The Map of Everything Podcast

Memory is a central part of what makes us who we are. It is a necessary ingredient to having a sense of self. I sat down with Dr. Jarrod Lewis-Peacock to talk about his research on memory and forgetting. We talk about what memory is and how memories are stored in the brain as distributed networks of connections. He shares why some memories remain strong for a lifetime and others fade quickly. We discuss the power of emotion in memory and why memories get tied to particular senses like smell. And we also talk about Jarrod's winding path of exploration before landing in cognitive neuroscience studying memory. A linear career path is becoming less and less common and his perspective and story are valuable to anyone homing in on their own "thing". hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did- we'd love to hear what you thought. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

We have a strange disgust for bugs in the West. The truth is they're chock full of vital nutrients, they're economic, they resource efficient, and they can be prepared in all sorts of tasty ways. Plus, most humans have eaten them as a staple in the diet for ALL of our history. I sat down with Robert Nathan Allen, the founder and director of Little Herds, who educates kids on the value of eating bugs and supports businesses getting insect food products out to the market. This guy is awesome and we cover just about every angle of this. Listen and then get online and find some bug-based foods to order...and let us know what you think! I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did- we'd love to hear what you thought. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

Art Markman is a cognitive psychologist who studies human behavior, motivation, habits, and cognition. I had a fascinating conversation with Art about the adaptive purpose of our tendency towards habitual behavior and thinking, the use of metaphor and analogy in thinking creatively and solving new problems, how failure is our greatest teacher, his journey learning the saxophone as an adult, the value of scientists sharing their work with the general public, and much more. Art is a wise human and I'm grateful to have had the chance to talk with him and share it with you. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

I spent 3 weeks in Israel with my cousin Joe Voigts. He's been traveling the world for over 15 years and lived on nearly every continent teaching English, taking portrait photos, interviewing strangers for his podcast, and making friends around the globe. We talk about the consistent kindness he's experienced everywhere he's gone, the relativity of our cultural norms, and what one gains through travel. We talk about his love of story and literature and why humans use stories to make sense of our experiences. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did- we'd love to hear what you thought. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

I sat down with my good friend, embodiment coach, and author Jamie Lee Finch. We talk all about the insanely complex bodies we inhabit and the experience of trauma, both large and small, that often leads us to dissociate from that body. In her own healing and with her clients she practices active embodied listening where we stop referring to the body as an "it" but rather as a "he, she, or they" worthy of our appreciation. We talk about the useful signals and messages our body sends us, the healing that comes through facing our pain, and the process of making a home in our bodies. This is an important one that I'm very excited about- we'd love to hear what you thought. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

I sat down with my old friend, Daniel Oppong, to pick his brain on what I didn't realize was his birthday. Daniel has found success in most things he's done in life, most recently in venture capital and starting a company in the health sector. But, what I admire most is his unwavering vision for what really matters to him. Authenticity, connection, presence. These are the things he measures success with, allowing money, prestige, and the rest to come along as extras. We get into his approach to prioritizing his life, defining success, and spend quite a bit of time talking about his experience as a black man in America with parents from Ghana. He's one of the most well-spoken, clearing thinking humans I know, so I always appreciate his take. We dive into polarization in our culture, the lack of nuance in conversation, and how essential it is for each of us to see the "oppressor" and "oppressed" in ourselves to begin healing. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did- we'd love to hear what you thought. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

What if every moment was the meditation? Life itself, with all the ups and downs, is our great teacher. In this solo episode, I explore the possibility that everything that "brings us down" or "gets us high" are our guide posts. Anxious thoughts, negative emotions, resisting reality as it is- these are all arrows pointing us towards our growth and healing. It's all about learning to apply curiosity to our experiences and, especially, the experience of our own mind. Join me for another solo cast about being present and paying attention. And let us know what you thought. Did you enjoy it? Let me know on Instagram @mapofeverythingpodcast or email me at Andy@mapofeverythingpod.com. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes and to our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Get outside, my friends!

I sat down with ecologist, David George Haskell, author of award winning books "The Forest Unseen" and "The Songs of Trees". In his books, he sets aside his scientific research for a moment to simply be in the forest and observe. The conclusion that he, and ecology as a whole, are coming to is that the fundamental unit of biology is not the organism, but the complex network of life. The community. We dive deep into this fundamental way of things. We talk about the ecological crises we face from climate change, deforestation, and mass extinction, as well as how humans might reimagine our place on the planet. We talk about the need for experiential education actually out in the forest, political activism, economic restructuring, and much more. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

Attention is EVERYTHING. It determines the quality of every experience we have in life. That's why I come back to it over and over. In this solo episode, I dive into how I think about attention and being present. Despite the fluffy words we have to describe these things, they are tangible and practical. I spend a bit of time setting the stage with some context before we go headlong into a guided meditation and two thought experiments meant to help us consider the fundamental experience of our senses. The subjective experience we're all having through sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, thought, and more. Come along for a some mind-bendy visualizations! And let us know what you thought about this first, true solo cast. Did you enjoy it? Let me know on Instagram @mapofeverythingpodcast or email me at Andy@mapofeverythingpod.com. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes and to our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Get outside, my friends!

I sat down with my good friend, artist and spiritual seeker, Ben Griffith. Ben has built a career as an artist and has done so without a hint of pretension. In fact, he insists that art and creativity is nothing to do with talent- that it's as essential as breathing and that everything is art in some way. He shares his story of learning to let go of the voices in his head in order to create consistently and why he loves bright colors. And perhaps, most importantly, he shares his experience with depression and anxiety. As you'll hear in his beautiful laugh throughout this episode, he's found ways to build momentum towards a life where he feels consistently good and he shares some of what that journey has looked like. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

After a short life and travel update from myself and my pup, Solo, I share my idea for a solo (not my dog) episode experiment. Essentially, I'm going to try out sharing one solo episode per week in addition to the main interview episodes that air every Monday. The idea is to make these solo episodes a platform to share speculative, sometimes crazy ideas. To think publicly. To blur some lines and imagine. To think around the edges and see what comes out. I'll go into these talks with the full admission I'm not a recognized expert (in anything), so you can take my words as those from a simple human who likes to explore mentally. Maybe this format will work, maybe not, but I'm excited to try nonetheless. So, take a listen to find out more and expect to see a solo episode from me every week on just about any topic you can think of from the realms health and wellness, biology and chemistry and physics, culture, language, anthropology- no limits. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and go subscribe to our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Get outside, my friends!

I sat down with John Christian Phifer, the founder and director of Larkspur Conservation where he now practices natural burial after spending a decade as a funeral director in the corporatized funeral industry. We talk about how the unnatural process of embalming and burying bodies in concrete vaults got started (kind of by a fluke of history) in the Civil War, how it's become corporatized, and an expensive affair. We, of course, talk all about natural burial, the alternative which has been the way most humans have been buried for 99.9% of our history and how we can give our bodies back as a gift to the earth. We talk about his story in the funeral industry and how he found natural burial and founded Larkspur Conservation. And, we talk all about our fear and avoidance of death, the importance of learning to face it, death meditations he's found useful, and much more. This one is a big one, because, let's face it- we're all going to die. And facing the inevitability of our own impermanence can free us to live life fully in the present moment. Go follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast and sign up for our email list at www.mapofeverythingpod.com. Cheers!

Dr. Dave Vago is a cognitive neuroscientist researching the brain while meditating and former Senior Researcher and current Fellow with the Mind and Life Institute working with the Dalai Lama. And, he's an all-around interesting guy. We talk about some of his research findings on meditation and how meditation has been used historically by humans probing the nature of mind. We discuss how the mind affects the body and specifically how mental states might bring about physical disease, how the "self" is a process more than a concrete entity, and how we might re-write our habitual patterns of mind using techniques like mindfulness meditation. He shares findings about how the brains of expert meditators experience pain differently by not adding the emotional story to the sensation itself. And, we talk about the exciting promise of psychedelics to help transform the way we treat depression and anxiety, PTSD, addiction, and much more. The mind, consciousness is where every experience we ever have takes place- it is our experience. And that makes this episode relevant to anything else we talk about. If you'd like to bring greater awareness to your own mental patterns and learn to rewrite them, give this episode a listen and it will be a great starting point. Follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast, check out our website at www.mapofeverythingpod.com, and make sure to subscribe to get each of our weekly episodes!

This is a solocast with yours truly, Andy Derrick. I introduce the podcast and explain why I'm adding one more podcast to the world. I share the long birthing process of this idea, get a tad esoteric about our place in the universe and the importance of wonder (as I like to do).  I close up by sharing the lineup of guests for the first 8 weeks of 2020 and some exciting ideas for the future of the podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram at @mapofeverythingpodcast. Check out our website at www.mapofeverythingpod.com.

I sit down with self-motivated mycologist (someone who studies fungi), Wes Wojtowicz, for a deep dive into the amazing world of fungi. We talk about what fungi are and fungal reproduction and metabolism. We discuss all the great work and research being done by people like Paul Stamets and the many benefits mushrooms can offer human health, applications for bioremediation like cleaning up toxic wastes, their crucial role in ecosystem health, and their potential to halt the colony collapse of bees. He shares his wealth of knowledge on mushroom foraging and low-tech ways to cultivate mushrooms at home for any of you interested in getting started yourself. With the environmental crises we face, this is perhaps one of the most important fields and one that is still making discoveries every day. I came away more excited than ever to do more foraging and growing of mushrooms and to find ways to get involved in partnering with our planet.