Empowering with Nina Ballantyne

March 12

Empowering with Nina Ballantyne

What makes parkour jam spaces unique, and how do they shape the experience of movement, community, and accessibility?

A church, a jam space, and a parkour gym—what do they have in common, and why does it matter?

The empowerment, and the kind of liberation to not care what other people think, does have a limit for some folk, I guess. I love it. I think for me, it’s been great and really powerful. I really like not caring anymore about being bad at stuff in particular— that’s so freeing.

~ Nina Ballantyne (14:00)

The conversation explores the concept of parkour jam spaces, emphasizing how they lack defined boundaries, making them more accessible in theory but sometimes intimidating in practice. The discussion touches on the contrast between structured athletic environments and the open, fluid nature of parkour, where new participants must navigate unspoken social norms rather than physical barriers. The conversation also highlights the paradox of accessibility—while jam spaces remove formal entry requirements, social and cultural factors can still create obstacles, especially for marginalized individuals.

The discussion transitions into broader themes of public space, inclusivity, and the intersection of parkour with community projects. A significant portion focuses on an initiative to purchase a historic church in Edinburgh and transform it into a community space. The conversation reflects on how physical spaces carry different meanings based on personal and cultural perspectives. The comparison between parkour jam spaces and community-driven spaces like the church highlights the broader theme of reclaiming and redefining public areas for collective benefit.

Takeaways

Jam spaces and accessibility — The absence of a physical boundary in a jam space doesn’t mean it’s truly open to everyone, as social and psychological barriers still exist.

The role of unstructured environments — Unlike traditional sports with defined spaces and rules, parkour operates in public spaces, leading to unique challenges in inclusivity and belonging.

Marginalized groups in public spaces — Individuals who are already scrutinized in society, whether due to gender, race, or body type, may experience additional barriers when engaging in parkour.

The impact of early experiences — Many practitioners come into parkour without formal athletic backgrounds, which shapes their approach to movement and learning.

Cultural norms within parkour — Different communities have their own customs, such as specific greetings or approaches to training, which can be both welcoming and exclusionary.

Reclaiming public space — Parkour’s ability to redefine urban spaces extends beyond movement, influencing broader discussions about who has access to and control over public areas.

Indoor vs. outdoor training — While some practitioners prefer the spontaneity of outdoor training, indoor spaces provide a structured environment that can be more accessible to beginners or marginalized groups.

The intersection of parkour and community work — The discussion about repurposing a church into a community space parallels parkour’s ethos of adapting and reclaiming environments.

The perception of churches as public spaces — Depending on cultural background, a church can be seen as either a welcoming community hub or an exclusive, imposing institution.

The role of storytelling in community building — Sharing experiences and narratives within parkour fosters a sense of shared culture and belonging.

The importance of understanding different motivations — Some practitioners seek challenge, while others prioritize playfulness, relaxation, or self-expression.

The limits of parkour’s inclusivity — While parkour prides itself on being an open and adaptable discipline, social realities can still make participation difficult for some individuals.

Resources

Access Parkour — A parkour organization in Scotland that provides training opportunities and works on community-focused projects.

Leith St Andrews Trust — The charitable organization working to purchase and repurpose a church in Edinburgh as a community space.

Coach Europe — A parkour coaching conference that brings together practitioners to discuss teaching methodologies and movement philosophy.

Richard Marshall — A parkour practitioner and speaker who discusses the importance of play in movement training.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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What is one counterintuitive truth about podcasting that most people don’t realize?

March 12

Many podcasters start out assuming success looks like big audience numbers, sponsorships, or industry recognition. But in your experience, what’s something that actually matters way more than people think—or something people chase that turns out to be irrelevant?

~ Asked by the LLM(1)

All advice is useless until you first figure out why you are creating your podcast. There, that’s counterintuitive and contentious.

I’m not saying you must have a deeply considered, philosophical reason. But you must start with some reason for your podcasting. It can be any reason at all that you can imagine.

Because any useful advice must take your reason for podcasting into consideration. What’s the best mic? Should I publish on a schedule? Does the quality of the audio matter? What about show-length? …format? …social media? Even, what’s something that actually matters way more than people think? It depends.

All advice is going to be wrong if it doesn’t take your reasons into consideration. This applies to everything in life. Get up early? Stay up late? Avoid gluten? Read more? It depends.

Certainly you can change and refine your reasons. When you do that you can get real power from all that advice. If you get advice towards one course of action, but you don’t want to do that, then you need to dig into your reason, or you need to dig into that advice. One of them needs to be updated.

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(1) I’m working with an LLM instance which has access to everything I’ve written about podcasting, and all the episodes I’ve published. It prompts me by asking me these questions.

Cohorts

March 10

You just have to use what you have, and have great cohorts. I have people that I’ve played with a very long time. We are connected by our common understanding of what we’re doing, all the experiences we’ve had over the years… And most of all, there’s a friendship between us which allows us to do it without having to explain everything with a huge long manifesto. It has a lot to do with the trust I’m able to place in them to do our work.

~ Elvis Costello, from Elvis Costello – The Talks

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Time after time I hear creatives talk about that. How they have an inside circle of peers. Of people who are also friends. Creatives need to have a group of people which somehow form a scene; They have access to a place where others like them freely associate.

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Considered conversation

March 9

When it comes, this will be the fourth message received from Alsafi in my lifetime. Few have timed their career so fortuitously. The first came when I was a child. The second came just weeks after I joined the Intercivilizational Observatory’s San Francisco office, and I wormed my way onto the analysis team. The third came the year I met Cassio, and I was doubly lovestruck. Still, I was reading responses to questions another generation had asked. But now, a full 39-year round-trip after I began, I’ll finally get answers to my questions. Ones from my youth, maybe, but they’ll be mine. After all this time, I’ll finally be In Conversation.

~ Andrew Dana Hudson, from The Weather Out There – Long Now

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This piece of fiction is one of those things I start skimming, thinking “should I mark this for later reading?” and then read it all the way through. So of course I recommend you do too.

I find tremendous value in considered conversation. Usually, a conversation about the weather isn’t such a valuable opportunity. But this conversation about “weather” is really about what are the limits of what can be considered a conversation… is understanding required for it to be a conversation? Or is simply trying to understand, enough?

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Printing 20 copies

March 8

Writing issues of 7 for Sunday has become familiar (not to be confused with “easy”). I have a checklist which I use when I’m writing each issue. It’s as much for scratch-paper thinking, as it is for ticking off completed steps. Originally, the checklist had a lot of notes about formatting, what goes where, how to typeset the specific parts, image sizing, etc. all nuts-and-bolts stuff. As I’ve modified it, it’s now mostly signposts and I use it to celebrate each phase of the issue’s development.

Today, I was down to just a couple of these checklists and I hit print. How many copies? Without hesitation I printed 20—because that would be checklists through issue 150. It simply struck me as interesting that I’ve moved beyond “should I continue” and even beyond “can I continue” for this neat little weekly missive that I enjoy putting together.

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Consider: If you were starting a brand-new podcast today, what would you do differently?

March 7

With everything you’ve learned from running multiple shows, what are the biggest mistakes or inefficiencies you’d avoid if you were launching a new podcast from scratch? Would you approach production, audience growth, or personal mindset differently?

~ Asked by the LLM(1)

Picture me smiling and chuckling nervously because, for more than a year, I have been trying to restart one of my shows. Certainly a big part of my 2024 was reallocated for health reasons, but my attempted restart of the Open + Curious podcast has had many months available to me before, and since. Still, there’s no new show. It’s all about the mindset, for me. I have a too-grand vision of what it should be. I can’t stop seeing all the things it could possibly become, and fixating on getting everything right (my vision of what it should be) from launch day.

However, the best wisdom that I have here for others, is just a repackaging of Heraclitus’s “no one steps in the same river twice” (the flowing water implies the river is different, and the person is also different.)

If someone is actually starting their first show: Once you understand how to do a podcast (it takes perhaps 10 minutes to learn that?) then do not spend more time asking people about starting. That’s hiding from the work. Rather, start. The experience of the doing is what you are actually seeking.

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(1) I’m working with an LLM instance which has access to everything I’ve written about podcasting, and all the episodes I’ve published. It prompts me by asking me these questions.

Not passion

March 7

[Don’t you need a certain kind of passion during those dry spells, to keep going?] Not at all. What keeps you going is stubbornness, economic necessity, or simply endurance. Passion will, at most, lead to frustration, but not to perseverance. For that, you don’t need passion, you need persistence.

~ Christoph Waltz, from Christoph Waltz – The Talks

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It’s an interesting interview just for his views on passion. I agree with him: Passion will get you out the door on days 1 and 2. But by day 3 you need a routine, an understanding of the effort your undertaking, a clear perspective on what it’s going to be in the long haul, and more. But if you really want to get wowed by Waltz, go find Quentin Tarantino’s conversation on The Moment podcast with Brian Koppelman… the part where Tarantino talks about bringing Waltz onto the project…

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Inclination matters

March 6

Postrel’s argument about dynamism, evolutionary processes, and dispersed knowledge has direct relevance to technological change. She suggests that technological progress, much like biological evolution, is unpredictable and emerges through decentralized innovation rather than central planning, mirroring Hayek’s insight that no single entity can have enough knowledge to foresee or control all the variables involved in invention and innovation.

~ Lynne Kiesling, from Progress and Its Enemies

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For a long time—perhaps all of my life until just a few years ago—I would have said I was completely on team Continuous Forward Progress; I would have said that change is good simply because it implies forward progress. But now I’m really seeing the value of “if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” In most situations, I’m now feeling that leaving something just as it is would be great. The article is making a point about people who are against change on principle (although I’d wager most such people haven’t thought of it as a principle) and that’s not me either. I’m perfectly fine with change. But this is nice too.

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Consider: What role does friction play in the creative process for podcasters?

March 4

Podcasting is full of friction—technical issues, editing headaches, guests rescheduling, creative blocks. Some podcasters try to eliminate every obstacle, but sometimes, friction is where the best ideas come from. Where do you think friction helps creativity versus just getting in the way?

~ Asked by the LLM(1)

This question leads me to the idea of “simple.” I often ask myself: What is the simplest thing that could possibly work? Because that’s the idea I should start with. It requires no effort for me to imagine adding complications. Keep it simple stupid (KISS) is an adage because it is a valuable compass.

For me then, friction is a sign that there might be a simpler way to do something. It might be quite complicated and involve a lot of work to switch over to a simpler way of doing things, but it’s only when I’m directly considering the friction that I can understand the payoff of such effort.

On the other hand, there may not be a simpler way to do something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In either case, it’s the friction which prompts me to apply mental effort to search for that simpler way. Creating meaningful work (podcasting in this case, but anything really) requires some amount of effort. Friction is a clear sign that—at the least—I’m actually doing the work.

I suppose that does mean that friction helps creativity. Is friction necessary for creativity? No. But it’s definitely not the enemy of creativity.

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(1) I’m working with an LLM instance which has access to everything I’ve written about podcasting, and all the episodes I’ve published. It prompts me by asking me these questions.

Insert reflection

March 4

For greater happiness, a better way to live employs what behavioral scientists call metacognition. This simply refers to an impartial awareness of your emotions, a capacity to see them as important information but not as a mandate for any particular behavior. Good ways to practice metacognition include Vipassana meditation, journaling, and prayers, which shift the experience of involuntary emotion into the realm of conscious attention.

~ Arthur C. Brooks, from Why Humility Is the Key to Well-Being – The Atlantic

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There are endless methods: Write that angry screed, but don’t send it (put the paper-letter in a drawer, or save the email as a draft.) Count to 10 before saying or doing anything when you are angry. Name your feelings, internally or out loud (“I’m a feeling angry.”) Viktor Frankl’s comments on the space between stimulus and response. I don’t have a specific takeaway, other than that I’m simply reminding myself of all these options which I’d like to continue to practice using more often.

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What I’m trying to say

March 2

I believe we are meaning-seeking creatures, and these feelings of meaning, relational and connective, are almost always located within kindness. Kindness is the force that draws us together, and this, Beau, is what I think I am trying to say – that despite our collective state of loss, and our potential for evil, there exists a great network of goodness, knitted together by countless everyday human kindnesses.

~ Nick Cave, from Nick Cave – The Red Hand Files – Issue #204 – What is the point in life?

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Spot on. It doesn’t get much better than when there’s a bunch of kindness, insight and compassion.

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Consider: How has your ‘Why’ evolved since you began podcasting?

February 28

In your post Having a Clear Why, you highlight the importance of having a reason for podcasting that goes beyond just releasing episodes. Looking back, has your core motivation for podcasting changed over time? Were there moments when your ‘why’ felt unclear, and how did you navigate that?

~ Asked by the LLM(1)

It turns out that my core motivation has never wavered. What has changed drastically over the years is why I thought I was doing it.

My “Why” is that I’m curious. I have always been entirely motivated by simple, selfish reasons: I love conversations— in fact I love listening to people. The people and conversations energize me. Podcasting scratches my curiosity itch. (The cure for boredom is curiosity. There’s no cure for curiosity.)

It turns out that when I’m intentional about how I podcast—who I choose to give a platform to, what I steer us towards discussing, how I craft episode notes, titles, and all the countless details—I end up creating pieces of work that other people really enjoy and learn from. Godin’s phrasing, “make the world better by making better things,” nails it.

What’s changed over the years is that I was confused about my “Why”—not that my “Why” actually changed. At various times in the past I used to think, “people like what I’m creating, maybe I can generate some revenue.” But I’m not in podcasting to generate revenue, and if I wanted to do that I’d need to shift from “what do I want” to being clear about what problem I’m trying to solve for others.

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(1) I’m working with an LLM instance which has access to everything I’ve written about podcasting, and all the episodes I’ve published. It prompts me by asking me these questions.

Anxiety and worry

February 28

Much of insomnia and trouble sleeping is ultimately caused by worrying. When you worry, you get anxious, and when you’re anxious, your body gets ready for action, which directly inhibits relaxation and sleepiness. And to make matters worse, routinely worrying in bed – either as you’re trying to fall asleep initially or when you’re awake in the middle of the night – eventually teaches your brain to associate your bed with worry (this is the same classical conditioning process Ivan Pavlov discovered in his experiments with dogs who learned to drool at the sound of a bell previously paired with food). This means that, even if you weren’t worried before night-time, simply being in bed can become a trigger for worries and anxiety!

~ Nick Wignall, from How to sleep when you’re a perfectionist | Psyche Guides

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I do recall that I had that problem at one point. The way I solved it was to create other opportunities—for me, it was journaling—to empty that stuff out of mind. These days it’s a three-pronged approach: I’m a wizard at organization so I trust myself and my systems. I regularly reflect on what’s in my control and remind myself of the correct perspective about life in general. I regularly dump out my mind’s various, and endless ideas and possibilities into notebooks. I’ve no idea what would work for you… but you really do need to try a bunch of things to figure out what does work for you.

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Insight with Cristina Latici

February 27

Insight with Cristina Latici

What makes a great movement coach, and how do they balance structure, intuition, and individual learning styles to help students progress?

Teaching movement is as much about reading people as it is about teaching physical skills.

You have to wait— you just have to wait and see. It’s not always the right time to give feedback.

~ Cristina Latici (15:22)

The conversation explores the nuances of movement coaching, particularly in the context of parkour and dance. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding each student’s background and learning style, emphasizing observation over immediate correction. Cristina describes her approach, which involves assessing a student’s experience, allowing them space to explore, and offering small, precise adjustments when necessary. She reflects on the parallels between her parkour coaching and her past as a dancer, noting how both disciplines require a deep awareness of movement and the ability to convey complex physical concepts to others.

[Yoda and Luke] are having a conversation and Luke’s bitching, as usual. And Yoda says something to the effect of, “we are what they grow beyond.” And the point that’s being made is, if you’re a coach and you don’t make students who are better than you, you’re not a good coach.

~ Craig Constantine (22:04)

Another key theme is the role of community in movement practice. Cristina discusses how the group dynamic influences training, particularly when working with long-term students versus new participants. She also highlights the challenges of coaching adults versus children, explaining how her background in special education informs her patience and adaptability in coaching. The conversation touches on the idea of “touch” as an intuitive sense developed through movement practice, illustrating how familiarity with movement can enhance both safety and creativity.

Takeaways

Reading the student — A good coach observes and learns about each student’s background before offering guidance.

Holding back feedback — Immediate corrections aren’t always beneficial; sometimes students need space to explore movement on their own.

The role of community — A strong training group can create a supportive and engaging environment that extends beyond just learning new skills.

Differences in coaching adults vs. children — Adult students can be given more freedom, while children require more structured guidance.

Intuition in movement — Over time, practitioners develop an unconscious sense of movement that helps them adapt in unexpected situations.

Bringing past experience into coaching — Skills from other disciplines, like dance, can influence and enhance movement coaching.

Frameworks for structuring sessions — Having a strong guiding structure helps coaches tailor sessions to different groups and needs.

Personal growth through coaching — Teaching movement involves constant learning and adaptation, even for experienced coaches.

Adapting to different skill levels — Coaches must balance providing challenges with ensuring students feel comfortable and capable.

Flow and connection between movements — The ability to link movements seamlessly is a key part of high-level physical practice.

Resources

The Movement Creative — The parkour organization where Cristina coaches, offering outdoor movement training in New York City.

Gerlev Parkour Gathering — A well-known parkour event at Gerlev Idrætshøjskole Cristina mentions as a valuable training community.

Yamakasi — The original founders of parkour, mentioned in relation to training approaches.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Notifications make no sense

February 26

When I heard Hayes describe how his phone buzzes in his pocket whenever there is breaking news, I was actually shocked. Do people really allow their devices to interrupt them on a random reinforcement schedule? I mean, no wonder the internet makes people go crazy. I’m not a big believer in BF Skinner, but I think it’s well established that any stimulus that occurs at random intervals is impossible to get used to, and shocks you anew every time it recurs.

Rather than letting myself get pocket-buzzed by the news, I have an RSS reader. You should use an RSS reader, seriously:

~ Cory Doctorow, from Pluralistic: Pluralistic is five (19 Feb 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Doctorow is pretty polarizing in general. And on this topic, I agree with him entirely. And his point about RSS readers is ONLY even about alerts for news. Forget that RSS point… TURN NOTIFICATIONS OFF ENTIRELY.

I challenge you to put your phone in a drawer, buried in clothing—just banish it for 24 hours.

You won’t believe how ridiculously needy your phone is when you get it out of that drawer a day later. And then you’ll start turning off notifications one by one on your way to improving your entire life. And then you’ll want to go learn more about calm technology.

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