I Heart This – Details, episodes & analysis

What if the chains holding you back… are on the inside? What if the rules constraining what you do and say and think … are ones you didn’t even know you were following? In this episode, the biggest and most challenging one I’ve ever produced, we’ll follow four different stories of people finding the courage to write their own minds. This is the story of freedom you can’t see. 

Berlin, I. (1969). Two Concepts of Liberty’. https://faculty.www.umb.edu/steven.levine/Courses/Action/Berlin.pdf

Foner, E. (2016). Give me liberty! (6th AP). W W Norton.

Franklin, B. (1753). Letter to Peter Collinson. Teaching American History; Ashbrook Center. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-peter-collinson/

Franklin, B. (1784). Founders Online: Remarks concerning the Savages of North America, [before 7 Jan …. Founders.archives.gov. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0280

Gowdy, J. M. (1998). Limited wants, unlimited means : a reader on hunter-gatherer economics and the environment. Island Press.

Green, H. (2025, October 2). You are probably underestimating Jane Goodall’s impact. YouTube; Vlogbrothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_FzzLeA6pk

Harris, M. (1995). Cultural Anthropology. Good Year Books.

Peterson, D. (2006). Jane Goodall : the woman who redefined man. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Ronda, J. P. (1977). “We are well as we are”: An Indian critique of seventeenth-century Christian missions. The William and Mary Quarterly, 34(1), 66. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/1922626

Sahlins, M. (1981). Stone age economics. Aldine.

Thwaites, R. G. (Ed.). (1896–1901). The Jesuit relations and allied documents: Travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610–1791; the original French, Latin, and Italian texts, with English translations and notes (Vols. 1–73). Burrows Bros. Co. https://archive.org/details/jesuit-relations-allied-documents

Westover, T. (2018). Educated: A memoir. Random House.

Anybody out there like to do big things? Anybody out there feel like your life is so full sometimes you can barely think? Anybody out there wonder if there’s a better way? Yeah … me too. In this much belated episode, I’m asking big questions about how much work is enough and how to make that happen in an ambitious life … because, right now, I’m right I’ve got no way around those questions.

The story of the picnic table comes from Draft No. 4. It was retold in Cal Newport's Slow Productivity where some of the stories in this episode also originated. Research on the relationship between work quantity and quality is summarized in Scott Young's book, Get Better at Anything.

Mcphee, J. (2018a). Draft No. 4 : On the Writing Process. Farrar, Straus And Giroux.

Mcphee, J. (2018b). Pine Barrens. Daunt Books.

Newport, C. (2023, April 28). Danielle Steel and the Tragic Appeal of Overwork - Cal Newport. Study Hacks. https://calnewport.com/danielle-steel-and-the-tragic-appeal-of-overwork/

Newport, C. (2024). Slow Productivity. Penguin.

Pema Chödrön. (2018). The wisdom of no escape : and the path of loving-kindness. Shambhala Publications, Inc.

quoteresearch. (2013, September 16). Quote Origin: “To Be Is To Do” “To Do Is To Be” “Do Be Do Be Do” – Quote Investigator®. Quoteinvestigator.com. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/16/do-be-do/

Young, S. H. (2024). Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery. HarperCollins UK.

When Megan fell into QAnon, it nearly cost her everything. This is a story about a conspiracy theory and how one person’s radical listening helped Megan break free. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love. 

This episode is based on a story from: Zaki, J. (2024). Hope for Cynics. Grand Central Publishing.

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What does it mean to be free? Sometimes it means two wheels and an open road. This episode is a love song to and a celebration of the bicycle--from a dead-end American suburb, to a trail in Quebec, to a train station in Amsterdam. This is a story about how a few spinning gears can change the world.

How do we live in dark and difficult times? There are lots of places that people look to answer those questions. One place I find wisdom is J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic story, The Lord of the Rings. In today’s episode how these stories became so much more than a fantasy escape, what they have to say about the role of stories in our lives, and the inspiration that I find for living through the darkness. This I Heart This, everyone. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love. 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IHeartThisPodcast

Email: ben@iheartthispodcast.com

Look I know what you’re thinking … 

You’re thinking, “Are you kidding? Textbooks are the dullest, most lifeless, deepest vortexes of soul-suck known to humankind. Their suck goes down to the sub-atomic level. 

You’re thinking about how you hated your chemistry textbook so much that you literally threw it out the window . . . twice.”  

Okay . . . deep calming breaths . . . I get it . . . but  . . . hear me out. 

I’m willing to bet that I can convince you that the textbook is one of the most underappreciated genres of all time. 

Because the truth is that textbooks are free of some constraints that bind nearly every other genre. Listen on, to find out what they are. 

Who invented first grade? Or second and third for that matter? Someone had to. Someone had to decide that it was a good idea to put all of the kids of the same age in one room and have one person teach them for a year before passing them on. But why? Today, story of the rise and fall of school system from the past that did things completely differently . . .  why almost nobody has heard of it today  . . . and what we have to learn from this almost forgotten experiment. This is the story of Andrew Bell and his Madras schools.

Email us: ben@iheartthispodcast.com

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Duffin, E. (2022, July 27). Americans with a college degree 1940-2017, by gender | Statista. Statista; Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/

Lancaster, J. (1932). The Practical Parts of Lancaster’s Improvements and Bell’s Experiment. Cambridge University Press. https://constitution.org/1-Education/lanc/practical.htm

Sarma, S. E., & Yoquinto, L. (2020). Grasp : The science transforming how we learn. Doubleday.

Sheposh, R. (2022). Monitorial system (education) | EBSCO. EBSCO Information Services, Inc. | Www.ebsco.com. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/education/monitorial-system-education

Snyder, T. D. (1993). 120 years of American education: A statistical portrait. National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf

Southey, R., & Southey, C. C. (1844). The Life of the Rev. Andrew Bell. John Murray. https://archive.org/details/lifeofrevandrewb02sout/page/n1/mode/2up

TED. (2007). Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&t=2s

Watters, A. (2015, April 25). The invented history of “the factory model of education.” Medium; The History of the Future of Education. https://medium.com/the-history-of-the-future-of-education/the-invented-history-of-the-factory-model-of-education-a069ae3d1e99

Wikipedia Contributors. (2025, March 8). Racial achievement gap in the United States. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_United_States

It’s the last place you’d expect to find a library--the long hallway of an old brick warehouse at the sanitation department . . . Long rows of white garbage trucks parked nearby. What the heck? Why put a library there? Who thought that was a good idea? 

This is the true story of one of the world’s most unexpected libraries and what it has to teach us about libraries, good ideas, community resilience, and  . . . garbage collecting.

Email us: ben@iheartthispodcast.com

Our Website: www.iheartthispodcast.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IHeartThisPodcast

Dorsey, D. (200 C.E., December). Positive deviant. Fast Company, 41, 284–287. https://communication-skills.net/pdf/PositiveDeviant.pdf

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: how to change things when change is hard. Broadway Books.

Positive Deviance Collaborative. (2018, April 14). The Vietnam story: 25 years later. Positive Deviance Collaborative. https://positivedeviance.org/case-studies-all/2018/4/16/the-vietnam-story-25-years-later

Wikipedia Contributors. (2024, April 9). Positive deviance. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance

This is the story of positive deviance  . . . the story of how a simple, counterintuitive approach transformed the lives of children suffering from malnutrition, empowered their families, and changed the way that aid agencies work all over the world. 

In this episode, that story and how it provides hope for all of us facing intractable societal problems.

Email us: ben@iheartthispodcast.com

Our Website: www.iheartthispodcast.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IHeartThisPodcast

Dorsey, D. (200 C.E., December). Positive deviant. Fast Company, 41, 284–287. https://communication-skills.net/pdf/PositiveDeviant.pdf

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: how to change things when change is hard. Broadway Books.

Positive Deviance Collaborative. (2018, April 14). The Vietnam story: 25 years later. Positive Deviance Collaborative. https://positivedeviance.org/case-studies-all/2018/4/16/the-vietnam-story-25-years-later

Wikipedia Contributors. (2024, April 9). Positive deviance. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance