Podcast · Learning

Know Thyself

by André Duqum · English · Learning

Know Thyself is a community supporting you to KNOW the true nature of yourself and the world around you, THRIVE in your health, wealth, and relationships – ultimately empowering you to CREATE and share your true self with the world. Each week André Duqum interviews experts in their field; ranging f

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 2 hr 3 min
Latest: 13 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026 · 2 hr 22 minNew

E216 - Janna Levin: An Astrophysicist's Guide to Black Holes, Higher Dimensions & the Nature of Reality

In this episode, I sit down with Janna Levin, a theoretical astrophysicist at Barnard College of Columbia University, Guggenheim fellow, and author of Black Hole Survival Guide, Black Hole Blues, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, and How the Universe Got Its Spots. Janna started out as a philosophy major drawn to the biggest questions, then found in physics a way of answering them that felt true for everyone, everywhere. Preparing for this conversation blew my mind more than almost any other, and sitting with her only deepened that. What We Dive Into: 1. When a massive star collapses into…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S1 · E215 · 6 Oct 2026 · 2 hr 14 min
E215 - Elizabeth Gilbert: Love Addiction, Telling the Truth & Hearing Your Inner Voice
Elizabeth Gilbert joins me for her first public conversation after a six month sabbatical, a stretch where she stopped writing, producing, and planning so she could simply be available to life. Liz is the author of "Eat, Pray, Love", "Big Magic", and her memoir "All the Way to the River". In this conversation she speaks openly about the daily practice of two-way prayer that guides her choices, her recovery from sex and love addiction, and the story of loving her partner Raya through terminal cancer and active drug addiction. What We Dive Into: 1. Liz describes feeling trapped many times in…
S1 · E214 · 29 Sep 2026 · 2 hr 39 min
E214 - Tom Bilyeu: Humanity Is Splitting into 4 Futures… Choose Wisely
My guest today is Tom Bilyeu, the entrepreneur behind Quest Nutrition who went on to build Impact Theory into one of the most watched long form interview channels in the world. Tom is now building a procedurally generated video game called Kyzen, and in recent years his content has shifted away from personal development and toward economics, artificial intelligence, and the systems that quietly shape how we live. I wanted to sit with him inside that shift, to understand what pulled him away from the mindset conversation he had mastered and toward questions about money, power, and the…
S1 · E213 · 22 Sep 2026 · 2 hr 35 min
E213 - Matthew Hussey: The Patterns Blocking You From Love (& What To Do)
Matthew Hussey is back on the show, and this conversation picks up right where our last one left off, except he's grown a lot since then. Matthew built his early career on a simple idea: create more opportunity and you'll make better romantic choices. Over time he realized abundance alone doesn't fix anything. The real work lives underneath, in the unconscious patterns and emotional reflexes that decide who we choose and how we behave once we have them. That discovery pushed his focus toward emotional regulation, and it's the thread running through everything we talk about today. What We…
S1 · E212 · 15 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 57 min
E212 - Dr. Shefali: How To Raise Conscious Children (It Starts With You)
I sat down with Dr. Shefali, clinical psychologist trained at Columbia and the voice behind the Conscious Parenting Movement for over two decades, to explore what it really means to parent from awareness instead of ego. We talk about the illusion of the perfect parent, why children are our greatest mirrors, and how the wounds we carry from our own childhoods get passed down unless we do the work to see them clearly. Dr. Shefali doesn't offer a script. She offers a practice of humility, one that asks us to look at ourselves before we look at our kids. What We Dive Into: 1. Dr. Shefali…
S1 · E211 · 8 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 54 min
E211 - John Wineland: Love, Safety & Desire - What Your Wounds Are Deciding for You
John Wineland has spent nearly twenty years teaching people how to love more deeply, and in this conversation he lays out why intimacy has become one of the most demanding spiritual practices available to us. We talk about why relationships surface our oldest wounds, why the partner we choose so often mirrors the exact pattern we grew up in, and why that mirroring is not a mistake but an invitation to heal. John also opens up about his daughter Claire, who passed away eight years ago, and what her life and death taught him about grief, presence, and unconditional love. What We Dive Into: 1.…
S1 · E210 · 1 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
E210 - Dr. David Spiegel: #1 Hypnotism Expert, “Wake Up From The Trance of Your Life”
Dr. David Spiegel is the Wilson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry at Stanford, the co-founder of the hypnosis app Reveri, and one of the world's leading clinical researchers on hypnosis. He has worked with over 7,000 patients across 50 years, and in this conversation he opened with something I did not expect: he tested my hypnotizability live on camera. I scored a nine out of ten. What followed was one of the most genuinely surprising conversations about the mind I have had on this show. What We Dive Into: 1. The self you walk around with is not a fixed structure. Dr. Spiegel calls…
S1 · E209 · 25 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 35 min
E209 – Rizwan Virk: Are We Living in a Simulation? (It's Deeper Than You Think)
Rizwan Virk is an MIT-trained computer scientist, video game pioneer, and bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis. His work sits at a rare intersection: quantum physics, Eastern mysticism, and the architecture of video games, all pointing toward the same unsettling and strangely liberating conclusion. In this conversation, we explore not the nihilistic version of simulation theory, but the one that actually gives life more meaning rather than less. What We Dive Into: 1. The simulation Rizwan describes is not one where you are code running on a server. You are the soul outside the…
S1 · E208 · 18 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 51 min
E208 - Dr. Robert Lustig: What Modern Food Is Doing to Your Sense of Self
Dr. Robert Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, pediatrician, and bestselling author who has spent 45 years watching children get sicker despite his best efforts to stop it. His work connects the dots between ultra-processed food, mitochondrial dysfunction, dopamine hijacking, and the chronic stress epidemic in a way that is impossible to dismiss. In this conversation, we explore what he calls the hostage brain, what happens to a nervous system under sustained biochemical assault, and why so much of what we call personal failure is actually a systems problem. What We Dive Into: 1. When chronic…
S1 · E207 · 11 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 11 min
E207 - Jim George: Stillness Expert: “How To Not Miss Your Life”
Jim George is a stillness coach, former animator, and one of the first guests ever to appear on this podcast. He has spent nearly 50 years developing what he calls practical spirituality, a way of working with the mind that requires no doctrine, no dogma, and no special belief system. What it does require is the willingness to get quiet enough to see what is actually there. In this conversation, we return to the most essential territory: the cost of mental noise, the nature of the ego, and what it genuinely means to be present for your own life. What We Dive Into: 1. The noise in the mind is…
S1 · E206 · 4 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 54 min
E206 - Jahnavi Harrison: Living a Life of Devotion & Embracing Your Voice
Jahnavi Harrison is a Grammy-nominated artist, musician, and practitioner of Bhakti Yoga who has spent her life exploring sound as a path to the divine. Raised at Bhaktivedanta Manor in England, she grew up inside one of the world's most dedicated devotional communities, and in this conversation we trace how that formation shaped her relationship with voice, identity, approval, and what it means to offer your life as a prayer. What We Dive Into: 1. Most of us were told at some point to be quiet, to sound better, or to wait until we were good enough. That conditioning runs deep. Reclaiming…
S1 · E205 · 28 Jul 2026 · 2 hr 12 min
E205 - Anil Seth: Your Perception of Reality & Self Is a Hallucination
Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex and one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness. His central claim is both unsettling and liberating: we do not passively receive reality, we actively generate it. The world that appears when you open your eyes is not a transparent window onto what is actually out there. It is the brain's best guess, a controlled hallucination, built from the inside out. What We Dive Into: 1. Your brain is not reading out the world like a camera. It is making constant predictions about what is out…
S1 · E204 · 21 Jul 2026 · 2 hr 3 min
E204 – Dr. William Li: The Body's 5 Health Defense Systems, Cancer, Microplastics & Healing From the Inside Out
Dr. William Li is a Harvard-trained physician, co-founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation, and New York Times bestselling author whose work centers on one quietly radical premise: the power to stay healthy lives inside you. In this conversation, we explore the five hardwired defense systems the body runs continuously, angiogenesis, stem cells, the gut microbiome, immunity, and DNA protection, and what it looks like to actually support them through food, sleep, and daily choices. What We Dive Into: 1. You are not just one organism. You carry 39 trillion bacteria inside you, many of which send…
S1 · E203 · 14 Jul 2026 · 3 hr 23 min
E203 - Dr. Justin Sledge: The Occult, Witch Trials & the Forbidden Teachings of Gnosticism
Dr. Justin Sledge is a scholar of philosophy and Western esotericism, and the voice behind the YouTube channel Esoterica, which has grown to over a million subscribers. He has spent his career studying the traditions that history tried to erase: Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, witchcraft, and alchemy. What We Dive Into: 1. Classical skepticism is not about debunking or disbelief. It is about bracketing your personal investment long enough to let the material speak for itself. 2. Newton wrote more on alchemy and the occult than on calculus. Descartes arrived at his famous method through a…
S1 · E202 · 7 Jul 2026 · 4 hr 22 min
E202 - Donald Robertson: 2,400-Year-Old Stoic Wisdom To Conquer Your Ego & Live a Virtuous Life
Donald Robertson is a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, author of over nine books, and one of the founding voices in the modern Stoicism movement. He has spent over 30 years studying how ancient Greek and Roman philosophy intersects with contemporary psychology, and in this conversation we start where it all begins: the maxim carved into the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Know thyself. We explore what it actually meant, who said it, and why it still matters more than most self-help advice written in the last century. What We Dive Into: 1. The Stoics drew a sharp line between what actually…
S1 · E201 · 30 Jun 2026 · 2 hr 24 min
E201 - Dandapani: A Monk's Warning "Distraction Is Costing You Your Life"
Dandapani is a Hindu priest who spent over ten years as a celibate monk before devoting his life to teaching the world how to master focus. His central claim is simple but unsettling: most of us are not distracted by accident, we have spent years actively practicing distraction, often more hours a day than most people practice anything else they care about. In this conversation, we unpack what it actually costs to live a physically present, mentally absent life, and why that cost compounds with every passing year. What We Dive Into: 1. Whatever you do for hours a day, every day, you get good…
S1 · E200 · 23 Jun 2026 · 3 hr 6 min
E200 - Ido Portal: The Body Knows What the Mind Can't
Ido Portal is one of the most original movement thinkers alive. He has spent decades studying the body across martial arts, acrobatics, yoga, dance, and ancient movement traditions, not to master any one of them, but to ask a deeper question: what does it actually mean to move well, and what does the body reveal when you finally start listening to it? In this conversation, we go long, covering ground that most movement conversations never reach. What We Dive Into: 1.Most of us treat the body like a car to maintain, something we service occasionally for performance or appearance. Ido's entire…
S1 · E199 · 16 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
E199 - Dr. Caroline Leaf: How to Stop Your Brain From Holding You Back
Dr. Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist and bestselling author who has spent over 40 years studying the relationship between the mind and the brain. At a time when neuroplasticity was still emerging as a field, she was already building clinical tools to help patients recover from brain injuries, trauma, and conditions that conventional medicine had written off as permanent. In this conversation, we go deep into a distinction that changes everything: the mind is not the brain, and once you understand that, you stop being a victim of your own biology. What We Dive Into: 1. The brain…
S1 · E198 · 9 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 57 min
E198 - Dr. Todd Rose: Why Your Desires Aren't Actually Yours (Here's Who Planted Them)
Join our online community ↓ https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com Todd Rose is a Harvard-trained social scientist, former high school dropout with a 0.9 GPA, and co-founder of the think tank Populace. His research centers on the gap between what people privately believe and what they publicly say, and the profound consequences of that gap for individuals and for society. This is one of those conversations that reframes something you thought you understood and doesn't let you go back. What We Dive Into: 1. Your brain estimates group consensus using a simple shortcut: the loudest voices…
S1 · E197 · 2 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 22 min
E197 - 9 Great Thinkers on the Inner Work That Frees You
Join our online community ↓ https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com This is a compilation episode, and it draws from some of the most honest and clarifying moments across recent conversations on the show. Nine different voices, each approaching the same territory from a different angle: what it means to stop being ruled by the outside world, to understand the patterns we inherited, and to come back to something more real inside ourselves. What We Dive Into: Thoughts arise whether you choose them or not. The shift is learning to observe them rather than be pulled by them. The nervous system…
S1 · E196 · 26 May 2026 · 1 hr 31 min
E196 - Dr. Vasant Lad: The Doctor From India: The Forgotten 5,000-Year-Old Science of the Human Body (Ayurveda
Dr. Vasant Lad is the founder of the Ayurvedic Institute and the man most responsible for bringing Ayurveda to the West. He has spent over 40 years teaching this 5,000-year-old science of life to practitioners across the world, and in this conversation, we sat down together at SoHum Mountain Healing Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where I had just completed a week-long Panchakarma. What unfolded was one of the most quietly profound conversations I have had on this show. What We Dive Into: Why unprocessed emotions don’t simply pass — and how grief settles in the heart, anger in the…
S1 · E195 · 19 May 2026 · 1 hr 35 min
E195 - Dr. Mei Rui: The Science of Sound & Music as Medicine
Dr. Mei Rui is a Yale-trained molecular biophysicist, concert pianist, and clinical researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she runs trials on the measurable effects of music on the human body. In this conversation, we explore what actually happens in the brain the moment music enters it, why the auditory system is the first sense to develop in the womb and the last to go when we die, and how something as accessible as a curated playlist can outperform FDA-approved pharmaceuticals in reducing cortisol. What We Dive Into: 1. Music is not a supplement to healing. In the right context,…
S1 · E194 · 12 May 2026 · 1 hr 59 min
E194 - Arthur Brooks: How To Find The Meaning of Your Life
Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor, social scientist, and three-time New York Times bestselling author whose life's work centers on a single, urgent question: what actually makes a human life feel meaningful? In this conversation, we explore why depression and anxiety have surged since 2008, how technology has hijacked the part of the brain responsible for wonder and meaning, and what it looks like to live, as Arthur puts it, like his great-grandfather Leroy, present, bored at times, and genuinely alive. What moved me most in this conversation is how Arthur bridges the ancient and the…
S1 · E193 · 5 May 2026 · 1 hr 45 min
E193 - Dr. Paul Conti: A Psychiatrist's Guide to Understanding Your Mind
Dr. Paul Conti is a psychiatrist, trauma specialist, and author whose work centers on one deceptively simple idea: that understanding yourself is the most powerful thing you can do for your mental health. In this conversation, we explore how the unconscious mind quietly sets the boundaries for how we think, feel, and move through life, and how much of what we assume is just "who we are" was actually formed long before we had the words for it. What struck me most in this conversation is Paul's insistence that looking inward doesn't have to be frightening. He introduces the concept of the…
S1 · E192 · 28 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 48 min
E192 - Emily McDonald: The Neuroscience of Transforming Yourself
Emily McDonald holds two degrees in neuroscience and has become one of the fastest-growing science communicators on social media. In this conversation, we explore how the brain constructs reality from the inside out — not as a passive receiver of the world, but as a constant prediction machine shaped by memory, belief, emotion, and past experience. From color vision to the kitten experiment, Emily brings the science to life in a way that makes you ask: where am I the kitten in my own life? What I love about this conversation is that it doesn't stop at the intellectual. Emily shares how…
S1 · E191 · 21 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 49 min
E191 - Roman Yampolskiy: The Man Who Proved We Can't Control AI (And What That Means for Humanity)
Dr. Roman Yampolskiy joins me to explore one of the most urgent and uncomfortable questions of our time: what happens when we create intelligence that surpasses our own? We unpack the difference between the AI tools we use today and the emergence of artificial general intelligence, and why the transition from narrow systems to self-improving intelligence may mark a point where human control is no longer possible. Roman shares why even the people building these systems do not fully understand how they work, and why that gap in understanding becomes exponentially more dangerous as capabilities…
S1 · E190 · 14 Apr 2026 · 2 hr 4 min
E190 - Joe Hudson: Why The Emotions You Avoid Are Running Your Life (How To Break Free)
Joe Hudson returns to explore a deeper layer of the inner work, and why peace alone is not the full picture of being human. We unpack the distinction between awakening in the mind and awakening in the heart, and how many people use meditation and awareness as a way to find calm, while still avoiding the emotional depth that brings real connection, intimacy, and joy. Joe shares how positive emotions can actually feel more threatening than negative ones, and why the capacity to feel love is directly tied to our willingness to feel everything else. In this conversation, we walk through Joe’s…
S1 · E189 · 7 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 39 min
E189 - Wim Hof: Why Your Body Was Built to Heal Itself (And What Stopped It)
Wim Hof joins me to explore the deeper story behind his work, from profound personal loss to discovering a direct path back into the body through breath and cold exposure. We unpack how modern life pulls us out of feeling and into constant mental noise, and how reconnecting with the breath can bring us back into a state of presence, strength, and clarity. Wim shares how a single moment stepping into freezing water at 17 opened something fundamental within him, quieting the mind and reconnecting him to his heart. In this conversation, we explore the science behind his methods and what it…
S1 · E188 · 31 Mar 2026 · 2 hr 27 min
E188 - Emad Mostaque: AI Expert: “We Have 800 Days Left”
Emad Mostaque joins me to explore one of the most confronting questions of our time: what happens when human intelligence is no longer economically valuable? We unpack how rapidly advancing AI is moving toward a world where cognitive labor becomes obsolete, and why this shift may happen much sooner than most people expect. Emad shares how we’ve already built systems that can replicate human thinking, decision-making, and creativity, and how the next phase is not about new breakthroughs but simply scaling what already exists. In this conversation, we explore what this means for identity,…
S1 · E187 · 24 Mar 2026 · 2 hr 18 min
E187 - Shi Heng Yi: Shaolin Master’s Guide to Self-Mastery & Inner Stability
Shi Heng Yi joins me to explore the path of self-mastery through the lens of the Shaolin tradition, and why, despite having more comfort and convenience than ever before, so many people still feel a deep sense of inner lack. We unpack the idea that external success, wealth, and achievement cannot replace a missing sense of inner stability, and how the constant search outside of ourselves often leads us further away from what we are truly looking for. In this conversation, we explore the relationship between mind, body, and energy, and why true mastery begins with learning how to regulate and…

About Know Thyself

Know Thyself is a English learning podcast from André Duqum. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: André Duqum
Language: English
Category: Learning
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 2 hr 3 min
Latest episode: 13 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1633725927
Rights: André Duqum

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