Introduction

Hello, and welcome back to the Negotiating Reality Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Hekler.

We've been on a three-part journey exploring the fundamental assumptions we make about the nature of reality—what philosophers call metaphysics. Today, we reach one that may initially feel disorienting, but as you grow into it, I hope you'll find it truly liberating and inspiring for navigating our current moment (and the need for it was perfectly set up in my discussion with colleagues, Mai Nguyen and Keith Pezzoli, check it out here).

In Episode 1, we explored the challenges of our present moment and discovered that different cultures undergo great transitions when one way of organizing breaks down and another emerges—and that during transitions, we must learn to be responsible, truly learning from our ancestors while attuning to where we are being drawn into becoming. I then asked my mentor, colleague, and friend, Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz to do a bit a peer review on this where we explored the sort of process we’d need to navigate this moment wisdom-seeking and authentic cross-cultural dialogue. Donna aligned wit the general framing of this being a moment of transformation when the spiritual, civic, and natural infrastructure and processes that are tethering us to reality are breaking down. A large part of this involve how to navigate both honoring the relationships and communities one have while also looking to connect, learn, and grow into healthy relationships with others, without falling into the trap of appropriation.

In Episode 2, "Life Breathes," we discovered how we're embedded in a living, exchanging universe where cosmic, geologic, and biological processes breathe together across vast scales of spacetime. I then discussed this episode, first with a theologian and pastor, Dr. Christopher Carter and then with a geoscientist, Dr. Marcia Bjornerud.

In the discussion with Christopher, he emphasized that creation stories historically emerge during times of captivity and displacement—like the Genesis accounts written during Babylonian exile—to help communities make sense of their identity and provide direction for future generations. Carter identified how the destructive Babylonian myth of redemptive violence (where the male deity Marduk creates the world by violently dismembering the female deity Tiamat) has been incorporated into Western thinking, creating a "might makes right" logic that justifies conquest, capitalism, and ecological destruction through the false belief that violence can be salvific. With this in mind, his assessment of my offered "Life Breathes Together" creation story represents a necessary corrective to these harmful narratives, offering an alternative grounded in relationship and interconnectedness rather than dominance, which becomes especially critical as communities recognize that their current guiding stories have become disconnected from sacred truths and are leading toward collective harm.

In the discussion with Marcia, she provided generous scientific validation for the "Life Breathes" creation story, finding it both scientifically accurate and humanly compelling, while helping refine the breathing metaphor to acknowledge that lung-and-gill breathing represents only recent evolutionary development—that said, the exchange of matter and energy, with breathing being one type and, given we do it, a good metaphor to help us to feel this exchange, is a viable way of understanding that which could be seen has having animacy and, thus, a sort of life on its own terms. She contextualized this work within geology's remarkable intellectual achievement of mapping Earth's 4+ billion year history through diverse collaborative minds, and explained how the field has quietly evolved from its extractive origins toward embracing concepts that might once have seemed "new agey"—including the recognition that most geoscientists, if pressed, would acknowledge that Earth is alive in some meaningful sense on its own terms, not ours. The conversation explored the tension between Newtonian thinking (seeking timeless universal laws) and Darwinian thinking (embracing time and evolutionary complexity), with Bjornerud arguing that our culture's dysfunctional relationship with time and tendency toward "adolescent pugilistic" relationships with nature requires us to become "law-abiding biogeochemical citizens" who work within planetary rhythms rather than against them.

In Episode 3, "Islands Sculpt," we explored how every context shapes us while we shape it back—from the microbes in our gut to the cities we build, each relationship carving new possibilities.

In my conversation with urban planning colleagues Drs. Mai Nguyen and Keith Pezzoli from UC San Diego's Design Lab, we examined how the "Islands Sculpt" framework applies to the built environment—and discovered both its power and its limitations. Mai revealed the uncomfortable truth that American cities were designed from inception to segregate and exclude, with zoning laws originally created not just for health and safety but explicitly to concentrate wealth and power in white neighborhoods. Keith traced four decades of planning theory evolution, from rational comprehensive approaches through advocacy and feminist planning to today's bioregional frameworks that seek to bridge urban-rural divides. Their peer review highlighted a critical gap: while the ecological insights of islands sculpting each other capture important truths about how places shape people and vice versa, the framework remained largely apolitical in a field where, as Mai emphasized, "planning is inherently political." Every decision about infrastructure, housing, and land use emerges from networks of human relationships, irrational constituencies, and power dynamics that don't follow ecological patterns. Keith suggested the metaphor of "sculpting" itself might be limiting, evoking a chiseling away rather than the connective, relationship-building work actually needed. Both stressed that authentic community engagement requires moving from planning for people to planning with them—a shift that demands we grapple not just with how contexts shape us, but with who gets to construct stories and theories of change that determine which contexts are even possible.

All of this was critical set up for today’s episode.

Today, in "Beings Adapt," we dive into perhaps the most humbling and liberating insight of all: We don't perceive reality as it is. We construct it together. And that construction is both our greatest superpower and our most delicate responsibility.

This episode draws extensively from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's revolutionary work. Dr. Barrett is a psychologist and neuroscientist, Professor at Northeastern University, and one of the most highly cited scientists in the world. Her research fundamentally shifts our understanding of human nature toward something far more dynamic and relational than our cultural inheritance might suggest.

This episode is based on Barrett’s work, including my understanding of her work based on reading the original scientific papers but, even more so, the way she frames her work in her popular press books, Seven and a Half Lessons About your Brain and How Emotions are Made.

The aphorism guiding today's exploration: "Beings Adapt."

Ready to have your reality gently transformed? Let's begin.

Part 1: The Humbling Truth About Your Brain

Let me start with a story that will become our touchstone today—one Dr. Barrett shares in Seven and a Half Lessons About Your Brain.

A Vietnam veteran was on patrol in the jungle when he saw a line of men in military fatigues carrying rifles, lurking around a corner. His heart raced, his body prepared for combat. He raised his weapon, finger on the trigger, ready to fire—when his comrade said, "Wait, those are just children."

In that instant, the guerilla fighters transformed into children walking in line, playing together.

Same visual input. Completely different reality.

You might think: "Obviously, he made a mistake. His brain corrected itself." But here's Barrett's revolutionary insight: There was no mistake. His brain was doing exactly what brains always do—constructing reality from incomplete informat...