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What should a healthy community look like?We continue our conversation on community with Dr. Ashley Pryor-Geiger and Amie Brodie. How should community work? What is required for a community to function healthily, especially with relational conflict that is bound to happen? We explore the roadblocks to community and observational practices for how to approach the difficult yet necessary experience of relationships that hold a common life well.

A philosophical, sociological, and pragmatic survey of community. How has community been understood and how shouldn't community be understood in conversation with Dr. Ashley Pryor-Geiger of the University of Toledo and Amie Brodie of The Farmhouse. Community is something that we talk about a lot, but do we actually understand it? Community is the common life of a person's experience with other people together that transcends the individual. While there's no single definition, there are some ingredients necessary for community to occur.

Is there a philosophical and practical premise for ecological ethics? Despite technological advancement, there is still a mystery to being alive and a mystery to the natural world we are a part of. Why should that matter and how should we live with the natural world? This episode explores four premises: Contingency - the nature of existence and the givenness of life. Inherent Value - the perception of existence and its potential goodness. Inherent Process - the mechanics of existence for how living things are in process. Teleology - the ethic of existence and how our actions can be determined by the goal of existence: Universal Flourishing

An exploration of ecological ethics: Are there moral principles and philosophical perspectives relating to the natural world? Should we care about the earth? Should it be confined to political or religious ideologies? This episode explores ecological entanglement, depoliticizing environmentalism, and the central principle for why human beings should prioritize their relationship to the earth; which has nothing to do with the environment.

What causes a person to sign up for an Ironman? For Morgan Hudik, it was a major surgery as a result of her family’s genetics. Not having a BRCA gene forced Morgan to make a huge decision that came with major changes, major loss, and deep pain. But Morgan’s story is an example of taking deep pain and turning it into deep love. She’s an extrovert, but she has created a wise, welcoming presence that holds the deepest wounds of the human condition. Her life has become a medium for creating belonging, healing, hope, connection, and beauty in the world around her. She makes the world feel more at home — but first, she had to learn to be at home with herself. How did Morgan come to embody such a presence? What does a real kind of life look like? And how can we — in a dark, difficult, and painful world — learn to do the same?

Existential Death Grief is not just for the loss of a person. Anything lost requires the grieving process. This episode explores why that is so necessary with an example of an existential death and how it was grieved. Music composed by Jon Torrence from The Native Heart. Reading from the memoir: "A Lost Home, A Lost Family, and a Tequila Bottle Full of Dirt."

Our culture doesn't handle death well. From funerals to the grieving process, we can move through death more healthily. This episode explores the grieving process including: Grief as any form of loss and an unending process Four grieving principles (Distress, Trauma, Affliction, and Meaning-Making) Instrumental versus instinctive grief. Reactive versus proactive responses to grief. Memorial services versus ancient death rituals. Finally, we explore how we might re-approach grieving with a reflection experience. Music includes: Valdeldur (Sigur Ros) Day is Gone (Noah Gundersen)

What is the role of memory?Your memory is a means of grieving your inevitable death. Which then offers an honest approach to the time that you have left. This episode explores mortality, phenomenology, and an exploration of Augustine's three tenses of time: Memory, Attention, and Expectation. May you grieve your own death with every passing moment; for then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world within the limited constraints of our bodies and minds.

Our memories are not realityWe tell stories, relay information, and discuss details, but they only capture the limited perspective that we've experienced. Our memories are malleable, splintered, and easily influenced selections and interpretations. Memory is not about history, memory is about meaning. Why is this the case? And how should it impact how we tell stories and memories? This episode is a conversation on epistemology. We need to stop pretending our memories are more than they really are. We need to let stories be stories. Only then will our stories be able to come together to bring all of us closer to reality than we are unable to discover on our own.

How do you improve your memory?A lot of people think they don't have a good memory. That's not true. Memory is not a personality trait. Often poor memory is a result of leaving the process to chance. If you don't know the seven methods of encoding or how sensory, short-term, and long-term memory works, you probably won't have a good memory. How, then, do we remember stuff? And why do we forget things? Do you want to learn more effectively? Do you want to get better at storing information and retaining details and remembering names? This episode explores the memory game: Memory, storytelling, and meaning-making Sensory memory Short-term memory Long-term memory Explicit and implicit memory Encoding failure (storage decay and interference) Encoding methods

Why do we fail to enact the good ideas we have and the changes we desire? We have to confront our natural resistance to change and the complicated process of memory.

A different approach to changing and transforming your health - from diets, nutrition, exercise, and helpful processes for meaningful health and wellness development. Topics covered:How to approach holistic health transformation Exploring the fitness industry (especially this time of year) The goals of integrative health: Functionality, quality of life, life expectancy, and societal value Intrinsic mental vision Executing action Intuitive eating Intuitive exercise Why you should drink more water Challenging our culture's body image perspective The role of accountability For more on Vanessa's health and wellness coaching: vkhealthcoaching.live To support the show: Becoming Human Ko-Fi