The Observing I Podcast

Award winning podcast about philosophy, psychology, and the human experience. Pirate radio for the mind. New episode every Tuesday. theobservingi.com

The Observing I Podcast is a society podcast hosted by David Johnson, with 163 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

David Johnson hosts The Observing I Podcast, a society show with 163 episodes published.

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  Episode #164

  René Girard and the Trouble with Other People’s Desires

  Sep 29, 202642 min

  Why do we never seem to want anything until someone else tries to pick it up first? In this episode, we look at the work of French thinker René Girard and his unsettling theory of mimetic desire—the idea that our ambitions, envies, and rivalries are rarely our own, but borrowed directly from the people standing on our own patch of carpet. From the quiet friction of group chats and family gatherings to the glowing glass in our pockets, we trace how admiration curdles into competition and why modern crowds are so quick to find an enemy. It’s an unvarnished look at the mechanics of envy, the illusion of self-authored taste, and what it actually takes to catch the machinery running before you join the mob. Much love, David x

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  The Observing I Podcast

  Epictetus and the Things You Can’t Control

  Sep 22, 202636 min

  Epictetus is usually reduced to one clean Stoic idea: focus on what you can control and let go of the rest. But his actual philosophy is stranger than that, especially once you start asking what is really “up to us” when even our thoughts, emotions and circumstances refuse to cooperate. In this episode, I look at Epictetus through the gap between what happens and what we decide it means, from unanswered messages and broken relationships to coercion, injustice and the limits of inner freedom. The question is not whether you can control your mind. It is whether the first story your mind tells deserves to become the truth. Much love, David x

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  The Observing I Podcast

  The Anti-Guru: U.G. Krishnamurti and the End of Seeking

  Sep 15, 202639 min

  U.G. Krishnamurti spent most of his life chasing enlightenment, then decided the entire search had been a mistake. He rejected gurus, methods and the promise that enough spiritual work would eventually produce a better version of you. What interested him instead was the seeker itself: the part of us constantly comparing who we are with who we think we ought to become. Some of U.G.’s claims are difficult to defend, particularly his account of the biological transformation he called the “calamity”. But the problem he kept pointing at is harder to shake off. A useful practice can become another way of grading yourself, and self-improvement can quietly turn into permanent self-surveillance. Can we change the things that genuinely need changing without turning ourselves into a permanent renovation project? Much love, David x -- Join the conversation on our Discord server https://discord.gg/yUJGTCUmS5

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  Episode #161

  Weaponising Self-Awareness: The Mind That Can Catch Itself

  Sep 8, 202639 min

  What happens when the mind catches itself in the act? This episode explores self-awareness, metacognition and the strange moment where a thought, reaction or impulse becomes visible before it turns into behaviour. But more self-awareness isn’t always better. We look at rumination, cognitive defusion, choice blindness and the limits of introspection, asking whether noticing the mind gives us any real control over it, or simply gives us another layer of thought to get trapped inside. Much love, David x

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  Episode #160

  I Never Asked for This: Anti-Natalism and the Ethics of Birth

  Sep 1, 202640 min

  What if having a child is a moral decision we rarely treat like one? Anti-natalism begins with an awkward fact: nobody consents to being born, every life contains some degree of suffering, and the person who will live with the consequences has no say in the decision that creates them. In this episode of The Observing I, I look at the philosophy behind that argument, from Schopenhauer’s pessimism to David Benatar’s claim that coming into existence is always a harm. Benatar’s case is more difficult to dismiss than simply saying that most people are glad to be alive, because he draws a distinction between a life being worth continuing once it exists and that same life having been worth starting in the first place. Taken seriously, that distinction leads somewhere fairly extreme. If suffering can be avoided by never creating the person who would experience it, while nobody is deprived of the pleasures they never exist to miss, then the safest ethical choice appears to be not to create anyone at all. But that argument also raises problems of its own. How much weight should we give to the judgement of people who actually live these lives? Does the impossibility of consent make procreation wrong, or simply something we should take far more seriously than we usually do? And what happens when the imagined baby becomes an adult with their own view of the decision somebody else made for them? Much love, David x PS: I've finally gotten around to setting the a Discord server for the podcast. If you want to join in some philosophical chats, recommend ideas for future episodes, or just hang out with a group of people who like to think, then the link is discord.gg/yUJGTCUmS5 .

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