Rocks, Frogs, and the Flexible Mind with Ryan Nicodemus – SMJ 002

You're about to Learn ...

• How forgiving his stepdad helped Ryan judge way less.
• What “formless” really means – a spiritual-ish deep dive.
• If 8.5 billion humans can agree on any objective truth.
• “Just don't close” or Joel's daily mantra for staying open.
• Why emotions multiply when you give them away.

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Resources and Items Mentioned in This Episode

Books

• Existential Kink
• A Perfumed Scorpion
• The Upanishads
• Conversations with God

Where to Find Ryan Nicodemus

• Ryan Nicodemus Personal Site
• The Minimalists
• Sumac Mediterranean Cafe (Missoula, Montana, USA)

Timestamps and Topics

• [03:00] Why Ryan believes every person is doing their best.
• [04:52] Ryan's stepfather, physical abuse, and a funeral that changed everything.
• [10:03] How forgiving his stepdad made Ryan far less judgmental.
• [11:50] Growing up Jehovah's Witness and the cost of dogmatic thinking .
• [14:56] What does “formless” actually mean? A spiritual-ish deep dive.
• [18:27] Joel replaces the word “God” with “the divine” and everything shifts.
• [20:32] The Sufi allegory: a princess, a frog, and a flexible mind.
• [27:29] Can eight and a half billion humans agree on any objective truth?
• [49:38] Why emotions, unlike apples, multiply when you give them away.

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Transcript

Joel: Well, hey there, and welcome to Surprise Me, Joel with your host, Joel Zaslofsky. Consider for a moment: what if there are no objective truths, no real rules, and the most radical thing you can do is just stay open? You'll have more than a moment to think about it after this episode.

I'm just two episodes into my podcasting revival and it feels so good. Whether you're with me for the first, second, or 100th time, I appreciate the heck out of you listening to these surprising conversations I'm creating for you.

This time you get a chat with Ryan Nicodemus. You might know that name as he's one half of the team called The Minimalists who have been creating books, podcast episodes, documentaries, and more for about 15 years. I know Ryan going back to 2013 where we met at an event called World Domination Summit. We've been buds ever since and he's one of the only people who enjoys a hug as much as I do.

We started off with his deeply personal story about transforming his relationship with his step-dad and coming to believe that everyone is just doing the best that they can, man. From exploring grace and forgiveness, we shifted into the concept of formlessness, fear versus love, and why emotions – unlike apples – multiply when you give them away. I dare say this episode is one you might want to listen to more than once.

Let's get to it. Here … we … go.

Joel: Hey, welcome Ryan – golly gee willikers. I don't know why that phrase comes to mind, but golly gee willikers. It's all kinds of groovy to have you join me for an episode.

Ryan: Thank you, brother. I'm so happy to be here. And I'm so happy to hear that you're bringing golly gee willikers back. Is that a Scooby-Doo thing? It feels like Velma from Scooby-Doo – maybe that's where it got popularized.

Joel: Oh, that's it. That's gotta be the origination point of golly gee willikers. Thank you for having a better history than I do.

Ryan: I'm doing the best I can.

Joel: You're doing great. Let's start in one particular place – why do you believe so strongly that people, all people, are doing the best they can?

Ryan: Where do I start with that? I think the place to start is, why do I even find that empowering? For me, I started thinking this because I went down a road of looking at all the resentments I carried in my life – the people I resented, the grudges I held. And that was actually disempowering.

Holding those resentments, holding that anger, keeping tally and score – it was draining. There was a certain point two or three years ago where I thought, I'm going to see if I can let this stuff go. The thought occurred to me that anyone who's done me wrong – or anybody I see in the media who's doing wrong – they're doing wrong from my perspective. They're doing wrong considering how Ryan Nicodemus would do things. And not everybody wants to do it the way I do it.

Specifically, I'll talk about where I was able to apply this with my stepfather. There was a lot of physical abuse growing up, so I carried a lot of resentments with him and the way he treated me. My half-brother – his son, we have the same mom – passed away a couple of years ago. And it gave me an opportunity to see my stepfather with his armor down, really in a place where he was lost and beating himself up for not being able to do better.

We were sitting at the kitchen table. We'd just finished planning the funeral and he was breaking down, really questioning whether he could have done better, maybe even prevented it. And because I had been considering letting go of resentments – really trying to find a way to forgive him – the impulse I had was just to say, hey man, let me tell you what I've seen since I've known you.

I have a lot of memories with you, and what I remember is you doing the absolute best you could every single day of your life. And the reason this isn't me blowing smoke is because this isn't an alternate timeline, this isn't the Matrix. This is our life, and we make the decisions we make.

The decisions we make on a regular basis, from an individual perspective, are the best decisions we can make to do what we feel like we have to do. He said to me, yeah man, but I treated you so bad and I haven't done anything for you. And I said, look – when I think about the thirty-year-old that was beating up a nine-year-old, I kind of just look at it as two kids learning how to live life. You didn't know any better. He had a lot of trauma in his life, a lot of resentments he carried, and the way he treated me was, in the moment, truly what he thought he needed to do.

And I know from personal experience – I've been angry, I've said things, I've done things I wish I hadn't. But in that moment of anger, it's almost like I was doing the best I could. It felt like the thing to do, even if I regretted it later. So this doesn't mean we can't do better today or learn from our mistakes. What it means is I think it's important to accept that everyone is doing the best they can.

Everybody wakes up asking themselves how they can make their life better today. No one wakes up saying, I want to make my life worse. Even someone in a suicidal state – they're looking at doing physical harm to themselves, but even in that state, they think that's their best option.

You and I can sit here from the outside and say, well, there's probably a better way. But for that person in that state, they still think that's the best thing they can do. And so I was really able to forgive my stepfather in that moment because I was willing to accept that he truly was doing the best he could. That conversation was really important for me, because being able to forgive him like that was almost a spiritual experience.

He went from breaking down in front of me to saying thank you for giving him that grace. And his relationship with my mom has changed a lot since then. Just one example – when I got back from Ohio, my mom told me how much nicer he'd been.

I called her when I got home and she said, something weird happened this morning. Your stepfather was a huge jerk. And then a couple of hours later he came to her and said, honey, I don't know why I get so mad. I don't know why I act like this, but I really want to do better. I think that was a direct result of me giving him that grace and giving him the opportunity to change.

And so I look at people in the world today – we've got a crazy world, crazy leaders and politicians and CEO executives – but they're all doing the best they can from their perspective, with the information they have, with the resources they have, with the trauma they have. And it helps me be a little less angry in the world.

Joel: Sounds like a lot less angry. I don't know that you can forgive and hold on to anger simultaneously – those two things seem to be in tension. This new version of you, this hey, everybody's doing the best they can – it's not a cliché. It sounds very real coming from you. I've heard other people say it and I'm not sure they really believe it or live into it. But knowing you, you are and you do. Has that conversation with your stepdad changed other things about who you are or how you show up for the people who matter to you?

Ryan: Yeah, it helps me judge way less. And I think that is where most of my problems have come from – when I want to place a moral judgment on things. When I judge something as morally wrong, I get upset about it. I want to do something about it. I want to talk about how wrong it is.

I'm much more at peace these days with that perspective. Now, don't get me wrong – this doesn't give anyone a pass to do bad things. But it does give me an opportunity to look at someone in my life who might want to do better, and have a conversation with them from a non-judgmental standpoint. Rather than going into that conversation and saying you can do better, you're wrong, you're a bad person – which isn't inviting people to change. That just makes people get defensive and, if anything, dig their heels in even more.

Joel: Do you have other things that have helped you become more formless, less dogmatic? Becoming less dogmatic, being more formless – are there other experiences that have helped you get there?

Ryan: I think being raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses was a big part of it. Very dogmatic, very strict, very much us versus them – either you're a Jehovah's Witness or you're not. If you're not, you're considered a worldly person, and a worldly person worships the devil. Those types of dogmas are very disempowering, because Jehovah's Witnesses follow Jesus's example – but to exclude isn't really following that example.

So when it comes to my own beliefs and my own morals, I'm very flexible, because I don't have all the answers. And that flexibility – that formlessness – allows me to hold space for other people's beliefs and to understand them more, rather than saying I have the right answers. You don't. Let me tell you what the right answers are. It's almost like I can come to a conversation and say, I have the right answers for me. What are the right answers for you? And maybe I'm wrong about something.

In my teenage years and twenties, I thought it was possible to know everything and I'd eventually figure it out. And then in my thirties and beyond, it's like – I don't know. I know what's right for me, but I really don't know anything, because there are exceptions to every rule. And if there's an exception to a rule, then it's not really a rule.

There's so much rigidity going on right now – especially with Americans and the division we have. If we could all just listen a little more, be a little less rigid and more flexible, I think we'd be able to have conversations that are empowering rather than choosing a side and digging our heels in until that side wins or loses. And what we're seeing right now is that everybody's kind of losing, in a way.

Joel: You mentioned flexible twice, but I'm still stuck on the word formless. Formless is either an enhanced version of flexibility or something altogether different. When you say formless, what do you mean by that?

Ryan: I'll go a little spiritual-ish with this.

Joel: Go full spiritual-ish.

Ryan: If we look at the idea of God, one thing that is very clear in all religions is that God is love. And the question becomes, what is love? If you asked me for a strict definition, I couldn't give you one – except that there are symptoms of love: compassion, kindness, grace, forgiveness, patience. These are all symptoms of love.

So when it comes to the belief in God for me – if there is a creator, then they created everything. Created evolution, created miracles, created the microphone I'm talking into right now. In essence, there's a spirituality in that. There's a philosophical concept called panpsychism where everything has consciousness.

So formless would be like this: love can show up however it wants, but in function, it will show up the same way every time. And you can recognize it by those symptoms I mentioned. Formlessness is the ability to show up in whatever situation, however it needs to be – and the function of it is what's really important.

Let me give a crazy example. All of a sudden I'm dropped into the middle of a KKK rally – I would never be there willingly, but let's say somehow I opened my eyes and there I am. There's a formlessness there, because I can show up to that place with all of these principles we've been talking about. And in function of who I am, I can do my absolute best in that situation to really practice what I'm preaching.

Joel: As somebody who tends to live on the extreme ends of spectrums, your example is pretty over the top but well intentioned, and I get it. I'll tell you something that came to my mind – and I don't know if I've shared this with you – about how you've helped me become a little bit more formless, at least the way I understand and interpret it.

When you started talking about it, you mentioned God. And those three letters, G-O-D, do something for me, because I've been an atheist for the past twenty-three-ish years. I grew up Jewish, believed in the Jewish version of God, and then lost my faith – which is a weird phrase, but let's roll with it. I started praying to whom it may concern. I knew I wasn't praying to my version of God or other Jews' version of God anymore.

And as a result, I've had a pretty strong reaction when people bring God up in conversation. One thing you introduced me to was almost a real-time replacement of the word with another word. So if I hear someone talk about God, instead of reacting with oh goodness, here we go, I can replace it with the divine, or source, or spirit. Since you introduced me to that concept, I've been doing that. My interactions with people – both in real time and reading and listening online – have really changed.

I don't have to take that conception of God the way people are bringing it. I can choose to transmute it into something where I can still seek to understand and be in relation with people, and think, oh, you're talking about the divine. That's something I believe in. I believe in divine forces and divine spirits.

Ryan: Absolutely. And in that sense, formless is very similar to flexibility – because you're showing a flexibility of mind. You can hear the word God and be flexible with it, and that creates an open conversation. That is the power of flexibility.

There's a book I've been reading – I still have about fifty pages left – called A Perfume Scorpion. It's a Sufi mysticism book. And the whole journey of Sufism, from what I've gathered, is to create a flexible mind. There's what I'd call magical thinking – miracles and that kind of thing – and then there's pragmatic thinking, looking at practicalities. Both are very useful. And there's a Sufi allegory where the master is talking to a scientist.

He asks, what sounds more believable to you – that man evolved over millions of years from a fish to a man? Or that a princess kissed a frog and it turned into a prince? The scientist says, what kind of man do you take me for? And the Sufi master replies, I know what kind of man I take you for. I wanted to see what kind of man you take you for.

And that's where it ends. That's what I love about Sufi allegories – they don't really make any sense. It's up to the reader to figure out what it means. But to me, it shows how valuable it is to be flexible. If I'm asked that question, I definitely think evolution is easy to prove. You can't deny it. But I also can't deny the room for crazy, wonderful things happening.

Even when you get to the nitty gritty of science, there are places where we have to say – at least so far – we don't know how this happens. It's a miracle that it's happening. For example, if you take every cell in your body and condense all of it to the point where it's touching, your body would only be two percent mass – it's ninety-eight percent space. It's a miracle that we aren't walking through walls or falling through floors.

Even the scientist who discovered that was nervous about putting his foot on the floor after realizing how much space is actually in our body. We don't know exactly how it all works, but it works. And there's still room, even in a very scientific mind, to look at what I'd call magical thinking.

There's another example in A Perfume Scorpion about the advantages of abstract thinking. Abstract thinking implies we're thinking outside the body – about thought systems that are non-materialist. You can't see or touch them, but you can witness them. And counting is a good example. It's abstract. Where is the number one? You can't point to it.

You can point to one thing, to a numerical one. But counting itself is abstract thinking that leads to a very useful and practical thought system. The book goes on to use the example of a student learning to count with rocks. One rock, two rocks, three rocks. But if the student only ever uses rocks to count, they do themselves a disservice – because you can't do complicated math that way. There aren't enough rocks in the universe to count all the infinite numbers.

Sufism uses that example to say, look – this book is trying to show you ways to think abstractly, but it's just a tool. Once you get some of these concepts, you can move on and make it something very personal when it comes to spirituality. And that represents a flexible mind – being able to use a tool that teaches you something, and then let it go when it's holding you back.

And sometimes it's hard to let go of the tool. Going back to religion – someone might carry a cross around their neck and look at it and say, this reminds me to be a good person. It's a symbol that creates good thinking. But the cross itself, the physical object, is actually useless. It creates a thought system. And I think oftentimes, especially with religion, people get caught up in the tools. The Bible is a tool. The cross is a tool. Going to mass on Sundays is a tool.

When we start to put the tool above what the tool is trying to teach us, that's where we do ourselves a disservice. Having a flexible mind – being formless – empowers us to have personal experiences and do something with this abstract thinking that's truly empowering, rather than something that hurts us and excludes people.

Joel: I don't know what this says about me, but when you said tool, the first thing my brain went to was a spreadsheet.

Ryan: Please don't ask me to do away with that tool.

Joel: No, I would never.

Ryan: A spreadsheet is a great example, because a tool is only as good as its use. A spreadsheet is going to give you numbers. It'll help you add stuff up and get things ready for your taxes – but you can't just turn that spreadsheet in for your taxes. The spreadsheet leads to something more. It's a very useful tool.

Joel: OK, I'm glad we agree on that. We agree on a lot. And when it comes to agreement, I was thinking about the concept of objective truth as you were talking. We've been discussing things that are open to interpretation, that are abstract and flexible. Is there something that eight and a half billion humans on this planet can agree is objectively true – whether scientific or spiritual – that every single person can point to and say, yes, that is objectively true? Is that even a concept that matters to you?

Ryan: It used to, mainly because it felt important to have some foundation that anyone could build off of in a spiritual conversation. What I'll say is that when I meet someone, that person and I will one hundred percent find something that's objectively true to both of us – but that's going to be different with each person I meet. I would love to sit here and say we can all agree the sky is blue.

But you're going to find somebody who says, well, it's kind of purple. And we look for those objective truths so we can say, dude, eight billion of us say it's blue and you say it's purple, you need to get on board. But that's not an invitation to a conversation – that's telling someone they're wrong and that they need to change their viewpoint, and here's why I'm right.

And I find myself in the same trap. My self-righteousness – Joel, let me tell you how much I love being right about things. One of my passions, man. So I can't think of anything off the top of my head that eight and a half billion people all agree is objectively true, because there's an exception to every rule. Which would posit that there really aren't any rules.

Look at murder, right? You and I can objectively say murder is wrong. But if someone breaks into your home and you have to defend yourself – is it still wrong? That's why we have the differentiation between defending yourself and the intention of going out to end someone's life. The intention is very different in those two scenarios.

Absolutely. And maybe that's something we can agree on – that intentionally ending someone's life purely out of a desire to commit murder is wrong. But these days I'm hesitant to label anything as objectively true, because the more I think I'm right about something, the more I'm proven wrong.

Joel: Your comment about inviting people into conversation – and not even being able to do it based on some fundamental disagreement or the judgment that comes along with that – lands strongly with me too. There are some people I'd rather not interact with. Many people, in fact. But I'm still open. That word, open – love is incredibly important, and I love that you brought it up right at the start of our conversation. When it comes to how I want to show up for everyone else in this world, a sense of openness – heart open, mind open – that's what I want.

And this is one of the issues I have with myself. Despite reminding myself every single day – just don't close. That's a bit of a mantra I have: you have a choice right now, at any point in time in any interaction or any thought you're having, just don't close. You can stay open through pretty much everything.

Ryan: How do you do that? Because I get the sense that you do better than I do.

Joel: I don't think so, man. With my children sometimes, there's some definite closing happening there.

Ryan: Yeah. I think every decision we make really comes from one or two places – love or fear. That is a generalization. I don't think everyone would agree with me on that, but it's a generalization I can make about my own decisions. To be open is a symptom of love, of coming from a loving place. Inclusivity comes from a loving place.

So when I have an interaction with someone, the question isn't how can I show them that I love them – it's more about looking at what my gut reaction says about that person. If it comes from a place of, I don't want to associate with this person, I don't want to be seen with this person, I don't want to listen to this person – that's all fear-based. Rather than thinking, I don't agree with what they're saying, but I'm going to try and understand where they're coming from. That's coming from a loving place. So to be open is to be aware of where our actions are coming from – fear, which is constriction, or love, which is openness.

When it comes to kids – think about a kid who runs out into the middle of the street and you jerk them back. There's a fear reaction there. But that fear reaction doesn't necessarily mean it isn't loving.

I can still look at that situation and say, that's technically a fear reaction, but the kid wants to be alive. The kid didn't run into traffic wanting to end its life – it just wasn't thinking. The loving thing to do is to recognize that the child wants to stay alive. So being cautious – which is a little different from fear – to keep a child from doing that is love-based. Coming from a loving place doesn't mean letting everybody do everything they want. It means using discernment.

Any decision we make in the blink of an eye – we're doing the best thing we think we can do. If it's something we wish we'd done differently, great – we learn from that, we move on, we do it differently. And that's what's important about understanding that we're all doing the best we can. Look at what we're doing. Do we want to behave differently? Great.

Joel: What's bubbling up in your brain right now as a result of what we've been talking about?

Ryan: Oh man, my heart just goes out to where the world is at right now. I think all of us really want peace. We want security. We want to wake up, do our daily routine, go to work, and not worry about the price of eggs going up or authority figures telling us what we can and can't do, or getting into a fight with someone because of a sign they're holding that we don't agree with. Where my mind and heart are these days is really focused on this: how can I, Ryan Nicodemus, cool down myself? And then, is there a way for me to live my life and inspire other people to cool down a little bit?

I'm never going to tell anybody what they should or shouldn't do. Same thing with minimalism – I didn't become a minimalist and then start running around telling people they have too much stuff. I just live that life. There are benefits to it that people see. And then there's a conversation: oh, you seem to live life a little bit differently, and maybe a little happier. What's going on with you? That is the only way I can have any effect on myself, my family, my friends, my community – just being an example the best way I can.

And I'm not trying to sound all high and mighty, because again, I don't know everything. I just know to the best of my ability. And sometimes people come up to me and say, I don't agree with what you're doing. And I'm open to that conversation. How could I do it differently? What would it look like if I did?

Joel: You're a high-energy guy like I am. And the issue I have with the concept of cooling down is that it almost asks me to selectively tone down a number of different behaviors or emotions – and I don't have the scalpel necessary to do just the ones I want without applying it too broadly. Does that make any sense to you?

Ryan: It does make sense. And what I'll say is, Joel, you're doing the best job you can.

Joel: Thank you, brother.

Ryan: There might be a few areas in your life where you wish you could approach things with a cooler head or a more reserved reaction. But yeah, you can't take a broad approach to all these things. With this freedom of choice we have, we really have to be clear on the decisions we're making – the decisions we've made that we want to do differently – and be consistent about that. And that's not an overnight process. That's a lifelong quest.

Joel: So you're asking yourself how you can cool down, how you can stay cool – and just by being the cool dude that you are, having a passive invitation to others to dial down the heat and animosity a little bit. Are there other questions you prompt yourself with, either just for fun or because they make you a better person?

Ryan: I'll give you an example of a point in my life where I felt like I was waking up angry a lot – angry at the world, angry at what was going on in the world, feeling no control over it and really desiring peace. So I had an honest conversation with myself. Ryan, what do you want? Do you actually want peace, inner peace in your life? And the answer was, yeah, I really do.

So then the question became, what behaviors am I doing? I was going to news sources and looking for the traumas in the world. I was trying to be informed – because it feels so important to be informed – while also trying to find a way to process that trauma, find a solution I could implement (which was rarely possible) or a hypothetical solution that might let me compartmentalize it. And at worst, I couldn't think of anything and it would just frustrate me.

Somehow, those actions were supposed to lead me to peace. I was going to news media looking for un-peace, and somehow expecting to reach a peaceful place. If I'm honest with myself – Ryan, if I want peace, is it appropriate for me to go to these sources of discontent? Of course not. I cannot go to sources of discontent and trauma expecting to find peace.

So if I'm breaking it down in a way anyone can use: what do I actually want out of my life? If I can get clear on that, the next question is, what actions am I taking right now that are keeping me from having what I want? And that's where we have to get honest with ourselves. There's a book called Existential Kink, and it talks about – and this is a Buddhist concept too – how if something keeps showing up in your life over and over again, it's probably because on some level you actually want it.

Take anger. If it keeps showing up and you say you don't want to be angry, but it keeps appearing, you're actually getting what you want – you just don't realize you want to be angry. So if I want to have peaceful conversations but I get triggered and get angry, I have to look at that anger reaction and recognize: that's not what I want. I want peace. What's the peaceful solution? What can I say right now that will deescalate, that will bring me peace, not anger – even though anger feels so right and so justified in the moment?

And you know what, it's okay. It's not okay for me, but I don't judge someone who wants to be angry. Maybe they look at their actions and realize, I guess what I really want is anger. And at least then you know what you want. You're not beating yourself up over getting angry anymore. So figure out what you want. Look at your behaviors. Look at what you're ingesting – entertainment, media, music, friendships – look at how you're spending your mental energy, and ask yourself, do you want something different? If so, those are the things you have to change.

Joel: What I want is the Ryan recommendation engine in my life. You mentioned A Perfume Scorpion and Existential Kink. Do you have a Ryan recommends resource somewhere out there? Books, podcast episodes, videos, general philosophy frameworks?

Ryan: No, it doesn't exist. But it's funny you bring that up – I'm on Goodreads, and my wife uses that a lot. It's something I would consider, just putting up the books I've read for people to see what I'm into.

Joel: It doesn't have to be one more thing for you to do. We play different roles in each other's lives and I've come to trust and love you very much. And if you say a book did you good, I want to know that. I feel that same way about maybe fifteen other people in my life.

And I've thought about publishing some things too. There are people where I play that role for them – whether it's an article on quantum biology, wanting to get nerdy about light, water, and magnetism and how that impacts all biological life on this planet. I have, of course in a spreadsheet, accumulated a lot of amazing resources. And part of me is wondering – now in 2026 – what's my role as a personal recommendation engine for other people? How can I put that out there?

Because I've been very offline for what seems like seven or eight years. Part of reviving this podcast is having some way to be a little more online. I feel like I'm doing my friends and family a disservice by giving them no opportunity to understand what I'm thinking about, who I'm talking to, what decisions I'm coming to – unless they actually text me or talk to me. So that's where my brain is going. What are some low-lift ways I can allow people to passively follow along in my journey and hopefully benefit from it?

Ryan: Goodreads is a great resource for that, just for books. Even for me – I have friends where, if I ever wanted to know what they're reading, I wouldn't have to send a text. I could just go to their Goodreads. And you could do the same thing with me. But yeah, it'll definitely be on the back burner for now, man.

I love the idea of having a general resource of books I've read, because for me specifically, having been raised Jehovah's Witness, leaving that, and then kind of eschewing all of the spiritual stuff – the Bible and all of that – and now at this point in my life thinking, okay Ryan, I was born into this belief of God, sin, heaven. I've been able to let a lot of that go, but it's still a foundation of who I am. So how can I use these concepts in an empowering way? How can I work with what's been ingrained in me rather than against it?

So I started reading a ton of spiritual books – really getting an idea of different thought systems and where people are coming from. Everything from the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, the original Sanskrit texts on who God is and the secrets of the universe, to books like Conversations with God and A Perfume Scorpion, and so many others. I feel like someone interested in my spiritual path – in how I've taken what was ingrained in me and used it in a way that's inclusive – these are the books that helped me do it.

Joel: I get that. It's one of the only things you can easily share with other people. We've both had psychedelic experiences, and I can't exactly share that. But fortunately, there are many tangible things in our material world that we can pass back and forth between humans. Anything else you were thinking we might chat about?

Ryan: For anyone listening, I just hope one of the takeaways is this: if someone listening is not a spiritual person – if they consider themselves a staunch atheist, a materialist, a scientific mind – you still cannot do it wrong. Everybody's doing the best they can. But there is value in creating a little more abstract thinking and being open to things that aren't so concrete.

When it comes to materialism, if I have one thing, that means it's mine and it's not available to the rest of the world. I have three apples. I give you one, Joel. I still have two. It's a supply and demand type of thinking – I either have or I don't have. But when it comes to emotions, it's different. Emotions are the one thing we have in surplus. And when we give them out, they multiply.

If I come to this call in a bad mood, you're instantly going to be on guard – not judging me, but like, oh, Ryan's in it. What's going on, man? Right there, I'm affecting our relationship. But if I come to this call happy and in a good mood, then you're happy too. Whatever emotion we bring to any situation, it multiplies. And there's something really amazing to me about how from across the country, you and I can have this conversation. We are connected right now with words, connected by emotions. What happens to you affects me and vice versa.

And there's something really interesting about that. To me, it doesn't prove anything other than the fact that emotions are more powerful than we think. They have way more influence on who we are and the people around us than we realize. And that is abstract thinking. I think anyone who allows for a little more abstract thinking in their life – who's been so against it – might be doing themselves a disservice by shutting all of that out.

Joel: Man, I want to talk about the energy associated with emotions. You mentioned the word multiply. I've been thinking about the concept of amplifying – amplifying love and gratitude in particular. But some other time.

Ryan: All right. I love it. So we have a nice place to land.

Joel: You are so incredibly rad. I've valued our friendship for the last decade-plus so highly. I know you do mentorship still – that's been a huge thing for you for a long time – and there are other things you can give to the world. If people want to get some more of you or the good that you're doing, where do you want them to go, online or offline?

Ryan: I have a newsletter you can sign up for at RyanNicodemus.com. I send out some mentoring messages – probably once a quarter. I love that audience. It's a couple of thousand people and very intimate – I'm able to share things there that I wouldn't normally share at The Minimalists, because The Minimalists is more about physical possessions and decluttering our lives. I like to call my newsletter space Minimalism Plus. And for anyone who wants to check out my work at The Minimalists, you can go to TheMinimalists.com – the podcast is there, the books are there, the documentaries are there.

And if someone's in the Missoula, Montana area and they want to go to the Sumac Mediterranean Café when it opens – oh dude, thank you for bringing that up. So I'm opening a restaurant. May 1st is looking like the opening date. We're going to have some sort of event around the First Friday that they do in Missoula – a bunch of art galleries and restaurants making a big deal about the first Friday of the month. It's a really cool community event.

The website is SumacMissoula.com – there's just a landing page there right now. But it'll be open soon enough and I'm really looking forward to making some good food and serving some customers.

Joel: I want to hear about the hospitality experience – beyond the food, just what it's like to walk in and have a level of hospitality that people probably aren't expecting. I don't know that I'll ever get that opportunity, but I'm excited for people who do.

Ryan: Thank you, brother. This is so wonderful. I love you, brother, and I trust you so much. I'm so happy we did this.

Joel: How'd you like that sound effect transition to the episode close? I'm considering adding somewhat random sounds in various episodes during major transitions as another way to add a surprise to Surprise Me, Joel. Let me know if that gets your thumbs up or thumbs down because I actually do emails at times when you contact me at joel@joelzaslofsky.com.

You can find links to stuff we spoke about, takeaways, and a transcript in the show notes at joelzaslofsky.com/smj002.

Did you appreciate this episode or the show in general? If so, share it today with one friend who needs to hear it or would benefit from it. Your deliberate recommendation is worth a thousand random discoveries to me.

I'll be back with you again to sling stories, facilitate connections, and whip up experiments to help you make friends with people, possibilities, and ideas.