- MUSIC: Khruangbin’s EP w/ Leon Bridges – Texas Sun. It’s a short, 4 song EP the Texas based trio & singer put together in early 2020 that’s fantastic. The musicianship and tones that this band gets is from another planet. ( Would love to know what equipment their guitarist is running.) If the opener, “Texas Sun” doesn’t mellow you out, place you in a classic car, driving down a hot country highway as the Summer sky gives way to evening, I’m not sure what else would.
- PODCAST: Daily Stoic w/ Pete Holmes & Ryan Holiday. Ryan is one of my favorite authors, and he also does a quick daily podcast that features a longer episode over the weekend. Most of the episodes are very short time commitments (5 min, MAYBE), but this great interview with comedian, Pete Holmes, is longer at an hour & eighteen minutes. Ryan & Pete discuss their lives since the pandemic hit, with both of them losing income from cancelled events, but also realizing they’re far better off than most. Pete talks about the competing factions in his brain that say “achievement is important” & “achievement is crap.” Pete discusses the ridiculousness of spending time with his parents, and how he gets frustrated with the continual “bad” visits.
- BOOK: Sam Harris “Waking Up”. Warning: the subtitle to this book is “A guide to spirituality without religion.” If you’re offended by the musings of a very intelligent atheist, then this book is not for you. If you’re open to hearing a different viewpoint than that with which you grew-up, then you’d do very well to read this book. I’ve listened to a lot of what Sam has to say over the years. He’s brave. Even though he’s certainly a left of center person, he’s called out the evils of Islam ( famously w/ Ben Affleck) and other religions. In this book, he describes how a person can be spiritual without religion, and how morality is maybe more connected to scientific findings than we think about at a surface level.
Andrew L Hamilton 