Episodes

  • Generosity

    Generosity
    Oct 29 2026
    SHOW NOTES: •Generosity should coexist with healthy boundaries. •Giving should. not require neglecting your own well-being. •Generosity is most meaningful when it comes from freedom rather than guilt or obligation. •Sometimes the most generous thing you can offer is honesty, accountability, or helping someone become independent. Generosity as a philosophy is the belief that life becomes richer, more meaningful, and more fulfilling when we approach others with a spirit of giving rather than scarcity, competition, or self-interest. It goes beyond giving money or possessions. It is a way of thinking, living, leading, and relating to others. Creates a mindset of abundance. Generosity shifts your perspective from "There isn't enough" to "There is value in what I can share." It encourages confidence, gratitude, and openness rather than fear of losing what you have. Deepens relationships and trust. Generous people tend to create stronger emotional connections. Giving time, attention, encouragement, and understanding builds goodwill and often inspires reciprocity. Encourages personal growth. Giving often requires us to stretch beyond our comfort zones. Sharing knowledge, offering forgiveness, or helping someone succeed can deepen our wisdom and emotional maturity. Improves leadership and influence. Generous leaders share credit, develop others, listen carefully, and create opportunities. This can strengthen loyalty, collaboration, and long-term organizational success. Creates freedom from materialism. Generosity helps us recognize that wealth and possessions are tools rather than ultimate measures of success. It encourages us to value relationships, experiences, contribution, and meaning. Gives life a greater sense of purpose. Perhaps the deepest benefit is the recognition that a meaningful life is not measured only by what we accumulate, but also by what we contribute to the lives of others.
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    7 mins
  • Entitlement

    Entitlement
    Oct 22 2026
    SHOW NOTES: Wherein the people in real or petty power learn what it's like for others to have to follow the often asinine rules that the former create. And why followers on social media are so easily outraged at what the rest of us realize is mundane. And why you can be so full of yourself than you can implode in public.
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    7 mins
  • Politics

    Politics
    Oct 15 2026
    SHOW NOTES: If you're sensitive or overly partisan about politics, don't listen. Alan takes on the lying, cheating, obfuscation, and essentially greed that is the shame of both major parties.
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    6 mins
  • Do I Have What You Claim I have_

    Do I Have What You Claim I have_
    Oct 8 2026
    SHOW NOTES: Have you noticed how we're drowned with ills and maladies and their cures and remedies? During the unceasing bombardment (arthritis, incontinence, cognitive decline, diabetes, breathing issues, lack of mobility/flexibility, hair loss, facial lines and wrinkles, vision deterioration, muscle aches, skin discoloration, and on and on) I think many of us start to believe we have conditions that we don't! This is called "recency bias," wherein something you're hearing repeatedly makes you suddenly begin searching for the condition. Instead of simply misplacing your car keys, you think it's the onset of dementia. Instead of a mole, you think it may be melanoma. You have infrequent indigestion and believe it may be a heart problem. Doctors are telling me they're seeing too many patients who see their advertisements, self-diagnose over the internet, and come in demanding tests and medical responses that are unwarranted. And, of course, all of this is well worth it despite possible spoken and written side effects of public urination, committing arson, gangrene, and suicide ideation!
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    6 mins
  • Bringing Shallowness to New Depths

    Bringing Shallowness to New Depths
    Oct 1 2026
    SHOW NOTES: • More cheats, frauds, schemers, liars and thieves than ever in our perception. The turning point was internet access. • Men's and women's sob stories are followed by glam shots. • Drugs and gizmos for the aging are hyped until people get wise: tinnitus, incontinence, arthritis, hair loss, hearing decline, cognitive issues, constipation. • Book deals for the ego needs of prospective and new authors. • False identify for editors from major publishers. • "Tricks" to bake cakes, seal pipes, preserve food, fix toilets. • Phony endorsements from people who don't really exist. • I told one scammer that he was obviously a foreign, spamming, scammer who had no quality and the intent was theft. He said, "I'm a citizen of the Czech Republic, why are you making this so personal?!" • I can understand the elderly, perhaps, who lack proper advice and family, for falling for this stuff. But really, holding a metal object next to your ear to cure tinnitus? • My doctors tell me too many people are self-diagnosing and coming in with preferred treatment suggestions. • Vacations aren't fulfilled or people are left stranded or in run-down facilities. • Of course, I could afford all of this if those Nigerians just delivered on the $5 million they found in my name in a Swiss deposit box, awaiting for US air mail.
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    5 mins
  • Difficult Conversations

    Difficult Conversations
    Sep 24 2026
    SHOW NOTES: There is a great deal of work being done today around what's called "difficult conversations." I think the work is important and needed. In my experience, I've witnessed, been part of, and had to deal with more poorly done performance evaluations than good ones. I've had to help people gain the courage and proper language to talk to colleagues, let alone customers and prospects. The basic issue is that we don't want to endure the "pain" of dealing with a tough or sensitive issue: performance, relationships, behavior, lies, failures. So we live with a long-term ache instead of facing the short-term pain. It's like avoiding the dentist and the needle and drilling to cure a toothache, and instead living with the discomfort endlessly. Of course, the same applies to people in long-term, very unhappy marriages, who dread the pain of divorce. Divorce IS painful, but it's temporary, and horrible, continuing bad marriages can destroy your health and your soul. Pain is temporary, suffering is voluntary. Don't avoid the difficult only to create the debilitating.
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    6 mins
  • The Rocky Road of AI

    The Rocky Road of AI
    Sep 17 2026
    SHOW NOTES: AI isn't perfect or infallible. It is subject to construction by human and human user error. It's ideal to help you consolidate and remind you of your own IP. It can easily lead you into unintended plagiarism by answering inquiries and not providing attribution for its answers. It will eliminate jobs, but also create jobs. Look around you for social proof, don't just listen to unsupported claims. Never use it when you need high touch. Use it for high tech, but validate. It is not a terribly personally creative tool, and it's substitution for what is supposed to be original work will soon be easily exposed...by AI. Use AI in your work, but don't organize your work to support AI.
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    7 mins
  • On the Cheap

    On the Cheap
    Sep 10 2026
    SHOW NOTES: • Plastic cup lids that pop off and spill all over you. • Cheap plastic water bottle with tiny, cheap caps that you twist, squeeze the bottle, and it squirts all over you. • European bottle caps that are connected and hit you in the nose or the eye. • Cheap straws that rip or break up. • European insanity about air conditioning. • Only 43% of US households participate in recycling where it's available, and only 21% of potential is actually recovered. Bottom line, only 5-9% of residential plastic recycling potential is actually recycled, and the rest remains as plastic waste. • Drucker's rule about laws resulting from a single person's actions. 8Electric battery fires are extremely hard to extinguish. • They card me for a beer at Fenway Park. • When my wife's metal knees trigger the alert, even after she tells them, they check her for gunpowder residue. • The CYA of banks ignoring their best customers and making them to conform to limits on remote deposits, ID checks with tellers, etc. • Entering a theater they peak into bags which could still be hiding a bomb or hand grenade. • No matter how great your chef is, you can't make a bad cut of cheap meat into a legitimate $50 entree.
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    7 mins