Know Thyself

André Duqum
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Know Thyself is a community supporting you to KNOW the true nature of yourself and the world around you, THRIVE in your health, wealth, and relationships – ultimately empowering you to CREATE and share your true self with the world. Each week André Duqum interviews experts in their field; ranging from spiritual educators to cutting edge scientists, heart-led creatives & more on topics such as the true nature of ‘Self’, “what is reality?,” and exploring the fundamental pillars we all need to unlock our fullest potential. Contributing to birthing a more beautiful world, one episode at a time.

  1. 3 Nov

    E219 - Robert Greene: The 12 Doorways to the Sublime & What Almost Dying Taught Me About Being Alive

    In this episode I sit down with Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, The Art of Seduction, and The Laws of Human Nature, to explore his latest book on the sublime. Robert first imagined researching it through travels to the Amazon and distant mountains. Then a stroke nearly took his life and confined him to his home. With his left side paralyzed, he spent seven years handwriting the book and discovered that the sublime was waiting in his own backyard. What We Dive Into: 1. Robert describes adult life as dead time, measured in abstract blocks of minutes and hours. Children live inside time like a river, seeing the world for the first time, and much of our restless dissatisfaction is a buried memory of that open, unfiltered way of meeting the world each day. 2. The brain prunes enormous amounts of sensory data so we can function, constructing both our reality and a sense of a separate self. Focused attention, like Gurdjieff’s practice of self-remembering, can loosen that filter and let the world appear strange, vivid, and alive again. 3. Robert links our avoidance of pain, discomfort, and death to a loss of inner resilience. When suffering and mortality are faced deliberately, they can be transmuted into acceptance and compassion, along with a deeper kinship with everyone who has lived, suffered, and died before us. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.sleep.me/knowthyself To get up to $640 off your Chilipad 2.0 with code KNOWTHYSELF https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself Use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide Waking Up: Get your 14 day free trial! https://www.wakingup.com/knowthyself ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:00 A Stroke and the Backyard Amazon 10:03 Writing a Book by Hand 13:07 The Circle of Everyday Consciousness 18:54 The Anti-Sublime 25:01 The Cosmic Sublime 35:00 The Pagan Sublime and Eleusinian Mysteries 42:50 The Hunger for Collective Ecstasy 47:01 Childhood as an Awakening 52:20 Returning to a Second Innocence 59:15 Despair as a Doorway 1:02:51 Vulnerability and Feeling Ridiculous 1:04:25 The Naked Brain 1:12:37 Gurdjieff and the Power of Attention 1:22:22 The Interspecies Sublime 1:31:00 Loneliness and the Animal World 1:37:56 The Love Sublime 1:45:58 Love and the Art of Seduction 1:50:07 The Historical Sublime 1:55:13 How Language Shapes Experience 1:59:46 The Daemon and the Primary Self 2:06:27 Mastery and the Inner Voice 2:15:04 Ingrid Bergman and Her Daemon 2:19:07 Different Forms of Intelligence 2:23:22 Talent Without Love 2:27:33 The Aesthetic Sublime 2:36:03 The Dynamical Sublime 2:43:41 Inviting Challenge Back In 2:52:13 Suffering as a Rite of Passage 2:56:32 The Death Sublime 3:00:34 Near-Death Experiences and Consciousness 3:08:31 Visualizing Your Own Death 3:12:51 The Haiku Poet Issa 3:17:13 One Thing to Carry Forward ___________ ✨MORE FROM ROBERT GREENE ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robertgreeneofficial/ ↳Pre-order The Law of the Sublime: https://sites.prh.com/lawofthesublime?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAad30lDYWsD_tVwsefFroQ0yA0SpKuRsN-lBhV7iqF_2m0foDmB2qlDKpVA9pg_aem_pjv6BG4q4JoEqBVGGwHeDA ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RobertGreeneOfficial ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@robertgreene ↳All Books: https://powerseductionandwar.com: 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E219 - Robert Greene: The 12 Doorways to the Sublime & What Almost Dying Taught Me About Being Alive

  2. 20 Oct

    E217 - David Whyte: The Conversational Nature of Reality

    David Whyte trained as a marine zoologist, spent two years as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos, and went on to become one of the most beloved poets of our time. In this conversation we begin with words themselves: how they first arrive in our bodies as children, how they drift into abstraction, and how poetry can return them to direct presence. David describes the stages of attention he discovered while sitting in silence with the animals of the Galapagos, and how each deeper level of attention changes who we are and what can meet us. What We Dive Into: 1. Watching a Galapagos hawk, David moved from self-absorption to noticing, then to being seen, then to sensing the relationship itself as what was most alive. The same progression is available at the kitchen table with a partner or child, if we are willing to let it look back at us. 2. We often throw valuable things into grief, such as relationships, marriages, and plans, hoping we will not have to go down ourselves. David suggests that falling all the way to the bottom is how we find solid ground, and how the qualities we loved in someone lost begin to live in us. 3. Before David found his path, he had to refuse work that looked close to what he wanted. A stranger’s story by a fireside turned him back toward his original longing. Saying no to the near miss can feel like a loss, but it keeps room open for what is actually calling. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: Waking Up: Get your 14 day free trial! https://www.wakingup.com/knowthyself Anima Mundi: 20% off with code KNOWTHYSELF https://www.animamundiherbals.com/ ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:59 Words as Doorways into Reality 04:20 Living Inside Abstraction 09:27 Attention and the Capacity for Conversation 22:28 Zen and the Contemplative Path 36:59 Speaking from Silence 38:56 Overhearing What You Didn’t Know You Knew 50:38 Grieving John O’Donohue 58:52 The Soul Friend Without a Mask 1:01:08 Ambition and Crossing the Unknown Sea 1:10:26 Uncertainty on a True Vocation 1:24:39 The Power of a Stranger 1:26:42 The Courage to Say No 1:34:42 Letting Others Remain a Mystery 1:42:52 Inner and Outer Horizons 2:02:56 Living the Questions ___________ ✨MORE FROM DAVID ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidjwhyte/ ↳Substack: https://davidwhyte.substack.com ↳Poetry & Prose: https://davidwhyte.com/poetry-prose/ ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@poetdavidwhyte ↳https://davidwhyte.com 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E217 - David Whyte: The Conversational Nature of Reality

  3. 13 Oct

    E216 - Janna Levin: An Astrophysicist's Guide to Black Holes, Higher Dimensions & the Nature of Reality

    In this episode, I sit down with Janna Levin, a theoretical astrophysicist at Barnard College of Columbia University, Guggenheim fellow, and author of Black Hole Survival Guide, Black Hole Blues, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, and How the Universe Got Its Spots. Janna started out as a philosophy major drawn to the biggest questions, then found in physics a way of answering them that felt true for everyone, everywhere. Preparing for this conversation blew my mind more than almost any other, and sitting with her only deepened that. What We Dive Into: 1. When a massive star collapses into a black hole, the star itself keeps falling and leaves behind only curved, empty space. With no material features left to observe, every black hole looks alike, which is why physicists treat them like giant fundamental particles holding clues to quantum gravity. 2. Einstein realized the purest experience of gravity is weightlessness, the feeling of falling freely with no chair, floor, or bed in the way. What we call heaviness is really something resisting our fall, while objects simply follow the natural curves of spacetime. 3. Janna suggests technological species may face a bottleneck where the ingenuity that builds rockets also builds bombs. Surviving it could mean reaching a balance with nature so complete that a civilization becomes hard to detect, which may help explain why the cosmos looks so quiet. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself Use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide https://www.oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF Use code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off OneSkin Larineco: 50% off on remineralizing gum https://www.buylarine.com/knowthyself ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:24 From Philosophy to Physics 06:39 Made of Star Stuff 12:13 The Ever Expanding Cosmos 17:14 Before the Big Bang 21:31 How Complexity Emerges 24:42 The Nature of Black Holes 32:08 Supermassive Black Holes 39:02 Photographing a Black Hole 45:33 How Stellar Black Holes Form 47:46 Falling Into a Black Hole 56:38 The Information Loss Paradox 1:00:00 Einstein’s Happiest Thought 1:11:00 Nothingness in Physics and Meditation 1:19:56 Why Whales Don’t Go to Mars 1:24:11 Isotopia and Balance With Nature 1:30:50 The Fermi Paradox 1:32:13 Intelligence on a New Substrate 1:37:30 Humility and the Cosmic Perspective 1:41:18 The Odds of Alien Civilizations 1:46:17 Consciousness and Extra Dimensions 1:54:41 How Many Dimensions Exist 2:01:48 Time as the Fourth Dimension 2:04:56 Extra Dimensions and Dark Energy 2:12:06 A Universe Inside a Black Hole 2:19:14 Progeny of One Universe ___________ ✨MORE FROM JANNA LEVIN ↳Substack: https://jannalevin.substack.com ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jannalevin/?hl=en ↳The Moth Story: https://youtu.be/dVubvLgTcxg?si=Hkaic0osIYwBMcA0 ↳https://jannalevin.com 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E216 - Janna Levin: An Astrophysicist's Guide to Black Holes, Higher Dimensions & the Nature of Reality

  4. 29 Sept

    E214 - Tom Bilyeu: Humanity Is Splitting into 4 Futures… Choose Wisely

    My guest today is Tom Bilyeu, the entrepreneur behind Quest Nutrition who went on to build Impact Theory into one of the most watched long form interview channels in the world. Tom is now building a procedurally generated video game called Kyzen, and in recent years his content has shifted away from personal development and toward economics, artificial intelligence, and the systems that quietly shape how we live. I wanted to sit with him inside that shift, to understand what pulled him away from the mindset conversation he had mastered and toward questions about money, power, and the trajectory of intelligence itself. What We Dive Into: 1. Tom credits his success to a simple loop: predict an outcome, run the experiment, and stay honest about what actually happened. He treats being wrong as useful data rather than a threat to his identity, which lets him adjust quickly instead of defending a position that clearly isn't working anymore. 2. Tom argues that meaning isn't discovered but handed to us by evolution as an empty box we get to fill. For him that box holds his wife and his work, and he believes people struggle most when whatever filled the box, a job, a role, a relationship, disappears and nothing takes its place. 3. Tom's core financial message is that not owning assets quietly erodes your purchasing power through inflation, whether you notice it or not. He believes the escape route is available to almost anyone, but most people never take the step of investing consistently over decades instead of waiting for certainty. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack IM8: Explore the exclusive offer https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:50 The Evolution of the Show 05:02 Between What Was and What's Next 08:53 The Spark of Divinity and What Tom Is Building 13:52 Nature, Nurture, and Leverage 15:49 The Physics of Progress 19:35 Facing Ego and Inadequacy 24:08 Feeling Most Alive 25:58 A New Virtual World 27:36 The Coming Bifurcation of Civilization 36:52 Superintelligence and Universal Abundance 40:27 Four Futures and How Soon 50:59 Simulation Theory and Consciousness 1:04:13 Why Something Rather Than Nothing 1:10:17 Letting Go of Certainty 1:21:39 A Communion of Subjects 1:30:22 Meaning in a Disenchanted Age 1:40:42 Who Is Tom Without His Ambition 1:42:10 Rewriting Value in a Post-Scarcity World 1:45:55 How the Money System Is Rigged 1:59:15 Is a Crash Coming 2:02:22 A Message to the West and P(doom) 2:09:57 Why Tom Came On the Show 2:12:15 Rewiring at the Root and What's Sacred 2:18:25 The Movie of Your Life and Your Blind Spot 2:21:16 Utility, Novelty, and Fulfillment 2:25:20 The Most Transcendent Moment 2:27:24 Dabbling in Meditation 2:29:13 The Case for First Principles 2:32:30 From Adyashanti to Kyzen 2:38:20 Outro ___________ ✨MORE FROM TOM BILYEU ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu ↳Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1nARKz2vTIOb7gC9dusE4b ↳Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ ↳Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en ↳https://www.impacttheory.com 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E214 - Tom Bilyeu: Humanity Is Splitting into 4 Futures… Choose Wisely

  5. 1 Sept

    E210 - Dr. David Spiegel: #1 Hypnotism Expert, “Wake Up From The Trance of Your Life”

    Dr. David Spiegel is the Wilson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry at Stanford, the co-founder of the hypnosis app Reveri, and one of the world's leading clinical researchers on hypnosis. He has worked with over 7,000 patients across 50 years, and in this conversation he opened with something I did not expect: he tested my hypnotizability live on camera. I scored a nine out of ten. What followed was one of the most genuinely surprising conversations about the mind I have had on this show. What We Dive Into: 1. The self you walk around with is not a fixed structure. Dr. Spiegel calls it a convenient assumption, something the brain constructs to simplify experience. Hypnosis reveals this by demonstrating how quickly and completely a person can shift, often in a single session. 2. Memories are not neutral recordings. They are laid down and retrieved from brain regions that manage affect, which means the emotion and the memory are inseparable. Working with a memory hypnotically allows you to enter it, update its emotional meaning, and change how it lives in you. 3. The same capacity that lets a child survive abuse by mentally leaving their body can, in adulthood, become a habitual distance from experience. Understanding whether your detachment is a protective skill or an old survival pattern still running is one of the more honest questions this conversation surfaces. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack https://www.timeline.com/KNOWTHYSELF Save 20% off your Mitopure® Gummies ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:52 What Hypnosis Actually Is 05:34 The Malleability of Personality and Self 07:01 How Trauma Gets Stored in the Body and Memory 12:00 Hypnosis as the Oldest Western Psychotherapy 15:13 What Happens in the Brain During Hypnosis 18:36 The Default Mode Network and the "My Fault" Network 22:29 How Hypnotizability Is Measured 30:28 What High and Low Hypnotizability Looks Like in Life 33:58 Live Demo: Testing André's Hypnotizability 40:11 Dissociation: Adaptive Defense and Pathological Trap 45:50 How to Use Hypnosis for Stress and Performance 49:07 Hypnosis vs. Meditation: Being vs. Doing 54:41 Flow State, Golf, and the Art of Process Over Outcome 58:13 Believing Is Seeing: The Color Perception Experiment 1:01:00 Perception as a Generative, Interpretive Act 1:03:29 Emotions as Signals and Hypnosis as a Flashlight 1:07:01 Smoking, Self-Respect, and Reframing Addiction 1:09:08 Dr. Spiegel's Path: A Genetic Illness in the Family 1:15:44 Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Many Selves 1:19:54 If There's No Solid Self, Who Are We? 1:22:04 Collective Trance and Societal Hypnosis 1:26:50 Reverie and Empowering Innate Abilities 1:27:12 Closing Message: Learn More About Your Innate Abilities ___________ ✨MORE FROM DR. DAVID SPIEGEL ↳Reveri: https://app.reveri.com/ Use code KNOWTHYSELF20 for 20% off membership 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E210 - Dr. David Spiegel: #1 Hypnotism Expert, “Wake Up From The Trance of Your Life”

  6. 25 Aug

    E209 – Rizwan Virk: Are We Living in a Simulation? (It's Deeper Than You Think)

    Rizwan Virk is an MIT-trained computer scientist, video game pioneer, and bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis. His work sits at a rare intersection: quantum physics, Eastern mysticism, and the architecture of video games, all pointing toward the same unsettling and strangely liberating conclusion. In this conversation, we explore not the nihilistic version of simulation theory, but the one that actually gives life more meaning rather than less. What We Dive Into: 1. The simulation Rizwan describes is not one where you are code running on a server. You are the soul outside the game, choosing an avatar and entering by choice. The body is the character. The player is something more. 2. Synchronicities, hunches, recurring patterns, these are not coincidences. Rizwan frames them as messages from a deeper intelligence, perhaps a future self, a guide, or the part of you watching the game from outside. The practice is learning to read them rather than dismiss them. 3. In a well-designed game, difficulty scales to keep you engaged and growing. Rizwan applies the same logic to life: the quests that keep returning are the ones not yet completed, and completing them is what the game is actually for. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:46 NPC vs. RPG: Two Flavors of Simulation Theory 07:44 The Universe as Information: It from Bit 13:07 The Second Assertion: Information Rendered as Real 18:06 Non-Locality, Quantum Entanglement, and the Speed of Light 22:32 The Simulation Point: When VR Becomes Indistinguishable 26:44 The Third Assertion: The World as Purposeful Illusion 35:23 Awakening as Becoming Lucid in the Dream 38:52 The Fourth Assertion: You Chose to Play the Game 43:42 Life Selection, Forgetfulness, and the Bardo 49:28 Savant Children and the Autism-as-Backdoor Hypothesis 57:28 The Literal vs. Metaphorical Axis of Simulation Theory 1:01:52 Yogananda and the Film Projector Metaphor 1:07:34 The Life Review, the Book of Life, and the Karmic Database 1:13:47 Samskaras, Vasanas, and Yoga as Cessation of Whirlpools 1:17:34 Clues on the Treasure Hunt: Synchronicity and the Quest Path 1:22:38 The Simulated Multiverse: Running the Simulation More Than Once 1:30:09 The Tiger Swami: External Tigers and Inner Ones 1:36:23 Rizwan's Heart Surgery and the Course Correction 1:44:14 Karma, Dream Palaces, and the Questing Engine 1:48:49 Living the Life Review Before You Die 1:57:01 Kindness Is Enforced by the Architecture 2:03:17 Epistemic Humility at the Edge of Mystical Claims 2:14:22 What Is Outside the Simulation? 2:22:54 UFOs: Interstellar, Interdimensional, or Rendered? 2:33:09 Closing Message: Challenges Are Integral to the Game ___________ ✨MORE FROM RIZWAN VIRK ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rizcambridge ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rizwanvirksimulation ↳X: https://x.com/Rizstanford ↳Buy The Simulation Hypothesis Book: https://www.zenentrepreneur.com/simulationhypothesis ↳https://www.zenentrepreneur.com 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E209 – Rizwan Virk: Are We Living in a Simulation? (It's Deeper Than You Think)

  7. 18 Aug

    E208 - Dr. Robert Lustig: What Modern Food Is Doing to Your Sense of Self

    Dr. Robert Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, pediatrician, and bestselling author who has spent 45 years watching children get sicker despite his best efforts to stop it. His work connects the dots between ultra-processed food, mitochondrial dysfunction, dopamine hijacking, and the chronic stress epidemic in a way that is impossible to dismiss. In this conversation, we explore what he calls the hostage brain, what happens to a nervous system under sustained biochemical assault, and why so much of what we call personal failure is actually a systems problem. What We Dive Into: 1. When chronic pain, emotional or physical, goes unresolved, the brain reaches for anything that spikes dopamine to quiet it. Over time, tolerance builds and neurons die. Lustig's point is that this is not a personal weakness. The food, the screens, and the stress have conspired to put nearly all of us in some version of this state. 2. Dopamine drives wanting. Serotonin drives contentment. The loneliness epidemic is not simply a social problem but a neurochemical one. Cortisol reduces serotonin, dopamine antagonizes it, and ultra-processed food depletes the tryptophan needed to make it. 3. Lustig draws a clear line between primary needs, love, sleep, real food, and secondary desires, status, power, accumulation. Meeting the basics first is both the simplest and most radical act available. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself Use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide https://www.oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF Use code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off OneSkin ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:02 What Is Hostage Brain? 04:47 The Loss of Stress Resilience 09:15 Dopamine, Tolerance, and the Addicted Brain 11:26 The Five Causes of Hijacked Biology 13:08 The Amygdala: Fear Center, Air Traffic Controller, Buckshot 16:07 The Four Brakes on the Amygdala and Why They're Failing 22:13 From Real Food to Ultra-Processed Food: The Five Changes 23:51 Sugar: The Big Kahuna 29:57 Mitochondria, Body Temperature, and the Energy Crisis 32:33 The Corporate Machine: Big Food, Big Pharma, and the Atlas Network 36:26 Does Big Food Collude with Big Pharma? 40:51 Children Getting Sicker: The Systemic Failure 46:10 "Personal Responsibility" Is a Tobacco Industry Invention 51:44 Freedom of Choice Is Really Freedom to Blame 53:11 Loneliness vs. Solitude: The Serotonin Distinction 56:52 You Can't Love with an Inflamed Brain 57:25 The Gut-Brain Axis and the Light of Tryptophan 1:03:13 Orange vs. Orange Juice: Why Fiber Is the Point 1:07:44 BioLumen and Making Ultra-Processed Food Healthy 1:16:14 Insulin, the Three Fat Depots, and Thin Outside Fat Inside 1:25:10 How to Reduce Liver Fat 1:26:19 Sugar, ADHD, and the Prefrontal Cortex 1:26:41 Practical Steps: Phones, Plastics, and Environmental Toxins 1:33:18 The Four C's: Connect, Contribute, Cope, Cook 1:41:29 Community Questions: ATP, Cognition, and the Biological Basis of Consciousness 1:45:27 What Gives Dr. Lustig Hope 1:47:38 Closing Message: Tend to Yourself First ___________ ✨MORE FROM DR. ROBERT LUSTIG ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrRobertLustig/ ↳Metabolical Book: https://metabolical.com ↳https://robertlustig.com STUDIES MENTIONED: ↳https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41880620/ ↳https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/505/504/ ↳https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987726001544 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E208 - Dr. Robert Lustig: What Modern Food Is Doing to Your Sense of Self

  8. 11 Aug

    E207 - Jim George: Stillness Expert: “How To Not Miss Your Life”

    Jim George is a stillness coach, former animator, and one of the first guests ever to appear on this podcast. He has spent nearly 50 years developing what he calls practical spirituality, a way of working with the mind that requires no doctrine, no dogma, and no special belief system. What it does require is the willingness to get quiet enough to see what is actually there. In this conversation, we return to the most essential territory: the cost of mental noise, the nature of the ego, and what it genuinely means to be present for your own life. What We Dive Into: 1. The noise in the mind is not neutral. Every moment spent in a self-generated narrative about the past or future is a moment you were not actually there. At the end of a life of that, Jim says, there is a strange vacuum. 2. The drive for status was not a character flaw. It was, quite literally, a matter of life and death for our ancestors. Understanding that gives you room to stop being run by it. When you see the mechanism clearly, competition can begin to evolve into something closer to cooperation, which Jim argues is the actual path forward for the species. 3. Gratitude is not a feeling you perform. It is focused attention on what already is, and it shifts your neurochemistry from dopamine-driven wanting toward something more stable. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:40 The Cost of Normalizing Internal Noise 06:07 What the Noise Is Made Of: Limbic Survival and Chatter 12:11 The Contrast Between Noise and Stillness 14:52 Status as an Evolutionary Artifact 24:16 Normalization and the Tiger in the Mind 29:18 Pure Stillness vs. Stillishness 32:37 The Ego Narrative and the Illusion of Separation 40:14 Everything We Want Is an End to Seeking 45:36 Simplicity, Dopamine, and the Holotropic Universe 49:27 What Happens When Subject and Object Dissolve 57:32 Stillness as Practice, Not Destination 59:24 Self-Love vs. Realizing Self as Love 1:02:08 How to Actually Do It: The Long, Short, and Micro Form 1:08:38 The Gifts of Headlessness: Harding's List 1:13:47 Physics, the Quantum Field, and the Non-Physical 1:25:15 How Far the Self Can Expand 1:37:08 Values Work: What's Actually Driving Your Behavior 1:47:18 Finding Your Me-Shaped Hole in the Universe 1:59:43 The Universe Conspires When You Commit 2:08:31 Closing Message: Quiet Down and Bring It ___________ ✨MORE FROM JIM GEORGE ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimgeorgeofficial/↳Contact: https://getstill.com/ 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

    E207 - Jim George: Stillness Expert: “How To Not Miss Your Life”
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About

Know Thyself is a community supporting you to KNOW the true nature of yourself and the world around you, THRIVE in your health, wealth, and relationships – ultimately empowering you to CREATE and share your true self with the world. Each week André Duqum interviews experts in their field; ranging from spiritual educators to cutting edge scientists, heart-led creatives & more on topics such as the true nature of ‘Self’, “what is reality?,” and exploring the fundamental pillars we all need to unlock our fullest potential. Contributing to birthing a more beautiful world, one episode at a time.

Information

  • Creator
    André Duqum
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    220
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © André Duqum
  • Show Website
    Know Thyself

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