The Modern Taoist
by Kit Mann
Taoism has a lot to say about modern life.The Modern Taoist is a podcast about Taoist philosophy, Taoist teachings and the ideas found in the Tao Te Ching, applied to the problems we actually face: stress, relationships, work, ambition, conflict, aging, loss, uncertainty and change.Hosted by Taoist teacher Kit Mann, each episode looks at an ancient idea and asks what it means for us now. How do we understand ourselves? How do we deal with things we can't control? How do we live with less struggle and more awareness?
Episodes
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Tao Te Now - Chapter 8
In Chapter 8 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu uses water to show how the Tao works in everyday life. Water nourishes everything without trying. It settles in the lowest places. It never forces. And everything flows toward it anyway. Using the Stephen Mitchell translation, this episode walks through…
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Weekend Check-In: Get Grounded
Grounding is having a moment. Wellness culture calls it earthing. NIH researchers have been studying it. And the Taoist tradition has been practicing it for three thousand years. In this weekend check-in, Kit explores what it actually means to feel the earth beneath your feet — what the science…
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Why We Make The Same Mistakes Over and Over
You already know what the pattern is. You’ve probably tried to stop it more than once. The problem isn’t awareness — it’s that awareness alone doesn’t reach the level where the pattern actually lives. In this episode, Kit breaks down why repeating patterns survive our best efforts to change them,...
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Tao Te Now - Chapter 7
The Tao Has Nothing at Stake — Chapter 7 of the Tao Te Ching Chapter 7 asks a question most people never think to ask: why does the Tao work the way it does? The answer Lao Tzu gives is this: the Tao is inexhaustible because it has no desires for itself. It holds everything and sustains…
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Weekend Check-In: Nesting In The Fall
You Are Not Lazy. You Are In October. | The Modern Taoist Weekend Check-In Why do you feel like slowing down when autumn arrives? Why does the couch suddenly look better than your plans, and why does going to bed early feel strangely guilty? In this Weekend Check-In, Kit Mann explores the Taoist...
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Do Taoists Believe In Ghosts?
Every October, people feel it — the sense that the dead are closer than usual. Halloween is just the pop-culture echo of something much older: the recognition that the unseen world is real, and that this time of year carries a different weight. In this episode of The Modern Taoist, Kit Mann goes...
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Tao Te Now Chapter 6
The Modern Taoist — Tao Te Now, Chapter 6 Kit Mann on the five lines in the Tao Te Ching that make the biggest claim in the book and then immediately make it personal. Chapter 6 calls the Tao the Great Mother — empty yet inexhaustible, the source of infinite worlds — and then turns directly to…
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Weekend Check-In: Time to Rest
The Modern Taoist — Rest Is Not the Same Thing as Stopping Kit Mann on why the weekend you spent doing nothing still left you exhausted on Monday morning. This episode draws a distinction that productivity culture never bothered to make: the difference between stopping and actually resting. One…
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Ask Me Anything Vol 5
The Modern Taoist — Ask Me Anything | Episode 5 Kit Mann answers six listener questions in the latest Ask Me Anything episode of The Modern Taoist — covering clinical anxiety and depression, perimenopause, whether Taoism is only for older people, what the tradition actually says about death,...
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The Tao Te Now - Chapter 5
The Tao Te Now — Chapter 5 Chapter 5 opens with the most uncomfortable claim Lao Tzu has made so far. The Tao does not take sides. It gives birth to both good and evil and does not choose between them. The sage does not organize the world into people who deserve care and people who do not. She...
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Weekend Check-In - Learning To Notice
In this weekend check-in, Kit Mann makes the case that the noticing practice does not start in the meditation sitting or in the hard conversation. It starts in the moments that have nothing at stake. The temperature of the air when the door opens. The weight of the coffee cup. The face of the...
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Why We Argue
Why do couples argue about the smallest things when the argument is rarely about the thing itself? In this episode of The Modern Taoist, Kit Mann explores the Taoist view of relationships, conflict, ego, and communication. He looks at why arguments create winners and losers, how unspoken...
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The Tao Te Now - Chapter 4
The Tao Te Now — Chapter 4 Chapter 4 is eight lines. The shortest chapter yet. And in those eight lines, Lao Tzu makes three of the most striking observations in the entire text. The Tao is like a well — used but never used up. The void it describes is not emptiness but the space where all...
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Weekend Check In: Time to Meditate
Sit Down Most people who find Taoism do so through the ideas. The philosophy resonates. The way of looking at things shifts. And then they go back to their lives without ever sitting down to do the one thing the tradition has always been built around. In this weekend check-in, Kit Mann makes the...
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Navigating Bad News
Navigating Bad News Bad news does not wait for a good time. It arrives in grocery stores and parking lots and at the dinner table in the middle of an otherwise ordinary Tuesday. And the world rearranges itself, and the person has to find a way to keep moving inside the rearranged world. In this...
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The Tao Te Now - Chapter 3
The Tao Te Now — Chapter 3 Chapter 3 is fifteen lines. Lao Tzu covers overvaluing, distrust, installed ambition, the confusion that arrives when certainty collapses, and wu wei. In that order. Without wasting a word. In this episode, Kit Mann works through the chapter line by line — the...
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Weekend Check-In: Changes Are Coming
You Knew This Was Coming Change arrived this week for someone listening to this. It always does. And the response, almost universally, is some form of: I never saw that coming. In this weekend check-in, Kit Mann makes the case that most of the time, on some level, the person did see it coming.…
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You Are Not Required To Be Pure
You Are Not Required to Be Pure Someone looked across a table recently and said: I thought you were supposed to be some kind of guru or something. That sentence is the whole of this episode. There is a picture of what a spiritually serious person looks like. Measured. Elevated. Careful with...
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Tao Te Now - Chapter 2
The Tao Te Now — Chapter 2 Chapter 2 follows immediately from where Chapter 1 left off, and it wastes no time. The moment you decide what is beautiful, something else becomes ugly. The moment you decide what is good, something else becomes bad. Lao Tzu is not making a point about subjectivity. He...
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Weekend Check-In - Be Kind To Yourself
Find Some Time for Yourself This Weekend When did you last do something purely for yourself? Not to recover so you can work better. Not to be a better partner or parent or friend. Just because you wanted to. For a lot of people that question produces either a blank or a memory that is further…
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Speak Your Truth
Speaking Your Truth There is the thing you actually think. And there is the thing you say instead. Not because you are dishonest. But because somewhere along the way, most people learned that what they actually think is not always welcome. That it creates friction. That it costs something in the...
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Tao Te Now - Chapter One
The Tao Te Now — Chapter 1 This is a new series. Every week, alongside the main Tuesday episode and the weekend check-in, we are going to sit with one chapter of the Tao Te Ching. In order. All the way through. Not as a lecture. Not as a study of ancient Chinese philosophy. As a conversation with…
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Weekend Check-In - When You're The Only One
What do you do when the people closest to you are not doing any of this? When your partner escalates every disagreement. When your family runs on guilt and obligation. When the people you love most are the ones making it hardest to live the way you are trying to live. The answer is not tolerance....
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When Life Feels Stagnant
When Life Feels Stagnant Most conversations about stagnation start with the same question: how do I get the momentum back? In this episode, Kit Mann argues that this is the wrong question — because it assumes stagnation is one thing, when it is actually two things that feel identical from the...
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Weekend Check-In: Back To Basics
This Is Not Just a Philosophy Podcast A lot of people listen to shows like this one the same way they read books they find interesting. They take something in, find it resonant, think about it for a while, and then go back to their lives more or less unchanged. The ideas join the collection of...
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Stop Going To War With Your Past Self
Most people who have done real work on themselves end up in the same strange place. They have genuinely changed. They are not who they were. And they cannot stop being at war with the person they used to be. In this episode, Kit Mann makes the case that sustained regret is not accountability. It...
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Weekend Check in -There Is No "But" in Taoism
I love what Taoism says about living in the present, but I can't stop worrying. I know I need to let this go, but I've been hurt too many times. I'm sorry I did that, but here's why. The word but does not add to what came before it. It cancels it. In this weekend check-in, Kit Mann looks at the...
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Let's Not Try So Hard
Lets Not Try So Hard Most people who begin a serious spiritual practice end up in the same place eventually. Not enlightened. Exhausted. Every difficult moment becomes a test of the practice. Every negative emotion becomes evidence of insufficient development. The tradition that was supposed to...
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Weekend Check-In - The End of Summer
The Summer Is Almost Over — And That Is Not a Bad Thing Something happens in late August that most people feel immediately. The light shifts. The shadows are longer. The air in the morning carries something that was not there two months ago. The season is talking to you. For a lot of people this...
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Reconnecting in a Disconnected World
The schedule belongs to the employer. The food comes from somewhere you'll never see. The light is set by a switch. And the connection to natural cycles that Taoism considers the ground of everything has been so thoroughly dismantled that most people aren't sure they ever had it. In this episode,...
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Weekend Check-In: The Tao is Everywhere. Just Look
The Tao Is Already There — You Just Have to Look It's in the weed pushing through the sidewalk crack. It's in the dog who is completely inside the joy of this particular walk with no memory of yesterday's and no plan for tomorrow's. It's in song lyrics you've known for twenty years that suddenly...
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What is Love, Anyway
We have spent our lives being taught that love needs a relationship to be real. That loving someone who doesn't love you back is a wound to be healed. That loving someone you've lost, or left, or grown apart from is unfinished emotional business — an attachment that hasn't been properly…
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Stop Explaining Your Every Move
Stop Explaining Yourself Most people have developed the habit of providing a reason for every decision they make. Not just the big ones. The small ones too. Why they left early. Why they said no. Why they need the day to themselves. Why they chose the thing they chose instead of the thing that…
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The Thinly Spread Life
The Thinly Spread Life Look at your week. Count the things that have a claim on you right now. Now ask yourself honestly: is there one thing on that list receiving the full quality of attention it deserves? For most people, the answer is no. And it has been no for a while. This episode is about…
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Don't Be An Employee Of Your Own Mind
Stop Being an Employee of Your Own Mind Most people wake up on a Saturday morning and before the coffee is made, before anything has actually happened, the mind has already produced an agenda. Something from last week that needs relitigating. A future conversation that has already gone badly. An...
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The Big Questions
Carrying Yourself Whole Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching is unusual. Instead of stating, Lao Tzu asks. Can you carry your body and soul together without separation? Can you love people without possessing them? Can you lead without controlling? Can you see what is actually there rather than the...
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Weekend Check-In - Less is the Practice
Chapter 48 — Why Less Is the Practice Most people who come to Taoism hit Chapter 48 and stop cold. Nothing is done and nothing is left undone. It reads like a riddle, or like the book is telling you to give up and opt out. Most people decide it must mean something they're not spiritually advanced...
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Motivation is NOT required
You Don't Need to Feel Motivated Motivation is not a magical condition that arrives and makes action possible. It is what action produces. And the person waiting for it to show up before they begin has the causality completely backwards. You brush your teeth without waiting to feel inspired. You...
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Weekend Check- In - 3 Taoist Things
Three Things a Taoist Does Every Day Most conversations about Taoism stay at the level of ideas. The water metaphor. The wisdom of not forcing. The value of stillness. People find these things resonant and then walk back into their lives and do exactly what they were doing before — because nobody...
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Its is NEVER the situation that is the problem
It Is Never the Situation Something goes wrong. And the immediate experience, almost every time, is that the situation is the problem — that the way forward runs through the circumstances changing, and until they do, you're stuck. Taoism has always disagreed with that reading. Not because...
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Weekend Check-In - Speaking In Absolutes
Speaking in Absolutes Is a Form of Giving Up I will never. This always happens. I'm just not the kind of person who. These sentences feel like honesty. Like finally facing the hard truth instead of pretending. They arrive with the authority of real experience behind them, and that authority makes...
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You Don't Have To Win Everyday
Life Is Not Asking You to Win Today Most people end hard days feeling like they failed them. Not because anything went wrong, exactly — but because the standard they applied to the day had nothing to do with what the day actually was. A day that deserved to be called endurance got filed under...
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Weekend Check-In - When Protection Becomes Possession
This weekend, I share a very personal experience that led me to wrestle with a much bigger question: What is the difference between protecting something and trying to possess it? It's a subtle distinction, but one that touches every part of our lives, from relationships and careers to our...
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When The World is On Fire - Be The Rain
When the World Is on Fire, Be the Rain Some seasons of life don't arrive one thing at a time. The relationship breaks, the job disappears, the family tips into crisis — and suddenly everything is burning at once. The instinct is to fight harder, clamp down, match the energy of the chaos with more...
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Weekend Check-in: Why Stillness Feels Like Doing Nothing
A listener wrote in this week with something a lot of people are feeling but haven't said out loud: they've been trying to do the things the practice asks — the stillness, the presence, the slowing down — and it's boring. The mind races. Nothing lands. The quiet that's supposed to feel like…
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Flexibility - The Strength in Yielding
The Strength in Yielding Most people would say they're flexible. And then life actually asks them to be. This episode examines the gap between believing you're adaptable and genuinely being so — and why that gap matters more than most people realise. Drawing on one of Taoism's most quietly…
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Weekend Check-In - The Over Organized Life
The Organized Life Is Not the Tao There's an entire industry built on the promise that better systems will finally make life feel manageable. More structure, more optimization, the right routine — and yet the feeling of control it's supposed to produce stays just out of reach. This weekend…
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The Closest Distance
The Closest Distance The person sitting across from you at dinner. The one who has seen you at your worst and stayed. The one whose breathing you know, whose moods you can read from across a room before a word is said. This episode is about what it actually means to be present with that person —...
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Weekend Check-in: The Little Things are the Big Things
The Little Things Are the Big Things Most people are waiting for their life to get interesting. The trip that hasn't happened yet. The version of things that arrives once the difficult patch is over. The moment when everything settles enough to actually enjoy what is here. Meanwhile, Tuesday…
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The Storm You're Standing In
When life gets genuinely hard, the advice to "be present" can feel less like wisdom and more like an instruction to sit quietly in pain. This episode is for the people who are currently inside something difficult — not after it, during it — and finding the usual answers insufficient. Using a...
About this show
Taoism has a lot to say about modern life.The Modern Taoist is a podcast about Taoist philosophy, Taoist teachings and the ideas found in the Tao Te Ching, applied to the problems we actually face: stress, relationships, work, ambition, conflict, aging, loss, uncertainty and change.Hosted by Taoist teacher Kit Mann, each episode looks at an ancient idea and asks what it means for us now. How do we understand ourselves? How do we deal with things we can't control? How do we live with less struggle and more awareness?
Hosted by
Kit Mann
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