What's Wrong With This Place?

Stefan Kalmar
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This podcast tries to go behind some of the problems and silly things that are keeping us from making the world better, and living better lives. We’ll explore the hidden, invisible and often unexpected structures and peculiar drivers shaping our world. Revealing deeper mechanisms, and underlying and sometimes surprising forces that you didn’t even think had a role to play. This podcast will be your weekly dose of new and fresh perspectives, insight, thought experiments and hopefully new ways of looking at the world. I will take you through psychology, philosophy, common sense, science insight, the baffling quirks of human nature, statistics, peculiar combinations and overlaps, odd facts and new ways of seeing things - and of course the occasional sanity check. In order to reach the invisible causes behind the curtain of what is actually wrong with this place? By Stefan Kalmar E-mail: wwwtp.podcast@gmail.com

  1. #26 The 5 biggest problems in the world right now (ranked)! Season finale

    JAN 1

    #26 The 5 biggest problems in the world right now (ranked)! Season finale

    The finale episode in season 1 of this podcast! Here is my take on the 5 biggest problems in the world right now. With an emphasis on the biggest problem of them all. Since I will be referring to a lot of the content, points and arguments from the previous episodes, you will get the most out of this final episode if you have listened to many of the previous episodes. … let’s dig in!

    54 min
  2. #25 Too gentle to be real or too nasty to be kind? Two unhealthy recipes for creating distance between us

    12/14/2025

    #25 Too gentle to be real or too nasty to be kind? Two unhealthy recipes for creating distance between us

    How do you approach other people? Ruthless or polite? Too nasty or too nice? Both approaches create distance between us. Ruthless is obviously hurtful - but too polite or too nice keeps us from the interesting space that lives close to our personal limits and boundaries. But it is in this space all the interesting authentic human stuff between us happens! It's about finding the middle path. In this episode I will take you through: The comfort zone, Hans Christian Andersen, authentic human behavior, connections, vulnerability and courage, Immanuel Kant, Me-Too, friendship, good intentions, rudeness, overly polite, the balanced middle path, our true emotional state and consideration-gravy (“omsovs”). And many other things.

    21 min
  3. #24 Lack of human originality and authenticity

    11/30/2025

    #24 Lack of human originality and authenticity

    Are AI-tools making us more creative or are we outsourcing our creativity to them? The many AI-tools around us have been touted as creative abundance tools, but in fact, they are reducing our ability to be creative and original - and they will deprive us more and more of the human originality and authenticity that we carry with us in our human edge, the human peculiarities and quirky subtleties. The focus on quick and safe profit and the focus on the end result and not the process will add to the flood of easy AI-generated stuff that is going to leave a mark on us as humans, and possibly cause a creative resignation in us. There is something innately human about creating things. And we have a human need to know if what we are interacting with is a human or something hollow and unreal. Is it fake or real? Superficial AI-generated LinkedIN posts, the Disney tendency, the AI-flood, distrust, the safe bet, the quirkiness and unpredictability of human’s originality, the opposite Turing test, sad useless job applications, Too-Much-Ness, Charles H. Duel and paid Chinese school cheating are some of the things that I will take you through in this episode.

    32 min
  4. #23 Too-Much-Ness

    11/16/2025

    #23 Too-Much-Ness

    The world today is full of so many things, options, distractions, choices, products, inputs and other stuff that tries to get our attention. All this, and more, is the overwhelming “too-much-ness” that swamps the world around us. It exhausts our mental energy, it ruins many simple human pleasures and it is currently breeding a young generation of people who are getting a sub-optimal emotional foundation in order to connect as friends or even romantically with others. In this episode I will take you through some of the known and unknown consequences and problems that this too-much-ness creates. Too-much-ness is one of the biggest problems in the world right now. A possible great filter for us humans. This episode will take you through everything from global declining birthrates, Isaac Newton, Wall-E, Japanese moms, circus presidency, the simple life, to Snapchat streaks, CNN, info signs, sand, ADHD, fame and much more!

    36 min
  5. #22 When we don’t ask “how?”

    11/02/2025

    #22 When we don’t ask “how?”

    Statistics, gossip from your friends, scientific articles, YouTube videos, influencers, the media, podcasts and many more - all of these constantly give you information that might be true, might not be true, or something in between. No matter what - these pieces of information are going to shape your mind, just like a bar of chocolate is going to shape your belly. And you will try to fight against some of this information. But not always because the information is wrong. Most likely because it doesn’t match your world view, or you think that it goes against your personal values.  But asking “how can I know this?” - and asking “how-questions” about the information that you are exposed to is both hard for us to do, and it often takes personal and emotional strength to do. Asking “how can I know this?” is about taking yourself seriously - but also about doing the hard and often necessary thing. It’s about understanding what it actually is that you agree or disagree with. This episode will take you through: urban legends, banning water, Trump, statistics, AI, lies, journalism, global problems, vulnerability, 8 spiders a year, second hand knowledge, the star signs, fact checking - and what kickstarts it all is the age old question: “what is the total length of the blood vessels in our body?” I once saw this funny quote on Facebook: “Don’t believe everything you read online” - quote, Hans Christian Shakespeare.

    36 min
  6. #21 Why predicting the future creates happiness

    10/19/2025

    #21 Why predicting the future creates happiness

    Trying to predict the future is such an intertwined ability in us humans. An ability and a focus that permeates more of our lives than we think. The ability and the focus we have on predicting the future, is very much connected to our happiness.  The future is just a collection of now-moments that are yet to come. And by being able to predict it, we pull in the future so that it becomes a mere extension of the present moment. Predicting the future comes from our intelligence, the ability to spot the invisible connections between cause and effect, and it is what takes us from weak animals to rulers of the earth - with all the problems that come with it. What happens to us when we can’t somewhat predict the future?  In this episode I will take you into the rabbit hole of future prediction through: Music, AI, happiness, doomsday, complexity, game changers, Covid19, nuclear bombs, rhythm, predict/plan/prepare, uncertainty and worries, affective forecasting, stocks, politics, Parkinson’s disease, climate change and many other things. You are in for a treat! P.S. All my episodes are made WITHOUT the use of AI.

    36 min
  7. #20 The Fuzzy Now-Moment! Why we don’t understand the present until it’s too late (We live life forwards, but understand life backwards)

    10/05/2025

    #20 The Fuzzy Now-Moment! Why we don’t understand the present until it’s too late (We live life forwards, but understand life backwards)

    The present or the “now” is a fuzzy and fleeting moment that hits us so fast. Many people try to live in the moment, the present, the now. But we often live just as much in the now after it’s over, than we do in it, because we define what happened in the now-moment afterwards - and if you live so simple that nothing new ever happens to you, then you are just living unauthentically backwards in the present. Hence the words of Kierkegaard: “We live life forwards, but understand life backwards”. Let’s dive into the quirks of the fuzzy front edge of "now-moments", and how they affect us, and how we live and relive them as two different people. In this episode I will take you through Kierkegaard, all-knowing narrators, school shootings, background music, 9/11, fuzzy uncertainty, Schrödinger’s cat words, Churchill, insults and assaults and many other things.

    31 min
  8. #19 Why is Denmark one of the happiest countries in the world? An in-depth analysis on the hidden and invisible reasons behind, that you probably didn’t know of

    09/21/2025

    #19 Why is Denmark one of the happiest countries in the world? An in-depth analysis on the hidden and invisible reasons behind, that you probably didn’t know of

    In this episode I will take you behind the curtain, and give you my in-depth analysis of why Denmark is one of the happiest countries in the world. What’s in the secret sauce? There are so many layers of reasons, causes and values that we never talk about that all contribute to the larger explanation behind Danish happiness - and I want, as a native Danish person, to try and give you these invisible insights. Maybe inspiration for others? And not only will we explore the more hidden reasons behind this famous happiness, I will also give you a view of the “dark side of the force”, and talk about the bad things about Denmark that potentially could destroy our happiness. Feel free to send me an email with you input: wwwtp.podcast@gmail.com

    45 min
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About

This podcast tries to go behind some of the problems and silly things that are keeping us from making the world better, and living better lives. We’ll explore the hidden, invisible and often unexpected structures and peculiar drivers shaping our world. Revealing deeper mechanisms, and underlying and sometimes surprising forces that you didn’t even think had a role to play. This podcast will be your weekly dose of new and fresh perspectives, insight, thought experiments and hopefully new ways of looking at the world. I will take you through psychology, philosophy, common sense, science insight, the baffling quirks of human nature, statistics, peculiar combinations and overlaps, odd facts and new ways of seeing things - and of course the occasional sanity check. In order to reach the invisible causes behind the curtain of what is actually wrong with this place? By Stefan Kalmar E-mail: wwwtp.podcast@gmail.com

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