In our ongoing series on defense mechanisms we have yet to cover SUBLIMATION. Sublimation is one of our more positive defenses where we can avoid certain thoughts and feelings that make us uncomfortable and sublimate them with something more positive or "productive". Of course sublimating can still be used to avoid or displace particular situations…

Christmas can be one of the strangest seasons of the year because we are supposed to be happy and full of cheer, but often Christmas afternoon is the most depressing day of the year. In this episode we talk with one of our favorite thinkers- Todd McGowan! We use Christmas and desire as a spring board for an hour of curious conversation!…

Thinking about poetry and dreams and the way it relates to our mind and the ways we interact with the world can be a extremely effective way to get curious about ourselves and others. On this episode we invite our friend Katy Richardson to join us for a super playful and insightful conversation about the ways that we think about the free, seemingly…

We've been hosting No Small Thing for over 5 years now and we thought it would be helpful to address the challenges we face when it comes to practicing what we preach. Being curious can be one of the most challenging things any of us can do! You'll CERTAINLY be able to relate to the ways that we have felt like sometimes we just don't have capacity …

This week we take a break from our regularly scheduled program to talk about a BIG thing with our friend Pat Hodges (which ironically is No Small Thing!)- a DYSON SPHERE! It could possibly the biggest conceivable human created thing we could talk about! Intrigued!? Listen into this funny curious informative convo to learn more!…

Its that time of the pod cycle where we talk about the enneagram! If you're new to the show welcome to a new type of conversation about the enneagram where we try to explore different teachers, histories, modalities, and practices! In our discoveries we often come to find that previous understandings of the enneagram weren't so solid! For the OG ho…

Its time to get curious about a potential new hobby! Recently we've been playing a ton of pinball with our friends and we wanted to let you in on the new target of our curiosity. Why is pinball fun? What is the history of pinball? (it was illegal for 30 years!), what are the metaphors of pinball and where can you find your local machine, league, or…

Narcissism is a hot topic in a lot of circles these days- well at least from our perspective. Its a helpful concept, but also something we may be talking about too flippantly? Or maybe its something we think we understand better than we actually do! The thing is- people are still discovering all sorts of new things about narcissism and trying to fi…

Being frustrated is a natural part of life that we often don't seem to have very creative ways of engaging with. Is frustration necessarily bad or necessarily something to be avoided? How can we work with frustration instead of just numbing it quieting it? What is trying to communicate to us and can we even learn to enjoy it a sign of life and pass…

Our quest for tools for cultivating curiosity continues! This week we talk about what it would mean to find out new things about ourselves and each other by experimenting with new things as we get older. It sounds like a simple idea, but it seems that too often we narrow our season of experimentation to our teens and early twenties. Might there be …

9,6,3 attachment types on the Enneagram! We finally have a conversation with all three of us: Scott, Mace, AND Daniel- together at last! In this episode we talk about the similarities and differences between these types and everything in between PLUS how we experience it as these types!由No Small Thing Podcast

We love tools and conversations that help us get more curious about ourselves. Multiplicity and The Other Within have been helpful conversations for understanding and welcoming all the different elements that make us US. Daniel has a unique way of talking to these different part selves that they call the INNER COUNciL. Its a bunch of different Dani…

Its time to get curious about fashion on a budget! In this episode we share our emerging living experiment where we buy one outfit per quarter and wear it almost everyday! Also we talk about the color of the year and famous people that were born today....AND we share the music we've been liking lately!…

What is the difference between Fantasy and Phantasy? And what roles do they play in our lives? How do our fantasies and our assumptions about the world, ourselves, and the future impact our daily decisions and the ways that we approach our relationships? And how does our unconscious influence our desires and actions! We address this and so much mor…

Join us as we dive into the concept of OVERinterpreting...this may seem like a strange word but it is an invitation towards multiple interpretations allowing for the self to consider what they may be missing by under-interpreting (sticking to minimal narratives). In this episode we also talk about Adam Philips, a psychoanalyst who has been a recent…

We springboard off the topic of what is a true self? What is a false self? Inspired by the work of D.W. Winnicott we explore how spontaneous gestures might give insight into a sense of our true selves. As with any NST episode, this dive into Winnicott's thoughts on the true/false self is meant to give an impression that sparks creativity in you!…

WE ARE BACK BABY! No Small Thing is back with a drop of five episodes, each just as random as the next! We take the mission statement of being less certain, and more curious to heart as we playfully unpack the difference of being cheesy vs corny as well as where these words come from, which makes for the best diss and which one we relate to most. W…

This just might be the best episode on enneagram nines we've released yet...or the most vague, meandering, soupy, floaty conversation we've ever about nines...OR...AND...it might just be a fun conversation between two nines talking about nines! Either way we know you'll enjoy Scott and Daniel (two nines) chatting about what it means to be a nine wh…

Growth and stress are prominent themes that often come up in enneagram conversations. We certainly have had our fair share of conversations about what this means. In this episode we have another curious chat with our friend Daniel Keyes in an effort to get a little more clarity AND little bit more wonder and uncertainty about what these concepts ar…

We are back with another enneagram episode! In this episode we talk about what it means to do "the work" of the enneagram and if that is even possible. We continue to use our pod to be curious about the enneagram and being slightly cautious about landing on any one mode of interpretation or modality....or choosing to follow any one teacher. Daniel …

Inside each of us are different "selves" that we can spend a lifetime learning to get curious about. In this episode we revisit the idea of the "other within" and multiplicity by engaging with the work of Dr. Pamela Cooper White from Union Theological Seminary. Are you trying to make room for different aspects of yourself that you might have repres…

After a weekend of recording enneagram content Mace and Daniel check in on what we've learned so far and where we're going. This conversation is a synthesis of some of the concepts that were discussed in our episodes for the last few weeks! We invite to come on this journey with us of reactivating our curiosity in the enneagram!…

Another enneagram episode with our in house expert Daniel Keyes! As many of know we have spent over 5 years researching and talking about the enneagram. The more we learn the more our views shift and evolve. We are trying to model out a curious posture and in some ways letting ourselves start over. In this episode Daniel unpacks the hexad types (1,…

Our new season on the enneagram continues with a deep dive into personality and type structure! In this episode Daniel and Mace being curiously and playfully trying to unpack what we mean when we talk about "personality" and start to think about it through the different enneagram types.由No Small Thing Podcast

We have had a very long, complicated, fun, playful, mysterious, authentic, chaotic journey with The Enneagram over the years. In some ways it is a public example of how to engage with something curiously. Recently we'e been inviting our dear friend Daniel to help us wrap our heads around The Enneagram in some new ways and there is so much to learn!…

no small thing is back?!! we've got another conversation with scott (he/him) and daniel (they/them), exploring how these enneagram ideas we hear about - passion, essence, ego, instinct, our type and wing, trifix if you're into that - how they all fit together. daniel has been studying misinformation in enneagram theories for the past few years, and…

For 4 years we have been up every Thursday night to have a curious conversation! If you have been on the journey with us we are so grateful! In this episode we spend some time reminiscing about the past by listening to clips from previous episodes and reacting to them. We had a blast and we hope you do to! Here's to another 4 years of curious conve…

As usual we choose a random topic that seems to be catching our attention lately and we have a conversation! A month or two ago Mace made a playlist for Scott that culminating with an inspiring song on ENERGY! Also in a meta sense with Scott and Mace haven't had as much energy for the pod as they would like because of their outside commitments (sch…

Ambivalence is something that all of us experience probably every second of our day. And its also one of those words that, upon further inquiry, get misused and misunderstood. Of course we need to take some time to chat about it and of course we wanted more out of this conversation, but it was a good start. And heads up! This convo got cut off some…

Welcome to our THIRD conversation on fashion! This one is pretty low key, but there was so much to catch up on! We address how our fashion has been evolving, how quarantine impacted our fashion choices, and what we think it ALL MEANS! There will definitely be more to come in the future, but this is restarting convo!…

Welcome to the Enneagram! It has been well over a year since we halted are pattern of talking about the enneagram every 5 episodes. It was a necessary break because we came to a profound realization that The Enneagram was way more complicated and mysterious than we had appreciated...even though did really appreciate how mysterious and complicated i…

We could not be more thrilled to introduce you to one of our favorite people- Taylor Emmaus! We connected with Taylor Emmaus through our online affirming youth group and they have been volunteering with us for well over a year. They are a wise soul who has so much good stuff to share! They chose the topic of INTROSPECTION and we gave this word/ top…

Ironically our conversation about awkwardness gets awkward because we can't seem to agree on what awkward is! Scott gets lost talking about things he experiences as awkward only to discover that he's mostly just talking about being a jerk! Luckily Mace gets us back on track with some clear and humorous thoughts on the subject! We loved our time dee…

We are back!!! After months of temporarily focusing on Grae by Moses Sumney we are choosing to have our first conversation about one of our favorite topics: PLAY. Have a spirit in play in conversations, relationships, work, and life in general has tremendous mental health benefits and could be a cure for a lot of the rigid toxic certainty many of u…

And now we come to the end...for now. Our Moses Sumney takeover is winding down friends! We plan on returning for a true finale recap episode on about 3 months, but this episode deep dives the last two tracks on Grae. We share about the impact this album has had on us and we vibe out to Before you Go. Thank you for joining us on this journey! It ha…

And so we come to ......the second to last episode of our Moses Sumney series! We're winding down with some quite calm reflective energy in Lucky Me this week....a sweet nostalgic acceptance...co written by James Blake Lucky Me is simultaneously filled ache and gratitude. And So I come to Isolation is another spoken word that rounds out and book en…

Many songs on Grae could be called the "emotional climax"...and Me in 20 Years would be a top contender. Its followed by a wonderful light release of a song called Keeps me Alive. The one/two combo of things songs is deep existential anxiety combined with a light playful come down that helps recenter the listener and grounds them for the final jour…

We are now on the second "disc" of Grae and we start with two JUGGERNAUTS this week. Two Dogs and Bystanders are both full of intense longing and lament and draw listeners into a more intimate type of inner torment. After the big bang of the first half of Grae we now enter into a more moody, somber, emotional, reflective state. There is an ache and…

182: Neither/ Nor/ Polly by No Small Thing Podcast由No Small Thing Podcast

The Moses Sumney deep dive continues with an exploration of two very different tracks. Colouour is a vibrant, energetic breathe of fresh air with some very personal and tender questions from Moses (perhaps posed to himself) about how to present oneself and what colors to use. Also also also and and and (according to Mace) is the thesis statement of…

Fresh off of getting some shout outs from Moses himself on his instagram we are BACK with a deep dive on two very different tracks: Gagarin and Jill/ Jack. Gagarin is a spacey moody grandiose meditation on wanting to live for something beyond oneself probably inspired by the first human to go into space: Yuri Gagarin. Jill/ Jack is a playful medita…

Here we go to into the Grae! This week we take a look at two epic songs that are also seemingly blended together. What does it mean to be a Conveyor? Is is a vocation that sets one up to be a messenger to the masses or is it the sense that we are all zombies on a conveyor belt? Is it both or something in between? What do we do with the boxes and la…

Our deep dive of Moses Sumney's album Grae continues to two VERY contrasting songs this week- In Bloom and Virile. In Bloom is a slow etherial song full of heartache and longing focusing on something that seems like unrequited love while Virile is a charged up anthem that protests and mocks toxic masculinity. We had a ton of fun wondering together …

Our first official deep dive into the music of Moses Sumney's epic double album officially begins! These week we take a look at the first two opening tracks of Grae: Insula and Cut Me!由No Small Thing Podcast

Moses Sumney is a musician who creates music and art that invites deep exploration and curiosity. As a podcast dedicated to curiosity we decided to get curious about a single album for 3 months and we chose Grae by Moses Sumney. In this episode we explain our intentions for this journey and provide a short introduction to Moses and his music. We al…

This week we are joined by Brian Pendergast who is a licensed therapist with training in the psychoanalytic tradition. Brian will soon be releasing a book on multiplicity and we had to take the opportunity to chat with him about his insights. The idea that multiple selves reside inside us that invite curiosity and attention is, of course, something…

Do you ever stop and notice all the fascinating variety in the way that people cross the street!? Does it ever make you laugh or angry or confused? How do YOU cross the street? Are you nervous? Apologetic? Clueless? The way people cross the crosswalk needs to be discussed! We need to get to the bottom of what the heck is going on with people's cros…

Free association is the expression of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes. The technique is used in psychoanalysis which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud. What a fantastic tool for curiosity, right!? It is said that our unconscious is not buried inside our mind somewhere, but r…

Today's episode is an extra light and playful episode where we discuss our opinions on lunch! WHEN does lunch happen and what makes the best type of lunch in terms of location/ company/ and food. Can lunch happen before noon? Is a soda a "drink snack" (Mace says yes Scott says no!)...and can you have breakfast for lunch? All these things will be di…

In our third friendship episode we continue to try and ask significant questions about what friendship is and what makes a good friend! We read some fairly interesting quotes/ engage with listener comments/ and try to describe our own friendship!由No Small Thing Podcast