Uncommon Sense: the This is True Podcast

About Uncommon Sense: the This is True Podcast

Thought-Provoking Entertainment Online Since 1994

Publisher

Randy Cassingham

Category

education · kids & family · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Sept 2018

Latest episode

1 Jan 2023

Latest episodes

95 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   1 Jan 2023

   094: Why You Don’t Need to Be Perfect

   In This Episode: Sure, it’s cool to hear stories of famous (and completely obscure) people who exhibit Uncommon Sense — the ones I talk about here. But there’s one other thing you need to know about every one of them: they’re definitely not perfect, and that’s important to know because neither are you, and I’ll tell you why that doesn’t matter. 094: Why You Don’t Need to Be Perfect (https://app.mysoundwise.com/tracks/16726005890062415e.mp3) Jump to Transcript (#transcript) How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes (https://thisistrue.com/uncommon-sense-podcast/) Show Notes * * Prior episodes mentioned: * Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize (https://thisistrue.com/podcast15) (#15). * Developing Uncommon Sense (https://thisistrue.com/podcast17) (#17). * How to be Happier (https://thisistrue.com/podcast19) (#19). * 7 Things to Stop Doing (https://thisistrue.com/podcast77) (& What to Do Instead) (#77). * And/or see the full list of episodes (https://thisistrue.com/uncommon-sense-podcast/). Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. There are several common gut reactions that listeners have to the stories I tell on Uncommon Sense. First there’s the feeling that “I could never do that!” — because the person I talk about is so special, or so talented, or born at just the right moment and the right place, that they’re seemingly impossible to emulate. Or second, the “But what about…?” types, who are aware of something less than savory in the person’s background. To use a couple of examples from Uncommon Sense itself: Jeff Bezos may be looking way into the future, but didn’t he cheat on his wife of 25 years? Isn’t that pretty much the opposite of Uncommon Sense? I mean, not surprisingly his wife divorced him — and when she left she took 25 percent of his Amazon stock as a consolation prize. That was worth $36 billion at the time. She did allow her ex to retain voting rights in those shares, but bad move ethically, morally, and financially, Jeff. But good display of Uncommon Sense, MacKenzie: she has given away more than $14 billion of that, but she still has more than $25 billion, according to Forbes. At just 52, she probably has a lot of time to give the rest of it away to good causes, which should really be a guide to other billionaires. Speaking of which, what of Elon Musk? Sure he’s looking way into the future too, but doesn’t he do very stupid things on a pretty regular basis? Say, taking a big puff from a marijuana cigar — on camera — when his SpaceX company is in the middle of a make-or-break contract with the government? Or make stupid tweets that have gotten him in big trouble? And that’s not even counting his buying Twitter for far more than it was worth, and probably much more than it will ever be worth. Yep, bad moves plural, Elon: every one of the actions like this took time and focus away from his huge missions in life — and cost him plenty of money, too. They set him, and those profoundly important life missions, back — at least to some degree — time after time. Yet I held both of them up as great examples of Uncommon Sense. Isn’t there a disconnect here? No, and here’s why. As I’ve said repeatedly over the years in relation to This is True stories, which very often show people at their worst, we shouldn’t gloat that we are somehow better than they are because, as I say, “We’re all stupid sometimes.” The corollary,

2. 

   5 Nov 2022

   093: The Best Books were Never Written

   In This Episode: I still feel his pain, and I will until I die. But strangely, feeling that pain led me to resolve, not fear. That taught me that my pain could be a good teacher. 093: The Best Books were Never Written (https://app.mysoundwise.com/tracks/16676236151056609e.mp3) Jump to Transcript (#transcript) How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes (https://thisistrue.com/uncommon-sense-podcast/) Show Notes * * The video and photos mentioned are within the transcript. The video was released in April 2019. * The website for the One Voice Children’s Choir (https://onevoicechildren.org). Transcript Welcome back to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. The best songs were never sung. The greatest poems that pierced hearts were never published. The greatest artist ever didn’t capture what was in her mind. The best music was never played. The best performances were never acted. The best books were never written. And, yeah, the best podcasts were never made. Even if those works of art were created, most disappeared because their creators were afraid to submit them to public view, to offer them for publication, to let them out of the drawer where they were hidden away. They were trashed, burned, lost. Why? They say… “I’m not talented enough.” “It’s not good enough.” “I’m too old.” Or the classic, “It’s not ready yet.” It all comes down to fear. Where does fear come from? Pain. My favorite song about pain — an oxymoron I know, but there’s the human brain for you — is Believer. My favorite version of it is not from the band that had a huge hit with it, Imagine Dragons, but rather the version from a nonprofit children’s choir in Utah called the One Voice Children’s Choir that grew out of the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Children singing about pain? You bet, and when they belt out lyrics like “my life, my love, my drive, it came from pain,” yeah, they know what they’re singing, and they put feeling into it because they’ve felt the pain. Pain is fortunately part of the human condition. Because it’s the people who push through the pain, take chances at putting their thoughts, their feelings, their art, out into the world for others to measure against those same feelings in themselves because they’ve felt that pain — that’s what makes a mark on the human condition. That’s what art is: reflecting on the human condition whether it’s writing or paintings or songs or poems or even dance (dance is a very effective part of that choir performance). “Pain: you break me down you build me up … you make me a believer” the lyrics say. I’ll embed the video on the Show Page. It has nearly 200 million views, and only a half-million are mine. But watch it: you’ll know those kids, in age ranging from 4 to 18, have gone through pain; sure, most likely the older they are the more they’ve experienced. Yet in so many cases, it’s because of the pain we’ve all gone through that great art emerges. We all have different things that give us pain, yet at some point most of us think we’re alone in our pain. We aren’t, and it’s imperative to know that pain is one of the building blocks of greatness. We just need to get past the fear and do what we were meant to do despite the pain, or because of it, because otherwise that art won’t be made. I’m lucky in that I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 5, even though, looking back,

3. 

   20 Sept 2021

   092: Leaving a Better World is More Complicated Than You Think

   In This Episode: It used to be that humans thought they were special because we can think. We might be a little special, but we’re not as far above other animals than what we want to believe. And the implications of that are profound. 092: Leaving a Better World is More Complicated Than You Think (https://app.mysoundwise.com/tracks/16321749980129404e.mp3) Tweet (https://twitter.com/share?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Jump to Transcript (#transcript) How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes (https://thisistrue.com/uncommon-sense-podcast/) Show Notes * * What is the Norden bombsight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight). * The book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (https://owowi.com/ama/0805098887) by Carl Safina, came out in 2015. * Other books mentioned: Factfulness (http://amzn.to/2Feylst) (2018) by Hans Rosling, and Enlightenment Now (http://amzn.to/2Fc73TE) (2018) by Steven Pinker. * Infant Mortality: The U.S. is #47(!) in infant mortality, at 6.5 under-5 deaths per 1000 live births. San Marino is #1 with 1.7; Iceland 2.0. Also ahead of the U.S. in that list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_and_under-five_mortality_rates) are (in order) Slovenia, Cyprus, Montenegro, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Luxembourg, Andorra, Italy, Monaco, Spain, Belarus, Czech Republic, South Korea, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Australia, Latvia, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland, U.K., Poland, France, New Zealand, Croatia, Canada, Cuba, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Qatar. Politicians like to say the U.S. has the best healthcare in the world. It’s a lie: we’re not even close on many measures. * The index of articles/podcasts in this series is https://thisistrue.com/longevity/ (https://thisistrue.com/longevity/). Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. Episode 26 talked about the implications of Koko the gorilla, who proved she could think because …she could talk to humans. Not grunts, but American Sign Language, where she could form sentences, express likes and dislikes, and even plan for the future. Others might say that Koko was a one-off: a particularly smart gorilla, or maybe even that gorillas are particularly smart as far as animals go, not the bird-brains that, well, birds are. The thing is, animals other than gorillas use tools. Monkeys, for instance, find just the right stick to shove into a hole to rile up termites, which the monkeys eat when they come to the surface. So maybe it’s primates that are smart, leaving the bird-brains for, well, the birds! There’s a problem with that hypothesis: birds can think too. They even use tools. They’ll grab a rock, get above shellfish on the beach, and drop their rocks on the shellfish to crack them open so they (the birds) can eat the sea creatures. So, think about that: they not only figured out rocks can be tools so they can get some nice seafood, but as they’re flying with those rocks,

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

45 ratings

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