Weather of the Mind

Episode #113 Original Air Date: 10 September 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 11 minutes An addendum to the last episode on Experiments.  In this episode I more explicitly encourage the listener to design one's own experiments! Embark! Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #112 Original Air Date: 27 August 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 28 minutes What is the nature of experiment in our lives?  How does experiment help our local culture evolve, our local rituals and habits? In this episode, I explore these questions and share my recent experiment: a year without home internet. Plus, I revisit some passages from the unpublished Urbanmonks Handbook on the topic of experiment. A riveting episode! Please tune in. Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #111 Original Air Date: 7 July 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 32 minutes The first Weather of the Mind cooking episode!  Learn some tips for hosting a 20 person bbq gathering featuring skewers! Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #110 Original Air Date: 5 May 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes Grab some pen and paper, for it's time to reflect on the state of play in your life. Join us for your annual play check-in, your annual play self-assessment. Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #109 Original Air Date: 3 March 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 29 minutes This episode features some stories and some reflection on the topic of Poker as it pertains to emotional health.  Over the past 7 months, I have had the opportunity to play over 50 poker sessions - mostly home games, with a few casino trips interspersed. In this episode I share what I have learned about the relationship between playing poker and developing emotional health skills. Some people have told me that they are surprised that I would play poker, for they saw it is incompatible or even contradictory to the Weather of the Mind pod. In this episode I hope to set the record straight - - poker can be a great teacher of focus, decision-making, emotional regulation, social skills, risk/rewards strategy. Best to you  - - Doug PS If this show resonates, please share with your people, that is a real help.  Thanks. (plenty of ways to link to social media on the audio player on the weather of the mind page.) (Episode 101 is a great introductory episode to share) PPS Seriously though, we have no new school social media for this podcast.  So word of mouth is extremely helpful.  Old school.

Intro to the new season

Episode #107 Original Air Date: 13 April 2022 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 58 minutes Guest: Jake Seegers, founder of Fitquest, which combines role-playing and fitness pursuits. (contact him: fitquestgm@gmail.com) Music sample: "Flute Loop" - Beastie Boys. RIP MCA. The Weather of the Mind pod is back!  It has been a challenging winter up here in Ithaca.  More details on that in a future pod. This episode features Ithaca-based innovator and all-around nice guy, Jake Seegers.  His work caught my attention because I appreciate when people innovate and create a collision between two things that are not often put together. In this long interview (I decided not to break it up into two episodes), we talk a lot about narrative, games, fitness, and bringing these together in clever ways. So happy to be back with you.  I have missed working on pods. Happy Spring. Doug

Episode #106 Original Airdate: 30 September 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 36 minutes Special Episode... Please share with your nature-loving peeps... a great episode to introduce new people to this podcast... In this episode I give a tribute to a mighty white oak tree, whose massive umbrella inspired and protected my family and me for many seasons. Topics that appear in this episode include: rituals, seasons, relationship to nature. A real treat! Tune in! -- -- “For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow. Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts ac...

Episode #105 Original Airdate: 27 August 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes Interview with Kaylea Forsythe.  Part II. We talk about how a blossoming relationship with plants - from houseplants to plantwork - can help engender a foundational shift in emotional health. Tune in! References: Root Bound.  Essay by Kaylea Forsythe. 2021. https://vocal.media/journal/root-bound

Episode #104 Original Airdate: 5 August 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 21 minutes Interview with Kaylea Forsythe.  Part I of II. We talk about how a blossoming relationship with plants - from houseplants to plantwork - can help engender a foundational shift in emotional health. References: Root Bound.  Essay by Kaylea Forsythe. 2021. https://vocal.media/journal/root-bound

Episode #103 Original Airdate: 13 July 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 36 minutes How is your relationship to the Sun? Do you know the basics... how far away the sun is?  How large the sun is? How is your relationship to your own skin?  After all, this is the part of our bodies - along with our eyes - that interacts with the rays of the sun.  Do you understand how to protect your skin? In this episode, I introduce 'The Shadow Rule' and encourage a deeper understanding of our relationship with the sun. And then after we touch upon the basics of science,  we take a look at culture - what happened to our old nature-based deities?  Our sun deities?  And how do these shifts in culture affect our understanding of our place in the world... in the galaxy ... An action packed, not-to-be-missed episode... Tune in!

Episode #102 Original Airdate: 11 June 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 22 minutes The pandemic is winding down in the United States. But the repercussions are rumbling... through our own selves, our towns and neighborhoods, and around the world. Even if better times are ahead of us, it seems that we are still in the midst of a lot of chaos and change. So let us explore the metaphor of the False Peak and how it relates to setting expectations. Tune in!  

Episode #101 Original Airdate: 7 May 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 34 minutes Weather of the Mind 101.  Past, Present and Future.  A reintroduction of sorts. Included in the 'past' section of this pod... my telling of my own "Einstein with compass moment." And as part of the 'future' section ... I read an encouraging email from a former student. Tune in!

Episode #100 Original Airdate: 1 April 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 24 minutes A celebration of sorts... where I give some thanks to a handful of friends and brainstorm pals for their support over the past 2.5 years. I posed this question to these members of my de facto board of advisors:  why does the Weather of the Mind podcast resonate with you? Insightful and encouraging answers abound.    

Episode # 099 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 16 March 2021 Length: 22 minutes Weather of the Mind #99 notes Einstein – Biography Review 3.16.21 In this pod I aim to provide a bit of a book review for Walter Isaacson’s Einstein. My 3rd Isaacson bio and he is a biographer that focuses on innovation. The cultural process and these transformative figures he chronicles… including Da Vinci, Ben Franklin, and Einstein. He tells a good story and you get a sense for both the person and the cultural milieu in which they find themselves.  This is all can ask for in a bio.  And Isaacson succeeds in these every time.  Surely there are always questions remaining, but to boil a complex and transformative life into 500 pages is actually pretty difficult. In this sense, I think Isaacson has a good sense of pacing, of density.  How far to explore a point before it is time to move on. If he has a weakness, it is the interpersonal complexity of families.  For example, Einstein’s son was near suicidal and in an institution for many years, and this was hardly explored in this book.   But again, a biographer has their lens which they tell the story.  And in terms of a general storytelling and a sense of the time and place, Isaacson does well. Why I encourage the reading of biographies Biographies are inherently intimate.  They provide an access to another, to this story of this fascinating character.  This true story.  You get to hear about what they were like as kids.  And how they evolved and how they remained the same.  How they thrived and where they failed.  How were they among family and friends?  How were they in the public space? But there is so much more…  insight into the culture of the time.  Things you would never know to look for you are bound to discover. As Isaacson says in his early pages, “his fascinating story, a testament to connection between creativity and freedom, reflects the triumphs and tumults of the modern era.” “Imaginative noncomformity was in the air: Picasso, Joyce, Freud, Stravinsky, Shoenberg….” - Isaacson But the biography is the canvas of someone’s life… and we all have a canvas So without further ado, let me share some quotes from the book that elucidate a few main themes of the book.  I hope that this allows a better insight into Einstein, but also I hope they entice you to pick up a biography. Music Encouragement Personality Mystery  (perhaps befriending the mystery) Music  Mom an accomplished pianist; pushed violin lessons for young Albert;  he would go on to love the violin and was a part of his character throughout his life, he loved to play for others and for himself “Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or faced a difficult challenge in his work, he would take refuge in music and it solved all his difficulties.” – son, Hans Albert Mozart his favorite “Music, nature and god became intermingled in him in a complex of feeling, a moral unity, the trace of which never vanished.” -biographer Moszowski   Encouragement -   feeding the gifts, the curiosity Dad and his uncle were engineering minded problem solvers who did a lot of studies in electricity, the exciting new phenomena of the time.  (Electricity was like the internet or the cell phone of the 1880s. At age 5 his epiphany and no image ripples out in a biography like this one does.  It would still ripple through him on his death bead 75 years later.   His Dad gave him a compass.  And the fact that it would respond to an invisible magnetic field just blew him away.  And lit a fascinating with fields… the last 30 years of life devoted to unified field theory.  That would aim to unify electrodynamic field and the gravity fields. And a local med student.  Einsteins are jewish, though not religious, but one of the customs was to have guests over for dinner once a week for shabbat.  But they did it on wed or Thursday night and a med student came o...

Episode # 98 Original Airdate: February 17, 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 30 minutes ((A real solid episode... much food for thought)) The key question I pose to you, the listener: Growing up, did your family have a weekly day of rest, of recharge?  Was it effective?  What were the best aspects of this day? In your life now, is there a weekly day of rest?  What is the ritual?  Is it working well? And looking forward, if you could build a ritual - what elements would you include - music? exercise? cooking? eating? reading? watching a movie? While this episode is practical in that it is meant to encourage an evaluation of our day of rest, It also drifts (wonderfully) to some deeper questions,  questions that are a relevant in contemporary social debate: how can we develop a nuanced relationship with human's past, human's old cultural institutions, and our collective human history? And of course, I also tell my own story of building a good 'day-of-rest-and-recharge' ritual. Tune in!  

Episode #097 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 28 January 2021 Length: 29 minutes Main topics: Two homework assignments: 1) In the trenches reflection on our times in the middle of winter of Corona II, and 2) design your own school, based on your experiences of your years of school.  If we were designing a school to help mold healthy well-rounded adults, what would the main subjects be? The Validator, Superhero of Emotional Validation  

Episode #096 Original Airdate: 31 December 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 25 minutes References: https://www.weatherofthemind.org/practical-skill-new-years-resolutions/

Episode #095 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 9 December 2020 Length: 24 What to make of these bizarre times we are living through... threats to democracy... corona times ... heading into a tough winter challenge.    

Episode #094 Original Airdate: Oct 30 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 17 minutes References: Passages. Predictable Crises in Adult Life.  1976

Episode #93 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 16 October 2020 Length: 24 minutes Reference: "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" David Foster Wallace. From the book Consider the Lobster. 2006.  Originally published Aug 30, 1992.

Episode #092 Original Airdate: 1 October 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes   References: "Two types of choices seem to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of various societies] toward success or failure: long-term planning and a willingness to reconsider long-term values.  On reflection we can recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of individual lives." -Jared Diamond, from the book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. December 2004. Ani Difranco, "Buildings and Bridges." Out of Range. July 26, 1994

Episode #091 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 17 September 2020 Length: 30 minutes   References "Rastaman Vibrations" Bob Marley.  30 April 1976. "Two types of choices seem to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of various societies] toward success or failure: long-term planning and a willingness to reconsider long-term values.  On reflection we can recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of individual lives." -Jared Diamond, from the book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. December 2004.

Episode #090 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 10 September 2020 Length: 23 minutes References David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

Episode # 089 Original Airdate: 27 August 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes  

Episode #088 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 20 August 2020 Length: 24 minutes Quotes: "A goal without a plan is just a wish." -Antoine de Saint Exupery "The majority of people don't want to plan.  They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for." -B.F. Skinner "Two types of choices seem to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of various societies] toward success or failure: long-term planning and a willingness to reconsider long-term values.  On reflection we can recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of individual lives." -Jared Diamond, from the book, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed "All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination."  -Earl Nightingale  

Episode #087 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 12 August 2020 Length: 19 minutes "Strive not to be a success, but to be of value." -Einstein "Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts." - Churchill "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou "Success is peace of mind which is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best." - John Wooden "Success consists in going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -Churchill    

Episode 086 Original Airdate: 22 July 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 21 minutes   References: The Daily (NYTimes podcast) w Rick Steves, May 8 2020 The Daily (NYTimes podcast) On the Life of John Lewis, July 20 2020 NY Magazine. "Can Baseball Really Pull this off?" by Will Leitch. July 21 2020 NYTimes oped. "We Interrupt this Gloom to offer you... Hope" By Nicholas Kristof. July 16 2020

Episode #085 Original Airdate: 10 July 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 16 minutes References: "Forest Born of Fire," Wild Nature Institute.  Youtube.

Episode # 084 Original Airdate: 18 June 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 20 minutes Guest: Rachel Bush (rachelbushyoga.com)

Episode #83 Original Airdate: 11 June 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes References:  Kaplan, Davis.  "We need a Trick to Feel our Joys as Deeply as our Griefs"  Illustrated by Eleanor Davis. New York Times.  10 June 2020  

Episode #082 Original Airdate: 4 June 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 17 minutes Audio Sample: Bill Withers "Lean on Me" 1972

Episode # 081 Original Airdate: May 27 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 21 minutes References: Fly Like an Eagle, Steve Miller Band, 1976 The Office (U.S) Season 6 Episode 6.  Oct 15, 2009 Time quotes: "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.  The second best time in now." -Chinese Proverb "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." -Warren Buffett "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." -Antoine de Saint Exupery "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." -Marthe Troly-Curtin "Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real." -Cormac McCarthy

Episode #80 Original Airdate: 13 May 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 19 minutes  

Episode 079 Original Airdate: 4 May 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 19 minutes

Episode # 078 Original Airdate: April 16 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 25 minutes Samples: "Running Away," Bob Marley and the Wailers (1978) Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte (1790).  Met Opera Production, Mar 31, 2018 "The Wasteland," T.S. Eliot (1922)  

Episode # 077 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 3 April 2020 Length: 19 minutes Audio Sample: Bill Withers, Lean on Me. 1972. RIP. Reference: metopera.org

Episode #76 Original Airdate: 26 March 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 20 minutes Audio Samples: Centerfield by John Fogerty (1985); Gov. Cuomo Press Conference 22 March 2020

Episode # 075 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 19 March 2020 Length: 15 minutes    

Episode # 074 Original Airdate:  March 11 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 12 minutes

Episode #73 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: March 4, 2020 Length: 16 minutes Audio Sample: Orgachella, Buena Vista Social Club

Episode #72 Original Airdate: 26 February 2020 Length: 22 minutes Guest: Craig Roberts

Episode #71 Original Airdate: 19 February 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 9 minutes  

Episode #70 Original Airdate: February 12, 2020 Length: 22 minutes Guest: Craig Roberts Audio Clip: A Trio in Mahur; Traditional Persian Classical Music

Episode #69 Original Airdate: 5 February 2020 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 11 minutes

Episode #068 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 29 January 2020 Length: 17 minutes

Episode #67 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 22 January 2020 Length: 15 minutes Samples: "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost. 1914.

Episode # 066 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 15 January 2020 Length: 13 mintues Audio Sample: "Route 66" by The King Cole Trio (1946)

Episode # 065 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: January 8, 2020 Length: 16 minutes References: Carson, Rachel.  The Sense of Wonder.

Episode # 064 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 1 January 2020 Length: 22 minutes References: The I Ching - or Book of Changes.  Wilhelm/Baynes. 1950.

Episode 063 Produced by: Doug Krisch Original Airdate: 25 December 2019 Length: 9 minutes Audio Sample: Orgachella, Buena Vista Social Club