What People Do

Author: brendanhoward

A moment to savor intelligent conversation about ONE THING someone else is deeply invested in.
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Episode 106: Brian Wheeler studies Alan Watts
Episode 106
Tuesday, 8 September, 2026

I grew up hearing Alan Watts' voice on weekend mornings in Southern California in recorded lectures on KPFK. But it wasn't until, on a whim, I pulled one of Watts' books off the shelf and read it during breaks between classes during my undergrad that I was changed. The book that did it was The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. I have since re-read it at least twice, read most of Watts' other books, followed Watts' pointing to Taoism and Buddhism, and currently listen to Watts' lectures at least weekly on walks. I have recommended the book to folks I know, and none of them liked it as much as I did and continue to. This episode's guest, Brian Wheeler, also probably likes the book less than me, but he has spent many more years deeply studying and playing with ideas in Watts' corpus. Brian and I discuss his entry point into Watts, Tao, Buddhism, transpersonal psychology (which Wheeler studied in graduate school), and paradox (which Wheeler has written on). What are you, we wonder in our conversation. Are you a separate you, or a piece of the universe? How? In what ways? Let's play ...