Catalyst: A Podcast of Thought

Greg Schnagl
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Catalyst is a podcast for people who want their thinking to lead somewhere. I’m Dr. G, an executive coach, ethnographer, and relentless reader of nonfiction. I spend my time studying ideas, breaking them down, and translating them into something usable. Each episode is a distillation, one idea, examined, challenged, and applied. Not more information. Connected thinking. Shared thoughts.

  1. Aug 5

    Flow With Force: Chapter 4 - When Our Body Talks, But We Don’t Listen

    For most of my life, I believed discipline could solve almost anything. If something wasn't working, I assumed I simply hadn't found the right strategy. Work harder. Prepare better. Tighten the routine. Apply a little more force. Then my body introduced me to a lesson that refused to negotiate. In this episode of Catalyst, I reflect on a decade-long journey toward understanding a rare autoimmune condition and how that experience gradually transformed my relationship with pain, uncertainty, and control. What began as an effort to solve a medical mystery slowly became an invitation to examine something much deeper, not what my body was doing to me, but what it was trying to tell me. Along the way, I explore the difference between hypervigilance and awareness, why false urgency often begins in the imagination long before it reaches the body, and how learning to recognize, recalibrate, and relax has reshaped not only my health, but also the way I approach leadership, relationships, and everyday life. Ultimately, this episode isn't about illness. It's about learning to see the body as a teammate rather than a machine and discovering that some of our most important lessons aren't spoken in words. They speak in signals.

  2. Jul 20

    Promises Made. Promises Kept. The Art and Science of Closing the Loop

    Every promise creates an opening, whether it's made to someone else or to ourselves. Until that promise is fulfilled, renegotiated, or released, our minds continue to carry it. In this episode, I explore the neuroscience, psychology, physiology, and sociology of "closing the loop," revealing why completion reduces mental load, strengthens trust, and quietly shapes identity. More than a lesson in productivity, this is an invitation to view follow-through as one of the simplest and most powerful expressions of integrity.

  3. Jul 10

    Flow With Force: Chapter 3 - When Force Stops Working

    There comes a point when trying harder no longer produces better results. In fact, it can begin producing the very friction we're attempting to eliminate. In this episode of Catalyst, I explore why force becomes our default strategy, why it serves us so well for so long, and why it eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. Through stories from the golf course, instructional coaching, leadership, teaching, and my own health journey, I examine what happens when competence quietly becomes constriction and when effort begins interfering with the very outcomes it once created. This episode is not an argument against discipline, preparation, or hard work. Force has its place. The invitation is to become more discerning about where force belongs and where it does not. Sometimes our greatest challenge isn't learning how to push harder, but recognizing when the situation is asking for something different. Awareness, timing, and context often accomplish what additional force cannot. If you've ever found yourself working harder while feeling less effective, this episode is an invitation to pause long enough to notice what your situation is actually asking of you.

  4. Jul 6

    Could It Be That This Is the Most Powerful Question You're Not Asking?

    One of the smallest changes we can make in our language may produce one of the biggest changes in our thinking. We often begin conversations with the phrase, "I think..." It sounds harmless because it usually is. Lately I've been wondering what happens when we replace those two words with a different opening: "Could it be that..." The difference seems subtle, yet it may completely change the conversation. Consider the contrast. One begins with a conclusion. The other begins with a possibility. One invites us to defend a position. The other invites us to explore an idea together. I've come to believe that this distinction matters far beyond conversation. It shapes how we lead, how we learn, and even how we relate to ourselves. Leaders are often expected to provide answers, yet the most effective leaders I've worked with create the conditions for better thinking. Questions distribute intelligence. Certainty often centralizes it. In this episode, I explore why these two simple phrases can lead us into entirely different relationships with curiosity, leadership, and learning. Along the way, I ask whether the most powerful question we can pose, both to others and to ourselves, isn't an answer at all, but a simple invitation to possibility.

  5. Jun 29

    Flow with Force: Chapter 2 - The Fixer Identity

    Some people become known for their ability to solve problems. They organize. Repair. Clarify. Mediate. They step into uncertainty and help others find their footing. Over time, however, what begins as a helpful behavior can quietly become an identity. In this episode of the Flow with Force series, I explore the origins of the fixer identity, how it develops, why it feels rewarding, and the hidden costs that often accompany it. What begins as reliability can evolve into usefulness. What begins as usefulness can evolve into responsibility. And what begins as responsibility can eventually become a lens through which we see the entire world. Along the way, I reflect on childhood experiences, coaching, parenting, leadership, emotional labor, hyper-attunement, and a lesson I learned from a rare autoimmune condition that I could not fix my way through. More importantly, I explore the distinction between helping and carrying, between participating and possessing. This episode is not about abandoning service to others. It is about recognizing that participation does not require possession. Sometimes the most meaningful contribution we can make is not leading the intervention, but participating in the discovery.

  6. Jun 25

    Flow with Force: Chapter 1 - Why Force Works (Until It Doesn’t)

    Think about something you're good at. Not naturally gifted at. Good at it because you've done it hundreds, maybe thousands of times. A skill. A profession. A hobby. A relationship. Now think about how you got good at it. Most likely, the answer is some combination of effort, repetition, discipline, and attention. You practiced. You adjusted. You improved. The relationship felt clear. What you put in affected what came out. That's one of the reasons force becomes so convincing. It works. Welcome to Catalyst, a podcast of thought. I’m Dr. G, an executive coach, trained ethnographer, and nonfiction nerd. I read widely, annotate obsessively, and spend a great deal of time thinking about how ideas shape the way we live, lead, and notice the world around us. In this episode, I explore why force earns our trust so early, why competence often reinforces that trust, and why some of the most successful people struggle when they encounter environments where effort and outcome no longer have a straightforward relationship. Before we can understand where force stops working, we need to understand why it worked so well in the first place.

  7. Jun 15

    The Weed Named Yarrow

    For most of my life, I walked past common yarrow without ever really seeing it. It was just another weed. Anonymous. Interchangeable. Part of a collective. Then I became curious. What followed was more than a lesson about plants. It was a lesson about people. In this episode, I explore how familiarity changes perception, how curiosity transforms categories into individuals, and why the people who make the greatest impact often possess a simple but uncommon skill: they notice others. Maybe the world has always been composed of individuals. Maybe familiarity is simply what allows us to see them.

  8. Jun 8

    Flow with Force: Series Introduction

    For most of my life, I believed strength lived primarily in effort. Push harder. Prepare more. Control the variables. And to be fair, that approach worked. Until it didn't. In this opening episode of a new sixteen-part Catalyst series, I introduce Flow with Force: A Different Way to Lead, Listen, and Live. Together, we'll explore where we learned force, why we trust it, and why we continue reaching for it long after our lives have stopped asking for it. Along the way, we'll examine leadership, relationships, health, performance, identity, and the subtle ways force can evolve from a useful strategy into an unconscious default. This isn't a series about abandoning effort. It's about becoming more aware of where effort belongs. Because the danger of force is not that it fails. The danger arrives when we continue using it where it no longer belongs. If you've ever felt yourself tightening around a conversation, a decision, a relationship, or a version of yourself you were trying to become, this series is for you. This is where the journey begins. Just after a moment. Right before a choice.

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Catalyst is a podcast for people who want their thinking to lead somewhere. I’m Dr. G, an executive coach, ethnographer, and relentless reader of nonfiction. I spend my time studying ideas, breaking them down, and translating them into something usable. Each episode is a distillation, one idea, examined, challenged, and applied. Not more information. Connected thinking. Shared thoughts.

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