Weather of the Mind

Episode #113 Original Air Date: 10 September 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 11 minutes An addendum to the last episode on Experiments. In this episode I more explicitly encourage the listener to design one's own experiments! Embark! Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #112 Original Air Date: 27 August 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 28 minutes What is the nature of experiment in our lives? How does experiment help our local culture evolve, our local rituals and habits? In this episode, I explore these questions and share my recent experiment: a year without home internet. Plus, I revisit some passages from the unpublished Urbanmonks Handbook on the topic of experiment. A riveting episode! Please tune in. Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #111 Original Air Date: 7 July 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 32 minutes The first Weather of the Mind cooking episode!  Learn some tips for hosting a 20 person bbq gathering featuring skewers! Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #110 Original Air Date: 5 May 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes Grab some pen and paper, for it's time to reflect on the state of play in your life. Join us for your annual play check-in, your annual play self-assessment. Living and Learning, Doug

Episode #109 Original Air Date: 3 March 2023 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 29 minutes This episode features some stories and some reflection on the topic of Poker as it pertains to emotional health.  Over the past 7 months, I have had the opportunity to play over 50 poker sessions - mostly home games, with a few casino trips interspersed. In this episode I share what I have learned about the relationship between playing poker and developing emotional health skills. Some people have told me that they are surprised that I would play poker, for they saw it is incompatible or even contradictory to the Weather of the Mind pod. In this episode I hope to set the record straight - - poker can be a great teacher of focus, decision-making, emotional regulation, social skills, risk/rewards strategy. Best to you  - - Doug PS If this show resonates, please share with your people, that is a real help.  Thanks. (plenty of ways to link to social media on the audio player on the weather of the mind page.) (Episode 101 is a great introductory episode to share) PPS Seriously though, we have no new school social media for this podcast.  So word of mouth is extremely helpful.  Old school.

Intro to the new season

Episode #107 Original Air Date: 13 April 2022 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 58 minutes Guest: Jake Seegers, founder of Fitquest, which combines role-playing and fitness pursuits. (contact him: [email protected]) Music sample: "Flute Loop" - Beastie Boys. RIP MCA. The Weather of the Mind pod is back!  It has been a challenging winter up here in Ithaca.  More details on that in a future pod. This episode features Ithaca-based innovator and all-around nice guy, Jake Seegers.  His work caught my attention because I appreciate when people innovate and create a collision between two things that are not often put together. In this long interview (I decided not to break it up into two episodes), we talk a lot about narrative, games, fitness, and bringing these together in clever ways. So happy to be back with you.  I have missed working on pods. Happy Spring. Doug

Episode #106 Original Airdate: 30 September 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 36 minutes Special Episode... Please share with your nature-loving peeps... a great episode to introduce new people to this podcast... In this episode I give a tribute to a mighty white oak tree, whose massive umbrella inspired and protected my family and me for many seasons. Topics that appear in this episode include: rituals, seasons, relationship to nature. A real treat! Tune in! -- -- “For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow. Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts ac...

Episode #105 Original Airdate: 27 August 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 23 minutes Interview with Kaylea Forsythe.  Part II. We talk about how a blossoming relationship with plants - from houseplants to plantwork - can help engender a foundational shift in emotional health. Tune in! References: Root Bound.  Essay by Kaylea Forsythe. 2021. https://vocal.media/journal/root-bound

Episode #104 Original Airdate: 5 August 2021 Produced by: Doug Krisch Length: 21 minutes Interview with Kaylea Forsythe.  Part I of II. We talk about how a blossoming relationship with plants - from houseplants to plantwork - can help engender a foundational shift in emotional health. References: Root Bound.  Essay by Kaylea Forsythe. 2021. https://vocal.media/journal/root-bound