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.
Neal Wooten on Life Growing Up on a Pig Farm in the Alabama Mountains: Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Bill McGuire on Hothouse Earth: Why We've Only Got 90 Months Left to Save the Planet
That Was the Week in Tech: Why Substack Is a Bust, How Apple Can't Do AI, and Why China Is Thrashing the U.S. in Clean Tech Innovation
Solito: Javier Zamora's Memoir of His Unaccompanied Migration From El Salvador to California at the Age of Nine
Richard Winters, MD: Should Good "Leaders" Get Rid of the Idea of Leadership Itself?
J. Bradford DeLong on Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Wealthy and Miserable 20th Century
Patricia A. Turner: What Can We Learn from Anti-Obama Trash Talk to Confront Racism in 21st-Century American Politics
Sterling Hawkins: Why "Discomfort" Might Be the Key To Not Just a Meaningful Life But Also a Happy Death
Bill George: Shut Up, Elon! Why Business Leaders Need to Get Off Social Media and Keep Their Views To Themselves
W. David Marx: Does Our Desire for Social Rank Determine Taste, Identity, Art, and Fashion?
Evan Puschak: On Public Benches, Superman, Blade Runner, and Other Stuff That Gives Life Meaning
Tim Higgins on the Tesla Story: Is Elon Musk the Hero, The Villain, or Just an Accidental Footnote to the Company's Remarkable Engineers and Workers?
Mansi Choksi on An Alternative Passage to India: Rebelling Against Conventional Love, Marriage, and Sexuality in Modi's India