Author: Craig Constantine

Play with Mary Hendra

July 1, 2022

What role does play have in professional spaces, and how can podcasting facilitate conversations about it?

Podcasting serves as a gateway to deeper dialogue about human connection and creativity.

I wanted to talk with people who brought play into their professional spaces in part because of the tension between the fun of play and the resistance from others saying, ‘If you want to succeed professionally, you have to be more serious.’

~ Mary Hendra (3:28)

The conversation centers around podcasting as a medium for creating meaningful dialogue and exploring deeper themes, particularly the concept of play in professional settings. Mary shares her journey into podcasting, explaining how an interest in intimate, conversational formats led to creating a podcast about integrating play into work environments. She discusses how play fosters authenticity and challenges societal norms around professionalism.

The discussion also goes into the technical and emotional aspects of podcasting, including preparing questions, handling unexpected moments, and maintaining natural conversations despite the constraints of recording. Mary shares insights from their experience interviewing diverse guests and reflects on how play transforms professional interactions and personal development.

Takeaways

Play in professional spaces — Play challenges traditional workplace norms and fosters authenticity.

Podcasting as a learning tool — Hosting a podcast provides opportunities to explore new topics and engage with diverse perspectives.

Conversation dynamics — Asking visceral, open-ended questions can create relaxed and meaningful dialogue.

The role of preparation — Balancing structured questions with spontaneous conversation enhances podcast quality.

Play and societal expectations — Discussing play uncovers tensions between fun and societal demands for seriousness.

Podcasting challenges — Navigating technical and interpersonal hurdles helps improve the craft of interviewing.

Authenticity through play — Play helps individuals reconnect with their true selves and approach challenges with clarity.

Resources

Mary Hendra’s Website — Contains links to her work, podcast updates, and details about her projects.

Lead with a Dash of Play Podcast — A podcast focused on the intersection of play and professionalism, launching soon. Will be linked on Mary’s website.

Hindenburg Editing Software — Mentioned as a tool for post-production in podcasting.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Evolution and six actors

July 1, 2022

With our six actors all on stage, the play begins and my story ends. As an epilogue to the performance, I add some brief remarks about the practical lessons that we may learn from the story. Our species faces two great tasks in the next few centuries. Our first task is to make human brotherhood effective and permanent. Our second task is to preserve and enhance the rich diversity of Nature in the world around us. Our new understanding of biological and cultural evolution may help us to see more clearly what we have to do.

~ Freeman Dyson from, Freeman Dyson: 1923 – 2020 | Edge.org

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Arranged as a pleasant conceit, Dyson lays out a sweeping and crystal clear history of our understanding of evolution. That alone is worth reading. The real gems however, are to be found in his commentary in the final paragraphs; Don’t skip to the end.

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Freeman Dyson

June 30, 2022

Remembering Freeman Dyson, assembled by John Brockman, is long read. If you know who Dyson was, you’ll be excited to discover the collection at the other end of that link. It contains a wide array of voices. Buried way way way at the end is an hour-long essay read by Dyson himself, (which I confess I’ve not yet listened to.)

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Excellence is a moral act

June 29, 2022

… excellence is not a law of physics. Excellence is a moral act.

You create excellence by deciding to do so, nothing more. It doesn’t matter if you went to the wrong school, or were born on the wrong side of the tracks, or working the wrong job.

You go into the situation and you go the extra mile. Your decision. You own it. You own the potential downsides as well.

~ Huch MacLeod

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B-e-a-utiful

June 29, 2022

Stone isn’t naturally malleable, and yet, Japanese artist Hirotoshi Ito (previously) carves his sculptures to make the material appear as if it can be unzipped or sliced with a butter knife.

~ Grace Ebert from, Deceptive Stone Sculptures by Hirotoshi Ito Unzip to Reveal Surreal Scenes in Miniature — Colossal

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I’ve only just recently learned of This is Colossal. Only a few weeks into following them—RSS for the win!—and they are definitely living up to their self-assessment.

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In summary

June 28, 2022

The chronological summary of a man’s life is of all composition for students perhaps the most futile. […] “What of it?” remains to be asked at the end; And if the student begin there, not rewriting the annals, but seeking throughout the characteristic traits, the typical activities, the expression of individuality, he will find no better practice. Thus not only the reader, but far more the writer, gains by the abandoning of the order of chronology.

~ Charles Sears Baldwin

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So many paths

June 28, 2022

In early January, I started regular co-working sessions with a friend, Sumana Harihareswara. She read that post from 2013 about wanting to write more, and emailed me to see if I wanted to form an accountability team to work on our writing together. She’s making progress on her book, and I’m writing more here: we’ve been able to get a lot more done together than trying to work solo and power through.

~ Jacob Kaplan-Moss from, Coworking With a Friend to Write More – Jacob Kaplan-Moss

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There are many paths to the top of Mt Getting Stuff Done. If you find yourself currently off the beaten path, this article is a nice trail map. It mentions cadence in the sense of “don’t break the chain” or “routine is your friend.” I want to talk about a recent epiphany I’ve had about a different way to look at cadence.

There are several things I’m currently doing which require ongoing, incremental effort. And for a long time, each of them to varying degrees, just wasn’t getting done to my satisfaction. I had repeatedly set goals, blocked out time, etc. Recently—unrelated to my points here about cadence—I’ve been making superlative progress on these things. (Because, reasons.) And I find that now I can see the cadence is much faster than it needs to be to reach my long-term goal. When these things weren’t getting done at all, I had an idea of the amount of work that was required to make meaningful progress. Now I can see that I can actually slow down. I’ve known, for these projects, just a teeny-tiny amount of work, would work. But I didn’t really believe it, until I had a cadence, and truly apprehended how teeny-tiny I could actually scale my efforts and still make meaningful progress.

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Oblivion

June 27, 2022

So begins her obsession with dominating the mind by dominating the body, which would follow her throughout her life in various guises — running, karate, yoga, cycling, skiing — always ambivalent and self-conscious, until it finally resolves into a glimpse of the larger truth beneath the mechanics of illusory perfectibility: that we exert ourselves so violently on keeping the package of the body intact in order to keep it from spilling its immaterial contents — the soul, the self — into oblivion.

~ Maria Popova from, The Secret to Superhuman Strength: Alison Bechdel’s Illustrated Meditation on the Life of the Body, the Death of the Self, and Our Search for Meaning – The Marginalian

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Ah yes, “oblivion.” Good stuff. Popova is referring to a graphic artist, and midway through the article is an exquisite cartoon example; the author drawing, figuratively and literally, a metaphor for life involving a hill and a bicycle. Reading that cartoon brought to mind my beloved practice of meditating on death. (Try this explanation.) Closely related I often call to mind the impermanence of things. Sometimes I mix the two, thinking…

This is my last sip from this [my favorite, morning coffee] mug. (Knowing it will one day be broken.)

This [regularly scheduled weekly] conversation with this person is our last one. (Imagining when priorities change and we’re no longer working together.)

This conversation I’m recording for a podcast is my last one. (Because I will die.)

This dinner with this person [my mom, my spouse, etc] is my last one. (Because one of us will die first.)

The goal is not to be morbid and depressed; The goal is to maintain a realistic perspective to enable wringing the absolute maximum enjoyment and appreciation from every single waking moment.

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Upper bounds

June 26, 2022

If we play our cards right, we could live hundreds of thousands of years more. In fact, there’s not much stopping us living millions of years. The typical species lives about a million years. Our 200,000 years so far would put us about in our adolescence, just old enough to be getting ourselves in trouble, but not wise enough to have thought through how we should act.

~ Toby Ord from, We Have the Power to Destroy Ourselves Without the Wisdom to Ensure That We Don’t | Edge.org

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I find it beneficial to have my perspectives stretched. This article walks through scales of time in a delightful manner. It pauses to ask questions, and to point out people who did certain things at precise points in our history. There are countless opportunities to shift perspective. For example: I’ve been alive for 1/100 of recorded human history. And recorded history is only 3/100 of the age of our species. The aggregate progress of humanity is simply the sum of our individual efforts, and my life represents 1/100,000,000,000 of humanity so far. Stretched perspectives indeed.

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Discontent

June 25, 2022

This is discontent, but it is not the discontent of pessimism. It is noble discontent which is the secret of progress. Only the pusillanimous are content. Heart’s desires are divine discontents. Only the unsatisfied do things. The satisfied do nothing. Unsatisfaction is the stimulus to achievement. Satisfaction is destruction and leads down to the chamber of death.

~ Jack London

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More light

June 25, 2022

There’s also a long list of advertisers who rely on this confusion to abdicate their ethical responsibility in terms of their money winding up in the pockets of bottom-dwelling grifters and bigots. The murkiness makes it easier to pretend it’s not happening, and it’s this accountability gap the group hopes to target

~ Karl Bode from, Nonprofit Takes Aim At Fox News By Demystifying Ad Exchanges | Techdirt

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Caution: Depending on your viewpoint, that article will make you cheer, or will enrage you. What I want to focus on is, “murkiness” and I want to split a fine hair.

I believe there’s visibility, (in the sense that it is clear who is accountable for some speech [advertising is speech],) anonymity, and murkiness which obscures the dichotomy of visibility versus anonymity. My position is that murkiness is never a positive thing. The knowledge that something is being said with accountability, (who said it is clear,) versus with anonymity is critical for one to be able to evaluate some speech for oneself. That knowledge is removed when there’s murkiness.

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Wait wat?

June 24, 2022

Since around 2009, methamphetamines have been made with phenylacetone (P2P). Is there a chemical different causing schizophrenia?

~ “Dynomight” from, The main thing about P2P meth is that there’s so much of it

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As I was reading those two sentences, my world was just fine… until that very last word. I was ready for death, overdose, addiction, and there are probably a dozen more words that I don’t expect would fit there, but which wouldn’t make me go, “wait wat?” So i started reading…

I quickly realized this article is basically the science behind Breaking Bad. There’s also an enormous amount of “this is not good” information in there. For example, an apparently exponential-function graph of deaths is never a good thing. There’s also a bit of industrial chemistry, and a large scale sewerage treatment plant data collection . . . well, it’s worth the read.

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Gömböc

June 23, 2022

So in a nutshell, Gömböc is cool, Hungarians are proud of it greatly. So naturally, they made a 4.5-ton statue replica of the shape.

~ Atlas Obscura from, Gömböc – Atlas Obscura

I could probably write a blog post about other interesting math-related puzzles and shapes that come from Hungary… or about the number of Hungarian mathematicians… but instead, I’ll just point you towards this particularly interesting thing.

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Incomplete with Janne Laurila

June 22, 2022

Incomplete with Janne Laurila

How does movement influence personal change and adaptability in life?

Movement evolves from a tool for improvement to a means of adapting to life’s challenges.

I think that when I started doing Parkour, the movement was a kind of like— it was constant exploration. […] But as more time has gone, I started to feel that that change isn’t just trying to improve. [It’s] more to adapt on how you can perform? Or how would— How do you see a challenge? Or how do you process a challenge?

~ Janne Laurila (1:47)

The conversation explores how movement intertwines with personal growth, adaptability, and energy management. Starting with parkour as a way of improvement, Janne shares his journey of evolving to see movement as a tool for adaptation rather than mere enhancement. Factors such as physical energy, time management, and life changes, like raising children, shape his relationship with movement.

Living in Finland adds layers to this experience, with long periods of light and dark influencing mood and activity. Balancing responsibilities as a parent, entrepreneur, and student while managing ADHD highlights the challenges of maintaining schedules and finding moments of recharge. The conversation concludes with reflections on compassion, curiosity, and the acceptance of being incomplete as guiding principles.

Takeaways

Change and movement — How parkour shifts from improvement-focused to adaptation-oriented.

Energy and time management — Balancing energy and available time in a demanding schedule.

Impact of light cycles — Navigating the challenges of extreme light and darkness in Finland.

ADHD and scheduling — The difficulty of adhering to schedules despite careful planning.

Family integration — Using Pokémon Go as a way to bond with children and stay active.

Self-compassion — Recognizing the importance of being kind to oneself amid life’s chaos.

Continuous growth — Embracing curiosity and the idea of being incomplete as motivations.

Resources

Daniel Vitalis — A podcaster discussing movement as nutrition.

Pokémon Go — A mobile game blending outdoor exploration with technology.

Art du Déplacement — Referenced as a movement practice.

Kurt Vonnegut — Quoted for mindfulness in appreciating simple moments.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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