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How do I live when I know I must die? Learning to Die is a show about exploring that question hosted by Ian Dunican and Ciaran O'Regan. They explore areas of philosophy, psychology, martial arts, culture, existential risk, and anything else that seems of interest and relevance to navigating a well-lived life. And, since Montaigne put it beautifully when he said "every man bears the whole form of the human condition," Ian and Ciaran can only hope that some of what they learn prior to returning their borrowed carbon to the Universe might be of benefit to you too. Namaste Sapiens.
Episodes
Friday Aug 12, 2022
Friday Aug 12, 2022
In this episode, Ciaran and I are joined by Dr Shane Creado in Chicago. Shane is a double board-certified sleep medicine doctor and psychiatrist. He practices functional sleep medicine, integrative psychiatry, and sports psychiatry, combining all those skills to uncover underlying factors that sabotage the patients, comprehensively treat them, and help them achieve their goals. He completed an undergraduate degree in physical therapy and went on to do an MD, graduating at the top of his class with Honours in every subject in medical school. He completed his psychiatric training at the University of Wisconsin, where they awarded him the graduating resident award for academic achievement. He then went on to a fellowship in Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin because of the huge overlap between sleep and psychiatric issues.
Topics we discuss in this epic episode with Shane.
- The value of storytelling and narrative for convey historical truths
- The neolithic burial chamber in Ireland called Newgrange
- Carl Jung archetypes
- Learning about yourself from facing your shadow, integrate the shadow
- The guesthouse by Rumi https://gratefulness.org/resource/guest-house-rumi/
- The role of suffering to better our life
- The story of Job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_(biblical_figure)
- Ying and Yang, Unification and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
- “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love, and hate, are necessary to human existence.” William Blake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
- In Heraclitus’s Fragments, he notes that tension is the very thing that makes life sing. Take a guitar string, for example. If you wind it too tight, it will snap. Too slack, and it will buzz and make no note at all. Heraclitus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
- Jordan Peterson on Evil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqoyQNUrGls
- The story of two wolves https://www.urbanbalance.com/the-story-of-two-wolves/
- The use of biblical stories in today’s world
- Carl Jung anima and animus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus
- Boethius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius
- Thomas Jefferson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
- Catholic church historical, social, cultural, religious, and personal context
- Stoicism in Catholicism and Christianity https://dailystoic.com/stoicism-and-christianity/
- The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship by Derek Scally https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-best-catholics-in-the-world-9781844885282
- On the Genealogy of Morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality#Summary
- Carl Jung and the shadow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhzBo0dZNpY
- Catholic church raided during service
- https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/coronavirus/outrage-after-police-stop-mt-hawthorn-st-bernadettes-church-service-to-check-masks-c-5565472
- Derrin Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
- Roland Fryer on Police violence in the USA https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_analysis_tables_figures.pdf
- Coleman Hughes https://colemanhughes.org/
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
- Covid in Sydney: Military deployed to help enforce lockdown https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58021718
- Who was Rumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi
- Jungian Dream Interpretation - Marcus West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73dOSrn4fw
- Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, a short book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession
- A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart by Martin Luther King
Purchase Shane’s book here Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes: The Cutting-edge Sleep Science That Will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage
Contact Shane at shanecreado.com
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au.
Monday Jul 11, 2022
Monday Jul 11, 2022
In this episode, we are joined once again by Professor Seamus O’Mahony. Seamus is a doctor and a prize-winning author. He worked for many years in the NHS, returning to his native city of Cork in 2001, where he was a gastroenterologist and clinical professor until February 2020. His first book The Way We Die Now won the British Medical Association’s council chair’s choice award in 2017.
Purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Die-Now-Medicines/dp/1250112796
His second book Can Medicine be Cured? was published in 2019, purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com.au/Can-Medicine-Cured-Corruption-Profession-ebook/dp/B07DKKVBL4 and his latest book The Ministry of Bodies was published by Head of Zeus in March 2021.
Purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Bodies-Death-Modern-Hospital/dp/1838931929
He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books and the Medical Independent. He has written also for The Observer, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Saturday Evening Post. He is a member of the Lancet commission on “The Value of Death” and is visiting professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London.
In this episode, we discuss his involvement in this Lancet report. The Lancet is the top medical journal in the world with an impact factor of 79. The published Report of Lancet Commission on the Value of Death: bringing death back into life. You can read the entire report here (50 pages) for free https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02314-X/fulltext
Here is a short summary video from the Lancet (<7 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRqjkIPMBhw
Key points we discuss and useful links:
- The global commission was multidisciplinary in many ways including religious background, education, profession, and geographical location.
- The fear of death has been exacerbated by Covid-19
- The world is increasingly becoming devoid of meaning, we are disconnected, and hyper-scientific.
- Yuval Noah Harari https://www.ynharari.com/
- Cosmic Impiety by Bertrand Russell
- Global imbalance of health and medicine
- Equity, justice, and fairness
- Biogerontology
- The increase between rich and poor and access to health and medicine
- Life expectancy has been reduced in the United States and stagnant in the UK.
- Compression of Morbidity Theory
- Dying in the ICU in India is a status symbol
- Medical care is a cause of bankruptcy
- God is Dead (Nietzsche) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead
- Michael Pollan on https://michaelpollan.com/
- Elysium -the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
- Robert McNamara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara
- Ivan Illich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
- What is biogerontology: Rattan SIS. Biogerontology: research status, challenges and opportunities. Acta Biomed. 2018 Jun 7;89(2):291-301. doi: 10.23750/abm.v89i2.7403. PMID: 29957767; PMCID: PMC6179011.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179011/
- Michael Marmot-The status syndrome https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/status-syndrome-9781408872680/
- Compression of Morbidity Theory https://palliative.stanford.edu/overview-of-palliative-care/compression-of-morbidity-theory/
- A confession by Leo Tolstoy, full free audiobook here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k9Qo4w3JVY
- Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland
- The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Wednesday Jul 06, 2022
Wednesday Jul 06, 2022
In the episode of the Learning to Die Podcast, Ian and Ciaran sit down to discuss the relationship between Christianity and Society. We had a theme for this conversation of a scoping review. We discuss this broad interesting and tumultuous relationship between Christianity and society.
Items of discussion
- What is Marxism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
- Frans de Waal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal
Books we mention
- A confession by Leo Tolstoy, full free audiobook here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k9Qo4w3JVY
- Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland
- The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku
- A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart by Dr Martin Luther King Jr
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
In this episode of the learning to die podcast I am joined by Dr Caitlin Duffy
Caitlin graduated with a PhD in English Literature from Stony Brook University. Her dissertation focused on exploring the ways that 19th-century American gothic literature works to define liberalism and contemporary American horror films react to/define/challenge conceptions of neoliberalism. She has been published in The Journal of Dracula Studies, Poe Studies, and a collection of essays on Trump in fiction. As a graduate student, she used her blog as a space for my comprehensive exam notes. You can read it here https://caitlinduffy.hcommons.org/blog/
Caitlin's work at Sublime Horror https://www.sublimehorror.com/author/caitlinduffy/
You can follow Caitlin on Twitter @caitduffy49
Here are a bunch of items we discussed in this episode, in no particular order. I hope you enjoyed the episode
Blúiríní Béaloidis 21 - Samhain / Halloween (With Dr. Billy Mag Fhloinn)
Head full of ghosts by Paul Tremblay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Head_Full_of_Ghosts
About Charles chestnut https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Chesnutt
Po Sandy by chestnut https://chesnuttarchive.org/item/ccda.works00014
Silas Weir Mitchell 1829-1914 a biographical memoir
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/mitchell-silas.pdf
Physician Silas Weir Mitchell is perhaps best remembered for his “Rest Cure” for nervous women, depicted by his onetime patient Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/01/go-rest
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce1842– 1914 was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce
His works we discuss
- Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of short stories by an American Civil War soldier,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Soldiers_and_Civilians
- "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge>
- "The Eyes of the Panther https://literature.fandom.com/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Panther
One of the first American Gothic novels, Edgar Huntly (1787) mirrors the social and political temperaments of the postrevolutionary United States.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Edgar-Huntly-Sleep-Walker-Charles-Brown/dp/0140390626
Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.1093/oso/9780190666507.001.0001/oso-9780190666507
Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker
Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula
https://www.amazon.com.au/Something-Blood-Untold-Stoker-Dracula/dp/1631493868
Dracula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula
Darby O'Gill and the Little People is a Walt Disney movie from the 1950s. It was one of Sean Connery's first movies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_O%27Gill_and_the_Little_People
Barbian L, Sledzik PS, Reznick JS. Remains of War: Walt Whitman, Civil War Soldiers, and the Legacy of Medical Collections. Mus Hist J. 2012;5(1):7-28. doi:10.1179/mhj.2012.5.1.7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3381362/>
Walt Whitman and the Civil War https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/walt-whitman-and-civil-war/
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Friday Apr 29, 2022
Friday Apr 29, 2022
In this episode, we welcome back Gordon Marino. Gordon earned his PhD from the University of Chicago, M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and B.A. from Columbia University. His areas of specialisation include History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Kierkegaard. He teaches philosophy and related courses as a professor at St. Olaf College and holds a position as the curator of the Kierkegaard Library. In 2018, Marino published his most recent book, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide. He has authored and co-authored numerous works, including Kierkegaard in the Present Age. His articles have appeared in internationally acclaimed news sources and periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the American Poetry Review. Follow Gordon here https://www.existentialistscorner.com/
In this episode, we discuss
- The Cuban Missile crisis
- What is Existentialism? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
- Values and cultural differences
- Nuclear near misses and a previous episode we did https://learningtodie.com.au/podcasts/13-nuclear-near-misses-and-vice-admiral-vasili-arkhipov/
- Gordon's essay, "We must imitate Zelensky, not just admire him https://iai.tv/articles/we-must-imitate-zelensky-not-just-admire-him-auid-2085
- Ciaran's essay Existential Roulette "Ukraine and the Quagmire of Defending Freedom in the Nuclear Age" https://quarrelsomelife.substack.com/p/existential-roulette?r=dknyr&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
- Operation Paperclip and how NASA had Nazi scientists
- Development of values and different values in our society
- Alexander Dugin and his impact on Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin
- Unit 731 in the Japanese Army
- Appeasement in pre WW2
- And an outlook on Tyson versus Whyte
Order Gordon's book here “The Existentialist's Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age”https://www.amazon.com.au/Existentialists-Survival-Guide-Authentically-Inauthentic/dp/0062435981
Follow Gordon on Twitter @GordonMarino
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.
Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
In this episode, we catch up with @tommysantospn, AKA Tommy $, to discuss his previous role as a combat medic in the 82nd Airborne Artillery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/82nd_Airborne_Division_Artillery.
His journey of self-development from his time in the military to attaining two master's degrees since then. However, this episode is primarily focused on Tommy's new quest. Tommy is going to Ukraine on a mission.
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links. Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Tuesday Mar 15, 2022
Tuesday Mar 15, 2022
What an episode; we were thrilled to have Robb Wolf on the podcast. This was a great discussion led by Ciaran. Robb was scheduled to come on for 60 minutes but kindly stayed for 90 minutes. In this episode, we discussed many things today: the pandemic, diets, wokeism, environment, climate change, war, politics, and much more.
If you recognise Robb's name, you're not mistaken. He has been on the JRE podcast at least three times. He is a former research biochemist and a two time New York Times/WSJ Best Selling author of the Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. He is a brown belt in BJJ (Robb, on his love of BJJ https://youtu.be/l_HcfDWuozA)has fought as an amateur kickboxer. Find out more about Robb here and his podcast at https://robbwolf.com/.
His recent work with Diane Rodgers can be accessed here https://www.sacredcow.info/about-sacred-cow. They recently appeared on the JRE podcast episode #1784 to discuss this work https://open.spotify.com/episode/0r7MbKFhtLf9RLOahCT1gU
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links. Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au.
Tuesday Mar 08, 2022
Tuesday Mar 08, 2022
In this episode, Ciaran and I reflect on what is happening in Ukraine and the potential outcomes. If you have listened to our previous episodes you will know we have discussed Nuclear near misses. Will this be Nuclear war? Are we about to embark on World War III or a Cold War II? Is it East versus West all over again. More importantly, how the f$ck did we get to this.
Links to items we discuss
Monday Feb 21, 2022
Monday Feb 21, 2022
In this episode, we speak to Dr Rachel Menzies. Rachel is a clinical psychologist and member of the Australian Psychological Society. She is currently practising in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Rachel completed her Honours degree in psychology at the University of Sydney, winning the Dick Thompson Thesis Prize for her work on death anxiety and its relationship with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Rachel completed her Masters of Clinical Psychology and her PhD at the University of Sydney. Rachel has published extensively on the causes of various disorders, including depression, OCD, panic disorder, illness anxiety, social anxiety, agoraphobia, generalised anxiety disorder and specific phobias, as well as on gender differences in anxiety.
Rachel was featured in The Conversation Yearbook 2016, a collection of the top 1% of ‘standout articles from Australia’s top thinkers. Rachel is the lead editor of the book Curing the Dread of Death: Theory, Research and Practice, published by Australian Academic Press in 2018. In 2019, she released her second book: Tales from the Valley of Death: Reflections from Psychotherapy on the Fear of Death. In 2021, Rachel released Mortals: How the Fear of Death Shaped Human Society.
Rachel has delivered workshops on death anxiety and its relation to anxiety and mood disorders across 7 Australian cities. This 2019 national tour was hosted by the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy (AACBT). In addition to her clinical work, Rachel currently works as a postdoctoral research fellow and guest lecturer at the University of Sydney.
In this interview, we discuss Rachel’s new book Mortals: How the Fear of Death Shaped Human Society. We thoroughly enjoyed this book, and, in this interview, we explored many topics from religion, funeral practices, health, vitamins, and much more. If you are interested in Ernest Becker’s work around the Denial of Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death or Terror Management Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory , then you will love this book. Highly recommended and easy to read.
Order your copy today
https://www.amazon.com.au/Mortals-death-shaped-human-society-ebook/dp/B0967TDPZR
All of Rachels publications can be found here https://rachelmenzies.com/publications/
Contact Rachel at rachelelizabethmenzies@gmail.com and see her website at https://rachelmenzies.com/
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au
Friday Feb 04, 2022
Friday Feb 04, 2022
Ven Dr Buddharakkhita is an Irish native, BSc & PhD from University College Dublin with a Diploma in Buddhism from ITBMU Myanmar. He has enjoyed a successful engineering career in semiconductor chip fabrication. He has practised meditation extensively in lay life since childhood. He was first ordained in 2006 in the Theravada Forest Tradition with two decades of training with renowned meditation masters across a range of practices. He has more than 30 years of experience living, working and practising meditation in Europe, US, Asia and Australia. His teaching has been well received.
Emai Buddharakkhita on : knowtheheart@gmail.com
Knowing the heart talk on YouTube https://youtu.be/09SCzptegoE
Gratitude talk on YouTube https://youtu.be/oIohofxuIZc
In this episode we discuss
Buddharakkhita's background, education and his path to Buddhism
Specialisation versus Generalised approaches
Philosophize this Podcast https://www.philosophizethis.org/
Ricky Gervais show "Afterlife" https://youtu.be/JDtJhIQSdao and https://youtu.be/jpiM2z9ARm4 John Stuart Mills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
Ian's coming to God and Ciaran's experience with meditation
Marks of Existence in Buddhism
The Perils of Politicizing Science, Anna I. Krylov, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2021 12 (22), 5371-5376, DOI:10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475 Read here https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475?ref=pdf&
Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au