What I never liked about this emphasis on being in the present and a rejection of thinking

about the past is it seems to me they coexist, not just in the literal sense that physicists

might mean, but there's no way to understand oneself or other people without knowing their

past. In many ways, what we are is the sum of everything that is happening to this. This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. Welcome to Episode.

My guest this week is Randy Cohen.

Randy wrote a column in the New York Times magazine called The Ethicist,

where people would send in ethical questions and dilemmas, and he would answer them through philosophical

studies and, you know, a way of delving into what is the right choice in these situations. He also,

this is how I found out about him, has a wonderful podcast called Person Place Thing,

where he asks a guest each week to name a thing or talk about something that's important

to them, a person, a place, and a thing, which he points out in the description of the show

is a really, really nice way to get people to talk about things that they really care about and therefore

find interesting subjects. I've noticed from doing this show, if you ask someone point blank,

you know, about themselves out of nothing to just give their life story. And I've done that

before. It doesn't really work that well. But if you ask them to talk about something they're

passionate about or care about, you can get some really cool stuff. So I flipped the script with

Randy on the first part of this episode and we talk about basically what's interesting to him.

...