Podcast

🎙️ The Podcast That Doesn’t Exist (Yet)

There is no podcast. Not yet, anyway.

But if there’s interest, I’m open to recording one. The book makes some bold claims that deserve pushback, elaboration, or at minimum, a raised eyebrow. 🤨

Who Wants to Talk to Me?

Are you a skeptic, practitioner, academic, or curious troublemaker? Maybe you want to engage with some of the book’s more outlandish claims?

🔬 I have cleared the way for scientific religion

Not Scientology. Not “religion that doesn’t conflict with science” but actual scientific religion. Personal growth becomes the predictable outcome of a reproducible process—one you can actually test. 📊

Think this is category error? That the ineffable can’t be operationalized? That I’m committing scientism while claiming to transcend it? I’d love to hear why.

🤲 My book advocates for zero metaphysical beliefs

Most spiritual books ask you to believe something: that consciousness survives death, that spirits are real, or that the universe is conscious. My book takes a different approach—the practices work whether or not any of those claims are true. It asks for nothing on faith.

Consider the relationship between physics and cosmology. Physicists run experiments, build models, and make predictions without needing to settle whether the universe is infinite, what (if anything) preceded the Big Bang, or whether other universes exist. The practice of physics doesn’t wait for cosmology to resolve its deepest questions. This book takes the same approach to spiritual practice: the process doesn’t depend on resolving the content.

Think this is impossible—that you can’t have genuine spirituality or religion without belief? Pragmatic agnosticism is just cowardly fence-sitting? Some metaphysical commitments are unavoidable? Make the case.

📖 My book represents the first User’s Guide to Consciousness

Not a philosophy of consciousness. Not a neuroscience of consciousness. A user’s guide—practical instructions for operating the equipment you already have. 🧠

Convinced this is hubris? That better guides already exist? That consciousness resists being “guided”? Let’s record that disagreement.

🔄 Turning the Tables

The book has surprises. I’m not going to spoil them. So instead of answering your questions, I’m going to ask mine. 🎤

I’m a trained psychological counselor—IFS Certified Practitioner. Asking questions is my job. Your answers will be more interesting than my rehearsed positions anyway.

Here’s what I want to know:

🤔 First things first

• “Religion without belief”—gut reaction. Go.
• Is belief even the right word for what’s broken about religion?
• Have you ever held a spiritual or religious conviction that you couldn’t defend? What did you do with it?

🏗️ Design problems

• You’re building a religion from scratch. What goes in first? What do you refuse to include?
• How do you keep it safe without smothering what makes it matter? What makes it matter?
• Why do so many communities end up recreating exactly what they rejected?
• Is there a design feature that resists calcification?

🪘 The oldest practices

• Trance, ritual, spirit-work—tens of thousands of years old. Solving a real problem, or creating one?
• Shamanism: romanticized, dismissed, or actually onto something?
• What were humanity’s oldest religious technologies for?

🧘 Meditation

• Should altered states play a role in serious spiritual practice?
• Meditation went secular. Loss, gain, or both?
• Can you build a genuine inner life through meditation alone?

🍄 Psychedelics

• Do psychedelics belong in religious practice?
• If yes: who gets access, how do you prepare, and what are the real risks?
• How do you avoid projecting meaning onto an experience that might not have any?
• Where’s the line between transformative and destabilizing?

🤝 Community

• Shared beliefs are the usual glue. Remove them—what holds people together?
• Have you been part of a community built around practice rather than doctrine? How’d that go?
• What’s the irreducible minimum? What can’t you cut?

💸 Personal stakes

• What have you given up in your own spiritual life?
• What’s a view you’ve actually changed your mind about?
• What’s your most unpopular position—even among people who’d otherwise agree with you?

🔒 The codification problem

• Every religion eventually hardens. Inevitable, or engineerable?
• Can a tradition be anti-fragile against its own institutionalization?
• If it resists codification, can it even be taught?

🎯 The honest reckoning

• What’s the strongest objection to this whole project that you haven’t heard a good answer to?
• What does belief-laden religion do that open inquiry simply can’t replace?
• What question do you wish someone would ask you that nobody does?

Express Interest

No promises. But enough interest might summon this podcast into existence. 👻✨

Notes