You check your phone. Again. Then your email. Again. Then the news. Again. Each time hoping for something different. Each time feeling a little worse. But what's the alternative? Never checking? Complete disconnection?

In this first combined-format episode of The Current, Jon Sanchez explores one of the most powerful concepts in information hygiene: the rhythms of engagement - finding your sustainable pulse and pause with information.

Jon shares his personal burnout story from constant connection and his journey to discovering a more sustainable approach - not endless consumption or complete disconnection, but intentional rhythms of engagement and recovery.

Discover the science behind why rhythmic engagement works, from neuroscience research on cognitive load to attention restoration theory. Learn the Four Rhythms Framework - daily cadence, weekly wave, monthly cycle, and seasonal shift - that creates a complete system for sustainable information consumption.

Get practical guidance on designing your own personal rhythm based on your unique needs, constraints, and preferences. Address common challenges like workplace expectations, social pressure, and the fear of missing out. Plus, get a simple but powerful Pulse-Pause Experiment to try this week.

This isn't about restriction - it's about liberation. It's about reclaiming your attention, energy, and agency in an information environment designed to capture and keep them.

New episodes every Wednesday.

In this episode:

Just over five weeks ago, we began a journey together to understand the information epistemic crisis - why it's so hard to know what's true, why we can't agree on basic facts, and why information feels overwhelming. Today, we pause to reflect on that journey, celebrate how far we've come, and prepare for what's next.

The Journey So Far:

• Week 1: Introduction to the epistemic crisis and The Jellyfish Philosophy
• Week 2: Sitting with confusion and exploring truth vs. trust
• Week 3: The exhaustion of verification and filter bubbles
• Week 4: Navigating different realities and motivated reasoning
• Week 5: Intellectual humility and historical perspective

What's Changed For Me:

• Jon's personal reflection on how this understanding has transformed his relationship with information
• The difference between intellectual understanding and lived application
• The challenges that remain despite greater understanding
• The unexpected gifts that have emerged from this journey

What We've Built Together:

• Understanding why we can't agree on basic facts (truth vs. trust)
• Recognizing why verification is exhausting (the system changed)
• Seeing how echo chambers form (algorithms plus human psychology)
• Understanding why smart people defend wrong positions (motivated reasoning)
• Discovering why saying "I might be wrong" is strength (intellectual humility)
• Learning how we've survived this before (historical perspective)

The Milestone Moment:

• Completing Pillar 1: The Information Epistemic Crisis
• Why understanding the problem deeply matters
• How this foundation will support the solutions to come
• A celebration of sitting with complexity when most can't

Looking Ahead:

• Preview of Pillar 2: Information Hygiene
• How we'll transition from understanding to doing
• The practical tools and frameworks coming in the weeks ahead

This Week's Practice:Complete the "Pillar 1 Integration" exercise at jellyfishphilosophy.com - a guided reflection on how these concepts apply to your life.

Coming Next:Wednesday's episode will synthesize everything we've learned into your personal epistemic framework - a complete system for navigating information uncertainty

You think this is the first time humanity has panicked about information chaos?

In 1938, Americans thought Martians were invading Earth—because of a radio broadcast. In 1517, a monk with a printing press triggered religious wars across Europe. In 1960, how two men LOOKED on television changed who became president.

Every major communication revolution has created the exact chaos you're experiencing right now. And every single time, we survived.

In This Episode:

Join Jon on an energetic journey through four major information crises in human history. This isn't heavy philosophy—it's storytelling with purpose. Each crisis reveals the same pattern: disruption, chaos, panic, adaptation, and ultimately, survival.

Discover how societies adapted when:

• The printing press democratized information and destroyed the church's monopoly on truth
• Radio broadcasts couldn't be distinguished from reality
• Television made image matter more than substance
• The internet and social media created infinite competing realities

The Four Crises Explored:

1. The Printing Press (1450s-1600s) - How mass-produced books led to religious wars, then the Enlightenment
2. War of the Worlds Panic (1938) - When radio was too new for people to tell fiction from news
3. Television Era (1960s-1970s) - How moving images changed politics and trust forever
4. Viral Hoax Era (1990s-2020s) - From chain emails to "fake news," and where we are now

The Pattern (Repeated Every Time):

• Stage 1: New technology democratizes information
• Stage 2: Old gatekeepers lose control, everything feels unreliable
• Stage 3: Society fractures, panic sets in
• Stage 4: New literacy develops, standards emerge
• Stage 5: Stability returns, crisis becomes history

Key Insights:

"We are currently somewhere between Stage 3 and Stage 4. And that's actually good news—because we know what comes next."

"The printing press crisis lasted over a century. Radio and television took decades. The internet is maybe 30 years old. We're still early in the adaptation phase."

"Every medium eventually develops credibility markers, ethical guidelines, and evaluation frameworks. We're currently in that trial and error phase."

Six Historical Lessons:

1. Chaos is normal during information transitions
2. Adaptation takes time (decades, not years)
3. Literacy is learned, not innate
4. Standards emerge through collective trial and error
5. We don't go back, we move forward
6. The crisis feels permanent until it doesn't

• 
  

• This Week's Homework:The Historical Hope Exercise - Research one past information crisis and see how convinced people were that civilization was ending. Then look at what actually happened. Find three things that give you hope.

  Resources and historical timelines at jellyfishphilosophy.com

  Why This Matters:

  After four weeks of exploring why our current information environment feels overwhelming, this episode offers something rare: perspective and hope. Not false optimism, but historical evidence that humanity navigates information chaos and comes out stronger.

  If you're feeling overwhelmed, cynical, or worried we won't survive this—this episode is medicine.

  Next Monday: We reflect on everything we've learned in Pillar 1. Then Wednesday, we synthesize it all into your personal epistemic framework before moving to Pillar 2.

  The Current podcast - Navigate information chaos without losing your mind. New episodes Monday and Wednesday. Based on The Jellyfish Philosophy by Jon Sanchez.

If you've ever felt like you lost an argument even though you had the better point, this Float is for you.

In a culture that rewards certainty and punishes doubt, intellectual humility feels like weakness. But what if the strongest people you know are the ones willing to say "I might be wrong"?

This week, Jon reflects on what it means to hold beliefs firmly enough to act on them, but lightly enough to change them when you encounter better information.

In This Episode:

Join Jon as he explores the courage it takes to practice intellectual humility in a world screaming for certainty. Through personal stories and cultural observations, discover why changing your mind isn't flip-flopping—it's wisdom.

You'll hear about:

• The fail-fast methodology and how it applies beyond software development
• A powerful social media moment that demonstrates humility in action
• Why "news was news" before it became entertainment
• The cost of tribal epistemology on our ability to update beliefs
• Five questions to examine your beliefs with genuine curiosity

Notable Quotes:

"Intellectual humility is holding your beliefs firmly enough to act on them, but lightly enough to change them when you encounter better information."

"The best response to attacks on your character is living in a way that makes those attacks obviously false."

"Real strength is saying 'I'm going to follow the evidence even if it leads me somewhere uncomfortable.'"

Key Concepts:

• Fail-fast methodology
• Intellectual humility vs. weakness
• Tribal epistemology
• Locus of control
• Strategic resource allocation

This Week's Practice:The Belief Examination - Five questions to help you hold your beliefs with both confidence and humility. Not to abandon what you believe, but to understand why you believe it.

Find the Belief Examination worksheet at jellyfishphilosophy.com

Why This Matters:

We've spent four weeks understanding the epistemic crisis. This week marks a shift—from diagnosing problems to developing the mindset needed for solutions. Intellectual humility isn't just a nice idea; it's the foundation for everything that follows in Pillar 2.

If you're tired of conversations that go nowhere, if you're exhausted by certainty culture, if you want to be the person who models something better—start here.

Next Wednesday: We explore historical information crises and discover we've faced information chaos before. Spoiler: We survived every time.

The Current podcast - Navigate information chaos without losing your mind. New episodes Monday and Wednesday. Based on The Jellyfish Philosophy by Jon Sanchez.

What if you're wrong about something important right now, and your brain won't let you see it?

Not because you're stupid. Because of how human cognition works.

Monday's Float explored the pain of loving people in different information realities. Today we explore WHY - the psychological mechanisms that make smart, good people end up believing incompatible things.

What we explore:

The research:

• Dan Kahan (Yale): Identity-protective cognition and why smarter people are MORE polarized
• Jonathan Haidt: Moral foundations and why groups apply different frameworks
• Daniel Kahneman: System 1 vs System 2 thinking and the backfire effect

Real examples across domains:

• Business decisions (my own motivated reasoning disaster)
• Sports fans watching the same play differently
• Religious belief systems
• Flat Earth believers (including those who died trying to prove it)

Key insight: Intelligence doesn't protect you from motivated reasoning - it makes you BETTER at it. Smart people are better at constructing convincing arguments for what they already want to believe.

Seven signs of motivated reasoning in yourself:

1. Instant certainty
2. Selective skepticism
3. Asymmetric standards
4. Finding reasons vs seeking truth
5. Emotional reactions to evidence
6. Can't articulate the other side
7. Never changing your mind

Eight strategies for better thinking:

• Separate identity from belief
• Pre-commit to criteria
• Seek best counterarguments
• Consider opportunity costs
• Consult your past self
• Use disagreement as data
• Create accountability structures
• Practice small updates

This week's practice: The Belief Audit - pick one strong belief and honestly assess whether you're truth-seeking or position-defending.

Episode Length: 31 minutes w/ Bonus Song

Bonus Song: Riding Elephants

Part of The Current podcast - educational deep dives every Wednesday on navigating the information age.

When Your People Are in Different Realities

For the past three weeks, we've been exploring the information epistemic crisis from a structural perspective: how algorithms work, why verification is exhausting, how echo chambers form, why we can't agree on truth anymore.

Today gets deeply personal.

We're talking about what the epistemic crisis actually feels like in your relationships. In your family. With people you love.

In today's family and friends network you are almost certain to have someone you used to interact with where that interaction has changed. Eggshells may now be part of your every interaction.

Today we explore a personal experience within my own network where this has impacted how we interact as a unit, and how we've all had to make changes to accommodate this new dynamic. But perhaps more importantly, how we're able and allowed to grieve over the loss of those connections.

The person is still there. The love and respect is still there. But the connection - the ability to think through the world together - that's gone - or at least, not the same.

And it hurts in a way that's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it.

The Grief is Real

This isn't just "different opinions." This is loss.

The loss of:

• Being able to think together
• Mutual respect for each other's thinking
• Shared concern about the same things
• Trust in each other's judgment
• The future you imagined with this person

All of these losses are real. And they deserve to be honored, not minimized.

Why This is So Hard

• It threatens your identity (relationships are part of how we understand ourselves)
• It feels like betrayal (even though it's not)
• It's invisible to others (no one can see this grief)
• There's no resolution (it doesn't get better with time like other grief)
• You're helpless (you can't make them see what you see)

What Doesn't Work

I share what I've tried that hasn't worked:

What Might Help

Not solutions - because there aren't easy solutions. But approaches that have helped me find some peace:

The Grief Acknowledgment Practice:

Pick one person you're experiencing this division with. Write down (just for yourself):

• What am I grieving about this relationship? Be specific.
• What do I still have with this person? What's still good?
• What's one small way I can connect this week that doesn't require shared reality?

Connection doesn't always require conversation. Sometimes it requires shared experience, shared silence, shared presence.

This episode is for you if:

• You've lost the ability to have real conversations with someone you love
• You feel grief over a relationship that's still physically there but emotionally distant
• You're tired of surface-level conversations when you used to go deep
• You wonder how someone you respect can believe things that seem so wrong
• You're carrying invisible grief that nobody else seems to understand

Wednesday: We explore the psychology of motivated reasoning - why smart, good people believe things that seem obviously wrong to us. We'll look at confirmation bias, identity-protective cognition, and how our tribal affiliations shape what we can even hear.

It won't solve the problem. But understanding might lead to compassion.

grief, relationships, family division, political division, epistemic crisis, information bubbles, echo chambers, connection, boundaries, emotional wellness, mental health, family dynamics, disagreement, shared reality

Chapters:

00:00 INTRO HOOK

01:00 PART ONE: THE CATCH-UP

03:03 PART TWO: ECHO CHAMBERS VS FILTER BUBBLES

07:02 PART THREE: THE CONSEQUENCES

09:52 PART FOUR: BREAKING OUT

15:31 PART FIVE: THE JELLYFISH APPROACH

17:58 CHALLENGE & THE WEEK AHEAD

20:52 BONUS SONG: FALSE OATH (Rock)

"Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles: How Algorithms Create Parallel Realities"

Try this: Open your news app. Look at the top 5 stories. Now ask a friend (especially one who thinks differently) to do the same.

Compare what you see.

I bet you're looking at different realities.

This week on The Current, we dive deep into how algorithmic personalization creates echo chambers and filter bubbles—and why most of us don't even realize we're in one.

You'll learn:

• The difference between echo chambers (your choice) and filter bubbles (algorithmic)
• How we got from shared reality to parallel information universes
• Why algorithms optimize for engagement, not accuracy
• The attention economy and how your feed is designed to keep you scrolling
• How personalization works and why it's invisible
• The real consequences: epistemic closure, false certainty, radicalization
• The Bubble Check: How to recognize you're in one
• 8 practical strategies for breaking out

Featuring insights from:

• Eli Pariser (who coined "filter bubbles")
• Tristan Harris (former Google designer on the attention economy)

Practical Tools:

• The Bubble Check (5 diagnostic questions)
• Weekly Perspective Rotation
• The Bubble Comparison Exercise
• Reality Check Network building
• Algorithm manipulation strategies

Key Insight: This isn't a conspiracy. It's a business model. Social media companies optimize for engagement because engagement equals revenue. Echo chambers are just the side effect.

This Week's Challenge:Find someone in a different information bubble. Ask them: "What are the top three news stories in your feed?" Compare with yours. Don't argue—just observe the difference.

Episode Length: 25 minutes

This is The Current—educational deep dives every Wednesday on navigating the information age.

This Week's Challenge:

The Bubble Comparison Exercise

1. Find someone in a different information bubble
2. Ask: "What are your top 3 news stories right now?"
3. Compare with yours
4. Don't argue—observe the difference
5. Ask: "What's one source you trust that I should check out?"
6. Actually check it out

Key Quotes:

"You think you're seeing 'the news.' You're actually seeing 'your personalized engagement-optimized content stream.'"

"Different bubbles are talking about completely different 'everyones.'"

"You're in a bubble. I'm in a bubble. We're all in bubbles. That's not a moral failure—it's the architecture of modern information systems."

"Awareness creates options. Understanding your bubble is the first step to navigating beyond it."

Expert References:

• Eli Pariser - Filter Bubbles
• Tristan Harris - Attention Economy / Center for Humane Technology

What's Next:

Monday's Float: The emotional experience when people you love are in completely different information realities. The grief of division and how to maintain connection.

Wednesday: The psychology of motivated reasoning—why smart people believe things that seem obviously wrong.

Episode Tags: echo chambers, filter bubbles, algorithms, social media, personalization, epistemic crisis, media literacy, critical thinking, information bubbles, Eli Pariser, Tristan Harris

False Oath Lyrics

Serpent tongue

Words like knives

Twisting truth

Shattering lives

Whispers bloom

Secrets kept

Control is all

False oath!

Believe nothing

False oath!

Information is power

False oath!

Trust no one

Blind faith

Empty shell

Crush the weak

Cast them to hell

Shattered bone

Written & Produced by: Hopskotia Music

Chapters:

0:00 Intro Hook

00:50 Part One: The Verification Spiral

06:05 Part Two: Why Verification has become Impossible

09:25 Part Three: The Emotional Toll

11:47 Part Four: Permission and Practice

15:24: Closing

17:47: Bonus Song: Drift With The Tide

The Setup:

Last week on The Current, we explored the epistemic crisis—why we can't agree on what's true anymore. We talked about the distinction between truth and trust, how algorithms create parallel realities, and why verification has become so difficult.

Today gets personal. We're talking about what it FEELS like when you try to verify information in 2025.

The Story:

I tell you about my three-hour verification spiral—trying to check one simple statistic and ending up with seventeen tabs, contradicting fact-checkers, paywalled research, and more confusion than when I started.

It's a story you'll recognize because you've lived some version of it.

What We Explore:

The Verification Spiral:

• Starting with a simple question
• The citation maze
• Contradicting fact-checkers
• The meta-problem of verifying your verification
• The emotional aftermath of failure

Why This Has Become Impossible:

1. Volume: Too much to verify, information moves too fast
2. Access: Paywalls, technical language, unavailable sources
3. Expertise: Can't really assess sources outside your field
4. Sophistication: Misinformation has gotten really good
5. Multiplication: The more you look, the more complicated it gets

The Emotional Toll:

• The anxiety of uncertain ground
• The guilt of not doing enough
• The cynicism that comes from repeated failure
• The loneliness of uncertainty in a certain world

Permission Structures:

I offer five permissions that might feel radical:

1. You don't have to verify everything - It's literally impossible, so stop feeling guilty
2. "I don't know" is a complete sentence - You don't owe everyone your opinion
3. Trusting imperfect sources is okay - Build trust consciously, not perfectly
4. Changing your mind is strength - Update beliefs when new info emerges
5. Mental health > maximum information - Sanity matters more than completeness

This Week's Practice:

The Verification Triage - Before trying to verify something, ask:

1. Does this require action from me?
2. Do I have the time and expertise to verify this properly?
3. Will verifying this improve my life or decision-making?

This isn't intellectual laziness. It's strategic wisdom.

The Deeper Practice:Sitting with uncertainty. Practicing being okay with not knowing. Holding questions lightly instead of gripping them tightly.

Key Quotes:

"Three hours. No answer. Just exhaustion. And I felt like a failure."

"Having access to information and being able to verify information are two completely different things."

"'Do your own research' has become almost a joke—not because research is bad, but because genuinely rigorous research is impossible given time, access, and expertise constraints."

"Uncertainty, in our current information environment, is often the most truthful position available."

"You're not stupid. You're not slow. You're not failing. You're demonstrating more intellectual honesty than most people."

What's Next:

Wednesday: We explore one of the biggest reasons verification is so hard—algorithmic echo chambers and filter bubbles. How the algorithms create parallel realities and what you can actually do about it.

Episode Tags: verification exhaustion, information overload, fact-checking, epistemic crisis, digital wellness, mental health, uncertainty, intellectual humility