Between the Ears Podcast

betweentheear
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Your inner state creates your outer reality. Between The Ears is a show about the mental and emotional world we all carry inside, and how understanding it can transform the life we live outside. Hosted by Arnold Beekes, each episode explores a single idea for building a better life between the ears: taking back control from the expectations of parents, teachers, bosses, and everyone else who has quietly been driving your behavior, learning what you actually want instead of what you have been told to want, and lowering the chronic stress that comes from living two lives at once. Every episode closes with a moment of everyday beauty, a small true story of kindness, courage, or compassion, because what you notice and appreciate shapes your inner state just as much as what you think. If you are ready to stop living someone else's life and start living your own, this podcast is for you.

  1. 13h ago

    #46 Better for All Collective

    In this episode, Arnold Beekes zooms in on the better for all collectives he is setting up. He describes one as a community of care where participants design and implement better for all ways of learning, living and working in their own environment, whether that is a neighbourhood, a city, a country or the world. Collectives are currently being organised in Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Paraguay and the Netherlands. Arnold’s reasoning is that the people in charge are focused on what he calls better for a few, while around half of the world’s population lives in poverty and the middle class is disappearing in many developed countries. He doesn’t expect that to change, so he argues we need to build it ourselves through bottom-up innovation, not by fighting the existing reality but by building a new model that makes the old one obsolete. The key principle is to think for yourself, and he calls responsibility the flip side of freedom. He gives homeschooling as a positive example, where parents who see that the education system doesn’t work for their children collaborate with other parents around the world. He invites listeners to set up a better for all collective in their own community, and says he will help and train them. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story about Japanese researchers who screened 45 bacterial strains from the guts of a Japanese tree frog, fire belly newts and grass lizards. One bacterium achieved a 100 percent tumor elimination rate in mice with colorectal cancer after a single intravenous dose, was cleared from the bloodstream within hours and did not colonize normal organs. The study was published in Gut Microbes, and the team plans to test it on breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and melanoma. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #BetterForAll #Responsibility #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  2. 1d ago

    #45 Conformity Is Like Gravity

    In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what experience has changed your perspective? It can be from yesterday, this week or years ago, and he asks what you were doing and what inspired, triggered or hurt you. Knowing which experiences and texts change your perspective helps you learn and grow, and if nothing comes to mind, pay attention over the next few days to what does. The quote is “Conformity is like gravity. It pulls you down. It takes a lot of effort and energy to break free. But once you are free, you will float and be limitless.” Arnold says many forces in society are designed to make you conform, from the obedient citizen to the employee who does exactly what the boss says, in how you look, dress, behave and what you know, with exams testing whether you have memorized what they want. That process ignores your uniqueness, pulls you down and leaves you unsatisfied, with a feeling that you have more potential than you are allowed to use. His call is to move from fitting in to flying out. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Conformity #Uniqueness #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  3. 2d ago

    #44 Creativity: The How

    In this follow-up to the what of creativity, Arnold Beekes covers the how, starting from the fact that our creativity is suppressed from a young age, so the first step is allowing yourself to be creative again. He lists what you need. A question, meaning what you are researching or trying to make visible. A lot of different dots, the topics that inspire you, which don’t have to relate to your question, and he gives the example of Alexander von Humboldt and Jules Verne, whose novels drew on Humboldt’s descriptions. Time, because deep insights take time to digest, and he describes reading a book on human nature and needing a few years to feel in his body that we are foremost emotional beings and not rational ones. Patience and sleeping on an idea for a night or a few. Falling in love with the problem, not the first solution. Space in your head, because with a closed hand you can’t receive anything. Iteration, checking whether you’re still excited by what you created. Chaos, since structure can come at the end. And removing expectations, stigma, status, money and ego, plus the pressure from inside and outside. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story from a vineyard in Sacramento, California, where researchers installed 25 barn owl nest boxes to deal with a gopher and vole infestation. By the following year 18 breeding pairs had moved in and fledged 66 young, and over three breeding seasons the owls consumed an estimated 30,000 rodents. Arnold cites a cost of about 34 cents per rodent for the nest boxes against about eight dollars for trapping, with no poison building up in the food chain. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Creativity #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  4. 3d ago

    #43 Honesty Hurts, Hearts and Heals

    In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what makes you change your thinking? He invites you to look at times in the past when your thinking changed, and at what might need to change today or in the next few weeks. It can be something big, like the old belief that the earth was flat, or something small, like deciding to stop eating meat, and in each case it usually takes compelling evidence. The quote is “Honesty hurts, hearts and heals.” Arnold knows “hearts” isn’t a verb, but he uses it as one. Being honest with yourself and with others can hurt, and fear of that hurt often leads us to be dishonest instead. Honesty also affects your heart, and admitting that you no longer like your job or that a relationship has gone stale can heal, because it means accepting reality as it is. He shares his own example: his heel was destroyed in a car accident and the surgeon told him it would not be good again. He accepted that honestly, decided he still wanted to walk, and now walks well and enjoys it, even though he can no longer run. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Honesty #ChangeYourThinking #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  5. 4d ago

    #42 Creativity: The What

    In this episode, Arnold Beekes splits creativity into two sessions, starting with the what, with the how to follow next time. His definition is that creativity is connecting different dots in a different way and adding something new. The dots are the topics and subjects you are interested in, which is why curiosity and reading widely matter: with two dots there is not much to connect, with 37 it becomes easy. He gives brain fitness and brain athletes as his example, built from the fitness industry and sport combined with brain health, psychology, self-help and spirituality. He then names three more things creativity needs. The first is being present, because distraction makes you lose your line of thought and your intuition. The second is boredom: when you get comfortable being bored and don’t reach for your phone, you leave room for new ideas and insights. The third is accepting reality, since what you resist persists, and in fight or flight your brain is focused on safety and cannot reach creativity or long-term thinking. His suggestion is to accept reality and build something better, which is what he is doing with the better for all collectives, because if you co-create a much better way of learning, living and working, the existing reality fades. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story from St. Mary’s Basilica in Minneapolis, finished in 1914 and in a $50 million renovation with an Easter deadline. While washing the ceiling from 15 floors of scaffolding, workers found gold stencil work hidden under flat paint across a whole archway, and ultramarine blue panels with gold fleur-de-lis in the corners, with no record of either in the building’s documentation. The gold stenciling will be fully restored before Easter. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Creativity #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  6. 5d ago

    #41 Which Activities Make Time Disappear

    In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: which activities in your real life make time disappear and leave you feeling more like yourself? He suggests starting a list, anything from cooking a meal to walking a dog, talking with a friend or reading a great book. He stresses “real life,” meaning not three hours of scrolling, and says to keep the list for a month or two without rushing. Once you have five or six activities, look at what the list tells you and how it makes you feel. The quote is “If you think that there is a quick fix for major problems, be sure that the fast food mentality has taken over your life. The only instant gratification is from daily learning and effort.” Arnold links it to a culture of instant gratification, quick fixes and dopamine hits. He shares an example from when he lived in Budapest, where a university hosted weekly talks by the ambassadors of the main Middle Eastern countries. He went wondering why a few weeks and some clever people couldn’t solve the conflict, and came away realising it is far more complicated than he thought, with history and religion behind it as well as emotion. He values giving people a stage to share their point of view, since the ambassadors also listened to each other’s talks. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Flow #QuickFix #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  7. 6d ago

    #40 Between the Ears - AI Impact

    In this episode, Arnold Beekes looks at what happens when we use AI heavily, as work shifts from humans using software to humans managing autonomous agents that do the writing, searching and image creation for us. He cites a number of studies and surveys to make the case that outsourcing your thinking weakens it. He refers to an MIT study on using ChatGPT for writing tasks, which reported significantly lower brain activity and learning, with AI users showing the weakest neural connectivity compared with people using search engines or their own thinking. He also cites US reading results, where only 35 percent of high school seniors were proficient at analysing complex themes and arguments in 2024, and a rise in the share of American adults who struggle to paraphrase or draw inferences from a longer text, from under 20 percent in 2017 to nearly 30 percent. He adds that teachers and professors tell him students at every level can no longer write, think critically or remember what they read, and mentions a study of X-ray specialists in Poland whose skills declined after relying on AI. His point is that the brain works like the body: if you don’t use it, you lose it, like a limb that has been in a cast for six weeks. His advice is to think for yourself first, whether it’s a blog, a plan or a structure, and then use AI as a tool to improve or clarify the result, so you work with AI and stay in control, not work for it. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story from Oregon, which has recorded five consecutive years with zero pesticide-related bee deaths. It began with a mass bee die-off in a parking lot in 2013 that led to a pollinator health task force, followed by the Oregon Bee Project from 2018 training 12,000 people on reducing pesticide risk, and the Oregon Bee Atlas cataloguing all 567 bee species found in the state. 🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070 Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #AI #CriticalThinking #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

  8. Oct 26

    #39 What Motivates Me?

    In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what motivates me? He is looking for your intrinsic, inner motivation rather than the external kind. Most people use the word as if someone else has to do it, like a boss motivating an employee. Arnold thinks that is impossible and that it reinforces not living your own life. To live your own life you need to know what motivates you. Is it money, fame or status, which many people think bring lasting happiness but don’t, or is it helping others, doing something good for the world or building something beautiful? He notes that beauty is disappearing from our cities and communities, so build something that is beautiful. Don’t look at other people or depend on what they want, look inside, between the ears. The quote is “If you don’t add any newness into your life old habits will determine your outcomes and these habits will govern your future.” It echoes the saying that if you do what you did, you get what you got. If you want to change your outer world, your life, work or relationships, you have to change something inside yourself, because hoping for something else without changing anything won’t change the results. His closing question: what old habits would you like to shed and replace with new ones?   🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes) 🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes 💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness 🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club 🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club 🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070   Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter Website: https://roycoughlan.com/ Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/ Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/ The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/ EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/ Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/ #BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Motivation #Habits #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

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About

Your inner state creates your outer reality. Between The Ears is a show about the mental and emotional world we all carry inside, and how understanding it can transform the life we live outside. Hosted by Arnold Beekes, each episode explores a single idea for building a better life between the ears: taking back control from the expectations of parents, teachers, bosses, and everyone else who has quietly been driving your behavior, learning what you actually want instead of what you have been told to want, and lowering the chronic stress that comes from living two lives at once. Every episode closes with a moment of everyday beauty, a small true story of kindness, courage, or compassion, because what you notice and appreciate shapes your inner state just as much as what you think. If you are ready to stop living someone else's life and start living your own, this podcast is for you.

Information

  • Creator
    betweentheear
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    46
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Between the Ears Podcast