Chapter 114: Light Watkins on Mexico's marvels, meditation myths, and mental mastery

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Five years ago I was invited down to Brooklyn to speak at an event called The Shine Movement. It was an intriguing soul-refueling combination of meditation, drumming, giving, and a few words by me. The event attracted a fascinating subculture of people and I felt slightly entranced meeting the man and mind behind it all: Light Watkins.

Light Watkins is someone I consider a master of spirit and mind. He grew up in Montgomery, Alabama (with siblings Candy, Trey, and Dusty!) in the 70s and 80s, traveled the world as a fashion model, and then worked as one of the most prominent yoga instructors in LA (including teaching future princesses). Deepak Chopra calls his meditation insights "simple and profound." Today Light has taught meditation to thousands of people from all walks of life in retreats and workshops around the world. He is the author of three bestselling books: The Inner Gym, Bliss More, and Knowing Where to Look. And each morning since 2016, Light has been sending out a daily dose of inspiration email.

Light also hosts The Light Watkins Show, a podcast that shares inspiring stories of regular people who’ve found their purpose in life.

Not only is Light incredibly prolific but he is also a wandering spirit -- literally. He lives out of a backpack. Not a giant hiking backpack, either! A normal backpack. I was grateful to catch up to him from Mexico City to finally reconnect many years later. I think you'll love this conversation and his 3 most formative books.

We discuss: fostering community, happiness as a muscle, learning to meditate, leading with your heart, managing resistance, and much, much more…

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 114 now…

Chapter 114: Light watkins on Mexico's marvels, meditation myths, and mental mastery

 

What You'll Learn:

  • What is the Shine Movement?

  • How do you cultivate community?

  • Why is consistency so critical to personal growth?

  • Why does criticism not work?

  • How can you establish a meditation practice?

  • Why are more people not leaning towards meditation?

  • Why is passion in teaching so critical?

  • Why is happiness a muscle?

  • How can we learn to master our minds?

  • How can meditation help with sleep?

  • When is the optimal time to meditate?

  • What does it mean to live out of a backpack?

  • Why is Mexico City so special?

  • What does it mean to seek to understand?

  • Why should you begin with the end in mind?

  • Why is name change controversial in the West?

  • How did Light get his name?

  • How can we let our heart guide us?

  • How can we manage resistance?

  • How can we manage overwhelm and guarantee rest?

  • How can we learn to prioritize?

Notable quotes from LIght:

“You have to enrol people in your vision and you have to be passionate about that thing that you're trying to do, enough so that people also feel like they're a part of it." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"It's a consistency game. You have to just be consistent with whatever you're trying to build. And I understood that from building my meditation practice, and before that from building my yoga practice. You just have to show up.” Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"I recognize that my mission here on earth is to leave the planet better, more inspired than I found it." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"I have to always remind myself that the bitter pill of criticism goes down a lot easier if you've given the pill of praise enough." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"If you cannot explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"Happiness is like a muscle that you have to cultivate.” Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

On meditation - "What you ultimately want is you want to de-excite the mind, and the irony is the way you de-excite the mind is by allowing the mind to do what it does, which is to roam around and wander and get lost and get distracted." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"Most of us try to be understood, but we discount the importance of seeking to understand." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"It's not about getting good at meditation, it's about using meditation to get good at life.” Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 113: Alie Ward oozes originality over odysseys and ologies

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Photo credit: Justin Zangerle

Oh hey. 

It’s the person who just dropped their phone on the bus right when the driver hit the gas and now the phone’s sliding across the sandy floor all the way to the back… Neil. Neil Pasricha. And now it is finally time for our much-anticipated 3 Books chapter with the one and only ... Alie Ward.

Alie is the Sacramento-raised youngest of 3 girls who grew up in the 80s listening to DadWard deliver the morning news from the local radio station. She spent her childhood playing with bugs and just being told by her parents, “Come back by sundown and don’t get tetanus.”

Alie fell in love with science and studied science and film in college. An unlikely but prophetic mix. She went on to win an Emmy for being CBS’s correspondent for Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation with Mo Rocco and was a host for Did I Mention Invention? on CW. She’s a consulting producer for the Barack and Michelle Obama-produced Netflix show Ada Twist Scientist and appears in the Netflix science series Brainchild and the science channel’s How to Build Everything. 

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! The piece de resistance of her science-and-performing ways is, of course, her jaw-droppingly great podcast, Ologies. Everybody I've suggested this podcast to just loves it. There's a reason it's the number one science podcast in the world! What are ... ologies? There are so many! There’s Myrmecology which is about ants, there’s Scorpiology which is about scorpions, there’s Etymology which is about word origins and, of course, there's one on Awesomeology about gratitude and happiness starring yours truly. 

Now it’s time to pull up your petrified stump and get ready to talk about: self-help books, starting a podcast, skunk predators, Life lists, Cervidology, infectious energy, confidence versus arrogance, visioning, the Galápagos Islands, fostering community, building trust, formative books and much, much more...

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 113 now…

Chapter 113: ALIE WARD oozes originality over odysseys and ologies

 

What You'll Learn:

  • Are self-help books formulaic? 

  • What is independence?

  • What are east vs west coast podcast styles?

  • What is Alie’s advice for starting a podcast?

  • What is a life list?

  • What is cervidology?

  • Why should we never be embarrassed about our favorite books?

  • Does the Law of Attraction work?

  • How can we make our energies more infectious?

  • What is the fine line between confidence and arrogance?

  • What is the etymology of confidence?

  • What is the power of ‘show up like you belong’?

  • Why is visioning so important?

  • Why do reviews matter in the podcast world?

  • How can we make people care about others?

  • What is wrong with the news?

  • What makes the Galapagos so special?

  • How can we foster community?

  • How can we build trust?

Notable quotes from Alie:

“Capitalism says, ‘You’ve got a thing? Now make it bigger. Got a thing? Make it bigger!” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Default to authenticity all the time. It’s like rock climbing. Those little crags are how people get you. It’s how you show up as you are. And that’s how you offer something nobody else does.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Show up as who you are and you will be irreplaceable.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

"By shifting from "I don't belong here" to "I do belong here and I can do it" you start taking chances and putting yourself in places that you otherwise wouldn't." Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Confidence doesn’t mean I'm better than anyone else. It just means I have faith in myself that I can do it.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Show up like you belong and have fun.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“This book made me go from thinking about what I hadn’t done to what I wanted to do.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Living in that space of like having butterflies for a goal will get you so much farther.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“All the wrong people tend to have imposter syndrome.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Writing it down and being honest with yourself is such a first step to getting there because you have to admit that that your desire is real or else you will stop yourself from going for it.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“News is a business and it is for money. We are not fed what we need. We're fed what makes money." Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“The more context I can give people on the minutiae that they might have taken for granted, the more I feel like I can center us all into this human experience of being a living creature on the planet.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

"I'm just like this weird lady on the internet, who's like, everyone's dad.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Let yourself be crazy about someone and always be friends first.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 112: Katie Mack on cultivating curiosity and contemplating the cosmos

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I want to make you dizzy.

I want to make you look up into the sky and comprehend, maybe for the first time, the darkness that lies beyond the evanescent wisp of the atmosphere, the endless depths of the cosmos, a desolation by degrees

These two lines begin an incredible poem called “Disorientation”... by Katie Mack.

Did you feel dizzy reading it? I did. I do!

What is the universe? Where did it come from? What was here before it? How long has it lasted? How long will it last? How could it ... end?

Do you remember being a little kid and it maybe suddenly hitting you that there was this overwhelming gigantic thing we were a part of that was almost too vast to even comprehend? I feel like a lot of us have that feeling. Sort of reminds me of this super-short clip from Annie Hall where 8-year old Alvy Singer is taken to the doctor by his mother because the vastness of the cosmos has suddenly hit him.

Why isn't he doing his homework? "What's the point?" he concludes.

That's one reaction. But if you're Katie Mack growing up in California you run the other way. You pick up a book called A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and continue chasing these near-impossible questions and just never, never stop. Katie kept asking these questions through her undergrad in Physics at CalTech and her PhD in Astrophysics from Princeton before she launched into even more fascinating work like, no big deal, building a dark matter detector.

Today Dr Katie Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist who studies a range of questions in cosmology -- i.e., the study of the universe from beginning to end. Her wonderful, recent bestselling book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) is a New York Times bestseller and goes through a very helpful history of the universe before exploring a number of different ways the universe might end. At times complex, but often (thankfully) accessible, reading her book is like hanging out with a really, really smart friend, illuminating what is going on up there.

Since June 2022, Katie is the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. This is a relatively new institute based in Waterloo, Canada, and it's where Katie does research on dark matter and the early universe and engages in conversations, like the one we are having today, to make physics more accessible to the general public. So: she does podcasts! And: she's extremely viral! I highly recommend you join the 426,367 people who currently follow her on Twitter @AstroKatie.

Let's talk big puzzles, time, malleable fabric, wordplay, living on mars, the possibility of alien life, "colonizing" space, Katie’s 3 most formative books, and much, much more.

This is a mind expanding conversation. You'll hear me playing catch-up the whole time. Not sure I ever caught up, or ever will, but Katie is a gift to the world.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 112 now…

Chapter 112: Katie Mack on cultivating curiosity and contemplating the cosmos

 

What You'll Learn:

  • Where are we in the universe?

  • What is the true definition of time?

  • How does time work?

  • Do calendars reflect time?

  • How do we define the future?

  • Is there other life in the universe?

  • What is a back-up book?

  • Why is the term colonization wrong for space?

  • Is astrology a science?

  • What is the smallest scale of measurement in the universe?

  • What is the largest scale of measurement in the universe?

  • What is the unobservable universe?

Notable quotes from katie:

“Generally in physics, we think of time as one part of that coordinate system that we use when we're talking about how things occur in the universe.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“How you move through space affects how you move through time. And that's part of relativity.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“There's something like 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe as far as we know. So, the idea that we're the only place in the universe where life has arisen seems just shockingly unrealistic to me.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“I think exploring the universe is a great idea for a lot of reasons, but as a way to have a backup plan for humanity I think it's a terrible idea.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“I love the idea that you can create an emotion in another person just by the way that you're using words.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“There are things about the universe, about the largest scales and the smallest scales, that are so contradictory to our daily experience, that they seem absurd to us.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“There are things that we can all understand and appreciate about the universe. We can all look into the night sky and wonder and we can all try to get some glimpse of this beautiful universe we live in.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

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Bookmark: The two-minute morning rule for having a great day

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Happy Equinox!

Today the sun is directly above the equator so no matter where you are the day and the night are around equal length.

Two equinoxes and two solstices give us four pause points between our regular scheduled lunar programming to drop a little bookmark in the midst of our epic journey about formative books.

Today I want share the two-minute morning practice I use to begin my day.

So: A number of years ago I was going through a tough time and found that I needed a way to ground myself and center myself, as well as my thoughts, in the morning. I was waking up without focus, with a lot of anxiety, and wasn’t in a very positive mindset. So I started this practice and then made a YouTube video about it -- which is this entire bookmark. That little practice and video turned into a number of national TV spots and a cover story in Harvard Business Review and a number of other videos that the algorithms loved more than mine and now it's turned into a journal that has sold a few hundred thousands copies.

This is a dead simple practice that's had a profound effect on my life. I realized I hadn't formally shared it here so I bring it for you now.

Here is the two-minute morning practice I use for having a great day.

Bookmark: the two-minute morning rule for having a great day

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Chapter 111: Austin Kleon draws on doodling to design and dream

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Buckle up!

Today we are flying down to hot, hot Austin, Texas where we’re going to grab three chairs on the grackle-filled patio of Mi Madre’s restaurant and order ourselves some enchiladas and #0 breakfast tacos before having lunch with the wise and wonderful Austin Kleon.

Austin in Austin — a treat! Austin Kleon is “a writer who draws” and the author of a number of my favorite books including Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. His books are kalaidoscopic collage-patchwork delights, focus on themes of creativity, are massive bestsellers and have sold over a million copies.

Austin has a wonderful well of wisdom at AustinKleon.com which is home to his new great Substack community and his endlessly arresting Friday Newsletter. (One of the few newsletters I open and read religiously every week!)

We are going to talk about: writer and reader energies, the Japanese word tsundoku, violence in America, dumb questions, the power of doodling, nature as a metaphor, car problems, Austin Kleon’s 3 most formative books and much, much more.

Order yourself a taco, grab a margarita, put on a tank top and some shades, and come hang out with us down on the teal metal-grid table on the patio of Mi Madre’s Mexican Restaurant in east Austin, Texas.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 111 now…

Chapter 111: Austin Kleon draws on doodling to design and dream

What You'll Learn:

  • Why should you order a #0 Taco at Mi Madre?

  • How do writer and reader energies complement each other?

  • Why should unread piles not stress you out?

  • What is the intersection of reading and travel?

  • Why is an awakening to misinformation crucial to growing up?

  • Why is violence so prominent in the US?

  • What is ‘home’?

  • Why should we all have ‘a room of one’s own’?

  • What is the difference between lies and bullshit?

  • What is real freedom?

  • What’s wrong with the car?

  • Why are dumb questions the best?

  • How do we manage giving our kids freedom?

  • How does mentorship shape you?

  • Why should you use your hands when you create art?

  • Why is teaching like a quilt?

  • What is the power of doodling and why should we all draw?

  • How does keeping a diary promote writing?

  • What is the true power of a walk?

  • How can social media be used … productively?

  • Why is nature the best metaphor?

  • What is the optimal tension for creativity and life?

  • Why should we all take public transit on a regular basis?

Notable quotes from AUSTIN:

“People get real guilty about their unread book piles. To me it's a win for possibility.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Books are time travel devices.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Home is where you come in the door and you're accepted.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Bullshit can be toxic, but it can be benign. Lies are direct manipulation.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Freedom should be your ability to move freely throughout your community, to be free from harm, to stay healthy, to live your life and to make connections.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“I actually think dumb questions are the better questions. The dumber your questions the better you can get to the heart of the situation.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Every teacher is up against impossible odds. To be a teacher is already to enter into a kind of, if not outright poverty, a poverty of respect and compensation.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“If you can write words and draw pictures, you've got two different modes of communication at your disposal.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

When people start drawing, they draw what they think should be there rather than what's there.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

About Thoreau and Sedaris: “What they did for me is show me a repeatable way of working indefinitely. You set up systems in which you're never devoid of material because you're constantly, constantly writing.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“I use social media as a public notebook.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“As a writer, you're looking for metaphors all the time and nature just ends up being like a rich one.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“If most Americans wanted to live in the real world, they should take the bus on the other side of town. That's the real world.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Write the book you want to read.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Stay open to the possibility that you might be the worst judge of your own work.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“You put the energy you can into the work, but then it takes the energy of other people to unlock it.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast 

“Make lots of stuff and put it in the world and see what happens.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 110: Kevin Kelly on quashing quandaries with curiosity and creativity

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Photo Credit: Christopher Michel

Kevin Kelly is a man of many titles.

Krista Tippett calls him a ‘philosopher technologist’, Tim Ferriss calls him ‘the world’s most interesting man’, and Stephen J. Dubner says simply, “If I was the Queen, I would want Kevin Kelly on my Privy Council.”

Kevin Kelly is the first person — ever! — to be hired online. When? 1983. For what job? A fascinating one! We’re going to talk about it. He dropped out of college after a year to spend ten years backpacking around Asia. (His photos have just been released in a wonderful paperweight-dwarfing book called Vanishing Asia.) In the same breath he might drop stories of spending time with the Amish just as easily as chatting with Google’s founders in the late 90s. His online home, kk.org, is a fountain of deeply insightful and wise blog posts, such as, 1000 True Fans and his annual bits of birthday advice (which are coming out as a book next year!)

Kevin Kelly’s library

Kevin also edited The Whole Earth Catalog, founded The Hacker’s Conference, and is Co-chair of the Board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging long term thinking and which is, right now, building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years.

See why titles don’t really work with Kevin? I mean, sure, he calls himself a ‘packager of ideas’ and the Internet may know him best as ‘Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine’ (which he cofounded in 1993.) But he’s also written a series of prophetic bestsellers including: What Technology Wants (2010) and The Inevitable (2016). That last book came out six years ago but it lays out the future of technology over the next thirty. Clear and clairvoyant, Kevin’s words helped me feel more positive about the omnipresent magnetic pull of technology we’re all breathing in today. I would recommend it especially if, like me, you’re occasionally prone to digging your heels in the dirt, throwing your smartphone out the window, and screaming “I don’t wanna!”

Kevin Kelly is a kind, wise, and optimistic finger-pointer. And, unlike most mystics, fortune tellers, and futurists, he’s got a long track record of being right.

We are very lucky to have Kevin Kelly join us on 3 Books.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 110 now…

Chapter 110: Kevin Kelly on quashing quandaries with curiosity and creativity

 

What You'll Learn:

  • What makes for a good podcast conversation?

  • What are the different types of vacation?

  • How might you plan a vacation to optimize learning?

  • Why are books a long-term technology?

  • What does technology want?

  • How might AI change us?

  • How do you define optimism?

  • How is technology both the problem and the solution?

  • How do we learn to think longer term?

  • What are recursive loops and how do they help explain the world?

  • Why should we strive to engage in infinite games for growth?

  • Why is population a concern?

Notable quotes from kevin:

“Maximization and optimization revolve around learning.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“We travel to be confronted with otherness.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“The Whole Earth Catalog gave me permission to invent my life.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Books want to take you to this thinking space, this literary space, which is a place that you can't get to in ordinary life.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Technology, like wood, has grains, and we have to work with these grains to get better results.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“We  humans have a very peculiar  relationship with technology in that we are both the parent and the child, the master and the servant, the creator and the creator at the same time.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Optimism is a greater focus on opportunities rather than the problems.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“I believe that problems are actually the path to progress. We get to progress through problems because they open up possibilities that we had not even thought of before.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“If we want to make a world that is friendly to us it will not happen inadvertently. We have to actually deliberately envision it first in order to make it.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“We need brakes to steer us but you just want to make sure that the engine is stronger than the brakes.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Problems are in the service of progress.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Every really important person that I admire reads more than I do.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 109: Rebecca the Sex Educator on embracing erotic exploration

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What is your erotic potential? And how might you ... increase it? Online erotica? Mindful masturbation? Solo nude mirror practices? The answer is all of the above and much, much more.

To help guide us through the erotic bramblebush (erotic bramblebush? erotic bramblebush!) we are very lucky to sit down with the wise and wonderful Rebecca S. Kay.

Rebecca is a Sex Educator with over ten years of experience. She's been a sexual advisor at Planned Parenthood, the Sexual Education Centre at the University of Toronto and the Brandon Centre in London, England. She has studied Surrogate Partner Therapy with UK based ICASA and is currently obtaining her certification in Somatic Sex Education and Sexological Bodywork through the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education.

Rebecca's mission is to break down sexual stigma and build up people's relationships with their bodies, sexualities, and each other. She is guided by the belief that pleasure is an essential element of this work and that nurturing intimacy takes courage and practice. Rebecca helps clients connect with their bodies and sharpen their skills through mindfulness, sexological bodywork, psychology, and neuroscience. She's at www.rebeccaskay.com and I recommend checking out her work and offerings.

With Rebecca's warmth, curiosity, and judgement-free guidance she creates such a rare and supportive open space to talk about sexuality. And yet! Despite this safe space creating ability ... I was, uh, extremely nervous. Extremely. As you'll hear. So it was growth for me and I hope it can be growth for you, too. Sexuality is so stigmatized and maybe this type of conversation helps us move a little bit down the path.

My wife Leslie also teaches sexual ed to seventh and eighth grade students and she (kindly!) joins for this conversation. So, here we go! Are you ready? Let's bravely jump into this wonderful conversation with Rebecca S. Kay.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 109 now…

Chapter 109: rebecca the sex educator on embracing erotic exploration

What You'll Learn:

  • How should we teach young people about sex?

  • Why is there still so much stigma around sex?

  • What is planned parenthood?

  • What is somatic sex education?

  • What is erotic potential?

  • What is the state of sex education today?

  • Why is it so important to teach kids about body parts?

  • How are we shaped by our first sexual experiences?

  • How can we help kids explore their sexuality safely?

  • What is the value of reading erotic writing?

  • How can we use self compassion to love our bodies more?

  • How do we reconcile the paradox of coupledom and erotic desire?

  • How can we maintain eroticism in a long term committed relationship?

  • What is the difference between love and desire?

  • Why is eroticism in marriage fairly new as a concept?

  • What’s the state of marriage today?

  • Why are monogamy and non monogamy not binary?

  • What is a peak erotic experience?

  • What is mindful masturbation?

  • What is a surrogate partner?

  • What is sexological bodywork?

  • What is the future of sex coaching?

Notable quotes from rebecca:

“In Western society, we prioritize our minds, cerebral thinking, and I think we have lost touch with the wisdom in our bodies.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“We need to make sure young people have access to  trusted forums in which to have conversations about sex.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“It's a bit of a stretch to love your body because the vested interest is in making you uncomfortable about your body, because then you'll need to spend money to feel better about your body.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“Capitalism wants to make you feel bad about how you look.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“We don't see representation of aging bodies or disabled bodies being sexual. So we desexualize these people.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“If you have partners and lovers in your life who can offer affirmation, it can be very valuable, but it's also essential to find ways within yourself too.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“You need to make this conscious choice to weave eroticism and flirtation and appreciation and gratitude for your partner into the day to day.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“I think incorporating ritual around the ending of relationships is a beautiful thing in the same way that we incorporate ritual around creating it.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“Fantasies can offer windows into your erotic self.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“It all starts with practicing love which I see as acceptance of yourself. It is where it all starts.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 108: Mohsin Hamid on the pleasures of pages and the pulse of Pakistan

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Mohsin Hamid is one of the greatest writers of this generation.

He was born in 1971 in Lahore, Pakistan before moving to California at age 3 while his dad did a doctorate at Stanford. At age 9, in 1980, he moved back to Pakistan and remained there until he was 18 when he came back to the US to go to Princeton. He graduated summa cum laude and studied under novelists Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates.

Mohsin's first novel, Moth Smoke (2000), told the story of an ex-banker and heroin addict in contemporary Lahore. His second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), told the tale of a Pakistani man’s abandonment of his high-flying life in New York. (This was my first Mohsin Hamid book and I can't recommend it enough.) His third novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), is my favorite -- it's a fascinating exploration of urbanization and global economic transformation ... wrapped in the guise of a self-help book ... written in the second person. An incredible feat. His fourth novel, Exit West (2017), his most popular, follows refugees escaping from their war-torn home through a chain of mysterious doors to foreign lands. And his fifth novel, The Last White Man, comes out on August 2, 2022 .... in just a few days.

Mohsin's books have been published in over 40 languages, sold millions of copies, been turned into movies, and been shortlisted for the Pen / Hemingway Prize and Man Booker Prize multiple times. He has been named one of the world’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine and his writing regularly appears in, no big deal, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and the Paris Review.

Mohsin lives with his wife Zahra and their children in Lahore, Pakistan, where he joins us from today for our 3 Books conversation.

We discuss: the history of Pakistan and Lahore, storytelling as an antidote to nostalgia, transmuting fear into sadness, teaching children about death, what he learned from Toni Morrison as a teacher, the power of reading out loud, writing masterclass tips, Mohsin’s three most formative books, and much, much more.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 108 now…

Chapter 108: Mohsin Hamid on the pleasures of pages and the pulse of Pakistan

What You'll Learn:

  • What is the history of Lahore?

  • What are Lahoris like?

  • What explains our need for nostalgia?

  • What does storytelling allow us to do?

  • What is it like to be a novelist?

  • Why are self-help books oxymorons?

  • Why is grappling with death so important?

  • What are the ethical considerations of immortality?

  • What is it like to have Toni Morrisson as a mentor?

  • Why is it so important to read what we write out loud?

  • How much should we edit our writing?

  • Why is the search for truth so difficult in today’s world?

  • How do you balance writing and a job? 

  • Why is engaging with the world so important for writers?

Notable quotes from mohsin:

“Charlotte’s Web takes the terror of death and transmutes it into sadness.” Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“Culture and spirituality help us find ways to navigate our mortality without denying that it exists.” Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“Storytelling allows us to sort of prototype alternative lives and alternative futures.” Mohsin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“I suspect our species will see itself living much longer. If we learn to fight a bit less.” Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“The idea that technology will free us is disasterous unless it's coupled with a cultural, humanistic narrative." Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“Most of my writing day is me pacing around in my study with a printout of what I've been writing in my hands, reading it out over and over and over again.” Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“You read with your ears, not with your eyes.” Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

“Sometimes your greatest weakness turns into your superpower” Moshin Hamid #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 107: Latanya and Jerry build biblio buzz on the Bronx Bound Books bus

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Happy full moon!

Hard to believe we are halfway through our fifth year of this epic pilgrimage.

Are you up for going to the Bronx to hang out on a book bus? What!? Well, a few months ago I got an email from 3 Booker Karen where she said “Hi Neil. I love this! Have you seen it?” The this was this video, going viral, about a woman in the Bronx trying to get funding to start up a bookstore on wheels.

I couldn't believe that the 1.6 million residents of Manhattan have 82 bookstores whereas the 1.4 million residents of the Bronx had ... one. That's it! One bookstore. Well, Latanya grew up in the Bronx and decided to do something about that. So she founded Bronx Bound Books -- a "bookstore that comes to you." Today we're going to hang out with her and Jerry, who's the proud driver of this bus, that serves underserved communities across New York.

We'll be hanging out in the storage locker parking lot of the (freshly painted!) bus with the 5 train ripping over the tracks behind us. We'll learn how Latanya and Jerry spend their days driving around, picking up books, selling books, visiting schools, visiting shelters, and visiting community centers, to spread the good word -- or good words, really. And we talk about our mutual love of reading, the idea of bringing books to book deserts around the world, and of course, Latanya and Jerry’s most formative books.

This is a fun and immersive conversation you won't soon forget.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 107 now…

Chapter 107: Latanya and Jerry build biblio buzz on the Bronx Bound Books bus

What You'll Learn:

  • What was the motivation to start a bookstore on wheels?

  • What are the logistics to starting a mobile bookstore?

  • How do kids react to a bookstore on wheels?

  • Why is community essential to any small start-up?

  • How do you make time for reading?

  • How are bookstores community hubs?

Notable quotes from latanya and jerry:

“Reading was like a friend to me.” (Jerry) Bronx Bound Books #3bookspodcast

“I know that used books are just as valuable as new books.” (Latanya) Bronx Bound Books #3bookspodcast

“We are reuniting people with books they lost in transition.” (Latanya) Bronx Bound Books #3bookspodcast

“People say kids don’t read but when we are out all we see are kids excited about reading” (Latanya) Bronx Bound Books #3bookspodcast

“If you have children, read what they read, no matter their age and then talk about the book.” (Jerry) Bronx Bound Books #3bookspodcast

“Books allow you to travel the world.” (Jerry) Bronx Bound Books #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 106: Alok Vaid-Menon battles binary boundaries and beauty biases

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Alok ("A-loke") Vaid-Menon was born in College Station, Texas in 1991 to parents from India and Malaysia.

When they were young they’d dress up in their mom and sister’s clothes and dance around the living room for all their extended family, including their Auntie Urvashi (a gender non-confirming lesbian of color and national activist). The entire room would clap and cheer them on over syrupy bowls of gulab jamon. But when they performed a similar Bollywood routine onstage at the school talent show at age six ... they got laughed at by the entire school. Thus began a shame-filled odyssey through pretending to live as a boy -- or, at least, male-presenting -- for many years. And it also began an astounding personal dialogue and examination around gender which they're helping to lead globally today.

Alok graduated summa cum laude from Stanford University with a Bachelors and Masters of Arts in feminest, gender, and sexuality studies. Stuffing their post-graduation work into boxes doesn't work but if forced to attach labels you might start with academic, author, artist, comic, poet, philosopher, or activist. Their work explores gender, trauma, and belonging and they call for body diversity, true gender neutrality, and our most basic tenets of self-determination. They advocate for a world of acceptance and love.

Alok is the bestselling author of Femme in Public (2017), Beyond the Gender Binary (2020), and more recently a poetry book called Your Wound/My Garden (2021).

I grew up the son of Indian immigrant parents in Canada with male and female binaries and the accompanying blue and pink clothes laid out in blue and pink nurseries. Gender divides only deepened with age and, looking back, I know they partially caused me to self-censor sides of myself. I remember painting my toenails and hiding them in my socks, secretly reading and loving The Babysitter Club books, and quitting figure skating once I was the only boy left in the class. Alok shared with me the history that dispels the relatively modern cultural story of the 'gender binary' and they taught me how, in India as just one example, colonialists three hundred years ago eliminated existing gender non-conformities in favor of distorted filterings and categorization.

Alok created #DeGenderFashion, a global movement to degender fashion, they have performed in over 40 countries around the world, and they headlined the 2021 New York Comedy Festival.

Alok and I talk: beauty standards, queer history, librarian pizza parties, trans-femininity, denim platform shoes, British colonization, bánh-mì sandwiches, self love, Alok’s three most formative books, and much, much more.

It was a joy spending time with Alok in Central Park in New York City.

Get comfortable on the bench between us and let's flip the page into Chapter 106 now…

Chapter 106: Alok vaid-menon battles binary boundaries and beauty biases

What You'll Learn:

  • How should we define gender?

  • What is gender spirituality?

  • What is the #DeGender fashion movement?

  • How can we learn to see the world in a non-binary way?

  • Why is hate the easy path?

  • What is true gay and queer history?

  • What is the crisis of anti-trans violence and anti-trans discrimination?

  • What is the history of non-binary gendering?

  • What is the link between colonization and binary gendering?

  • What is the reality of everyday life for gender non conforming people?

  • How can we truly love our kids?

  • How do we get better at self-love?

  • And much, much more…

Notable quotes from ALOK:

“My dream is that gender becomes obsolete as a category to divide people." Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

“Beauty is kind of a bludgeon in society that whacks us over and over again into discipline." Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

“Normative beauty silences us just like any other form of censorship.” Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

“So much of the work of healing is about being able to sit in what people see as chaos, incongruity, or dissonance and be okay with it.” Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

"Gender nonconforming people are being hunted and it's getting worse.” Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

“Genders migrate through space and time.” Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

"It is easier to wear pain as a virtue.” Alok Vaid-Menon #3bookspodcast

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