Naming the Real

Brandon Cook
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In an era of polarization, confusion, and "fake news," discerning and naming what is real—what satisfies, what has substance, what is meaningful—is more important than ever. The Naming the Real Podcast is about doing just that: rightly naming the beliefs, attitudes, practices, and behaviors that will help you transcend our cultural anxiety and lead a flourishing life, for the sake of the world.

  1. The Yeah, But Fallacy: Why Moral Reasoning Is Breaking—and How to Stop It (A Third Way, Part I)

    JAN 16

    The Yeah, But Fallacy: Why Moral Reasoning Is Breaking—and How to Stop It (A Third Way, Part I)

    What happens when moral reasoning is replaced by comparison and outrage? In this episode, we name what may be the greatest moral fallacy of our time: the "yeah, but" fallacy—the habit of justifying our own behavior by pointing to the failures of the other side. We explore how this entrenched way of thinking corrodes conscience and threatens the American Republic. And as we launch this new series—an extension of Our Cultural Crisis—we begin to plot a path forward: a third way out of the madness.

    11 min
  2. Embodying What We Didn't Know How: Using the Body's Core Energy to Break the Stress and Trauma Loop (Somatics IV)

    11/14/2025

    Embodying What We Didn't Know How: Using the Body's Core Energy to Break the Stress and Trauma Loop (Somatics IV)

    In this fourth installment of the Somatic Series, we explore how trauma is embedded not simply through overwhelming event but through the body's incomplete survival responses. Stress, overwhelm, and trauma are energies which can become trapped in our bodies as long as our survival responses remain unfinished. How do we release and discharge these energies and find freedom? In this episode, we explore the reality that we don't talk our way out of trauma so much as walk our way free: we discharge traumatic energies by going back and embodying the responses we didn't know how to embody at the time we were overwhelmed.

    37 min
  3. Getting Unstuck: Navigating the Stress and Trauma Spectrum (Somatics III)

    09/26/2025

    Getting Unstuck: Navigating the Stress and Trauma Spectrum (Somatics III)

    To be human is experience stress as well as being on a trauma spectrum. In this episode—part three of the Somatics Series—we define trauma in relationship to stress, in connection with Polyvagal Theory. Trauma is the energy of overwhelm in which we feel (and then, most often, come to believe) that we don't have the resources to make life work. This episode concludes by introducing the pathway out of trauma and stuck energy.

    40 min
  4. Tracking Tigers: Polyvagal Theory and the Art of Navigating Your Nervous System (Somatics II)

    08/29/2025

    Tracking Tigers: Polyvagal Theory and the Art of Navigating Your Nervous System (Somatics II)

    In this second episode in the Somatics series, we explore Polyvagal Theory as a tool for raising awareness and befriending your body. Exploring the three central states in Polyvagal Theory (safety/connection, fight or flight, and shutdown), as well as the freeze state that most humans get stuck in, we name practices for getting your body unstuck and moving forward towards flourishing.

    44 min
  5. Your Body for a Change: Raising Your "Felt Sense" For Sustained Transformation (Somatics I)

    08/19/2025

    Your Body for a Change: Raising Your "Felt Sense" For Sustained Transformation (Somatics I)

    In this episode—the first in a new series about befriending our bodies—we explore how awareness of our body's feelings, experience, and sensation is the engine of sustained change. In a society in which we are encouraged, implicitly if not explicitly, to disembody—to dissociate from embodied awareness—we begin to lay out a path towards fully inhabiting our bodies and, thus, our lives. This, as this series bears out, is the crucial foundation for building a life of abundance and flourishing, for our sake and for the sake of the world around us.

    21 min
  6. Finding the Light All Around Us: Reflections on the Lives of Rabindranath Tagore, Etty Hillesum, and Edwin Muir (A Final Conversation with John Phillip Newell)

    06/09/2025

    Finding the Light All Around Us: Reflections on the Lives of Rabindranath Tagore, Etty Hillesum, and Edwin Muir (A Final Conversation with John Phillip Newell)

    In this final conversation with Celtic thinker and author John Philip Newell about his book 'The Great Search,' we explore themes of returning to the wisdom of childhood and learning to encounter the light of the world in the midst of darkness. What emerges is a map for navigating the challenging landscape of our contemporary culture, with its emphasis on external power over inner wisdom. As we reflect on the wisdom of three twentieth century luminaries, an invitation for transcending the darkness emerges. Come for his brogue, stay for his mind and heart: this final conversation with John Phillip Newell will leave you re-discovering wisdom, hope, and courage.

    1h 17m
  7. Dystopic Distortions: Grounding in Calm and Joy (No Matter How Many Facts Are Called Fake) (Our Cultural Crisis XXI)

    05/27/2025

    Dystopic Distortions: Grounding in Calm and Joy (No Matter How Many Facts Are Called Fake) (Our Cultural Crisis XXI)

    At the center of our cultural crisis is a battle for reality—for the role of facts, objective law, and thought itself. As mainstream media is derided as "fake news" and blatant lies become rampant, it starts to feel like we are in a shell game with the truth. Meanwhile, long-held Constitutional norms are violated and the rule of law and due process are threatened. All of this is facilitated, in part, because of the growing culture trend to engage outrage over reason and emotivism over thought. In this episode, we explore examples of the war on reality, how we can reject the temptations to live in alternate realities, and name practices for staying grounded in calm and joy throughout it all.

    34 min
  8. A Culture of Winners and Losers: Transcending the Animal Kingdom in President Trump's America (Our Cultural Crisis XX)

    04/21/2025

    A Culture of Winners and Losers: Transcending the Animal Kingdom in President Trump's America (Our Cultural Crisis XX)

    At the center of our cultural crisis is a clash of values. The current administration's actions reflect an age-old paradigm: us versus them, winners versus losers. It is driven by animal kingdom values, where "might makes right." In this episode, we explore a different paradigm and a different set of values for transcending such limited thinking.

    31 min
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Trailers

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About

In an era of polarization, confusion, and "fake news," discerning and naming what is real—what satisfies, what has substance, what is meaningful—is more important than ever. The Naming the Real Podcast is about doing just that: rightly naming the beliefs, attitudes, practices, and behaviors that will help you transcend our cultural anxiety and lead a flourishing life, for the sake of the world.

Information

  • Creator
    Brandon Cook
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    122
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2021, Brandon Cook. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Naming the Real

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