Know Thyself

Know Thyself is a community supporting you to KNOW the true nature of yourself and the world around you, THRIVE in your health, wealth, and relationships – ultimately empowering you to CREATE and share your true self with the world.Each week André Duqum interviews experts in their field; ranging from spiritual educators to cutting edge scientists, heart-led creatives & more on topics such as the true nature of ‘Self’, “what is reality?,” and exploring the fundamental pillars we all need to unlock our fullest potential.Contributing to birthing a more beautiful world, one episode at a time.

Know Thyself is a education podcast hosted by André Duqum, with 212 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

André Duqum hosts Know Thyself, a education show with 212 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #212

  E212 - Dr. Shefali: How To Raise Conscious Children (It Starts With You)

  Sep 15, 20261h 57mS1

  I sat down with Dr. Shefali, clinical psychologist trained at Columbia and the voice behind the Conscious Parenting Movement for over two decades, to explore what it really means to parent from awareness instead of ego. We talk about the illusion of the perfect parent, why children are our greatest mirrors, and how the wounds we carry from our own childhoods get passed down unless we do the work to see them clearly. Dr. Shefali doesn't offer a script. She offers a practice of humility, one that asks us to look at ourselves before we look at our kids. What We Dive Into: 1. Dr. Shefali explains that most parenting struggles trace back to ego, the desire to control, to be right, to see your child as an extension of your own unmet dreams. Real conscious parenting means constantly questioning whether your actions come from your child's essence or your own unresolved story. 2. Without rites of passage or male mentors, boys are left to figure out masculinity through porn and the manosphere. Dr. Shefali argues that testosterone, purpose, and physical challenge need healthy outlets, and that community, not isolation, is what turns raw masculine energy into something protective and grounded. 3. Dr. Shefali describes how social media exploits children's developing brains, especially girls', feeding insecurity and manufacturing endless standards to chase. She calls it algorithmic abduction, a process that outsources parenting itself and leaves children disconnected from their own inner voice. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.wakingup.com/knowthyself https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://www.buylarine.com/knowthyself for up to 50% off on remineralizing gum ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:51 Defining Conscious Parenting 03:35 Inviting Grace Into Parenting 07:20 Children as the Ultimate Mirror 10:25 Where Support Slips Into Control 11:07 Protecting the Developmental Years 14:05 What a Human Birth Means 17:17 Nature, Nurture, and the Cost of Pushing 21:43 Why Raise Sons and Daughters Separately 26:01 The War on Little Boys 30:54 What the Manosphere Gets Right 38:10 Male Loneliness and Silence 42:45 The Father Wound 47:08 What Conscious Masculinity Looks Like 52:08 Algorithmic Abduction of Girls 58:20 Empowering Girls Beyond Appearance 1:02:31 Boundaries and Sharing Power 1:09:28 Dr. Shefali's Own Hardest Lesson 1:14:43 Preparing to Become a Parent 1:16:42 Parenting With a Misaligned Partner 1:22:13 Sibling Differences and Favoritism 1:33:09 Escaping the Perception Prison 1:38:05 The Mother Bind 1:40:50 Confused Messages About Sexuality 1:45:05 The Machine Behind It All 1:55:16 Closing Message to Parents ___________ ✨MORE FROM DR. SHEFALI↳New Raising Conscious Sons / Daughters Books: https://www.drshefali.com/raisingconscious-daughters-sons/↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctorshefali/↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@doctorshefali⁩ ↳https://www.drshefali.com MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ ️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

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  Episode #211

  E211 - John Wineland: Love, Safety & Desire - What Your Wounds Are Deciding for You

  Sep 8, 20261h 54mS1

  John Wineland has spent nearly twenty years teaching people how to love more deeply, and in this conversation he lays out why intimacy has become one of the most demanding spiritual practices available to us. We talk about why relationships surface our oldest wounds, why the partner we choose so often mirrors the exact pattern we grew up in, and why that mirroring is not a mistake but an invitation to heal. John also opens up about his daughter Claire, who passed away eight years ago, and what her life and death taught him about grief, presence, and unconditional love. What We Dive Into: 1. John explains that whatever part of you remains unhealed keeps transmitting into the world, and it draws a partner with the opposite wound so you can replay your childhood dynamic together. He frames this pattern as an opportunity rather than a flaw, since the relationship that triggers you most is often showing you exactly what needs attention. 2. Years of unspoken fear shape how we stand, breathe, and hold tension, so real change requires more than insight alone. John describes training the nervous system through practices like breathwork and qigong so the body can stay open in moments that would normally trigger defense, attack, or withdrawal, which is where lasting change actually happens. 3. Reflecting on his daughter Claire, John shares that there is no end to grief because there is no end to love. He describes honoring grief as an act of self love rather than something to rush past, and encourages anyone facing loss to give that grief real space instead of staying busy to avoid feeling it. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself Use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide https://www.oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF Use code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off OneSkin ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:48 The Historical Evolution of Love 05:45 Why We Attract Our Reciprocal Wound 08:17 When Relationships Deepen the Wound 10:48 The ROI of Doing the Work 14:30 The Four Pillars of Divine Union 22:56 Safety, Belonging, and Being Loved 26:34 The Wound of Being a Man 31:47 Patterns in Men's Work 37:49 What the Manosphere Gets Right 40:03 Why Men Stay Silent 46:47 Masculine and Feminine as Universal Forces 55:12 Energetic Polarity and the Three Kinds of No 1:01:22 Liberation Through Relationship 1:03:23 Staying Connected Through Busy Seasons 1:10:14 John's Own Attachment Wound 1:15:51 What Claire Taught Him About Love 1:24:00 Should I Stay or Should I Go 1:33:41 Healing Generational Trauma 1:44:45 Preparing for Divine Partnership 1:49:02 The Practice of Incremental Improvement 1:52:01 Closing and Where to Find John ___________ ✨MORE FROM JOHN WINELAND↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_wineland/↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JohnWineland↳Teacher Training: https://johnwineland.com/teacher-training/↳Men's Leadership Training: https://johnwineland.com/embodied-mens-leadership-training/https://johnwineland.com MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ ️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

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  Episode #210

  E210 - Dr. David Spiegel: #1 Hypnotism Expert, “Wake Up From The Trance of Your Life”

  Sep 1, 20261h 30mS1

  Dr. David Spiegel is the Wilson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry at Stanford, the co-founder of the hypnosis app Reveri, and one of the world's leading clinical researchers on hypnosis. He has worked with over 7,000 patients across 50 years, and in this conversation he opened with something I did not expect: he tested my hypnotizability live on camera. I scored a nine out of ten. What followed was one of the most genuinely surprising conversations about the mind I have had on this show. What We Dive Into: 1. The self you walk around with is not a fixed structure. Dr. Spiegel calls it a convenient assumption, something the brain constructs to simplify experience. Hypnosis reveals this by demonstrating how quickly and completely a person can shift, often in a single session. 2. Memories are not neutral recordings. They are laid down and retrieved from brain regions that manage affect, which means the emotion and the memory are inseparable. Working with a memory hypnotically allows you to enter it, update its emotional meaning, and change how it lives in you. 3. The same capacity that lets a child survive abuse by mentally leaving their body can, in adulthood, become a habitual distance from experience. Understanding whether your detachment is a protective skill or an old survival pattern still running is one of the more honest questions this conversation surfaces. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack https://www.timeline.com/KNOWTHYSELF Save 20% off your Mitopure® Gummies ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:52 What Hypnosis Actually Is 05:34 The Malleability of Personality and Self 07:01 How Trauma Gets Stored in the Body and Memory 12:00 Hypnosis as the Oldest Western Psychotherapy 15:13 What Happens in the Brain During Hypnosis 18:36 The Default Mode Network and the "My Fault" Network 22:29 How Hypnotizability Is Measured 30:28 What High and Low Hypnotizability Looks Like in Life 33:58 Live Demo: Testing André's Hypnotizability 40:11 Dissociation: Adaptive Defense and Pathological Trap 45:50 How to Use Hypnosis for Stress and Performance 49:07 Hypnosis vs. Meditation: Being vs. Doing 54:41 Flow State, Golf, and the Art of Process Over Outcome 58:13 Believing Is Seeing: The Color Perception Experiment 1:01:00 Perception as a Generative, Interpretive Act 1:03:29 Emotions as Signals and Hypnosis as a Flashlight 1:07:01 Smoking, Self-Respect, and Reframing Addiction 1:09:08 Dr. Spiegel's Path: A Genetic Illness in the Family 1:15:44 Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Many Selves 1:19:54 If There's No Solid Self, Who Are We? 1:22:04 Collective Trance and Societal Hypnosis 1:26:50 Reverie and Empowering Innate Abilities 1:27:12 Closing Message: Learn More About Your Innate Abilities ___________ ✨MORE FROM DR. DAVID SPIEGEL ↳Reveri: https://app.reveri.com/ Use code KNOWTHYSELF20 for 20% off membership MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ ️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

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  Episode #209

  E209 – Rizwan Virk: Are We Living in a Simulation? (It's Deeper Than You Think)

  Aug 25, 20262h 35mS1

  Rizwan Virk is an MIT-trained computer scientist, video game pioneer, and bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis. His work sits at a rare intersection: quantum physics, Eastern mysticism, and the architecture of video games, all pointing toward the same unsettling and strangely liberating conclusion. In this conversation, we explore not the nihilistic version of simulation theory, but the one that actually gives life more meaning rather than less. What We Dive Into: 1. The simulation Rizwan describes is not one where you are code running on a server. You are the soul outside the game, choosing an avatar and entering by choice. The body is the character. The player is something more. 2. Synchronicities, hunches, recurring patterns, these are not coincidences. Rizwan frames them as messages from a deeper intelligence, perhaps a future self, a guide, or the part of you watching the game from outside. The practice is learning to read them rather than dismiss them. 3. In a well-designed game, difficulty scales to keep you engaged and growing. Rizwan applies the same logic to life: the quests that keep returning are the ones not yet completed, and completing them is what the game is actually for. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:46 NPC vs. RPG: Two Flavors of Simulation Theory 07:44 The Universe as Information: It from Bit 13:07 The Second Assertion: Information Rendered as Real 18:06 Non-Locality, Quantum Entanglement, and the Speed of Light 22:32 The Simulation Point: When VR Becomes Indistinguishable 26:44 The Third Assertion: The World as Purposeful Illusion 35:23 Awakening as Becoming Lucid in the Dream 38:52 The Fourth Assertion: You Chose to Play the Game 43:42 Life Selection, Forgetfulness, and the Bardo 49:28 Savant Children and the Autism-as-Backdoor Hypothesis 57:28 The Literal vs. Metaphorical Axis of Simulation Theory 1:01:52 Yogananda and the Film Projector Metaphor 1:07:34 The Life Review, the Book of Life, and the Karmic Database 1:13:47 Samskaras, Vasanas, and Yoga as Cessation of Whirlpools 1:17:34 Clues on the Treasure Hunt: Synchronicity and the Quest Path 1:22:38 The Simulated Multiverse: Running the Simulation More Than Once 1:30:09 The Tiger Swami: External Tigers and Inner Ones 1:36:23 Rizwan's Heart Surgery and the Course Correction 1:44:14 Karma, Dream Palaces, and the Questing Engine 1:48:49 Living the Life Review Before You Die 1:57:01 Kindness Is Enforced by the Architecture 2:03:17 Epistemic Humility at the Edge of Mystical Claims 2:14:22 What Is Outside the Simulation? 2:22:54 UFOs: Interstellar, Interdimensional, or Rendered? 2:33:09 Closing Message: Challenges Are Integral to the Game ___________ ✨MORE FROM RIZWAN VIRK ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rizcambridge ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rizwanvirksimulation ↳X: https://x.com/Rizstanford ↳Buy The Simulation Hypothesis Book: https://www.zenentrepreneur.com/simulationhypothesis ↳https://www.zenentrepreneur.com MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ ️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

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  Episode #207

  E207 - Jim George: Stillness Expert: “How To Not Miss Your Life”

  Aug 11, 20262h 11mS1

  Jim George is a stillness coach, former animator, and one of the first guests ever to appear on this podcast. He has spent nearly 50 years developing what he calls practical spirituality, a way of working with the mind that requires no doctrine, no dogma, and no special belief system. What it does require is the willingness to get quiet enough to see what is actually there. In this conversation, we return to the most essential territory: the cost of mental noise, the nature of the ego, and what it genuinely means to be present for your own life. What We Dive Into: 1. The noise in the mind is not neutral. Every moment spent in a self-generated narrative about the past or future is a moment you were not actually there. At the end of a life of that, Jim says, there is a strange vacuum. 2. The drive for status was not a character flaw. It was, quite literally, a matter of life and death for our ancestors. Understanding that gives you room to stop being run by it. When you see the mechanism clearly, competition can begin to evolve into something closer to cooperation, which Jim argues is the actual path forward for the species. 3. Gratitude is not a feeling you perform. It is focused attention on what already is, and it shifts your neurochemistry from dopamine-driven wanting toward something more stable. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:40 The Cost of Normalizing Internal Noise 06:07 What the Noise Is Made Of: Limbic Survival and Chatter 12:11 The Contrast Between Noise and Stillness 14:52 Status as an Evolutionary Artifact 24:16 Normalization and the Tiger in the Mind 29:18 Pure Stillness vs. Stillishness 32:37 The Ego Narrative and the Illusion of Separation 40:14 Everything We Want Is an End to Seeking 45:36 Simplicity, Dopamine, and the Holotropic Universe 49:27 What Happens When Subject and Object Dissolve 57:32 Stillness as Practice, Not Destination 59:24 Self-Love vs. Realizing Self as Love 1:02:08 How to Actually Do It: The Long, Short, and Micro Form 1:08:38 The Gifts of Headlessness: Harding's List 1:13:47 Physics, the Quantum Field, and the Non-Physical 1:25:15 How Far the Self Can Expand 1:37:08 Values Work: What's Actually Driving Your Behavior 1:47:18 Finding Your Me-Shaped Hole in the Universe 1:59:43 The Universe Conspires When You Commit 2:08:31 Closing Message: Quiet Down and Bring It ___________ ✨MORE FROM ↳Instagram: MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ ️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

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