
Advertise on podcast: The Metagame
Rating
4.3from
This podcast has
57 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Daniel KazandjianExplicit
Yes
Date created
2022/07/11
Latest episode
2026/10/14
Average duration
92 min.
Release period
21 days
Description
Practical philosophy for playing with life. themetagame.substack.com
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Check latest episodes from The Metagame podcast
#57 - Tamara Andreas | Becoming an Emotional Billionaire
2026/10/14
Tamara Andreas is an international transformational seminar leader and co-author of the book, Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within. It’s a parts work method that allows you to access the deep emotional states you’ve been hoping your biggest goals will give you.
I spoke with her sister and co-author Connirae Andreas last year. In this episode, Tamara does a live demo where she coaches me on a personal issue.
Resources:
* Microbook on Core Transformation
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#56 - Steve March | Why Self-Improvement Fails
2026/09/22
Steve is a coach and the founder of Aletheia Unfolding. His work integrates things like developmental psychology, contemplative practice and neo-Reichian somatic work into a psychospiritual approach to transformation.
We discuss how self-improvement presupposes self-deficiency, which leads to mixed results (e.g. have you kept your new year’s resolutions?).
What happens if instead, you start with the assumption that you are innately whole?
What if Life itself transforms us when we let it?
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#55 - Aaron Nesmith-Beck | The Metagame of Inner Work
2026/09/10
Aaron is an entrepreneur, writer, and coach. He famously founded one of the first legal psilocybin retreats and has spent over a decade navigating inner and outer frontiers. He works with founders and leaders, writes about inner work, psychedelics, and contemplative practice, and curates referrals to trusted practitioners and resources.
In this episode we discuss the process of “going upstream” to the root of your patterns and speculate on why different inner work modalities are effective.Here’s Aaron’s excellent article on the same topic.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#54 - Jessica Vellela | A Gentle Introduction to Ayurveda
2026/06/25
Jessica is the first American-born woman to graduate as an Ayurvedic Physician and practice independently. She studied for 8 years in India completing Bachelor of Āyurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS).
She’s also the founder of myayu.com and has been healing many of my friends.
In this overview, we discuss what western medicine misses, archetypal ways of knowing, personal empiricism, the doshas and some counter-intuitive Ayurvedic practices.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#53 - Guy (@nosilverv) | How to Avoid Psyops
2026/06/03
Guy is an independent researcher, author, Emergent Ventures Fellow, and hands-down the most prolific/insightful shit-poster I know on twitter. If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know him as “Rival Voices”.
Among many things, he’s an expert on Adversarial Epistemology: finding truth in an environment designed to deceive you. You can learn more from his book Alignment Gone Strange.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#52 Kathryn Devaney | The Neuroscience of Awakening
2026/05/20
Kati Devaney is a neuroscientist and meditation teacher with over 25 years of practice. She earned her PhD in 2018 using fMRI to study attention and prediction updating in experienced Vipassana meditators and completed a postdoc at Harvard Medical School. She’s now the Chief Scientific Officer at the Consciousness Foundation, co-founded the Berkeley Alembic and the SF Dharma Collective, advises Jhourney on the neuroscience of jhana, and has been quoted on the brain and meditation in The Atlantic, National Geographic, and TIME.
In this episode we talk about weird stuff like cessation, jhanas, and non-duality. We also explore how the brain quietly constructs your sense of reality moment-to-moment, and how to (re)start a meditation practice.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#51 - Elena Lake | Nondual Bodywork, Fascia, and Somatic Healing
2026/05/12
Elena Lake is a bodyworker and former mathematician. After studying math, CS, and physics at MIT and two years doing ML at Meta, she left tech to study touch. When her early massage sessions started producing results she couldn't explain, she trained across Esalen, craniosacral, fascia, ScarWork, BoneWork, and visceral manipulation. In 2024 she developed her own modality: Regenerative Touch. Elena now sees billionaire clients, teaches tactile anatomy classes, and writes on Substack.
In this episode we talk about her path from MIT to massage school, how to take care of yourself, what it’s like to see fascia with your hands, and some of the weirder aspects at the frontier of bodywork.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#50 - Alex Olshonsky | You're Probably Addicted to Thinking
2026/05/05
Alex Olshonsky is a coach, somatic therapist, and writer. After a polysubstance addiction nearly killed him during his Silicon Valley years at Twitter, Salesforce, and Slack, he found freedom in somatic psychology and contemplative practice. He now coaches founders and people in recovery, co-founded the psychedelic-assisted addiction nonprofit Natura Care, and writes the Substack Deep Fix.
In this highly practical episode, we talk about his life a “professional drug addict” and his beautiful article You’re probably addicted to thinking.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#49 - Richard Ngo | The Case For Virtue Ethics In The Age of AGI
2026/04/28
Richard Ngo is one of a handful of people who've worked on AGI safety at both DeepMind and OpenAI. After three years as a futurist on OpenAI's Governance team, he left to pursue independent research on coalitions, virtue ethics, and the foundations of cooperation. He’s also a science fiction author (The Gentle Romance: Stories of AI and Humanity) and writes at Mind the Future.
We talk about virtue ethics, egregores, academic fraud, memeplexes, cooperation, parts-work, and what it was like to work with Sam Altman.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#48 - Matt Southey | A Gentle Introduction to Nick Land
2026/04/21
"Nothing human makes it out of the near future." - Nick Land
Matt Southey is a leading expert on the philosophy of Nick Land with a PhD in Religion from Rice University. He is also the founding editor of The Latecomer, an online magazine which publishes essays on the long-term future.
Matt's excellent piece on "A Brief History of Accelerationism" can be found here.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#47 - Michael Smith | Hostile Telepaths: Why Your Brain Deceives Itself to Survive Social Reality
2026/04/14
Michael “Valentine” Smith is a co-founder of CFAR (the Center for Applied Rationality) and the author of influential LessWrong essays including The Hostile Telepaths Problem, Kenshō, and The Intelligent Social Web.
He’s also been described as “one of the most powerful wizards in the Bay Area.”
In this conversation, he explains why your brain creates fog and self-deception to survive social situations, what it actually takes to find clarity, and why "working on yourself" might be the wrong frame entirely. We also do a live coaching demo debugging my own procrastination.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#46 - Jake Orthwein | Unraveling the Dream: Psychedelics, Meditation, and the Brain
2026/04/07
Jake Orthwein is the creator of Frame Problems, a video essay channel on science, art, philosophy, politics, and culture.
In this episode, Jake talks about his upcoming film for Sam Harris‘s mindfulness app Waking Up. We explore the latest neuroscience on consciousness and how it might explain the psychedelic experience, religious phenomenology, meditation and what it all means for a good life.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#45 - Alex Zhu & Romeo Stevens | Debating the Perennial Philosophy
2026/02/09
Alex Zhu is a math olympian and researcher exploring the convergence of analytical rationality and religion. He’s also the co-founder of AlphaSheets. He’s currently working on a rigorous framework for bridging AI alignment and mysticism.
Romeo Stevens is one of co-founders of the Qualia Research Institute and the founder of Mealsquares. He writes extensively about buddhism, pedagogy, skill development and psychotherapeutic modalities. You can find his work on his blog, Lesswrong and Twitter.
In this episode, Alex and Romeo explore their disagreement around perennialism. The idea that all the world’s major religions are pointing to the same thing.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#44 - Pranab Sachi | Getting Things Done by Feeling Your Feelings
2026/01/22
Pranab Sachi is the co-founder of Attention Copilot, a service that blends meditation and therapy techniques with real-time productivity support. He applies non-dual teachings, IFS, somatic awareness, and emotional processing to help people experience deep work on demand.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
#43 — Max Shen | How Trapped Emotions Create Physical Pain
2026/01/07
Max Shen is a pain researcher with a background in computational cognitive science and degrees from MIT. After developing severe RSI in grad school, he devoted himself to understanding pain from the inside out. Remarkably, his pain was cut in half just from reading Dr. John Sarno's Healing Back Pain.
Max’s work blends active inference, non-dual teaching, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy to create practical, self-guided tools for lasting pain relief. He’s also the creator of DebugYourPain.org.
Resources:
* Max Shen’s Substack (Debug Your Pain)'
* To find out about Max’s coaching, see here
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com
Podcast reviews
Read The Metagame podcast reviews
not ari 2022/10/13
Just epic
The best new podcast, by a long shot.
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