An Unqualified Guide to the Good Life

Welcome to a new miniseries on Identity and Politics! In this episode, Nic and Adam discuss the objects they carry with them, as well as the ways in which we interact with material culture inform our identity and our politics. In the episode, Adam said that Danny Miller called blue jeans the first "post-semanitc" object, when he meant "post-semiotic" (what an idiot). Want to let us know the things you carry? Email us at unqualified@goodlifeguide.io or message us on instagram @_goodlifeguide! Sources: Oxford Bibliographies: Material Culture The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien Capitalism and Ego Formation by Alice Cappelle (video) Objects and Self Identity by S Wheeler

This week Nic and Adam are continuing their self-help kick by taking a look at Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Samuel Smiles' Self Help. As with the previous book, Nic is much more receptive than Adam who is bitter and jaded. Nevertheless, here at An Unqualified Guide to the Good Life, we are not snobby about where we obtain our wisdom from, and we try to tease out the value nevertheless! Adam's audio is a little wacky this episode. Will try and fix it for next time, apologies!  Also, a few corrections: Adam said it sold half a million copies by the time Sam Smiles died, but actually this was a quarter of a million. Furthermore, when Adam said "Great Men of history, and it is almost exclusively men", he meant those who had managed to be featured in this book.  Fiction is Better than Self-Help by Alice Cappelle 

Baby we back.  Welcome to Season Six of An Unqualified Guide to the Good Life! This season is all about ambition. To start the season off, we're starting in the same place that a lot of people start in their pursuit of ambition: self-help books. In this episode we discuss one of the best selling self-help books of all time: Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Nic maintains that there is some useful advice to be pulled from this book. Adam believes it to be almost meaningless drivel. Do either of them have something insightful to say? You decide!  The books Adam promised to mention were Happy by Derren Brown and The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. You can contact us on Instagram @_goodlifeguide or you can email us at unqualified@goodlifeguide.io

In this episode, the boys discuss ritual in its myriad forms and ponder questions such as: What is ritual? What forms of ritual are there? Why should we bother with ritual? What actions deserve ritual? How can we incorporate rituals into our lives? What actions are indicative of ritual? What obscure academics can Adam introduce to the conversation? And more! Nic's sources: The Power of Ritual by Casper Ter Kuile Adam's sources: Emile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner Oh, and as of upload, it really is Monday. It's wicked late (apologies, again), but it is Monday.

In this episode Nic and Adam discuss some of the different ways in which we interact with and perceive animals. Be it through domestication, co-operation, or food animals are an inescapable part of our existence. Additionally, they serve as potent symbols and representatives of their ecosystem and therefore can allows us to connect to the wider natural world around us. So what can animals teach us about ourselves, the world, and our place in it?

In this episode Nic and Adam discuss nature and the degree to which nature is important for our spiritual experiences. We discuss how we relate to nature, especially in the urban environments in which most of us live. How can we overcome the alienation we feel and how can we become more connected to space? Is the language we speak part of the problem? And what is the name of that molybdomantic Swiss tradition that Adam couldn't remember the name of? (It's Bleigießen)

In this episode, Nic and Adam consider how travelling can become a spiritual practice. What can be learned from removing oneself from one's context and immersing ourselves in somewhere new? Do we need special training for this? Do we have to go far, or abroad? We still don't know the answers, but we have a wonderful time expressing our ignorance and we hope you will too!

In this episode, Nic and Adam continue pontificating about the distinction between religion and spirituality and discuss why certain experiences may qualify as one or the other. In the process of this debate, they discuss martial arts, the semantics of eating an apple, why Adam was once punished for high-fiving a vicar, and the best way to enjoy pizza.

Nic and Adam are back for Season 5, this time discussing all about spirituality! This is a big topic and one we are particularly ill-positioned to address. In this episode, we discuss what spirituality means to us, the distinction between religion and spirituality, and how science might be reconciled with spiritual goals. 

In this episode we discuss the notion of being one's own doctor ('physician heal thyself') and where alternative medicine and healing remedies belong in the modern world. 

We're back, after a brief unjustifiable hiatus - hooray. In this episode we continue with the theme of the body by discussing the idea of 'excess': what it means to overindulge, over-exert, and just generally live in the extreme. 

It finally happened! In this episode Nic and Adam discuss the joys of martial arts. Included in this episode are reflections on our own experiences of martial arts, the benefits of martial arts for fitness and culture, the distinction between martial arts and combat sports, and why on earth we voluntarily subject ourselves to getting beaten to a pulp. 

In this episode, Nic and Adam are joined by Devin Ibañez to talk all about team sports.  Devin is the first openly gay Major League Rugby player and is dedicated to LGBTQ+ advocacy in sport. We talked about what it means to play on a team, how individual identity relates to team identity, how sports can be made more inclusive spaces, and why it is important to do that.  Devin is working to raise money for the Transgender Law Centre (TLC) in the US. The TLC advocates for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation. If you wish to donate, you can do so here: https://tinyurl.com/translawcenterfundraiser (It might struggle with a non-US phone number. This is not a mandatory field so you can leave it blank. If you need to put in a US postcode, I tend to use “90210” from the eponymous late 00s teen drama). Devin can be found on social media via his hand @thatgayrugger or on his website https://thatgayrugger.com

In this episode we discuss beauty standards of the contemporary era and times past, as well as how they differ among the sexes (we realised too late we should have had at least one woman join us for this conversation..). We also discuss whether it's healthy to train towards aesthetic goals and what the relationship between health and beauty is. Unrelatedly, Nic also tries his hand at accents. 

Welcome to the opening episode of our fourth Season: 'Body'. In this first session we talk about the dangers of living too statically and what we can do to redesign the spaces around us in order to encourage all peoples to live their lives dynamically, and in movement, in so far as they can.  A fair few ideas are taken from Christopher Mcdougall's works 'Born to Run' and 'Natural Born Heroes'. You can buy those anywhere. He also did a Ted Talk, it was tight. 

Recorded live in Geneva, in this inter-seasonal episode we are joined by our friends Damon and Peter of The Reeds podcast/magazine in an attempt to try and answer whether or not learning philosophy does help one to live a good life. Given that is largely the premise of both of our projects, we thought it might be fun to potentially jeopardise our mission statements. No conclusions were extracted in the making of this podcast. Check out The Reeds here: https://www.the-reeds.com

In this episode Nic and Adam take a look at the histories of depression and anxiety, respectively. Insights include progress not being linear, superstition not necessarily being a thing of the past, and the occasional bright lights of the not so dark ages. A happier episode than you might expect. 

We're very fortunate this episode to be joined by Dr. Jon Nuth. Jon lives in Auckland and is a New Zealand Registered Clinical Psychologist and Registered Neuropsychologist. He works both as a clinical and forensic psychologist. Nic and Adam discuss Jon's work with him, and Jon provides insights into how he conducts his work, troubles with outdated language, and how therapies actually work. 

In this episode we discuss habit-building and the concept of gamification and how it can be applied to self-improvement or skill-building. Adam draws a lot from James Clear's book Atomic Habits to propose a new framework for routine building, and Nic claims to have read upwards of 2 articles on his chosen topic. 

In this episode we discuss the extent to which we think in words rather than other mediums (be they sensory, emotional, or other) and why it is that we have a voice in our heads that needs to vocalise thought even when there's no one beside ourselves to talk to. Some consideration is also given to the notion of 'self-narrating' our lives, and the tools that can be used effectively to mould (honestly!!) self-image, with a prominent focus on journaling as a complimentary yet entirely distinct skill to meditation in this particular context.  There's some mention of psychedelic trees (allegedly!) and unorthodox gospels, and the introduction grows more rambling and unformatted by the episode, (pretty soon we'll just be barking at each other for the first 5 minutes - there was in fact some barking in this episode, but it does not originate with either of the hosts).