Flik Floc

About Flik Floc

Across Oceans of Meaning orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Dr Orestis V

Category

education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

17 Jun 2026

Latest episode

21 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

7 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Oct 2026

   Take Another Bet - with film director Stella Skiadopoulou

   “Because I always had arts in my heart.” Stella Skiadopoulou and I met more than twenty years ago, when we were both studying physics at the University of Athens. This summer, we found ourselves sitting on a balcony in Egaleo, Athens, talking about what happened in between. Stella went on to do a PhD in physics and postdoctoral research in several European countries, before eventually deciding to study filmmaking in Belfast. Now she is making films, exploring memory and nostalgia, and working with people who have migrated from different parts of the world. But the story is not quite as straightforward as physics to film. We talk about music, a master’s degree that almost didn’t happen, academic competition, the darker sides of research culture, and what it means to finally enjoy something just when you’re expected to turn it into publications and funding. Somewhere along the way, we get into the relationship between physics and cinema, how images can evoke experiences beyond what we see, the geometry of memory, the hero’s journey, and why some kinds of work matter even when we cannot easily measure their impact. And then there are the more practical questions. How do you keep making art while earning a living? What happens when you’re no longer interested in climbing the next ladder? And what if, ten years from now, you decide to take another bet? A long conversation between two old friends, with a little bit of Athens in the background. Support this project by: Gifting anonymous love (https://throne.com/orestisv) Subscribing: Main Themes Taking Another Bet: From Physics to Film What happens when you spend years building a career, only to decide you want to do something completely different? Stella talks about moving between physics, music, research, and filmmaking, the practical difficulties of starting again, and what happens to your identity when you leave behind something you’ve spent years becoming. When Academia Gets in the Way of Learning How can someone complete a PhD in physics and still feel they were never particularly good at it? We talk about the difference between understanding physics and being good at mathematics, the pleasure of research, academic competition, sexism, and how the pressure to publish and prove yourself can change your relationship with something you once enjoyed. What Do We Do with Education Anymore? What makes scientific research, education, or a work of art valuable, and who gets to decide? From measuring the impact of scientific papers to the difficulty of earning a living through art, we question how usefulness, money, recognition, and personal satisfaction fit together, and whether everything we do needs to have a measurable outcome. Thinking in Geometry: Physics, Cinema, and Memory Can a film make us feel something beyond what we actually see or hear? Stella introduces us to haptic cinema, the relationship between images and the sense of touch, and different ways of experiencing time and memory, leading us into a conversation about imagination, geometry, storytelling, and how we make sense of our experiences. Giving People the Camera: Who Gets to Tell the Story? What changes when people who are usually the subjects of documentaries become the filmmakers themselves? Through Stella’s work with migrant communities in Belfast, we explore participatory filmmaking, questions of authorship and control, access to the film industry, and whether making a film can do something for its participants beyond producing a finished work. Chapters 00:00 A balcony in Athens, twenty years later 03:20 Studying physics and wanting to leave Greece 08:23 Music and the difficulty of starting again 15:04 Portugal and a master’s degree that almost didn’t happen 33:40 Never feeling particularly good at physics 42:45 Academic life, sexism, and research culture 51:49 Persevering and the Marie Curie fellowship 1:15:14 Who cares? Scientific research and its impact 1:24:19 What do we do with education anymore? 1:35:21 Imagination in physics and cinema 1:40:25 Haptic cinema and experiencing images 1:44:55 The geometry of memory and time 1:53:30 Storytelling, the hero’s journey, and therapy 2:05:10 The academic ladder and the shame of starting over 2:12:18 Participatory filmmaking and who controls the story 2:18:20 Giving people the camera, nostalgia, and migration 2:27:38 Taking another bet 2:38:31 Order, chaos, and the pendulum About Stella Stella Skiadopoulou is a film director, scientist, and educator based in Belfast. Her films include Nostos, Baltic (so it is!), Mantis Shrimp, and Lab Dreams. Explore her films and writing at stella-skiadopoulou.com (https://www.stella-skiadopoulou.com/). Support this project by: Gifting anonymous love (https://throne.com/orestisv) Subscribing: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   8 Sept 2026

   What if you don’t have to know? - with James Tripp

   What is a nexialist? James Tripp became widely known through Hypnosis Without Trance, but his thinking has travelled considerably further than the territory suggested by that label. In this conversation, we wander through hypnosis, change work, martial arts, systems thinking, developmental psychology, creativity, identity, philosophy and uncertainty. Yet the wandering has its own coherence. Again and again, we return to how different ways of seeing can illuminate one another, and to what James calls the “pattern that connects.” James describes himself as something of a nexialist, borrowing a term for someone who draws useful connections between apparently disparate fields. Martial arts informs hypnosis, hypnosis informs martial arts, Gregory Bateson meets Erickson, therapeutic models are placed beside one another and asked not which one is correct, but what each allows us to see. Discover more of James: * Learn Changework (https://clientshifts.com) * James Tripp’s substack: Agents of Everything (https://jamestripp.substack.com/) Connect more with me (https://orestisv.com) Main themes The pattern that connectsJames describes himself as a kind of “nexialist,” someone drawn to connections between apparently unrelated fields. Martial arts, hypnosis, systems thinking, philosophy and psychology become different places from which to examine similar underlying patterns. Analysis and participationUnderstanding something often requires stepping outside it, making distinctions and examining its structure. But actually doing it well requires returning to participation, responsiveness and flow. Change as enlarging someone’s worldChange work is not simply about applying the correct technique. For James, something meaningful has happened when a person can see possibilities, distinctions or ways of relating to their experience that were previously unavailable. Development and ways of knowingDrawing on Robert Kegan, we explore how people differ not simply in what they believe, but in how they organize knowledge, authority and identity. This also helps explain why some people seek clear answers while others are increasingly comfortable holding multiple perspectives. Identity, being and becomingRather than imagining a fixed true self waiting to be uncovered, James approaches identity as something emergent and continually reorganizing. Being and becoming are not opposites, but aspects of the same unfolding process. The philosophy underneath everyday lifeWe all carry assumptions about what the world is, what other people are like, what is possible and what we are allowed to do. Whether or not we consciously call it philosophy, this background reality shapes how we participate in each moment. The freedom of not knowingThe conversation eventually arrives at uncertainty itself. We do not need complete understanding or the certainty of making the “correct decision” before acting. We can move, discover what the movement reveals, and move again. Chapters: 00:00 From Hypnosis Without Trance to change work07:22 Why context changes what works10:32 The nexialist and the pattern that connects18:21 Analysis, participation and subject-object relationships23:31 Why learning and doing require different modes28:09 Entering each other’s worlds35:35 The practitioner-client feedback loop39:59 Change should enlarge the client’s world44:00 Control, agency and reorganizing experience56:10 Comparing therapeutic models instead of believing them59:00 Why understanding is underrated1:01:23 Robert Kegan and adult development1:07:06 From socialized to self-authoring minds1:20:20 Creativity, productivity and living in process1:25:07 Being, becoming and the problem of the “true self”1:35:21 The reality underneath our actions1:46:23 Learning to inhabit “I don’t know”1:49:26 The myth of the correct decision Discover more of James: * Learn Changework (https://clientshifts.com) * James Tripp’s substack (https://jamestripp.substack.com/) Thanks for reading Escaping The Frame! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   26 Aug 2026

   The Guinea Pig, the Church, the Wizard & the Hypnotist!

   Is the unconscious mind the holy spirit? Summary Jason Smith’s path to hypnosis has been anything but linear. A music student, Army animal care specialist, entrepreneur, restaurant manager, coach, writer, Christian, father, and hypnotist, Jason’s story is shaped by a series of unlikely turning points. One of the earliest came during a past suicidal crisis, when the squeak of his guinea pig interrupted the moment and gave him an immediate reason to stay alive. That experience later influenced his decision to work with animals in the Army. Years later, other unexpected moments would redirect him again, discovering coaching and hypnosis, and being rejected by members of a church community he had belonged to for around two decades because of his involvement with hypnosis. Our conversation moves between these different chapters while exploring what connects them. We talk about hypnosis as relationship rather than technique, the role of reflection in coaching, rewriting old memories, fantasy and storytelling as ways of processing experience, and the importance of approaching difficult inner material without becoming consumed by it. Jason also describes how writing fantasy helped him process his own experience of rejection. His fictional wizard moves through darkness, confrontation, and eventual redemption, while Jason gradually recognizes elements of his own story inside the character he created. From there, the conversation crosses into the relationship between Christianity, hypnosis, spirituality, and psychology. We explore church rituals through the lens of attention, suggestion, trance, and embodied experience, as well as Jason’s personal attempt to understand concepts such as spirit, subconscious processes, meditation, and mystical experience without forcing them into a single explanatory system. Running underneath the conversation is another pattern. Again and again, apparently small events seem to become signals that change the direction of Jason’s life. After recently reading The Alchemist, Jason realizes during our conversation that perhaps he has been “reading the omens” all along. Discover more of Jason: * Children’s book: The Bathroom Super Sleuth (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GM76CZ5H) * Connect on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/JasonMSmith42) * Connect on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonmsmith42) * Website (https://jasonsmithhypnosis.com) Connect with Orestis (https://orestisv.com) Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Themes * Nonlinear life paths and repeated reinvention * Survival, purpose, and unexpected turning points * The guinea pig that interrupted Jason’s suicide attempt * Joining the Army and working with animals * Entrepreneurship, unemployment, and changing careers * Finding a niche as a hypnotist * Working with parents, children, and autistic children * Hypnosis as relationship rather than simply technique * Coaching, reflection, and hearing your own experience returned through another person * AI as a mirror for patterns, identities, and inner representations * Rewriting childhood memories and changing their present meaning * Recovering creativity and the childhood desire to become a writer * Fantasy, metaphor, and storytelling as forms of psychological processing * Jason’s wizard trilogy and the movement from darkness toward redemption * Facing difficult inner material without becoming reimmersed in it * The difference between approaching an old fire and stepping back into it * Church belonging, authority, rejection, and loss of community * Christianity and the fear or misunderstanding of hypnosis * Whether psychological and religious languages can sometimes describe related experiences * Ego states, inner parts, demons, and competing frameworks for inner experience * Worship, music, preaching, attention, suggestion, and trance * Hypnosis as a possible spiritual experience * Subconscious processes, spirit, meditation, yoga, and inner mysticism * Psychological support alongside medical treatment without reducing healing to a single cause * Meaning making through coincidence, recognition, and “omens” * How apparently disconnected chapters of a life can become part of one unfolding story. Discover more of Jason: * Children’s book: The Bathroom Super Sleuth (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GM76CZ5H) * Connect on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/JasonMSmith42) * Connect on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonmsmith42) * Website (https://jasonsmithhypnosis.com) Connect with Orestis (https://orestisv.com) Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   20 Aug 2026

   New Choice: Clowns, Therapy, Improv & Math

   Summary An improv game called New Choice turned out to describe something I keep meeting everywhere else. In this episode I follow one structure through four domains: changework, improv, clowning, and complex analysis. The structure is that real shifts do not arrive through variation. They arrive when the demand to know the outcome in advance finally drops. On the way there I end up inverting the usual relationship between anxiety and stuckness, and I close on a question I have not settled. Connect Directly with Me (https://orestisv.com/) Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Themes Change and choice are one loop. Neither comes first. Each is how the other becomes visible. Variation is not change. Most new attempts are near neighbours of the one that already failed. From the inside, adjacency feels like novelty. Structure is registered before it is understood. An audience knows a change was insufficient before anyone can say why. Recognition runs ahead of explanation. Reframes are produced by exhaustion, not by intention. The shift that works arrives once the small solutions are used up. A spontaneous reframe and a performed one differ in kind, not degree. Change is discontinuous. Phase transition is the better model than gradual improvement. Science moves this way too. Prediction is both the default and the obstacle. Making sense by prediction fails exactly where the signal has to come from outside. Stuckness is observable. It appears as narrowing. One gesture repeated while the available range sits unused. Safety seeking produces what it was meant to prevent. The demand for a guaranteed outcome generates the anxiety and the stuckness together. Releasing the demand is what moves things. Freedom is range. Measured as reachable phase space, not as comfort. Small choices are the route to the cut. Branch cuts give the picture. Circling your current level is how you arrive at the seam into the next one. The open question. Can the small choices be skipped, or is the frame of mind you make them in the only variable that matters? What do you think? I would really like to know. Leave it in the comments, or write to me directly. Connect more with me here (https://orestisv.com/)! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   6 Aug 2026

   A Cure for Monoculture - Nobody Rewards You for This!

   Our culture rewards narrowing. Sub-niche your sub-niche. Become the most specific version of yourself so the machine has a place to slot you in. It works! right up until it doesn’t. In this solo episode I explain why I think Flik Floc is, in essence, a cure for monoculture. Thanks for reading Escaping The Frame! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Connect Directly with Me (https://orestisv.com/) Extended Summary Our culture rewards narrowing. Specialise, then sub-specialise, then sub-sub-specialise. Become a clean, legible function so the machine has somewhere to slot you in. And it works! It’s efficient, it’s predictable, it’s productive. Right up until it breaks. In this solo episode of Flik Floc, I borrow a metaphor from farming. A monoculture, one species, one variety, planted across a whole field is wonderfully optimised. You know exactly what it will yield and when. But it depletes the soil, so you need more fertiliser. And because there’s no diversity in the system, a single pest can take the entire crop, because nothing in it had the resilience to withstand something unexpected. I think our minds work the same way. Our fundamental ideas are the genetic material of our thinking. When we spend years in narrow lanes, we build a monoculture of ideas, and then the algorithms feed it. Social media serves us the content that engages us rather than the content that stretches us. AI, through what people are now calling sycophancy, mostly hands us back a flattering version of what we already believe. Reward systems all the way down. The cost isn’t visible day to day. It’s that we slowly lose the ability to see differently, to cross-pollinate, to dream. And dreaming here isn’t what happens when we sleep. It’s the cross-pollination of imagination and reality that produces visions, and eventually new realities. I also tell the honest version of my own detour. I left theoretical physics, black holes, string theory, for hypnosis, hypnotherapy, and later theatre. The surface reason was chronic pain. The real reason was that for years beforehand I’d felt a need to expand my inquiry and to see the world with different eyes, and I’d been ignoring it, because that wasn’t what was being rewarded. When I left academia the obvious moves were machine learning or finance. I didn’t take them. I paid for that. It took a long time to learn something from zero, and a long time to earn from it. From one point of view it was a stupid decision. From another, it wasn’t; because recently a physics project landed in my lap, and I found I was doing physics better than before, with mind skills that physics itself had never taught me and couldn’t have. That matters beyond my own story. If you’re in science, or research, or any demanding field, and you quietly suspect you’re not smart enough because you’re not making it the way others do, it may not be an intelligence issue at all. It may be that you’re missing a set of mind skills your field, through its teaching tradition, has no way of handing to you. The catch is that none of this pays immediately. Big cross-pollinating journeys defy common sense, which is precisely why they work; they take you outside your own prediction mechanisms. But the reward is delayed. You have to be patient enough for the roots to travel the whole underground path before new branches sprout leaves again. That’s what Flik Floc is for: conversations across oceans of meaning, with people whose journeys defy the obvious. If you’ve read this far, I’d love to know. Leave a comment, send me a message, be part of the conversation. Themes * Monoculture of the mindOver-specialisation as the intellectual equivalent of monocropping * Invisible reward systemsHow culture shapes us not by argument but by what it quietly values * People as functions Being a gear in someone else’s machine, whether or not you notice * The genuine case for specialisationEfficiency, predictability, fewer hiccups — and where it stops serving * Soil depletion Narrow thinking exhausting its own nutrients, needing ever more “fertiliser” and continuous upkeep. * Fragility and pestsWhy a system without variability can be wiped out by one unexpected factor * Diversity and inclusivityThey are also essential for survival, not just sentiment * Algorithmic feedback loops Engagement-optimised content and AI sycophancy as monoculture engines * Cross-pollination of ideas Seeking out people with different journeys * Courage before crisis Walking to the edge where your thinking stops working, out of curiosity rather than necessity * The narrow river Creativity constrained by banks that are too close together * Dreaming as a mind skill Imagination and reality combining to produce visions, not sleep-dreams * Visionaries and entrepreneursEnvisioning as art rather than craft * My arc Theoretical physics and string theory → chronic pain → hypnotherapy → theatre → physics again combined with transformational changework * The ignored signal Years of quietly wanting to expand his inquiry before the body forced the issue * The roads not taken Machine learning and finance as the “obvious” transitions * The honest cost Years of lost income and starting from zero; “stupid” from one angle, not from another * Mind skills your field can’t teach you Impostor feelings that aren’t about intelligence at all * IntermittencyInterval training, intermittent conditioning, and why stepping away makes you better * Delayed rewardRoots travelling the underground path before anything visible sprouts * The purpose of the show:A cure for monoculture through conversations across oceans of meaning If this resonated, leave a comment. I read every message and I'd love to take the conversation further. Connect more with me here (https://orestisv.com/)! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   8 Jul 2026

   Past Lives, Future Selves

   This is the inaugural episode of Flik Floc: Across Oceans of Meaning. My guest is Ullrica Centurion, a hypnotherapist based in Spain whose life has taken her from Sweden through Gran Canaria and a formative period of trauma in Belfast; a journey that’s as literal an “ocean crossing” as the show’s name implies. We talk about the gap between coping mechanisms and genuine healing, what it means to hold multiple professional identities instead of one, and where rational/scientific and spiritual frameworks actually meet rather than compete. Along the way: past-life regression, Kundalini experiences, and what actually makes a hypnotherapy client ready for change versus not. More about Ullrica (https://ullricacenturion.com/) Connect with Orestis (https://orestisv.com) Themes 1. Crossing Oceans, Literally and FigurativelyUllrica’s path from Sweden to Gran Canaria to Belfast to Spain mirrors the show’s premise. The episode explores how physical relocation and inner transformation move together, each displacement forcing a reckoning with identity. 2. From Coping to HealingA central distinction runs through the episode: coping mechanisms (breathing techniques, medication, learned management) versus genuine transformation. Ullrica traces her own journey through both, and the two agree that coping is often a necessary first stage - not a final destination. 3. You Don’t Have to Be Just One ThingBoth hosts share a rejection of the cultural pressure toward singular identity or career. Ullrica holds three jobs simultaneously; Orestis moves fluidly between physics, hypnotherapy, and coaching. They discuss this as a deliberate choice rather than a lack of focus. 4. Openness as the Real PrerequisiteNeither belief nor skepticism determines whether transformative work succeeds - openness does. This surfaces repeatedly: in past-life regression, in trying something new, in letting go of what needs a rational explanation first. 5. Past Lives, Future SelvesThe episode’s most surprising thread: during a regression meant to explore the past, Orestis instead experienced a vivid episode set in the year 2154. The two reflect on what it means when the process defies its own name. 6. Where Science and Spirit MeetOrestis’s physics background and Ullrica’s intuitive, spiritual orientation don’t clash - they compare notes on the same underlying phenomena from different vantage points. Neither tries to convert the other; both treat it as translation rather than debate. 7. The Body RemembersFrom a strangulation incident in Belfast to PTSD-driven night terrors resolved by an unexpected phrase, to a Kundalini meditation that left a lasting physical calm - Ullrica describes trauma and healing as something felt in the body first, understood afterward. 8. Guiding, Not FixingA shared professional ethos: the practitioner’s job isn’t to impose an outcome but to create the conditions for someone to reach their own. This includes accepting that sessions sometimes “open a door” without resolving anything outright and that this is still real progress. 9. The Pressure to Perform TransformationBoth hosts name the quiet weight practitioners carry: the sense that a client’s lack of progress is a personal failure. They question whether this pressure is unique to hypnotherapy or shared across the helping professions. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   17 Jun 2026

   What Flik Floc is all about

   This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit orestisv.substack.com (https://orestisv.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Contact Flik Floc

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.