As always, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Read my bestselling novel, Monsters in My Mind: https://bit.ly/431rY3U

Follow me on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Nick-Oliveri/author/B09NLBSHV5?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1737603747&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

X: @faultyharb

Instagram: @nick0liveri

In this episode, I examine the modern notion of genius and argue that the word has been so overused it has nearly lost its meaning. Genius is often mistaken for high intelligence, professional success, or the ability to function smoothly within systems. Just as often, it is treated as a distant historical curiosity, safely removed from the present and stripped of its disruptive force.

I propose a more grounded definition of genius as something genuinely rare. Genius is the externalization of a capacity most people do not possess, either the ability to see what others cannot see or to do what others are unable to do. It is not an affect, a refusal, or a posture, and it is not synonymous with talent, intelligence, or skill, though it may involve aspects of all three.

Drawing from philosophy, art, science, literature, and music, this episode explores real examples of genius throughout history and examines why people so often dislike the genuine article. Genius threatens the ego, violates norms effortlessly, and exposes uncomfortable truths. The episode ends with a quiet warning about what happens when we label competence as genius and mistake safety for brilliance.

In Part 2, I define what a real writer is without apology. A writer writes. Period. This episode moves past diagnosis and into responsibility, examining writing not as self expression or inspiration, but as obligation, discipline, and privilege.

I address common counterarguments, including family obligations, trauma, illness, and addiction, with intellectual fairness, then dismantle them by looking at the historical record. Writers and artists have produced enduring work while facing conditions far harsher than inconvenience or self doubt. Writing has never required ideal circumstances. It has always required seriousness.

This episode reframes writing as an act of sovereignty over one’s own mind, rejects the outsourcing of struggle to abstract excuses, and ends with the only command that matters. Write anyway.

In Part 1 of this two-part episode, I dissect the modern notion of “writer’s block” and argue that the term itself functions as a linguistic alibi, one that falsely implies an external impediment to a fundamentally solitary act. Writing does not happen in crowds, and nothing outside the writer can prevent the sentence from being written.

This episode separates real psychological and physical hardship, including fatigue, burnout, grief, depression, and illness, from what is more often an indulgent and socially reinforced avoidance of the work itself. I examine how the idea of writer’s block is normalized within creative communities, how deadlines become a substitute for discipline, and how resistance to writing is mischaracterized as incapacity rather than a confrontation with the subconscious.

Drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, and the lived practices of writers throughout history, Part 1 diagnoses the lie and prepares the ground for a harder question. If writers facing poverty, illness, addiction, and despair could still produce great work, what exactly is stopping you?

In this episode, I examine a cultural assumption that rarely gets challenged: the idea that independent bookstores are inherently more ethical, more supportive, and more virtuous than large retailers simply by virtue of being smaller.

As an independent novelist who has handled every part of my own career — production, publishing, financing, marketing, and distribution — I reflect on my lived experiences with indie bookstores, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. While some independent bookstores have supported me generously and authentically (and I continue to support them in return), many others loudly champion “support indie” rhetoric while primarily stocking from the same major publishers as big-box retailers and remaining deeply resistant to independent authors.

This episode challenges the moralization of where we spend our money, critiques the myth that small businesses are automatically ethical, and argues for a more honest, reciprocal approach to supporting writers and culture. Support should be earned through action, not granted by slogans — and no business, large or small, should be exempt from scrutiny.

In this episode, I talk about one of my favorite books of all time: Voltaire’s Candide. I’ve read it half a dozen times, and it remains the only book that reliably makes me laugh during the darkest periods of my life. Written in the 18th century, Candide is a brutally funny, sharply written mirror of the suffering, chaos, optimism, disillusionment, and the absurdity of the world and the way it is, it was, and always will be.

I give a grounded, accessible synopsis of the novella, explore Voltaire’s life and the historical events that shaped this work, and reflect on how its lessons remain shockingly relevant today. With conversations everywhere about male loneliness, rising suicide rates, opioid and drug addiction crises, infanticide, genocide, abuse, constant global catastrophe, doomscrolling, pandemics, wars, and the crushing weight of macro-issues, Candide offers a radically different kind of wisdom: you can’t fix the world, but you can cultivate your "own garden."

This episode blends humor, philosophy, personal reflection, literary analysis, psychological insight, and my own personal anecdotes. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the state of humanity or wondered how to live meaningfully in a chaotic world, Voltaire and his three-hundred-year-old novella have something for you.

As always, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Read my bestselling novel, Monsters in My Mind: https://bit.ly/431rY3U

Follow me on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Nick-Oliveri/author/B09NLBSHV5?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1737603747&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

X: @faultyharb

Instagram: @nick0liveri

Youtube: @TheNickOliveri

In this bonus episode, I read one of the central poems from my book This Book Is Expensive: a raw, mythic meditation on endurance, self-exile, and the brutal necessity of moving forward even when the world behind you has rotted away.

This piece traces the solitary traveler who walks through barren steppes, mockery, spiritual desolation, and pursuit, only to discover that meaning is not a destination but a continuous act of motion. The poem moves through loneliness, fleeting beauty, illusion, the threat of wolves and winter, the temptations of despair, and the strange liberation that comes when nothing remains but the next step.

This reading is for anyone who has left something toxic behind… and found the path forward to be just as unforgiving, but somehow more honest. It is for those who persist without promise, who walk without guarantee, and who know intimately that the journey itself is the gift.

As always, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Read my bestselling novel, Monsters in My Mind: https://bit.ly/431rY3U

Follow me on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Nick-Oliveri/author/B09NLBSHV5?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1737603747&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

X: @faultyharb

Instagram: @nick0liveri

Youtube: @TheNickOliveri

In Part 2, we move beneath the surface and explore the deeper origins of tropes , their roots in myth, psychology, and the human soul. Drawing from Jung, Joseph Campbell, and the collective unconscious, I examine how archetypes once served as living, spiritual structures of storytelling… and how corporations and cowardly trend-chasing authors flattened those archetypes into lifeless tropes.

This episode reveals the mythic, psychological, and spiritual architecture behind real storytelling, and makes the case for resurrecting fiction through interiority, courage, and genuine human depth. If Part 1 diagnosed the disease, Part 2 explains the organism that got infected... and how writers can heal it.