Episode
SPECIAL EDITION: The Stranger in the Mirror
- Published
- Mar 29, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1202
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://rss.com/podcasts/the-story-of-us/2669974
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Summary
You've changed. More than you know. More than you're probably comfortable admitting. Not gradually. Not just a little. Fundamentally. Repeatedly. And you're not done yet. In this rare and deeply personal solo episode, host Jeff Ellison steps away from the guest chair and turns the microphone — and the mirror — on himself. What begins with an ordinary Tuesday morning and a steamed-up bathroom mirror becomes something far more searching: a raw, honest, and at times uncomfortably beautiful meditation on identity, impermanence, and what it means to keep becoming someone new while carrying everything you've already been. This one is different. And if you're a human being in the middle of your own story — which you are — it may be exactly what you needed to hear today. In this episode, Jeff explores: The jarring moment he looked in the mirror and saw his father's face looking back — and everything that moment cracked open Why we are, biologically and philosophically, never quite the same person twice — and why we fight it so hard The Buddhist concept of Anicca — impermanence — and why the self is not a noun but a verb, an ongoing, never-finished becoming The Ship of Theseus and what it means that your skeleton, your skin, your liver — your very body — quietly replaces itself while you're busy living your life The pivotal moments that don't just change you gradually, but draw a hard line between the before and the after: graduation, travel, parenthood, turning 50, chronic pain, and the decision to build something that matters Why clinging to an old version of yourself isn't loyalty — it's grief dressed up as identity What exploring Buddhist philosophy and meditation revealed about the difference between the self and the weather passing through it How launching The Story of Us…