Monthly Archives: December 2013

Deep Thoughts in Shallow Waters

Why the Hot Tub, , , ,

Does the body rule the mind
Or does the mind rule the body?
I don’t know… *

two_heads_are_better_than_one

 

We’ve solved the eternal question of mind-body duality by choosing  to interview guests from a hot tub. Nearly every other podcast takes place in a sound studio, where guests wear headphones, isolating themselves from the physical word. They respond to “head-based” questions and tell stories about their lives, transmitting their voices directly into your brains.

But we are not just brains-in-vats. Consciousness can’t be uploaded. When we soak in the 104-degree water, we invite our bodies to be part of the interview. Our minds open up and expand and only at this point can we properly talk about our themes: Uncertainty, Consciousness and Technology.

As time goes by, the interviews get more interesting. The first 10-minutes are warmup, the next 30-minutes are heated conversations and in the last 20-minutes we are babbling fools. Hopefully the SD card has run out of storage space by then.

 

* As sung by the The Smiths

Harbin Hot Springs on Thanksgiving

Hot Springs

This Thanksgiving weekend, I had an impromptu 2-day mini-vacation at Harbin Hot Springs. Harbin has amazing nature trails and, as the name implies, hot springs. The Yelp reviews describe the good, the bad and the weird of the place.

harbin

The meditation pool is a human soup — you quickly get accustomed to sharing a pool with a horde of naked bodies. When in Rome…

Roman-Baths

My recipe for soaking bliss was the hot plunge followed by the cold plunge. 5 cycles. Stay in each pool until you can’t stand the heat/cold. Your core temperature fluctuates wildly. By the 3rd round, you feel lightheaded and all transient thoughts melt away.