The Learning To Die Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

I am joined by Ireland's stone-lifting ambassador, David Keohan, in this Learning to Die episode. We discuss the ancient practice of stone lifting in Ireland and many other countries globally, how it was a rite of passage for the youth, a challenge within the community and something to do for fun. Stone lifting is an art that was lost through 800 years under British occupation. Like many customs, aspects of culture and language that were lost during this occupation, Ireland is in a cultural revival, and David is leading the way by lifting stones. An element of Irish culture that was nearly lost, but David is on a quest to make stone lifting great again. This conversation undoubtedly enthused me, and I can't wait to dig more into this subject. The great thing about stone lifting is that it's free. Check out the episode and the links below.

Items we discuss

• GQ article on David https://www.gq.com/story/the-quest-to-pick-up-the-lost-lifting-stones-of-ireland
• Irish Times Article on David https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/10/29/indiana-stones-meet-the-man-bringing-back-irelands-lost-culture-of-stone-lifting/
• History of stones https://brigadoon.org.au/stalls-exhibitors/history-of-stones/
• Sean Urq https://www.instagram.com/seanurq/ from https://liftingstones.org
• Map of Irish lifting stones https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1588334600/map-of-irish-lifting-stones

Follow David on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/_indiana_stones_/?hl=en>

I hope this was useful. Please enjoy this episode of the Learning to Die podcast.  

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au  for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions.

The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.

Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au

In this episode, we are joined once again by Professor Seamus O’Mahony. Seamus is a doctor and a prize-winning author. He worked for many years in the NHS, returning to his native city of Cork in 2001, where he was a gastroenterologist and clinical professor until February 2020. His first book, The Way We Die Now, won the British Medical Association’s Council Chair’s Choice award in 2017.

Purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Die-Now-Medicines/dp/1250112796

His second book, Can Medicine be Cured?  was published in 2019; purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com.au/Can-Medicine-Cured-Corruption-Profession-ebook/dp/B07DKKVBL4 and his latest book The Ministry of Bodies, was published by Head of Zeus in March 2021.

Purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Bodies-Death-Modern-Hospital/dp/1838931929.

He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books and the Medical Independent. He has written also for The Observer, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Saturday Evening Post. He is a member of the Lancet Commission on “The Value of Death” and is a visiting professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London.

In this episode, we discuss his latest book "The Guru, the Bagman and the Sceptic"

https://seamusomahony.com/books/the-guru-the-bagman-and-the-sceptic-a-story-of-science-sex-and-psychoanalysis/ 

You can purchase it here https://www.amazon.com.au/Guru-Bagman-Sceptic-science-psychoanalysis/dp/1803285656 

I hope this was useful. Please enjoy this episode of the Learning to Die podcast.  

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au  for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions.

The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.

Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au

In this episode, Ciaran and I are joined by Dr Shane Creado in Chicago. Shane is a double board-certified sleep medicine doctor and psychiatrist. He practices functional sleep medicine, integrative psychiatry, and sports psychiatry, combining all those skills to uncover underlying factors that sabotage the patients, comprehensively treat them, and help them achieve their goals. He completed an undergraduate degree in physical therapy and went on to do an MD, graduating at the top of his class with Honours in every subject in medical school. He completed his psychiatric training at the University of Wisconsin, where they awarded him the graduating resident award for academic achievement. He then went on to a fellowship in Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin because of the huge overlap between sleep and psychiatric issues.

Topics we discuss in this epic episode with Shane.

• The value of storytelling and narrative for convey historical truths
• The neolithic burial chamber in Ireland called Newgrange
• Carl Jung archetypes
• Learning about yourself from facing your shadow, integrate the shadow
• The guesthouse by Rumi https://gratefulness.org/resource/guest-house-rumi/
• The role of suffering to better our life
• The story of Job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_(biblical_figure)
• Ying and Yang, Unification and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
• “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love, and hate, are necessary to human existence.” William Blake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
• In Heraclitus’s Fragments, he notes that tension is the very thing that makes life sing. Take a guitar string, for example. If you wind it too tight, it will snap. Too slack, and it will buzz and make no note at all. Heraclitus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
• Jordan Peterson on Evil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqoyQNUrGls
• The story of two wolves https://www.urbanbalance.com/the-story-of-two-wolves/
• The use of biblical stories in today’s world
• Carl Jung anima and animus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus
• Boethius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius
• Thomas Jefferson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
• Catholic church historical, social, cultural, religious, and personal context
• Stoicism in Catholicism and Christianity https://dailystoic.com/stoicism-and-christianity/
• The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship by Derek Scally https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-best-catholics-in-the-world-9781844885282
• On the Genealogy of Morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality#Summary
• Carl Jung and the shadow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhzBo0dZNpY
• Catholic church raided during service
• https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/coronavirus/outrage-after-police-stop-mt-hawthorn-st-bernadettes-church-service-to-check-masks-c-5565472
• Derrin Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
• Roland Fryer on Police violence in the USA https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_analysis_tables_figures.pdf
• Coleman Hughes https://colemanhughes.org/
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• Covid in Sydney: Military deployed to help enforce lockdown https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58021718
• Who was Rumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi
• Jungian Dream Interpretation - Marcus West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73dOSrn4fw
• Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, a short book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession
• A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart by Martin Luther King

Purchase Shane’s book here Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes: The Cutting-edge Sleep Science That Will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage

Contact Shane at shanecreado.com

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au   or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au.

In this episode, we are joined once again by Professor Seamus O’Mahony. Seamus is a doctor and a prize-winning author. He worked for many years in the NHS, returning to his native city of Cork in 2001, where he was a gastroenterologist and clinical professor until February 2020. His first book The Way We Die Now won the British Medical Association’s council chair’s choice award in 2017.

Purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Die-Now-Medicines/dp/1250112796

His second book Can Medicine be Cured?  was published in 2019, purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com.au/Can-Medicine-Cured-Corruption-Profession-ebook/dp/B07DKKVBL4 and his latest book The Ministry of Bodies was published by Head of Zeus in March 2021.

Purchase the book here https://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Bodies-Death-Modern-Hospital/dp/1838931929

He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books and the Medical Independent. He has written also for The Observer, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Saturday Evening Post. He is a member of the Lancet commission on “The Value of Death” and is visiting professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London.

In this episode, we discuss his involvement in this Lancet report. The Lancet is the top medical journal in the world with an impact factor of 79. The published Report of Lancet Commission on the Value of Death: bringing death back into life. You can read the entire report here (50 pages) for free https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02314-X/fulltext

Here is a short summary video from the Lancet (

In the episode of the Learning to Die Podcast, Ian and Ciaran sit down to discuss the relationship between Christianity and Society. We had a theme for this conversation of a scoping review. We discuss this broad interesting and tumultuous relationship between Christianity and society.

Items of discussion

• What is Marxism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
• Frans de Waal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

Books we mention

• A confession by Leo Tolstoy, full free audiobook here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k9Qo4w3JVY
• Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland
• The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku
• A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart by Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au

In this episode of the learning to die podcast I am joined by Dr Caitlin Duffy

Caitlin graduated with a PhD in English Literature from Stony Brook University. Her dissertation focused on exploring the ways that 19th-century American gothic literature works to define liberalism and contemporary American horror films react to/define/challenge conceptions of neoliberalism.  She has been published in The Journal of Dracula Studies, Poe Studies, and a collection of essays on Trump in fiction. As a graduate student, she used her blog as a space for my comprehensive exam notes. You can read it here https://caitlinduffy.hcommons.org/blog/

Caitlin's work at Sublime Horror https://www.sublimehorror.com/author/caitlinduffy/

You can follow Caitlin on Twitter @caitduffy49

Here are a bunch of items we discussed in this episode, in no particular order. I hope you enjoyed the episode

Blúiríní Béaloidis 21 - Samhain / Halloween (With Dr. Billy Mag Fhloinn)

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/blu-iri-ni-be-aloidis-21-samhain-halloween-with-dr/id1227741013?i=1000455434902

Head full of ghosts by Paul Tremblay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Head_Full_of_Ghosts

About Charles chestnut https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Chesnutt

Po Sandy by chestnut https://chesnuttarchive.org/item/ccda.works00014

Silas Weir Mitchell 1829-1914 a biographical memoir

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/mitchell-silas.pdf

Physician Silas Weir Mitchell is perhaps best remembered for his “Rest Cure” for nervous women, depicted by his onetime patient Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/01/go-rest

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce1842– 1914 was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce

His works we discuss

• Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of short stories by an American Civil War soldier,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Soldiers_and_Civilians
• "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge>
• "The Eyes of the Panther https://literature.fandom.com/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Panther

One of the first American Gothic novels, Edgar Huntly (1787) mirrors the social and political temperaments of the postrevolutionary United States.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Edgar-Huntly-Sleep-Walker-Charles-Brown/dp/0140390626

Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.1093/oso/9780190666507.001.0001/oso-9780190666507

Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker

Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula 

https://www.amazon.com.au/Something-Blood-Untold-Stoker-Dracula/dp/1631493868

Dracula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula

Darby O'Gill and the Little People is a Walt Disney movie from the 1950s. It was one of Sean Connery's first movies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_O%27Gill_and_the_Little_People

Barbian L, Sledzik PS, Reznick JS. Remains of War: Walt Whitman, Civil War Soldiers, and the Legacy of Medical Collections. Mus Hist J. 2012;5(1):7-28. doi:10.1179/mhj.2012.5.1.7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3381362/>

Walt Whitman and the Civil War https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/walt-whitman-and-civil-war/

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au  for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.

Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au

In this episode, we welcome back Gordon Marino. Gordon earned his PhD from the University of Chicago, M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and B.A. from Columbia University. His areas of specialisation include History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Kierkegaard. He teaches philosophy and related courses as a professor at St. Olaf College and holds a position as the curator of the Kierkegaard Library. In 2018, Marino published his most recent book, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide. He has authored and co-authored numerous works, including Kierkegaard in the Present Age. His articles have appeared in internationally acclaimed news sources and periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the American Poetry Review. Follow Gordon here https://www.existentialistscorner.com/

In this episode, we discuss

• The Cuban Missile crisis
• What is Existentialism? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/ 
• Values and cultural differences
• Nuclear near misses and a previous episode we did https://learningtodie.com.au/podcasts/13-nuclear-near-misses-and-vice-admiral-vasili-arkhipov/ 
• Gordon's essay, "We must imitate Zelensky, not just admire him https://iai.tv/articles/we-must-imitate-zelensky-not-just-admire-him-auid-2085
• Ciaran's essay Existential Roulette "Ukraine and the Quagmire of Defending Freedom in the Nuclear Age" https://quarrelsomelife.substack.com/p/existential-roulette?r=dknyr&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
• Operation Paperclip and how NASA had Nazi scientists
• Development of values and different values in our society
• Alexander Dugin and his impact on Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin
• Unit 731 in the Japanese Army
• Appeasement in pre WW2
• And an outlook on Tyson versus Whyte 

Order Gordon's book here “The Existentialist's Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age”https://www.amazon.com.au/Existentialists-Survival-Guide-Authentically-Inauthentic/dp/0062435981

Follow Gordon on Twitter @GordonMarino

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au  for all episodes and links to the YouTube video versions. The YouTube version of this episode has a video and some slides.

Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au   or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au

In this episode, we catch up with @tommysantospn, AKA Tommy $, to discuss his previous role as a combat medic in the 82nd Airborne Artillery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/82nd_Airborne_Division_Artillery.

His journey of self-development from his time in the military to attaining two master's degrees since then. However, this episode is primarily focused on Tommy's new quest. Tommy is going to Ukraine on a mission. 

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links. Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au  or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au

What an episode; we were thrilled to have Robb Wolf on the podcast. This was a great discussion led by Ciaran. Robb was scheduled to come on for 60 minutes but kindly stayed for 90 minutes. In this episode, we discussed many things today: the pandemic, diets, wokeism, environment, climate change, war, politics, and much more. 

If you recognise Robb's name, you're not mistaken. He has been on the JRE podcast at least three times. He is a former research biochemist and a two time New York Times/WSJ Best Selling author of the Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. He is a brown belt in BJJ (Robb, on his love of BJJ https://youtu.be/l_HcfDWuozA)has fought as an amateur kickboxer. Find out more about Robb here and his podcast at https://robbwolf.com/. 

His recent work with Diane Rodgers can be accessed here https://www.sacredcow.info/about-sacred-cow. They recently appeared on the JRE podcast episode #1784 to discuss this work https://open.spotify.com/episode/0r7MbKFhtLf9RLOahCT1gU

Check us out at www.learningtodie.com.au for all episodes and links. Contact us at ian@learningtodie.com.au  or ciaran@learningtodie.com.au.

In this episode, Ciaran and I reflect on what is happening in Ukraine and the potential outcomes. If you have listened to our previous episodes you will know we have discussed Nuclear near misses. Will this be Nuclear war? Are we about to embark on World War III or a Cold War II? Is it East versus West all over again. More importantly, how the f$ck did we get to this. 

Links to items we discuss 

The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-return-of-holy-russia-apocalyptic-history-mystical-awakening-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-world_gary-lachman/22995467/#edition=24585393

ON UKRAINE, THERE’S NO WAR THAT EMOTIONAL HASTINESS CAN’T MAKE WORSE https://gript.ie/on-ukraine-theres-no-war-that-emotional-hastiness-cant-make-worse/