EF15 (BTP): Behind the Podcast — About Scott Ely and Evolving a Philosophy of Life
PLAY | DOWNLOAD What is the most important thing you’ve learned through all the key experiences of your life? And how often do you reflect on those lessons towards improving how you live? Even if you’re like me and don’t prefer revealing a lot about yourself, I do think this kind of self-reflective exercise is very important towards living an examined life. More...
Who Controls Your Narrative?
The big questions driving this episode is … Who controls your narrative? And more specifically, can you evolve the current narrative of your life into a valuable philosophy representing the person you want to be? And are you creating the story of your life? Or letting someone write it for you? What would happen if you made it a point to seek a change to your own narrative?
Episode EF15 Summary
Welcome to the very first AMA episode! This will be exactly as it sounds: these are listener-questions submitted mostly via the evolvefaster.com website. As opposed to the last episode, EF14, which was a “BTP” episode themed around “what makes the Evolve Faster Podcast tick and how it is created, etc”… this was to corral in all the questions about me to rip the band-aid off all at once, since I’m not a huge fan of talking about myself! So I’ve decided if I’m going to do it — let’s really do it — and I’ll offer up details about everything from psychedelic jungle experiences to what I’ve learned from traveling to 75 countries to what it’s meant to have a kid late in life to why I think about death just about every day. So, perhaps this will be an audience weed-out episode!
Evolve Faster is my laboratory to write and think about ideas in an attempt to learn to be a better human… which can be surprisingly difficult! But with a series of minor mindset shifts, it doesn’t have to be so hard. I’ve been experimenting with these ideas on a daily basis for over a decade and did a TEDx talk about one narrow aspect of it in 2015. I’m sharing the platform in the hope that learning from my many mistakes might make someone else’s evolution go a little faster.
Since completing engineering/business graduate school at Northwestern in 1999, I’ve been in nonstop evolution as a writer, creative, startup, traveler and thinker. Creating this framework to Evolve Faster is a work-in-progress and I won’t always get it right. My focus is the revolutions, thinkers and startups whose big ideas have changed (or could change) everything. And my goal is to take creative risks to make art that sits at the somewhat unorthodox intersections of fiction and nonfiction, science and spirituality, philosophy and psychology.
The question I’d like you to ponder as we go through this episode is the same one I’ll be trying to figure out myself as we go through this particular AMA. And that is: What is the most important thing you’ve learned through all the key experiences of your life? And how often do you reflect on those lessons towards improving how you live? Even if you’re like me and don’t prefer revealing a lot about yourself, I do think this kind of self-reflective exercise is very important towards living an examined life.
To peek behind the curtain of why I’ve created this podcast and platform, we’ll dissect the following submitted questions:
What is the about page talking about?
What is your background?
Why should I care about philosophy and psychology, they seem impractical?
Are you a philosopher?
What are you an expert in?
What experience most shaped you?
Why do you do this? Why these topics?
How did you develop this idea? How/why the fiction/nonfiction format?
Were there “aha” moments or key turning points or failures that got it to where it is?
What are your favorite books/movies/content?
Who I’d want to meet?
What do you love and hate about the podcast?
What is the hardest part?
What is something a lot of people don’t realize about you?
ABOUT THE EVOLVE FASTER PODCAST: Everything is changing, yet the questions that drive us remain the same. Will humanity face the absurdity of our collective existential crisis in time? Join Scott Ely as he takes us deep into the rabbit hole with philosophical tales to reboot your mind, upgrade your life and explore your soul. To Evolve Faster is to see the fact that you will die someday as a formidable challenge, instead of a source of immense fear. Create your reality…before it creates you. Isn’t it time for an upgrade? More episodes…
SUBSCRIBE: The Evolve Faster Podcast is written, performed and produced by Scott Ely. Writing and production of each episode of the podcast is a significant undertaking spanning many months—it’s a labor of love, but it needs your help to survive. To help ensure the creation of more episodes, please learn about ways you can support the podcast (register, share, review and subscribe) on the Support Evolve Faster page. Your help is much appreciated.
Season One: The journey begins as we embark on 11 episodes on big questions relating to MIND. What is the truth? Can we trust reason? Why do we have emotions? Does happiness define the good? What is identity? What is creativity?
(EF1) Trailer: The Evolve Faster Podcast (Extended) Trailer
(EF2) Intro: Life is a Near Death Experience: Welcome to The Evolve Faster Podcast
(EF3) S1-E1: All Aboard the Experience Machine: Destination…Unknown (Season One, Episode One)
(EF4) S1-E2: The Decapitation of Reason: A Skeptic’s Guide (Season One, Episode Two)
(EF5) S1-E3: The Truth is Clay in the Hands of a Sculptor (Season One, Episode Three)
(EF6) S1-E4: Information Mainlining and the Folly of Modern Wisdom (Season One, Episode Four)
(EF7) S1-E5: Sleight of Mind: The Black Magic of Rhetoric (Season One, Episode Five)
(EF8) S1-E6: Without a Compass: All Who Sail the Seas of Identity Are Not Lost (Season One, Episode Six)
(EF9) S1-E7: I Feel Therefore I am: Capsized by the River Emotion (Season One, Episode Seven)
(EF10) S1-E8: The Road to Happiness is Inked in Suffering (Season One, Episode Eight)
(EF11) S1-E9: When the Lights Go Out: The Blinding Light of an Artificial Future (Season One, Episode Nine)
(EF12) S1-E10: Wired to Fail: Leveling Up in the Game of Life (Season One, Episode Ten)
(EF13) S1-E11: The Bloody Fingerprint of Creativity (Season One, Episode Eleven)
(EF14) BTP: Behind the Evolve Faster Podcast - The Making of a Speculative Fiction Meets Philosophical Nonfiction Podcast
(EF15) AMA: Ask Me Anything: About Scott Ely and Evolving a Philosophy for Life
(EF16) BTP: On Creative Writing, Video Games and the Future of the Evolve Faster Podcast (About Antonio Rozich)
(EF17) BTP-EF3: What Am I Supposed To Do Free Will and Other Everyday Problems Behind the Podcast of Episode EF3
(EF18) AMA-EF3: The Mystical Allure of Converting to Buddhism and Speculating about Quantum Mechanics Ask Me Anything for Episode EF3
(EF19) BTP-EF4: Head Transplantation and Finding Inspiration for Speculative Fiction - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF4
(EF20) AMA-EF4: The Declining Value of Information and Taking Risks to Determine What is the Truth Ask Me Anything of Episode EF4
(EF21) BTP-EF5: Should Lying be Made Illegal and the Importance of Figuring Out Why You Believe What you Believe --Behind the Podcast of Episode EF5
(EF22) AMA-EF5: Defeating Fake News and Critical Thinking as the Superpower the World Needs Most Ask Me Anything of Episode EF5
(EF23) BTP-EF6: Scaling Mount Wisdom Without Suffocating Under an Avalanche of Ego Behind The Podcast of Episode EF6
(EF24) AMA-EF6: Is Less Really More When it Comes to the Pursuit of Wisdom or is Ignorance Bliss - Ask Me Anything of Episode EF6
(EF25) BTP-EF7: The Power of Propaganda and Rhetoric to Divide Us and the Quest for a Better World - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF7
(EF26) AMA-EF7: The Impossibility of Honest Politicians and Protecting Our Kids from The Most Insidious Fake News Ask Me Anything for Episode EF3
(EF27) BTP-EF8: Who are You and is it Possible to Upgrade Your Identity as an Adult? - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF8
(EF28) AMA-EF8: Drugs, Consciousness Manipulation and Cheating Your Way To a Better You - Ask Me Anything for Episode EF8
(EF29) BTP-EF9: Waging War Between Reason and Emotions and the Importance of Leaving Things Unresolved Behind the Podcast of Episode EF9
(EF30) AMA-EF9: Emotional Manipulation Tribalism and Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Think Before you Feel - Ask Me Anything for Episode EF9
(EF31) BTP-EF10: Dharma Modifying Negative Thinking and the Never-Ending Pursuit of Happiness by Embracing Suffering - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF10
(EF32) AMA-EF10: Mind Control Through a Well Chosen Tattoo and the Unlikely Case of Being Happy Enough - Ask Me Anything for Episode EF3
(EF33) BTP-EF11: The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Creativity - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF11
(EF34) AMA-EF11: On Perfection, the AI Alignment Problem, and the Possibility of Quantum Leaps of Creativity - Ask Me Anything for Episode EF11
(EF35) BTP-EF12: Cryptocurrencies Gaming and Leveraging Failure to Help Us Define Who We Are - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF12
(EF36) AMA-EF12: Pyrrhic Victory and Finding the 10% of Your Mind that Defines Who You Are - Ask Me Anything for Episode EF12
(EF37) BTP-EF13: Where Creativity Comes From and How to Find Your Uniquely Bloody Fingerprint - Behind the Podcast of Episode EF13
(EF38) AMA-EF13: Flow, Creative Improvisation and Other Altered States of Consciousness Ask Me Anything for Episode EF13
(EF39) S2-E0: LIFE, UPGRADED: Welcome to Season Two of the Evolve Faster Podcast
(EF40) S2-E1: Dehumanized: The Search for Self in the Devil’s Looking Glass
(EF41) S2-E2: Transhuman Fallibility: The Existential Risk of a Superhuman Future
(EF42) S2-E3: Civil Individualism: Loneliness Atop Mount Empowerment
(EF43) S2-E4: Evil Urges: The Fiery Duality of Human Nature
(EF44) S2-E5: Reality Unchained: Smashing the Icons of Social Delusion
(EF45) S2-E6: Weaving Society’s Web: Purpose in a Future Without Work
(EF46) S2-E7: Empathetic Distortion: Rigging the Scales of Justice
(EF47) S2-E8: Infinite Regress: Drawing Back The Veil of Perception
(EF48) S2-E9: Checkmate: A Child’s Guide to the Good Life
(EF49) S2-E10: The Domino Effect: The Momentum of an Unstoppable Future