Personal →

Published January 20, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 20

Everyone has an atmosphere peculiar to himself, pervaded by all of his characteristics. We cannot radiate anything unlike ourselves or our ideals. The qualities you radiate will either attract or repel people. Your atmosphere will affect your career.

~ Orison Swett Marden, from The Power of Personal Atmosphere

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We could debate whether such atmospheres are a good thing, and what responsibility we each have to cultivate ours. But first, it’s just interesting to study it and wonder about it.

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Curiouser and curiouser →

Published January 19, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 19

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

~ John McWhorter from, English is not normal

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It had never occurred to me to wonder if spelling competitions existed in any other languages.

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Small changes →

Published January 18, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 18

The most obvious way to stabilize blood sugar levels is to decrease sugar and carbohydrate intake. However, this is not the only way. Research has proven that simple changes can drastically mitigate volatile blood sugar fluctuations. Some strategies to stabilize blood sugar and optimize mood include […]

~ Mary J. Scourboutakos, from Blood sugar fluctuations after eating play an important role in anxiety and depression

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Worth reading just for the little 6-point bullet list at the bottom…

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A small number →

Published January 17, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 17  ·  ,

[…] a small number [of books] were truly transformative for me. They served as intellectual lighthouses on my journey, helping me understand what was happening to me as I explored my past, my psyche, and my pain.

~ Tiago Forte, from The 10 Most Transformative Books on Personal Development I’ve Read

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An interesting list. I’ve not read any of these books. I do have one of them in my pile of books at hand. I’m not endorsing the specific books. I do very much endorse the idea of making top-ten lists to share what one has learned.

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Archeology and music →

Published January 16, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 16  ·  

Simply sound-related things today: An image of a babbling brook and archeology…

It is possible that some 8,000 years ago, in this acoustically resonant haven, people not only hid from passing coastal thunderstorms, they may have used this place to commune with their dead—using music. That’s a possibility hinted at in the work of archaeologist Joshua Kumbani, of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and his colleagues.

~ Sarah Wild, from What Did the Stone Age Sound Like?

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Seems obvious that archeology would be interested in sound— but I’d never thought of that aspect of it before.

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Detailed →

Published January 15, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 15

I often stroll around exploring all the little nooks and crannies of places. I found this at Winterthur as part of small display of dried flowers. The display was barely mentioned at the info center, off the normal route (especially if one had taken the minibus ride to avoid walking the slightest distance), and hanging in the back of gazebo mostly out of sight. On the other hand, the sun peeked out just as I was standing there.

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Can you explain it? →

Published January 14, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 14

Physi­cist and sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor Richard Feyn­man came up with anoth­er cri­te­ri­on, one that applies direct­ly to the non-sci­en­tist like­ly to be bam­boo­zled by fan­cy ter­mi­nol­o­gy that sounds sci­en­tif­ic. […] Rather than ask­ing lay peo­ple to con­front sci­en­tif­ic-sound­ing claims on their own terms, Feyn­man would have us trans­late them into ordi­nary lan­guage, there­by assur­ing that what the claim asserts is a log­i­cal con­cept, rather than just a col­lec­tion of jar­gon.

~ from Richard Feynman Creates a Simple Method for Telling Science From Pseudoscience (1966)

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Confronting scientific-sounding things on your own terms is actually very difficult. What he’s described is not meant to be a way to decide if something is true—that’s much harder. He’s giving you a tool for quickly spotting scientific-sounding rubbish.

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Having a clear why →

Published January 13, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 13  ·  

It’s become cliché to talk about finding our ‘why’. That’s a shame because it’s absolutely, still, critically important, to us as podcasters. I was recently reminded of this point…

Ask yourself, why am I podcasting as a host, or as a guest? You must have a clear why, and it should be bigger than just “me.”

~ Alex Sanfilippo

Tell me your ‘why’.

And if you just hesitated— If you don’t immediately have an answer— Then you do not actually know your ‘why’.

You don’t have to post it! But you better know exactly and clearly what it is. Posting it just puts it out there, ensuring it remains real for you.

Whether or not you post it, you absolutely must have a ready-to-mind answer for your ‘why’.

For the longest running of my shows, Movers Mindset, my why is…

Each conversation feeds my insatiable curiosity, but I share them to turn on a light for someone else, to inspire them, or to give them their next question.

When I started that show, I did not have a clear ‘why’. It wasn’t until I took the Akimbo podcasting course in 2019, that I took the time to reimagine a lot of the two-year-old Movers Mindset podcast, and prompting from the course material and the coaches turned me onto asking myself, “uh, yeah, why?!”

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Getting back to podcasting →

Published January 12, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 12  ·  

Working with the garage door up, means I’m really just thinking out loud. I’m talking mostly to myself. It’s been a long time since I’ve done an episode for one of my own shows. Obviously the break was begun because of health issues in 2024. In the last couple of months though, I again do have the time. And I miss it. So I shall resume.

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Mitochondria →

Published January 11, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 11  ·  

That’s how I got mitochondria.

~ Randall Munroe, from Stromatolites

No one asked me, but if I was asked to summarize Munroe’s work I’d say: He’s mastered the art of finding insight by shifting the scale. Why is that hard? Why is that helpful? Why is that great? Because to do it at the mastery level (as Munroe does) requires one to have integrated a lot of knowledge. A lot.

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