ALL EPISODES

I think the vast majority of humanity's pursuits boiled down to an effort to escape pain, but pain built civilization. We learned to use fire to keep the pain of the cold at bay. We drive cars and use computers to speed everything up so we can avoid the pain of having to wait so long. If pain is such a bad thing, then why is it so often the catalyst for so many good things in my pursuit of understanding?

Once upon a time, I used to think that there was a way to make everyone like me, but that's not possible. I don't think even Mother Teresa was universally loved. No one is universally loved. Some people are able to manage being liked by a lot of people, but those people are also very frequently uninteresting.

Freedom seems like the ability for us to do whatever we want. But that's often the very thing that enslaves us at this moment. I kind of want to check my phone, but is that freedom or compulsion? What most of us like to call freedom is more of a curated form of voluntary enslavement. So, I noticed something a while back.

I had a friend. Literally have his world come crashing down on him this morning when a water pipe burst in his apartment building and started leaking from the ceiling. Understandably, his girlfriend was in a panic and to some degree, so was he. They had just gotten settled into this place with jobs and responsibilities weighing on them. They just didn't have the energy or the time to deal with this on top of everything else they already had going on. I read something in a

When a lion is looking for something to eat. It doesn't think about the antelope's feelings. It is focused and it is hungry, and it takes what it needs. It feels cruel, but the lion would die if it didn't choose to be the predator it was meant to be. People are odd creatures. We can be both predators and prey, and as such, I think that there's an argument to be made that maybe there are times in life.

There's a moment in the Chronicles of Narnia when Peter, one of the young protagonists, comes face to face with a wolf that wants to kill him. When others go to him, the king of Narnia, Aslan says Back, let the prince win his spurs. I never thought much about this until the other day. I happened to be watching the movie with my kids, and I thought, why on earth would you ever risk letting even the least valuable person in your army be killed by an enemy in one-on-one combat i

When I told my five-year-old, his mom and I were divorcing. I was practically crying, and his response was, it's okay, daddy. I don't care if you split up. If only that was true. He's seven now and struggles more deeply than ever with the fact that the two people he loves most are not together. The ramifications of divorce go beyond what I think we like to imagine. Sometimes over 50% of marriages today are expected to fail. Maybe it's just easier to divorce or maybe the s

If you cannot stand to be apart from them, you're not in love. You are infatuated or maybe just dependent. The difference between actually being in love or not is the difference between feeling pain when you aren't around them and having no place that you'd rather be. Romantic relationships have a way of being a kind of band aid for a lot of our insecurities. They make us feel less alone. They can bring some excitement to our lives. They bring pleasure to our lives. They

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - "Why Trying to Fix Everything is Breaking You." Do you ever feel overwhelmed by good advice? Like somehow, you're behind. If you're not waking up at four 30, journaling, meditating, cold plungin

Have you ever felt like other people got a head start in life, like they were born taller, richer, smarter, more connected? Well, maybe they were, but even with all of those advantages, they're still not guaranteed to win, and neither are you unless you stop playing their game. So, you can play your own game. So, someone was telling me a story recently about this guy that was born with a disease that made his spine form abnormally, and the effect was he didn't grow very tall,

I think as much as the typical man wants to project an image of rugged independence and toughness, what he really wants out of a relationship with a woman is to be mothered. There are two distinct differences between men and women, as I see it, and one obviously is biology, but the other I would say is nature. The differences between our nature's, is that generally speaking, men are tuned into things and women are tuned into people. You won't find nearly as many women as m

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones, “The Curse of Being Smart.” I've known a lot of smart people in my life. And I enjoy spending time with these people. They often have something interesting to say, but I've noticed that many of t

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Life Gives More Than It Takes.” In the 1970s film, Willie Wonka, the Chocolate Factory. There's a line from one of the songs that says, “If you want to view paradise, simply look around and vi

It is easier to see bad things than it is to see good things. Catastrophe and destruction suck up our attention like a vacuum. It isn't uncommon for the first thing we notice about someone else to be something we don't like. On the other hand, appreciating things that are beautiful and good. Takes a little focus. Unless of course you happen to be a man and you're looking at a woman, but generally speaking, beautiful things like flowers,

Humanity likes to fool itself into thinking it knows the world it lives in, but we don't. We are surrounded by darkness so thick that even the light we shine doesn't go very far. But there's a kind of comfort that we can take from living in the darkness because that same darkness gives us permission to stop thinking so hard about what is.

If we had a metaphorical cup that needed to be filled up to feel contentment, what would we have to fill it with? I know what we try to fill it with. I know we try to fill it with all kinds of things, but sometimes I think the real problem isn't that we don't have things to put in the cup, but rather that the cup has a hole in it.

Everybody starts out in life as a bully. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but children are savages. I find it amusing sometimes to watch my kids pick on each other. They are masters of poking at each other's insecurities. The funniest to watch is my three-year-old, who likes to tease my six-year-old. She is three, and she already knows how to get her brother to hyperventilate.

The reason words matter is because when we cannot accurately name or describe a thing, we are powerless to take action. How could we? Without a name for that which we are experiencing or seeing, we do not even know the thing that needs to be acted upon. When we are afraid, if we can learn the source of this fear and put a name to it, that fear often goes away, or at the very least, it's weakened.

Our pride is tied up in the picture we create of ourselves. It's what we see when we look into the mirror of the mind. But in truth, the whole thing is made up. We are not the person in our imagination. If we could eliminate this perception of ourselves, we would be free of pride. And pride is effectively the fence we build up around us.

When I'm watching a movie and something bad happens to a dog or a baby or a little girl or boy, or even a grown woman. I feel pretty sad for them. But you know who, I don't feel bad for almost ever. Men, typically. I'm just waiting for them to suck it up and move on to trying to fix the problem. Watch.