The Observing I

Chronophobia: Why Modern Life Makes Us Afraid of Time Itself

A journey into the shame, regret, and panic that hides beneath the surface of our relationship with time.

Dec 2 • 

David Johnson

43:46

November 2025

Ethics for the End of Everything

Why meaninglessness and suffering are not the same thing

Nov 25 • 

David Johnson

52:19

How Imagination Becomes Reality: Grant Morrison and the Tulpa Effect

On hypersigils, thought forms, and how you might be a character you forgot you were performing

Nov 16 • 

David Johnson

1

41:53

Hyperobjects and Other Nightmares: Timothy Morton and the Ecology of Collapse

On being entangled with your own destruction

Nov 2 • 

David Johnson

42:08

October 2025

The Cartography of Pain: Paul Auster's City of Glass and the Architecture of Identity

Your identity is scaffolding. It's collapsing.

Oct 26 • 

David Johnson

49:42

Four Thousand Weeks: A Love Letter to Your Mortality

Why we've been getting productivity totally wrong.

Oct 19 • 

David Johnson

1

51:05

Peter Putnam's Cosmos: The Functionalist Demolition of Self

Skepticism is the only freedom

Oct 12 • 

David Johnson

41:50

September 2025

The Philosopher’s Cage: Why Every Age Builds Its Own Prison

From Socrates’ death to the rise of surveillance capitalism, philosophy has always been less about truth and more about who gets to define it.

Sep 28 • 

David Johnson

44:49

Heidegger and the Horror of Existence

Living as Being-Toward-Death

Sep 14 • 

David Johnson

1

45:36

The Pendulum of Suffering: Schopenhauer’s Dark Philosophy

Listen now (49 mins) | Why happiness is a lie, and suffering is the only truth.

Sep 7 • 

David Johnson

48:56

I found some old notebooks

I was tidying up the office over the weekend and came across a stack of old notebooks that I hadn’t opened in years.

Sep 3 • 

David Johnson

August 2025

121 In the Province of the Mind: The work of John C. Lilly

Explore John C. Lilly’s isolation tank experiments, dolphin research, and psychedelic visions in this deep dive into the province of the mind.

Aug 31 • 

David Johnson

44:59