Between the Ears Podcast

Latest Episodes:

#43 Honesty Hurts, Hearts and Heals Oct 30, 2026

Show notes

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what makes you change your thinking? He invites you to look at times in the past when your thinking changed, and at what might need to change today or in the next few weeks. It can be something big, like the old belief that the earth was flat, or something small, like deciding to stop eating meat, and in each case it usually takes compelling evidence. The quote is “Honesty hurts, hearts and heals.” Arnold knows “hearts” isn’t a verb, but he uses it as one. Being honest with yourself and with others can hurt, and fear of that hurt often leads us to be dishonest instead. Honesty also affects your heart, and admitting that you no longer like your job or that a relationship has gone stale can heal, because it means accepting reality as it is. He shares his own example: his heel was destroyed in a car accident and the surgeon told him it would not be good again. He accepted that honestly, decided he still wanted to walk, and now walks well and enjoys it, even though he can no longer run.

🔗 About Your Host (Arnold Beekes)
🌐 Website: https://bio.link/beekes
💪 Brain Gym: https://braingym.fitness
🧠 Brain Athletes: https://brainathletes.club
🚀 Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club
🎓 Join our Skool brain-fitness community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070

Roy Coughlan · The Podfather Network — Editor & Promoter
Website: https://roycoughlan.com/
Virtual Assistants: https://va.world/
Private Networking Group: Learn about a Private Networking Group in 50 US States & 50 Countries with 700+ Members https://connectedleaders.academy
Brain Upgrade: https://brainupgrade.org/
The Authority Alliance: A Foundation of Experts — community for entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders to connect, collaborate, and grow their authority together: https://theauthorityalliance.com/
EMF Protection: https://protectfromemf.org/
Health & Wellness: https://podfather.thefrequencyawakening.com/

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Honesty #ChangeYourThinking #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#42 Creativity: The What Oct 29, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Arnold Beekes splits creativity into two sessions, starting with the what, with the how to follow next time. His definition is that creativity is connecting different dots in a different way and adding something new. The dots are the topics and subjects you are interested in, which is why curiosity and reading widely matter: with two dots there is not much to connect, with 37 it becomes easy. He gives brain fitness and brain athletes as his example, built from the fitness industry and sport combined with brain health, psychology, self-help and spirituality. He then names three more things creativity needs. The first is being present, because distraction makes you lose your line of thought and your intuition. The second is boredom: when you get comfortable being bored and don’t reach for your phone, you leave room for new ideas and insights. The third is accepting reality, since what you resist persists, and in fight or flight your brain is focused on safety and cannot reach creativity or long-term thinking. His suggestion is to accept reality and build something better, which is what he is doing with the better for all collectives, because if you co-create a much better way of learning, living and working, the existing reality fades. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story from St. Mary’s Basilica in Minneapolis, finished in 1914 and in a $50 million renovation with an Easter deadline. While washing the ceiling from 15 floors of scaffolding, workers found gold stencil work hidden under flat paint across a whole archway, and ultramarine blue panels with gold fleur-de-lis in the corners, with no record of either in the building’s documentation. The gold stenciling will be fully restored before Easter.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Creativity #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#41 Which Activities Make Time Disappear Oct 28, 2026

Show notes

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: which activities in your real life make time disappear and leave you feeling more like yourself? He suggests starting a list, anything from cooking a meal to walking a dog, talking with a friend or reading a great book. He stresses “real life,” meaning not three hours of scrolling, and says to keep the list for a month or two without rushing. Once you have five or six activities, look at what the list tells you and how it makes you feel. The quote is “If you think that there is a quick fix for major problems, be sure that the fast food mentality has taken over your life. The only instant gratification is from daily learning and effort.” Arnold links it to a culture of instant gratification, quick fixes and dopamine hits. He shares an example from when he lived in Budapest, where a university hosted weekly talks by the ambassadors of the main Middle Eastern countries. He went wondering why a few weeks and some clever people couldn’t solve the conflict, and came away realising it is far more complicated than he thought, with history and religion behind it as well as emotion. He values giving people a stage to share their point of view, since the ambassadors also listened to each other’s talks.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Flow #QuickFix #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#40 Between the Ears - AI Impact Oct 27, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Arnold Beekes looks at what happens when we use AI heavily, as work shifts from humans using software to humans managing autonomous agents that do the writing, searching and image creation for us. He cites a number of studies and surveys to make the case that outsourcing your thinking weakens it. He refers to an MIT study on using ChatGPT for writing tasks, which reported significantly lower brain activity and learning, with AI users showing the weakest neural connectivity compared with people using search engines or their own thinking. He also cites US reading results, where only 35 percent of high school seniors were proficient at analysing complex themes and arguments in 2024, and a rise in the share of American adults who struggle to paraphrase or draw inferences from a longer text, from under 20 percent in 2017 to nearly 30 percent. He adds that teachers and professors tell him students at every level can no longer write, think critically or remember what they read, and mentions a study of X-ray specialists in Poland whose skills declined after relying on AI. His point is that the brain works like the body: if you don’t use it, you lose it, like a limb that has been in a cast for six weeks. His advice is to think for yourself first, whether it’s a blog, a plan or a structure, and then use AI as a tool to improve or clarify the result, so you work with AI and stay in control, not work for it. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story from Oregon, which has recorded five consecutive years with zero pesticide-related bee deaths. It began with a mass bee die-off in a parking lot in 2013 that led to a pollinator health task force, followed by the Oregon Bee Project from 2018 training 12,000 people on reducing pesticide risk, and the Oregon Bee Atlas cataloguing all 567 bee species found in the state.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #AI #CriticalThinking #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#39 What Motivates Me? Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what motivates me? He is looking for your intrinsic, inner motivation rather than the external kind. Most people use the word as if someone else has to do it, like a boss motivating an employee. Arnold thinks that is impossible and that it reinforces not living your own life. To live your own life you need to know what motivates you. Is it money, fame or status, which many people think bring lasting happiness but don’t, or is it helping others, doing something good for the world or building something beautiful? He notes that beauty is disappearing from our cities and communities, so build something that is beautiful. Don’t look at other people or depend on what they want, look inside, between the ears. The quote is “If you don’t add any newness into your life old habits will determine your outcomes and these habits will govern your future.” It echoes the saying that if you do what you did, you get what you got. If you want to change your outer world, your life, work or relationships, you have to change something inside yourself, because hoping for something else without changing anything won’t change the results. His closing question: what old habits would you like to shed and replace with new ones?

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Motivation #Habits #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#38 Rudeness Contagion Oct 25, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Arnold Beekes talks about rudeness contagion, a video his business partner Roy shared with him. The idea is that low-level rudeness doesn’t just feel bad, it spreads through our nervous system and organizations like a virus. Arnold lists the key findings. Even a single rude encounter can make you more likely to read later interactions as hostile and respond rudely yourself. Anyone can become a carrier, even a kind and conscious person, often without realizing it. Rudeness works by priming a hostility schema, a mental threat file that makes neutral faces and words look disrespectful. The people who suffer most may not be part of the original event, like the person snapped at in traffic who is then shorter with a colleague, who is then colder with a partner. In workplaces it undermines performance, collaboration and psychological safety, and in hospitals and other high stakes settings it can impair decision-making. Kindness also spreads, but not as automatically or strongly, because rudeness taps directly into threat vigilance, the same fight-or-flight response as fear. Arnold’s conclusion is that you need roughly four or five acts of kindness to level out one act of rudeness, so over-indexing on kindness, appreciation and positive micro signals is crucial, and it takes daily practice and discipline. That is why he ends each episode with everyday beauty. This time the story is from Uganda, where he is mentoring a group of young people. In the Masaka region, which grows Robusta coffee, 30 model farms using regenerative practices held up when a drought hit while conventional farms struggled. The practices were practical and unglamorous: drought resistant seedlings, mulching to retain soil moisture, cover cropping and shade trees that cool the microclimate and reduce evaporation, so the soil held water longer and supported roots better.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Kindness #RudenessContagion #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#37 What Gives You Fulfillment? Oct 24, 2026

Show notes

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what gives you fulfillment? The answer doesn’t matter as long as you give one, or a couple. He suggests giving yourself a few days to observe yourself, then looking at your answers and what they mean to you. The quote is “If you do business like everyone else you will end up discounting your people and your products.” Arnold says business schools, MBAs and universities teach you to look at best practices and copy the best companies in your industry. He thinks that is not worth your time, because you will never do it exactly the same as the other company, and in line with the uniqueness formula he shared a few episodes ago, you can reach a maximum of about 40 percent of what they do. When you can’t win against the competition, you end up paying your people less, skipping raises or cutting your prices lower and lower, and that is not the way to go. His advice is to do business as you think is appropriate and in a way that suits you.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Fulfillment #Uniqueness #Business #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#36 What do you Want? Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Arnold Beekes asks what seems like an easy question: what do you want? He remembers being asked it by a coach 25 years ago, after he had lost his job, was going through a divorce and had lost his father. He spent the session listing what he didn’t want, no boss, no large corporation, and the coach asked what he did want. He had no idea, and nobody had ever asked him before, not his parents, teachers or bosses, who mostly want you to do or be something. That started his journey to understand who he is. Arnold explains why focusing on what you don’t want backfires: where your attention goes is what you attract, like being told not to think of a pink elephant. He gives Anita Moorjani, who grew up being told constantly not to get cancer and then did, and Brian Johnson’s Don’t Die movement as examples of focusing on what you want to avoid. He suggests focusing on what you do want, accepting that it changes as you grow, so choose for the next few years rather than for life. He also says money is not the answer, noting that the millionaires he played golf with were mostly unhappy and unhealthy. His practical exercise is to split life into areas and write down what you want in each, one topic per week, then repeat it every year or two. His inner life areas are mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health, creativity, learning, work, family, home, money, service and nature, and his outer life areas are the senses, nutrition, sleep, exercise, recovery, the people around you and your environment. Right now what he wants most is silence. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story about research from a Nigerian university on water in diesel emulsion, which across 35 peer-reviewed studies cut nitrogen oxides by 67 percent and particulate matter by 68 percent, stays stable for up to 60 days and needs no engine modification.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #WhatDoYouWant #Attention #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#35 What do I Value? Oct 22, 2026

Show notes

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what do I value? He suggests making a list of three to five things that feel right to your heart brain, anything from your health to time with family to time for learning and growing. The reason it matters is that we are bombarded with choices every day, from what to eat and which supplements to use to what media to consume and who to engage with, and knowing your values works like a thermometer that makes those choices easier. The quote is “Sacrificing your enthusiasm for skill and money will sell yourself short.” Arnold says this applies to startups, medium and large corporations, and even charities and NGOs. When you start something you have an initial why and drive, then an article tells you that you need to scale, get bigger and win more clients. He says you can, if you love it, but if you don’t, don’t. His example is a cook with a small neighbourhood restaurant of five to ten tables, where the food is good, the community comes to talk, and the rent and salaries are paid. If that cook opens more restaurants, they will likely become more of a business person than a cook, miss the conversations with customers and spend their time hiring, firing and finding locations. If that is what you love, go ahead, but if you love cooking and your community, scaling is not a must, so don’t sacrifice your enthusiasm.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Values #Enthusiasm #Scaling #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

#34 Responsibility Oct 21, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Arnold Beekes takes up responsibility, which links back to the starting point he shared a few episodes ago: you are good enough, and it’s not your fault but it is your responsibility. He lays out four ways to deal with it. First, you can accept responsibility for your well-being or refuse it, and refusing means “I’m a victim, it’s just the way I am.” Second, if you refuse, you become a pinball of other people and circumstances, your problems remain, and you feed a need for significance and attention. Fear often stops people from accepting responsibility, and they end up seeking relief rather than a cure, through drinking, partying, drugs, sex or porn. Third, you sometimes have to take responsibility for things that are not under your control, like a child kicking a ball through a neighbour’s window, where you are still legally responsible, which means balancing your own responsibility with letting go so you don’t feel powerless. Fourth, you take responsibility for what is under your control, which in the Stoic view is very little, but includes your thoughts, feelings and emotions. How you respond is the heart of your well-being, and if you focus on the cure you look at the cause and ask what you can do about it. Arnold’s own daily practice is to ask himself what went well, not what went wrong. The episode closes with a story of everyday beauty from Leicestershire, where 87-year-old Phyllis Day, who has Alzheimer’s, was asleep when a fire broke out at 11:30 pm. Her daughter Suzanne saw two half-dressed men ramming the front door on her doorbell camera and thought it was a break-in, but the neighbours had smelled smoke and run straight out. One of them was driven back twice by the smoke before reaching the bedroom, and they walked Phyllis out, one arm each. She was treated for smoke inhalation and made a full recovery.

#BetweenTheEars #BrainUpgrade #Responsibility #Stoicism #EverydayBeauty #ArnoldBeekes #SelfAwareness

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected