Welcome to UnFuck Your Brain.

I'm your host, Cara Lowenthal, master-certified coach and founder of the School of New

Feminist Thought.

I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life

on your own terms, one that you're

truly excited to live. Let's go.

Hello, my friends. So we're journeying back in time in some ways today to the very beginning

of my journey in self-development because we are going to be speaking with Oliver Berkman,

who is the author of one of the first books that actually made me think that a smart,

rational person could also do some version of self-development, self-help, philosophical work.

And so it was very meaningful for me.

And so I'm very excited and honored to have him on the show.

And I'm going

actually just ask him to introduce himself and tell us a little bit about who he is and what he does

before we get going. Welcome. Thank you so much. Yeah, my name's Oliver Berkman. I'm an author,

trained as a journalist. I wrote this book 4,000 weeks and the more recent book, Meditations for Mortals and some other books,

but I won't go on and on and on. I live in North of England in the UK now after many,

many years living in Brooklyn, New York. All right, a former Brooklynite, but you got out.

So I actually want to back up a little bit in your career too, and of course we'll get your newer work,

but your book, The Antidote, was kind of one of the first self-development books I read. Or I don't even

love that term. I really think of it as practical philosophy, what I do and a lot of, not to speak

for you, but a lot of what you do as well. But it was one of the first, you know, I came from a very, you know, a family of New York Jews.

...