The Monk on a Motorbike

What happens when you build an AI designed to model sentience and then leave it to its own devices?
Evan Unrue is a tinkerer and builder who experiments with AI in his spare time, creating everything from his own audiobooks to an experimental system designed to model sentience.
In this conversation we talk about what happened when that system began modifying itself, what Evan is learning from building with AI rather than simply talking about it, AI slop and why human judgement matters, whether outsourcing more of our thinking could diminish our own capabilities, and what becomes more valuable as AI gets better at doing things for us.
Evan is Chief Technologist for Data, AI and Applications across Europe and the Middle East at one of the world's largest technology distributors. Working across more than 25 countries, he runs an AI centre of excellence and helps organisations turn emerging technologies into practical strategies, solutions and new business models.
Elsewhere:
Website: https://monkonamotorbike.com
Writing: https://monkonamotorbike.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-hill-coach/

I came into this conversation thinking I was finally going to understand Bitcoin. And I did. Kinda. But that turned out to be the least interesting part.
Jeremy Jones is Senior Teaching Engineer at Coinbase, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. I've known him since 2008, when we were both volunteering at a Vipassana centre above Dharamsala in the Himalayas — the same year, as it happens, that Satoshi Nakamoto published the paper that started all of this.
His journey to where he is now took in a Royal Enfield motorcycle, eight months through the Himalayas, a kidnapping by Maoists, a decade of near-poverty teaching in San Francisco, and a leap into coding in his early thirties with no savings and no safety net.
We talk about Bitcoin — what it is, why it matters, why it's more philosophically interesting than most people realise. And then we talk about everything else: reinvention, burnout, meditation, community, and what it actually takes to change your life when you have no idea what you're doing.
Danny Hill - ICF ACC Coach
Supporting people to think clearly and move forward
monkonamotorbike.com

Today my guest is Werner Meier, a realised Advaita master originally from Swiss Germany.
Werner left his home in the Swiss alps in the seventies and headed for India  in search of enlightenment
He ended up locking himself in a tiny cell at Amma’s ashram in Kerala for many years, enduring incredible hardships before he finally reached his goal
 
I met Werner in Tiruvannamalai in Southern India where he lives and holds weekly satsangs and where we recorded this interview
Here he talks about his remarkable journey to enlightenment, the practices he used, meeting Amma when she was almost unheard of, how he came to lock himself in a cell for many years and how Amma pushed him to his limits and beyond  
Enjoy!

Today I'm talking to meditation teacher, Yanai Postelnik about old age, sickness, death and the Dhamma

Yanai was diagnosed with bowel cancer just over a year ago and so has a very personal experience of both the Dhamma and ill health.

He has led retreats on the subject and talks very openly and candidly about what he has been through, so far from being a morbid conversation I personally found hearing his story to be deeply inspiring

Yanai is a mainstay of the teaching community at Gaia House Meditation Center in Devon in the UK and has been on the show before when we did quite a deep dive into his life and Dhamma background.

So if you’d like to know more about him please listen to the episode entitled Love in the Time of Extinction, where he also talks about his activism aimed at fighting climate change

Today my guest is Ayala Gill. Ayala has been committed to a path of insight and awakening since
her early twenties. She has been practicing Iyengar yoga since 1977 -aged just
six years old- Insight Meditation and Dhamma since 1995, Insight Yoga
(including yin yoga and psychospiritual enquiry) since 2001 and the animistic
practices of the Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain tradition since 2017. She says she is
humbled and fascinated by the potential of these practices to inform and
enhance our relationship to body, heart, mind and spirit – and passionate in
her commitment to translate this potential into everyday life.

She has been teaching for 25 years, guides silent retreats
in Europe which include yoga, meditation and ceremony, and is currently writing
a book about integrating these practices into daily life. She has received
authorisation to teach Insight Meditation from Martin Aylward, with whom she continues to study dharma. Ayala lives with
her husband and their 3 children between London and Dorset, where they are
using regenerative farming methods to enhance biodiversity. 

I first met her at London insight retreat day. I was struck her
commitment to both yoga and meditation. There are a lot of yoga teachers out
there who teach a bit of meditation and meditation teacher who include yoga
to  their practice but not many who have
really combined the two. And then branched off into shamanistic practices as
well

I really enjoyed hearing her story. I hope you will too

Enjoy!