Soul Gum

In stories, the narrator tells you which ordinary things are portals to magic and adventure. In real life, you have to find them yourself.
This episode reveals 5 secret portals to the next version of yourself: seemingly ordinary choices, traits, and habits that are thresholds to the future version of you who lives with more courage, clarity, and freedom. It’s for you if an old version of you has died but the new one hasn’t been born yet. You might have recently experienced a big life change: a move, or a relationship ending, or a career change. Or maybe you know one is coming. It’s for you if you have an unshakeable feeling that there is a more alive version of you out there, if only you could figure out how to get to them. 
We’ll examine the work of philosophy’s greatest minds, like Nietzsche, Kant, Kafka, and the Ancient Greeks, to uncover the hidden thresholds between who you are and who you're becoming, and point out clues for how to spot them when they appear in your own life.

EPISODE OUTLINE 

00:00 Intro
04:54 I missed you
06:05 Help me keep Soul Gum ad-free
07:35 Talk to me!!! 
08:18 1. Intuition is a portal
08:49 Nietzsche’s beef with Socrates
10:44 The neuroscience of intuition (Gary Klein)  
12:31 I exist because of a woman’s intuition
13:03 The tension between ambition & intuition
14:13 Mary Oliver on reacquianting with your intuition
15:05 Small ways to reconnect with your intuition
15:42 2. Solitude is a portal (Pascal)
16:39 The fear of being alone with your thoughts
17:33 2014 study on the discomfort of being un-stimulated
18:05 Solitude as a tool in my creative process
18:58 Brain drain study: it is that d**n phone
19:30 Going phone n*k*d
20:12 3. Aligned friendship is a portal
21:36 Nietzsche: Friends should be your “best enemies”
23:06 Friendship as a mirror 
23:40 The research of social contagion 
24:18 Look for friends that show you what’s possible 
24:52 4. Nature is a portal
25:40 Our increasingly sanitized relationship with nature
26:15 Kant, the sublime, and the gorpcore of it all
28:41 The ego-interrupting power of awe
29:45 5. Action is a portal (Kafka’s Before the Law)
31:29 Mary Oliver on the most regretful people 
32:00 You deserve to know what’s on the other side of fear
32:33 Leap by Joy Sullivan
33:34 For the Ones Who Left by Me (Victoria Hutchins)
34:29 Lightning round recap
35:40 Subscribe, rate, share, talk to me!!! 

LINKS
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now
Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) 
Follow me on Instagram and TikTok

See you soon - I'll miss you! Make sure you're subscribed so you know when Soul Gum is back.

WHERE TO FIND ME:
MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠⁠
Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
Join the waitlist for future retreats! ⁠
Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Everyone wants love, but no one can tell you exactly what love is. In this episode, we deep dive into seven philosophical perspectives on love, ranging from the Ancient Greeks to the existentialists. If you’re curious whether Plato thought soulmates were real or Kierkegaard would tell you to text your ex, this episode is for you. 

EPISODE OUTLINE 
00:00 Intro (the philosophy of love)
03:19 What even is love? (hypotheticals on love)
07:07 Ancient Greek philosophy on love 
07:35 Origins of the concept of soulmates (Plato’s The Symposium)
09:03 Socrates’ ladder of love 
13:03 Enlightenment thinkers on love 
13:15 Love as social performance (Rousseau)
13:58 Rousseau’s two types of self love 
15:22 How self love affects how you love others
17:31 The humanity formula (Kant)   
19:49 Practical vs. passionate love (Kant)
22:07 Love as a trick (Schopenhauer)
24:04 Why do opposites attract? (Schopenhauer)
24:28 Is love just biological encouragement to reproduce? (Schopenhauer)
26:06 Existentialists on love
26:14 The tension between love and freedom of choice (Sartre)
27:50 Love as an objectifying force (Sartre)
30:32 Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s non-monogamous love story 
31:40 The relationship between love and possession (de Beauvoir) 
33:06 How your fear of being seen impacts your ability to give and receive love (Sartre, Doestoevsky, de Beauvoir) 
36:54 Kierkegaard’s Works of Love 
37:22 Unreasonable standards in love (Kierkegaard)
42:24 Lightning round recap

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Plato, The Symposium (c. 385–370 BCE)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818)
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit (1944)
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Gordon Marino, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide (2018)

MY LINKS
MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠⁠
Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
Join the waitlist for future retreats! ⁠
Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Ever wonder why some people seem to have endless creativity while you’re stuck with half-baked ideas that never make it out of your Notes app? In this episode, we explore the habits, tips and artistic processes of creative geniuses ranging from Plato and Picasso to Mary Oliver and Rick Rubin. I reveal the 7 secrets of creative geniuses that helped me stop chasing perfection, relight my creative spark, and actually enjoy the process of making art. If you’re ready to stop gatekeeping your own creativity, this one’s for you. 

EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00 Intro: Why creativity matters for everyone (not just artists)
03:58 1. Great creatives don’t let perfection be the enemy of creation (Plato’s Republic, perfection vs. forms, Ira Glass on “the gap”)
11:28 2. They separate creation, refinement, and critique (Rick Rubin, The Creative Act)
14:41 3. They focus on next possibilities, not ultimate goals (Stuart Kauffman’s adjacent possible, evolutionary biology, Bhagavad Gita, Rick Rubin on artistry vs. craftsmanship)
20:56 4. They embrace flow and anti-flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow state; Mary Oliver’s editing process; Stanley Kubrick’s many takes)
25:52 5. They thrive under constraints (Barry Schwartz’s paradox of choice; Mary Oliver writing Wild Geese as a constraint exercise; Parkinson’s Law)
30:35 6. They know that if they don’t create it, someone else will (Rick Rubin on how ideas move, Elizabeth Gilbert’s hand-off story with Ann Patchett)
34:01 7. They know that no one really knows (Socrates on knowing nothing, imposter feelings, why your contributions matter)
37:57 Lightning round recap

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 
• Plato, The Republic 
• Studies on the impact of perfectionism on performance and creativity (2022 and 2025)
• Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being 
• Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe 
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience 
• Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook; “Wild Geese”; On Being interview with Krista Tippett 
• Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice
• Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear 

MY LINKS
• ⁠MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Join the waitlist for future retreats! 
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

What happens when your faith collapses? In this episode, I share my story of spiritual deconstruction and how I learned to believe again—sort of. This isn’t a “how to get your faith back” story. It’s the story of tearing my faith down to the studs, sifting through the rubble, and deciding what was worth keeping. We’ll talk god shaped holes, Kierkegaard, Camus, Pascal’s wager, and the surprising peace of not needing all the answers. This episode if for anyone who is currently filling their god-shaped hole with TikTok marathons, self-help books and spiral-inducing questions. If you started at church camp and have landed in full-blown nihilism, press play. 

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro: the story of how I lost my faith and got it back (sort of)
08:01 1. Why spiritual crises often happen at the worst possible time
10:35 How my own spiritual crisis began
18:07 Kierkegaard on despair and the self
19:47 2. Why spiritual health gets worse before it gets better
26:19 The delight of spiritual curiosity
27:43 3. Choosing how to fill the God shaped hole
29:42 Absurdism and optimistic nihilism (Camus)
30:57 Pascal’s Wager explained and what it gets wrong
32:51 Approaching belief pragmatically (belief as a choice)
33:53 What “god” means to me now 
35:33 Can you make yourself believe? Should you?
36:16 On stepping in the same river twice (Heraclitus)
36:49 Five reflection questions (Rainn Wilson)
38:14 Lightning round recap 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
Rhett McLaughlin’s Spiritual Deconstruction Story
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)
St. Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 CE)
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Heraclitus, Fragment 49a (c. 500 BCE)
Rainn Wilson, Soul Boom (2023)
Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays (2016)

MY LINKS

• ⁠Listen to my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson on Spotify 
• ⁠Watch my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson on Youtube
• ⁠MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Join the waitlist for future retreats! 
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

RESOURCES 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Chat with a Trevor Project counselor now 
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ANAD helpline 
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• 988 lifeline