About this episode

The episode explores the concept of metacognition and self-reflection through personal anecdotes and philosophical insights.

Movement I: Epistemology Metacognition is the awareness of awareness itself; the capacity to observe the structure that generates thought while experience is unfolding. The unconscious mind is capable of discernment; it has its own delicate sensibility. It knows how to choose, how to divine. — Jules Henri Poincaré, “Mathematical Creation,” lecture delivered to the Société de Psychologie de Paris, 1908; later published in Science and Method (1908). As I was browsing X, I bumped into Eileen Gu [Watch video at the end of Movement I,] who had just won Olympic medals. She was asked how she thinks, and when she was responding, I saw myself reflected in her speech and in her work. I smiled unconsciously, and it led immediately to something very relaxing. I said to myself, oh, I must be doing something good. I must be observing myself being observed and then observing others. It all started again with the outside making me reflect about the inside. I first remember wanting to lock myself in my room when I was ten or eleven years old with the excuse that I wanted to read, and I would be reading a book and then I would turn it over, put it on my belly, and with my eyes open I would start…

More episodes of I am OPTimist

• My Renaissance · April 22, 2026 · 12 min
• LFG_Aries 🚀 · April 15, 2026 · 9 min
• The Shape of the Space I Did Not Know I Needed · April 9, 2026 · 16 min
• Willfully Ignorant · April 6, 2026 · 29 min
• Who is da fool? · April 1, 2026 · 10 min
• URGENT RANT · March 26, 2026 · 9 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the I am OPTimist podcast page.