Episode 38 - It's About Time

Darron and Jeff have a sensemaking conversation around the concept of time - what it is and how we perceive it. We talk about Jeff’s experience with time in relation to his reading about Emerson, the relationship between time and change, how experience influences how we decide to spend our time, the many different ways we mark time and are reminded of its passing, how we sometimes wish for time to pass and a thought experiment imagining the ability to fast-forward time, the social nature of how we experience time, and they end with some thoughts from a biological perspective about the sheer awesomeness of a single moment of existence. It’s a loose and fun conversation about a topic that they are sure to be revisiting soon.

Notes:

• 3:00 - Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson

• 7:32 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 300 - Solo: Does Time Exist? from January, 2025

• 7:36 - From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll

• 7:38 - The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• 8:16 - See the Wikipedia entry on entropy as an arrow of time

• 12:58 - Read Nature and Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

• 16:54 - Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

• 19:05 - Check out Focus T25, Sean T, and Derek

• 20:28 - “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years” is an idea popularized most recently by Bill Gates and sometimes referred to as Gates’ Law.

• 21:42 - Derek Jeter played in 20 major league seasons starting in 1995 and retiring after the 2014 season

• 22:12 - Derek Jeter played his final game on September 25, 2014 at Yankee Stadium against the Baltimore Orioles - watch “Relive Derek Jeter’s Final Game” (MLB.com)

• Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 37 - Memento Mori from February, 2025

• 26:05 - Rickey Henderson played in 25 major league seasons from 1979 to 2003. He passed away on December 20, 2004 and is remembered as one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. See “Rickey Henderson, 'greatest of all time,' dies at 65” (ESPN.com)

• 29:34 - Read “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything” by Linda Holmes (NPR, 2011)

• 31:10 - See the “Great American Novel” Wikipedia entry

• 31:18 - See the “In Search of Lost Time” (A Remembrance of Things Past) Wikipedia entry

• 32:51 - Listen to the “Songs About Time” Spotify playlist

• 32:57 - Listen to “Working for the Weekend” by Loverboy from 1981 (YouTube)

• 36:05 - See “What Is Memento Mori?” (Daily Stoic)

• 38:45 - The 2006 Adam Sandler movie Click is about “a workaholic architect [who] finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.”

• 40:40 - See “Eternal Recurrence: What Did Nietzsche Really Mean?” (Philosophy Break) and “The Eternal Return: Nietzsche’s Brilliant Thought Experiment Illustrating the Key to Existential Contentment” from The Marginalian

• 44:55 - Read “We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It” (The New Atlantis, 2025)

• 46:14 - Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli

• 54:38 - Watch “Oxygen’s surprisingly complex journey through your body” (TED-Ed YouTube Channel)

• 55:50 - Watch “Cellular Respiration Steps and Pathways” to see why you need a steady supply of oxygen and “Photosynthesis and Respiration” to see how oxygen cycles through the processes of photosynthesis and respiration (YouTube)

• 56:22 - Listen to Richard Feynman’s “Ode To A Flower” (YouTube)

• 57:03 - See the “Deep time” Wikipedia entry and the Deep Time: A History of the Earth interactive infographic