Mediocre Monk: Grant Lindsley on what he learnt in his stumbling search for wisdom in a Thai forest monastery
EPISODE 1431: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Grand Lindsley, author of MEDIOCRE MONK, about Theravada Buddhism, ultimate frisbee, and what wisdom he brought back from his solitary quest for wisdom in a Thai monastery
Grant Lindsley is a writer in Brooklyn, New York. He encountered his first Buddhist monk as an undergraduate at Carleton College, where he majored in psychology and minored in neuroscience, because he was majorly interested in himself and minorly interested in himself on drugs. He subsequently spent months training as a monk with the Thai Forest Tradition, a sect of Theravada Buddhism that seeks to follow the exact rules of the historical Buddha from over 2,500 years ago. Lindsley has worked at NOLS and briefly worked at Google until publishing his resignation letter in The Washington Post. An accomplished Ultimate Frisbee player, he has won multiple national championships and two gold medals for Team USA at the World Games. He received his master of fine arts in creative nonfiction from Pacific University and his master of business administration from Cornell Tech. He enjoys pranks and being outside with his family.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
Damien Lewis on a Profound Sense of Duty: What Josephine Baker Had in Common With Queen Elizabeth II
Andy Kroll on the Madness of Online Crowds: What the 2016 Murder of Seth Rich Tells Us About Our Conspiratorial Age
Kim Samuel: Should the Right to "Belong" Be Enshrined As a Sacred Human Right?
Jason Feifer on Darwin 2.0: How to Embrace Change, Adapt Fast, and Future Proof Both Your Career and Your Life
Michael Sayman: How the Gay Son of First-Generation Peruvian Immigrants Became the Most Influential Latino in Silicon Valley
Mark Bergen: Given YouTube's World Domination, Should the Google-Owned Video Platform Be More Aggressively Regulated and Controlled?
Douglas Rushkoff: What the Escape Fantasies of Tech Billionaires Reveal About Our Apocalyptic Age
Josh Chin: Why China's "Surveillance State" Is More Nuanced Than Either China Lovers or Haters Would Have Us Believe
Ross Dawson: How Can We Be Sure That This "Futurist" Author Isn't, In Fact, a Smart Machine?
David Livermore: How to Get Along With People That You Want to Eradicate
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell: Feminist or Feminine? A Twentieth-Century History of Skirts
Louise Perry: No More Sex? A "Feminist" Case Against the Sexual Revolution
Jonathan Darman: How FDR Learned to Be FDR: The Personal Crisis That Transformed Him Into a Historic Leader