Experimental format today! I pulled over in the Lake District, pointed the camera and let AI flip the script - interviewing me instead.

What came out was more honest than I expected. We cover which marketing channels I'd bet on if starting from scratch, why I'd probably sacrifice the agency if I had to choose, my first long-term relationship and the failure I've never really talked about, four wild podcast concepts I've been sitting on, my complicated relationship with cold plunges, evening ice cream as a recovery tool, and what Bali actually means to me right now.

No guest. No structure. Just me, the road through Windermere and Coniston, and an AI that kept trying to wrap the episode early (lol!)

If you've been in a liminal phase yourself - unsure what's next - this one might land.

Subscribe, leave a review, and drop me a message if any of this resonated. I always reply.

***LINKS***

awakenoutofcontext.com

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No guest this week, just me.

Since December I've been in a bit of a flat patch. Not depressed, not broken, just... not quite myself. In this episode I talk through what's been going on: the strange paradox of building more with AI than ever before and feeling less fulfilled because of it, the reality of living alone for four years in a town built around nuclear family life, and why I think my environment has quietly dragged me down.

I also touch on the dopamine seesaw, what a therapist said about stress and depression being two sides of the same coin, and why I'm hanging on for Bali to give me a blank canvas again.

One for the aficionados only I’d suspect.

awakenoutofcontext.com

David Pearce is a British transhumanist philosopher and co-founder of Humanity+, best known for The Hedonistic Imperative; his 1995 manifesto calling for the use of genetic engineering to eliminate suffering from all sentient life.

In this episode, I sit down with David for one of the most thought-provoking conversations this podcast has had. We cover whether suffering is a design flaw we could actually fix; the ethics of editing your children's genetic predisposition toward depression; the difference between genome reform and eugenics; why MDMA gave David his clearest glimpse of what mental health could genuinely feel like; and what three decades of banging this drum has taught him.

Key topics:

- Natural selection as an engine of suffering and how CRISPR could change that

- Hedonic set points; what they are, why they matter, and how to raise them

- The eugenics problem; why the word is probably "damned forever" even with good intentions

- MDMA, psychedelics, and the blind rationalists parable

- David's own hedonic set point; a surprisingly honest personal answer

Subscribe wherever you listen, and if this one made you think, a review goes a long way.

Chapters

00:00 David's journey and the hedonistic imperative

01:37 Why suffering has loomed large in his own life

03:01 30 years of progress; CRISPR, AI and what surprised him

10:27 What he'd tell world leaders; end factory farming first

13:55 What is a hedonic set point and why does it matter?

20:04 Would you want your children engineered to be happier?

28:27 SSRIs, antidepressants and the case for genetic alternatives

31:53 What is stopping us; the eugenics problem explained

35:57 Does suffering produce great art? AI says otherwise

43:09 MDMA as a window into what mental health could be

45:26 Psychedelics, consciousness and the blind rationalists parable

54:43 Atheism, physicalism and the hard problem of consciousness

58:57 David's own hedonic set point; a personal confession

1:03:12 Defining hedonic zero; apathy, numbness and mixed states

1:05:43 Bliss vs motivation; can you have both?

***LINKS***

Websitehedweb.com

The Hedonistic Imperative (manifesto)hedweb.com/hedab.htm

Facebook Group - The Hedonistic Imperativefacebook.com/groups/hedonistic.imperative

X / Twittertwitter.com/webmasterdave

Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pearce_(philosopher)

MY STUFF:

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