The Urban Monk podcast with Dr. Pedram Shojai

🎙️ How many people in your life genuinely know you? Not like you, not admire you, but actually know you? Dr. Pedram Shojai unpacks the science of loneliness and why it is one of the most dangerous states the human body can live in. Drawing on John Cacioppo, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, and Naomi Eisenberger, he shows how chronic loneliness drives inflammation, disrupts sleep, weakens immunity, and raises mortality risk on par with smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, then introduces three layers of belonging every person needs to flourish. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why loneliness is a physiological state, not a mood: chronically lonely people show elevated cortisol, inflammatory markers, reduced slow wave sleep, and gene expression shifts that turn down antiviral responses How chronic loneliness raises all-cause mortality risk by 26 percent, comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and exceeding the risk of obesity, per Holt-Lunstad's meta-analysis of 148 studies and 300,000 participants The sharp distinction between chosen solitude (a temporary withdrawal that deepens the inner life) and unchosen loneliness, and why many people attempting solitary practice without foundation are achieving loneliness and calling it practice The three layers of belonging every person needs: witnessed presence (cortisol drops when others hold you with warmth and non-judgment), the chosen witness (specific people who hold the larger narrative of your life), and collective purpose (belonging to something built on shared values and meaning) 🔑 Key Insights: "Loneliness is not a mood. It is a physiological state with real consequences. The signal was never designed to run continuously for years." "Perfectionism cannot afford to be known. It blocks the very connection we need." "You cannot fully regulate your nervous system in isolation. The sangha is not a support group for practice. It is the practice environment itself." 💡 Action Steps: Assess which layer of belonging is most deficient right now: witnessed presence, a chosen witness, or collective purpose. Write one sentence on what is missing and one on what is in the way Reach out to one person this week with something real, not a casual check-in. Ask a question you truly want answered, acknowledge something that mattered, or share what you are working on. Reaching out breaks the withdrawal loop more reliably than waiting 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone who feels isolated despite being surrounded by people, those who have spiritualized their loneliness as independence or introversion, or those ready to understand why connection is as fundamental to health as sleep, breath, or food. 📚 Mentioned Resources: John Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (2008) Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Brigham Young University (meta-analysis on social isolation and mortality) Naomi Eisenberger, UCLA (neuroimaging research on social pain) Susan Pinker, The Village Effect (2014) Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General (loneliness public health advisory, 2023) Lights On Course: lightson.theurbanmonk.com 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #Loneliness #MentalHealth #Connection #NervousSystem #Community #Wellness #Mindfulness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

Perfectionism can look like high standards, but it often hides a cycle of fear, endless revision, and avoidance. Explore its links to stress, inflammation, burnout, and outdated childhood threat responses. The discussion examines conditional worth, catastrophic failure, and procrastination, alongside Taoist ideas of sufficiency, somatic regulation, self-compassion, and the courage to finish imperfectly.

🎙️ You spend roughly a third of your life asleep, and most of us treat it as dead time after the real day ends. Dr. Pedram Shojai turns that framing around. Sleep is not your brain going offline. It is a distinct mode of consciousness doing work no waking state can replace. He walks through the science of deep sleep, REM, and the glymphatic system, bridges to Tibetan Dream Yoga and Yellow Dragon teachings, and closes with a guided threshold crossing practice to use tonight. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why every lost hour of deep sleep is a mitochondrial repair session that never happens, and how one night of four hours cuts natural killer cell activity by 70 percent How REM functions as overnight therapy: reprocessing emotional memories without the stress chemistry that encoded them so you keep the information and lose the sting The three thresholds of sleep: the hypnagogic gate (where awareness seeds into dreams), the REM gateway (the richest cycle that an early alarm almost always steals), and the waking return (where the first 20 minutes matter more than most people realize) Why Tibetan Dream Yoga and the Yellow Dragon teaching of the Hun returning to the liver both treat sleep as active practice, and what both traditions agree on about autonomic dysregulation and restless sleep 🔑 Key Insights: "Sleep isn't the foundation of the practice. It is the practice in a different state." "REM is overnight therapy. You keep the memory and lose the sting. That's why things look different in the morning." "You can't out-supplement poor sleep. You can't out-meditate or out-optimize a bad night either." 💡 Action Steps: Do the sleep audit tonight: honestly write down what your last 60 minutes before bed actually look like. The gap between intention and reality is your target Practice the threshold crossing for seven nights: ten minutes before bed, sitting up, release the day, slow the breath (six count in, eight count out), and set an intention for the night. Notice how your mornings change 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone who wakes up tired despite enough hours, people whose mood, immunity, or cognitive performance feel inconsistent, or those ready to treat sleep as the most important practice in their day rather than the last item on the list. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (2017) Bob Stickgold, Harvard (REM, memory consolidation, and creative integration) Maiken Nedergaard, University of Rochester (glymphatic system, 2013) Dr. Irwin and colleagues, UCLA (sleep deprivation and natural killer cell activity) Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (Tibetan Dream Yoga) Dream Yoga Course and Deep Sleep Solution Course (Urban Monk Academy) Lights On Program Module Two: lightson.theurbanmonk.com 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #Sleep #SleepHealth #REM #NervousSystem #Wellness #Mindfulness #GlymphaticSystem #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ Day 100. Dr. Pedram Shojai marks the completion of his personal 100-day gong and uses the milestone to unpack what actually happens when someone commits to a daily practice for 100 consecutive days. He debunks the popular myth that habits form in 21 days, traces it back to a 1960s plastic surgeon's unstudied observation, and lays out what real research shows about the true biological timeline of behavior change and brain restructuring. The episode closes with a guided body-based declaration practice and practical advice on starting your own gong. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why the 21-day habit myth traces back to a 1960s plastic surgeon who never actually studied it, and what Phillippa Lally's real research shows: habits take an average of 66 days, ranging up to 254 depending on complexity How 100 days of consistent practice restructures the brain through increased cortical thickness, stronger self-regulation capacity, and mitochondrial adaptation, not just behavior change The three pillars of a gong that actually works: an honest and specific commitment, a witnessed agreement, and a dyadic accountability partnership Why vague commitments are wishes wearing commitment's clothing, and how a broken commitment that gets excused becomes evidence against your own reliability 🔑 Key Insights: "The days I least wanted to practice gave me the most. The commitment never got easier. I got stronger." "Knowing something intellectually and knowing it through the body are two completely different things. The gong bridges that gap." "A privately held gong is structurally weaker than one shared with others. Public accountability increases follow-through because the social stakes are real." 💡 Action Steps: Write down three to five specific, non-negotiable commitments by hand. Choose a gong size that sits at the edge of what's genuinely sustainable: not too easy, not too heroic Find one accountability partner for daily 60-second check-ins. Their commitment should be independent, not shared logistics, so both people have skin in the game 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone who has started and stopped the same practice more than once, people ready to understand the real neuroscience behind lasting behavior change, or those looking for a structured framework to finally make a commitment stick. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Phillippa Lally, University College London (2010 habit formation study, European Journal of Social Psychology) Dr. Sara Lazar, Harvard Medical School (neuroimaging research on meditators) Roy Baumeister, Florida State University (willpower and self-regulation research) Peter Gollwitzer, NYU (implementation intentions research) The Life Garden Academy 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #HabitFormation #DailyPractice #Mindfulness #Discipline #NervousSystem #Qigong #Wellness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ What would shift in you if you knew, with total certainty, that you had one year left to live? Dr. Pedram Shojai opens with that question and a personal story from Varanasi, where he witnessed cremation rituals on the Ganges. Drawing on Ernest Becker, Irvin Yalom, and Dacher Keltner alongside Tibetan and Daoist contemplative frameworks, he explains how mortality awareness can trigger either fear-based defensiveness or genuine presence, depending entirely on how it's held. The episode closes with a practical nightly practice called the evening review and a homework assignment to stop postponing the thing you've been putting off. 🎯 What You'll Learn: How Terror Management Theory explains why overwork, busyness, and distraction are anxiety management systems, not just bad habits, and why mortality salience drives tribalism, status-seeking, and rigid worldviews Why confronting death directly reduces its power more than avoiding it does, and how under the right conditions mortality awareness produces authenticity and presence instead of fear The three impermanence gates: the biographical gate (memento mori and deathbed reflection), the moment gate (noticing micro-deaths within each breath and thought), and the dissolution gate (temporary release of identity through deep meditation or breathwork) How the Tibetan and Daoist traditions both treat death preparation as a form of full aliveness, and how awe and mortality contemplation both quiet the self-referential default mode network 🔑 Key Insights: "Overwork, busyness, and distraction are anxiety management systems. They keep people displaced from the present moment." "Confronting mortality directly, rather than avoiding it, reduces its power. Avoidance is what gives it teeth." "The evening review is not a morbid exercise. It is a nightly rehearsal for living." 💡 Action Steps: Practice the evening review for seven consecutive nights: review the day backwards without judgment, ask whether you would be at peace if it had been your last day, and let tomorrow appear as a gift rather than a to-do list Identify one postponed thing and take a single concrete step toward it today. Write one sentence answering what you are not giving enough of yourself to 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone feeling stuck in busyness without meaning, people ready to let mortality sharpen their attention rather than fuel their anxiety, or those curious about what contemplative traditions across cultures have always known about dying well and living fully. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski (Terror Management Theory) Irvin Yalom, Staring at the Sun Dacher Keltner, UC Berkeley (research on awe) The Tibetan Book of the Dead Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #Mortality #Mindfulness #Presence #MentalHealth #Impermanence #Meditation #Wellness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ Your brain doesn't record reality. It predicts it. Dr. Pedram Shojai unpacks predictive processing, the neuroscience showing that the brain constantly generates a model of what it expects to happen and treats sensory input only as error signals to correct that model. Drawing on Karl Friston, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Anil Seth, he explains how emotions are predictions rather than reactions, connects this to the Daoist concept of dust on the mirror, and leads a guided practice on encountering the present moment without the filter of old priors. 🎯 What You'll Learn: How the brain works top-down, generating predictions before sensory data arrives, and why prediction error is metabolically costly enough that the brain is biased to confirm old patterns rather than update them Why emotions aren't automatic responses to events but predictions built from your body's history, and how a stressed, inflamed body feeds the brain threat-flavored data regardless of actual circumstances The three most common entrenched priors running quietly in the background: threat (filling ambiguous information with danger by default), scarcity (chronic urgency and difficulty receiving good things), and fixed self (the belief that sets the ceiling of possible change) How the Daoist practice of Neiguan (inner observation) allows raw sensory data to reach awareness without habitual predictions overlaid, gradually polishing the mirror and updating the brain's model 🔑 Key Insights: "You don't feel angry because something is objectively anger-worthy. You feel angry because your brain predicted anger as the likely interpretation." "A stressed, inflamed body feeds the brain threat-flavored data regardless of actual safety. The prior is architectural, not just psychological." "Naming a prior gives you distance from it. And distance is where change becomes possible." 💡 Action Steps: Choose one recurring emotion today and ask: is this coming from the present moment or from a running prior? Spend 60 seconds during an ordinary activity experiencing something without applying any labels Identify which of the three priors is most quietly active in your life right now: threat, scarcity, or fixed self. Name it and notice how naming it shifts your relationship to it 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone whose emotional reactions feel bigger than the situation warrants, people stuck in patterns they understand but can't seem to change, or those ready to understand why consistent practice over a hundred days is what actually rewrites the model. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Karl Friston, University College London (free energy principle) Lisa Feldman Barrett, Northwestern University (How Emotions Are Made) Anil Seth, University of Sussex (Being You, 2021) Bud Craig (interoceptive research) Daoist internal alchemy: pijian (dust on the mirror) and Neiguan (inner observation) 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #PredictiveBrain #Neuroscience #Mindfulness #Emotions #NervousSystem #Meditation #Wellness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ Your brain's most expensive habit isn't scrolling, overthinking, or multitasking. It's the default mode network, and it's running the show nearly half your waking hours. Dr. Pedram Shojai breaks down the neuroscience of mind wandering, rumination, and the nonstop inner monologue of self, explaining why DMN hyperactivity underlies anxiety, depression, addiction, and chronic pain. He connects the research to Taoist internal medicine's concept of the monkey mind, walks through three traps the DMN uses to hijack attention, and closes with a guided practice that reframes mind wandering not as a failure of meditation but as the practice itself. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why the brain's so-called resting state is its most metabolically expensive, and how the anti-correlation breakdown between the DMN and task-positive networks underlies anxiety, depression, PTSD, and addiction How Ethan Kross's research shows the toxic inner voice activates the same circuits as physical pain and raises inflammatory markers, and why Judson Brewer's mindfulness work outperformed some pharmacological treatments for craving The three DMN traps: the time machine (temporal displacement into past regret or future rehearsal), the social simulator (other-mind modeling that produces loneliness even in constant social contact), and the narrative loop (identity defense that mistakes the self-model for the self) Why the return of attention, not the staying, is the actual rep, and how Sara Lazar's research shows consistent practice builds gray matter density over weeks to months 🔑 Key Insights: "The resting brain state is metabolically more expensive than focused attention. The DMN is not idle. It is working hard, just not for you." "Chatter activates the same circuits as physical pain and raises inflammatory markers. The inner critic is not just uncomfortable. It is physiologically costly." "Mind wandering is not the obstacle. It is the practice itself. Every noticed departure and return counts as a rep, not a failure." 💡 Action Steps: During one ordinary activity today, count how many times your attention departs without judgment. Just notice and return. The anterior cingulate fires on recognition, briefly restoring healthy brain anti-correlation Identify which of the three traps you live in most: the time machine, the social simulator, or the narrative loop. Notice whether your dominant trap shifts across different contexts or life periods 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone who can't quiet their mind despite trying, people whose anxiety or depression hasn't responded to standard approaches, or those ready to understand the neuroscience behind why meditation actually works. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Matthew Killingsworth and Dan Gilbert, Harvard mind-wandering study (2010) Marcus Raichle, Washington University in St. Louis Judson Brewer, Brown University Ethan Kross, University of Michigan, Chatter Andrew Newberg, Thomas Jefferson University Sara Lazar, Harvard (gray matter density research) The Art of Stopping Time by Pedram Shojai 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #DefaultModeNetwork #Mindfulness #Meditation #Anxiety #MentalHealth #NervousSystem #Wellness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ Feeling wired and exhausted at the same time, and sleep isn't fixing it? Dr. Pedram Shojai traces that specific kind of tired back to mitochondria: not just the powerhouse of the cell from high school biology, but ancient bacterial colonies that sense and respond to your environment in real time. Drawing on research from Douglas Wallace and Martin Picard, he explains how chronic psychological stress fragments mitochondrial structure within hours, connects this to the Daoist concept of Jing depletion, and closes with a guided somatic inquiry into three trackable energy signals. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why ATP production is only about 10% of the mitochondrial story, and how mitochondria function as the cell's primary environmental sensors for oxygen, nutrients, light, and stress How chronic psychological stress suppresses mitochondrial function within hours through cortisol-driven fragmentation, and why ancient TCM warnings about depleting Jing describe the same mechanism modern labs now measure The three free, trackable mitochondrial signals: morning quality (overnight repair readout), the afternoon cliff (metabolic inflexibility signal), and recovery speed (how quickly you bounce back after ordinary exertion) How contemplative practice, cold exposure, fasting, and breathwork all activate PGC1alpha, the master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis, through the same hormetic mechanism 🔑 Key Insights: "This isn't a sleep problem or a mindset problem. It's a mitochondrial problem. The wired-and-tired state is what cellular energy depletion actually feels like from the inside." "Psychological stress fragments mitochondrial structure within hours. Cortisol doesn't just make you feel bad. It physically degrades your energy production at the source." "Vagal tone, gut-brain axis, inflammation, fascia, and mitochondria all track the same underlying signal. Chronic threat degrades all five together. Safety and recovery restore them together." 💡 Action Steps: Track your three mitochondrial signals for seven days: note morning quality on waking, afternoon cliff timing, and recovery speed after exertion. No caffeine compensation during the tracking period Make one dedicated recovery investment per day: a nap, a screen-free meal, or an earlier bedtime. Mitochondrial biogenesis takes weeks to months of consistency and cannot be rushed 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone who wakes up tired despite enough sleep, people whose energy crashes mid-afternoon without warning, or those ready to understand the cellular root of chronic exhaustion rather than just managing symptoms. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Douglas Wallace, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (mitochondrial genetics research) Martin Picard, Columbia University (mitochondrial psychobiology research) Picard and McEwen, 2018, Nature Reviews Endocrinology Elissa Epel, UCSF (contemplative states and mitochondrial function) 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #Mitochondria #ChronicFatigue #EnergyHealing #NervousSystem #Wellness #Breathwork #Qigong #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ Your fascia is not just packaging. It's a sensory organ. Dr. Pedram Shojai introduces fascia as a continuous connective tissue web running from feet to skull, densely innervated with mechanoreceptors that contract under stress and release under safety. Drawing on research from Robert Schleip, Helene Langevin, and Antonio Stecco, he explains how chronic stress becomes physically written into tissue tension, and closes with a guided fascial listening practice designed to build interoceptive awareness from the ground up. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why fascia contains smooth muscle cells with contractile capacity regulated by the autonomic nervous system, meaning stress doesn't just feel tense, it physically remodels your connective tissue over time How the loop runs both ways: chronic fascial inflammation causes thickening and restriction, and those changes feed inflammatory signals back into the nervous system through nerve endings linked to the brain's interoceptive felt sense The three fascial conversations: postural narrative (fascia records movement history as tissue density), emotional residue (unresolved stress contracts connective tissue structurally), and the present moment signal (fascia as an interoceptive instrument connected to the insular cortex) Why the ancient Daoist instruction to relax the tendons before moving the Qi is precise functional anatomy, and why Qi moves more freely through hydrated, neurologically alive fascia 🔑 Key Insights: "Stress is not just psychological. It physically remodels the fascial network. Tight because you're stressed, stressed because you're tight. The loop runs both ways." "Willpower-based postural correction rarely works. Direct tissue work does." "Feeling the body beats thinking about the body. Fascia is the substrate of felt sense." 💡 Action Steps: Do a three-minute full body awareness sweep daily: bring attention from feet to crown, noticing pressure, tension, and ease without adjusting or fixing anything Choose one routine movement this week and perform it at half speed with full fascial awareness. Notice what the tissue is telling you that normal speed hides 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone with chronic tension, pain, or postural issues that willpower hasn't fixed, people doing somatic or trauma work who want to understand the tissue layer, or those ready to treat the body as a sensory instrument rather than just a physical structure. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Robert Schleip (fascia research, Ulm, Germany) Helene Langevin (Harvard Osher Center for Integrative Medicine) Antonio Stecco (University of Padova) A.D. Craig (interoception research, Barrow Neurological Institute) Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine (trauma and the body) Urban Monk Academy Q&A ([email protected]) 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #Fascia #SomaticHealing #NervousSystem #Interoception #Trauma #Qigong #Wellness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast

🎙️ Your gut isn't reacting to your emotions. It's generating a large share of them. Dr. Pedram Shojai unpacks the real science behind the gut-brain connection, showing that the vagus nerve carries roughly ninety percent of its signals upward from the gut to the brain, not the other way around. He walks through the enteric nervous system, explains how it produces most of the body's serotonin and about half its dopamine, and ties the modern research back to Daoist teachings on the lower dantian before leading a live enteric listening practice. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why the enteric nervous system, with an estimated 500 million neurons, produces ninety to ninety-five percent of the body's serotonin and about half its dopamine, and keeps running even if the vagus nerve is severed How the four channels of the gut-brain axis (neural, endocrine, immune, and metabolic) connect a damaged gut lining to systemic inflammation that crosses into the brain and shows up as fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and low mood Why classical Daoist practice always warmed the middle and regulated digestion before working on higher consciousness, and why you have to fix the gut to stabilize the mood regardless of which system you follow The three gut signals to learn: the baseline hum, the rapid reflexive response to context (faster than the prefrontal cortex), and the recovery signal after meals or stress 🔑 Key Insights: "Ninety percent of vagal signals travel from the gut to the brain. In most cases your emotional states are being generated by your gut, not the other way around." "When mood dips without a clear psychological story, the first move should be a gut inquiry, not introspection." "Supplements support the work. They do not replace eating and lifestyle change. Reducing chronic stress is one of the most powerful microbiome interventions in the literature." 💡 Action Steps: Each morning before coffee or screens, place a hand on the belly, breathe, and journal one sentence on what the gut is broadcasting Keep a food mood log for twenty-four hours, tracing mood shifts back two to four hours to specific foods. Note how quickly the gut settles after meals or stress 🎧 Perfect for: Anyone whose mood, energy, or mental clarity seems disconnected from what's happening psychologically, people with chronic gut issues they haven't connected to their mental health, or those ready to build real body literacy from the second brain up. 📚 Mentioned Resources: Michael Gershon, The Second Brain (Columbia University, 1998) Emeran Mayer, The Mind-Gut Connection (UCLA, 2016) Frontiers in Psychiatry meta-analysis on gut microbiome and major depressive disorder (2019) Upstream App (Pedram's Socratic inquiry tool) Yellow Dragon Monastery training tradition 🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai: Website: theurbanmonk.com Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting #GutHealth #GutBrainAxis #MentalHealth #Serotonin #Microbiome #NervousSystem #Wellness #UrbanMonk #HealthPodcast