This is Smart People Podcast, a podcast for smart people, where we talk to smart people, but not

necessarily done by smart people.

Hello, welcome to Smart People podcast Reflections.

This is the second episode called Reflections, which if you're unaware, it's basically

me reflecting on the guest that we just had in the previous episode. And appreciate those of

you who reached out and told us what you thought, gave us some potential changes and edits,

please keep doing that. So if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I like it,

I want them to do exactly this or do something different, Smart People Podcast at gmail.com.

Let us know what you think about these reflection episodes. And so as of now, the structure of

these episodes is first. I will tell you my quick general reaction to the episode, the guest, why I wanted

to discuss it, and really where I felt the episode landed. So again, I think this is cool.

It's like a behind the scenes. I've been doing this for 15 years talking close to 500 brilliant

people. This is my take on this one.

That'll be short, maybe three to five minutes going forward, unless you all tell me otherwise.

And then spend the majority of the time, 10 minutes or so, with the three to five big takeaways

that I had, the things that I found useful, assuming I found some. I'm not going

to lie to you guys. I'm not going to make things up where it doesn't exist. Okay. So in this episode,

I was talking with Simon Critchley, who is a philosopher, professor, philosophy, author many

times over, and we were talking about his book called mysticism. And right there, I want to start, which is, after so many years of doing this podcast,

you would not believe the amount of pitches and emails and guest requests we get.

And I'm telling you that because, man, they really start to sound the same.

So one of the things I try to do is figure out what is

...