend for being cozy - American candy favourites

Steve knows what it's like to struggle with weight. George is worried he's eating too much in lockdown. Together, we talk about: - How Steve went from chubby boy to healthy man - Why "identity" matters in getting yourself to exercise - The importance of deciding what body weight works for YOU - The 80/20 rule applied to snacks - Health advice from Warren Buffet

It's time for a change, so one of our heroes had up and moved to the ol' USA.

The four burners theory says you have four areas of focus in life: 1. work 2. family 3. health 4. friends But can you have them all? Is trying to achieve perfect balance the path to the good life, as suggested by the Greeks and Confucian wisdom? Or is sacrifice necessary to do great things with our time on earth? Let's weigh the scales and balance out the arguments!

We're back! Some personal events have kept us away, but here we are, gently easing back in for a cozy podcast chat. We talk: - George's COVID wedding (at last!) - What wins and loses after COVID - London life after lockdown - favourite recent books and TV in 2020

"Millenials are work-shy, entitled cry-babies" "Boomers are narcissistic, entitled and greedy" We've heard the stereotypes. But how true are they? Does it help to define attitudes by generations? And how much can we escape conforming to the stereotypes of the group we belong to? Join us, and email at shhussey@gmail.com to let us know your thoughts on the podcast!

Lockdown. Day 9313911309135097. Here's how we're spending it.

Is it good to live in your own world? Will you be happier and healthier if you just ignore all the things that annoy you: politics, irritating family/friends, people who don't "get" you, activities you don't care about? We look at economist Bryan Caplan's case for living in your own bubble and discuss if it's a good idea for health and happiness.

Will coronavirus change the world? It already has. But where will we be a year from now? How will we behave when lockdown finally ends? And has the future of business, lifestyle, and relationships changed drastically following this once-in-a-lifetime "black swan" event? Join us for the big chat. And wash your hands.

Stuck at home in the time of corona? Not much we can do about that unfortunately. But what we CAN do is find ways to be productive when working from our desk, setting our own hours, and maximizing our output with simple habits and knowledge of what makes us most productive. And now is a time like no other to learn practices of self-discipline and motivation essential to thriving outside the typical office environment! Have a listen to our newest favourite productivity tips and let us know which work best for you! (Looks like we could all be at home for a while anyway, right?)

You may believe you make rational choices about what to eat, where to live, whom to date, and how much money to spend on chocolate. But for all our intelligence, we humans make flawed decisions EVERY DAY due to common biases that trip us up if we're not conscious of them. Here are 7 of the most common cognitive biases and what you can do to avoid them.

Career, love, social life: are all these things easier if you're socially gregarious and feel energized around people? Or are there hidden superpowers to being an introvert that go under-valued? Join us as we wrestle with the pros and cons on introvert personalities, including: - The struggle for introverts to get their needs met in love and relationships - Dating apps as an asset for shy-types - Friendships and offices for introvert vs. extrovert - The increasing "indoorsyness" of modern life Subscribe on iTunes and leave a review!

There are many reasons for you to want an Oscar: prestige, praise from your peers, ticket sales, sexual attention... But are awards a good thing for everyone else? Or do they allow incompetent arbiters of taste to over-inflate certain kinds of art over other more deserving ones? And who the hell decided that awards should be so political? We sink our teeth into the good, the bad, and the ugly of cultural awards, and try to decide what, if anything, makes them valuable.

Is it good to "stick it out" when things get difficult? Sometimes. But it can also be better to just quit! Some pursuits waste our time, careers get stale, or we extract all the value out of a hobby and now see diminishing returns. So in this episode, we talk about the biggest things we've given up, the benefits/struggles or quitting, and what makes it worth sticking with difficult projects.

Our culture tends to place ambitious people on a pedestal: Napoleon, Elon Musk, Kanye West. And yet, ambition has also been the cause of many great tragedies and follies throughout history. We question the value of ambition. What makes it noble? What does it cost in terms of love and friendship? And can you find a way to have ambition in your life without it going too far? Or is it simply the price one pays for worldly success?

We all know Hollywood is obsessed with taking valuable Intellectual Property and turning it into movies. And nowhere is this more common than turning books into films. But adaptation is a medium as old as the hills. Many opera's are based on Shakespearean plays and epic poems, plays are based on histories, paintings adapt scenes from the Bible... So in this episode, we look at the best and worst instances of adaptation in movies, and try to pinpoint exactly what gets gained and lost when going from film to screen.

2020 is here. One of our resolutions last year was to see and live in more new countries, and we actually did a pretty good job of it! Now Steve is back from his Asia trip so we decided to talk about the value of travel. What do you learn from seeing lots of countries in a short space of time? What parts of travel overrated? And how do you make the most of a long trip?

Japan seems to have been enjoying a resurgence of interest here in the West over the last few years. And since we're both flying out to Tokyo REAL soon, we thought we'd discuss the art and culture that first plunged us into the world of Japan and its unique aesthetic and philosophical outlook.

If you know us, you'll know we can't stop talking about books. But instead of talking about what we read, today we're going to examine HOW we read. Topics include: - How to find books you love - How to STOP reading things you don't - Who to ask for recommendations - Whether it's worth struggling to the end of difficult/boring books We all strive to learn more and get more books under our belt. These are some of our personal habits that have helped keep us on track over the years.

We're back from our summer "break". We talk about Steve's observations from being on tour talking dating in the USA, why we're STILL in peak "nostalgia porn", and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Plus, George digs into Taylor Swift's new album and gives us his verdict.

Steve has become fairly obsessed with how he spends his time since turning 30. One way we frame out decisions more and more as we get older is trying to avoid doing (or NOT doing) things we'll regret later on. But is this healthy? Is it a useful decision-making tool, or is it too paralyzing to try and predict what your future self will think 10, 20, 30 years from now? Join us for a chat about how to make life decisions - or forever regret it...

No matter how far we've progressed as a society, being single beyond a certain age carries some kind of social stigma. We all know relationships can be amazing (when they're good at least). But why can't being single also be great? The cultural story tells us: “Your life will finally make total sense when you meet the right person.” Actually, it’s even worse than that. It says: “Get a relationship, or else your life won’t have meaning.” Yikes. We dive in and argue why being single DOESN'T mean you're behind in life, and show how you can actually enjoy being unattached, even if you're looking for a long-term relationship for the future.

How is it possible to get 1 billion YouTube views and still have the average person not know who you are? Is there an official "mainstream" in popular culture anymore, or does everyone live in their own small bubbles on the internet? We talk about mass popularity, the value of a monoculture, and whether tv shows/movies/music can be culturally important if hardly anyone knows about them.

How do you feel when people in real life speak like a Twitter post? Do you shudder when someone says, "They're #goalz" at the dinner table? Or when your friend describes her partner as "bae" over a coffee? At the risk of sounding older than our 30-odd years, we debate the constantly annoying creep of internet language into everyday speech. Is Twitter-speak just an evolution of language? Or a sign of infantilised adults talking like 15 year old children? Let's #SpillTheTea and talk about it!

Would you quit doing something you love if you sucked at it? Why? Humiliation? Frustration? Embarrassment? Is it possible to LOVE a hobby for it's own sake, and find value in it's pursuit that transcends mere improvement? Maybe if we give up the pressure to be great at everything we can just be happier and enjoy it more. So here's the question: when was the last time you bravely tried something knowing you might fall on your face and SUCK? We sit down to talk about learning points from Karen Rinaldi's fascinating book, "(It's Great To) Suck At Something", and figure out why sucking is ok, how to let go of ego, and what can be gained from failure.

So, George isn't entirely sold on the idea of gratitude. So it's up to Steve to sell it to him. Is being grateful a symptom of middle class smugness? Can people in the worst circumstances really look for the positives? We discuss the benefits of gratitude, whether you have to be spiritual to practice it, and why the law of attraction is terrible.

Not every big ol' book is worth the struggle, but some are hearty banquets full of sublime prose, rich themes, cognitive insight, sex, death, all that good stuff. So here are our top BIG books to feast on this summer!

Do you want to get back into fiction reading? Looking for some quick summer reading to add to your book list? Here's our list of short, punchy fiction we love that doesn't waste your time!

It's finally time. Dating apps, hookup culture, being single vs. being in a relationship. We talk about what's difficult about modern dating, why it feels different in 2019, and what you can do about it.

Big book trilogies, eight season-long tv series, movies that require you to see twenty films to see the whole story. Is everything getting too long and bloated in an impatient world? Should art get to the point quicker to save us time? We debate the merits of short vs. long storytelling, getting to the point...and of course, the new Sonic the Hedgehog trailer!

Episode #15 - How To Focus, Best New Music of 2019, Avengers: Endgame by Stephen Hussey and George Taylor

We talk about Netflix vs. Disney streaming apps, our favourite new TV shows, and the state of the Marvel Cinematic universe...also Star Wars.

Talk doesn't have to be cheap. Especially when conversation is such a big part of life. We chat about annoying conversational habits, ways to be more interesting when meeting new people, and how to better connect with people you love.

Let's talk about what NOT to do with your life! Or at least, how to improve a bit with every decade. We talk about our biggest lessons and mistakes from the last 10 years in the realms of love, career, fashion-sense, and more...

Another booky episode for you readers out there! We talk about what we've read recently, and give our list of "books-to-read" from our current pile.

Episode #10 - 9 Non-Fiction Books That Will Change The Way You Think by Stephen Hussey and George Taylor

The first of what may end up several conversations on happiness. We talk about the danger of comparing success, letting go of other people's expectations, and what we've learnt over the last 10 years to enjoy life more.

The Oscars are over. Awards have been handed out. Awkward speeches have been made. But which films throughout history really deserve these accolades? Are there movies that critics and audiences LOVED that DON'T deserve their place in cinematic history? Get your popcorn, get cozy, and join us on a discussion about our most overrated movies (past and present). Then let us know what your choices are!

Do you find it hard to get things done? Struggling to finish that creative project or make time for important work? We share some of our own struggles as well as our favourite techniques and tricks for staying productive in a world of constant distraction.

Episode #6 - Albums That Define Us, 5 Years At A Time... by Stephen Hussey and George Taylor

We saw a bunch of films last year. So we sat down to compare notes and see what made our "best of" list. Plus, appropriately, Steve heads to Hollywood...