{"podcast":{"title":"I am OPTimist","slug":"i-am-optimist-7143643","podcast_index_feed_id":7143643,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/731823.rss","website_url":"https://www.monikabravo.blog/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/731823/a21b09d8cc174423adcae82bcde087d4.jpg","author":"Monika Bravo","episode_count":176,"summary":"Exploring the creative architecture of a polymath and multidisciplinary artist, sharing a living and individuated journey across shadow work, bitcoin, evolution, astrology, myths, art, and the principles of freedom, Austrian economics, and natural law.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-26T02:17:21.181753+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-am-optimist-7143643"},"episode":{"title":"The Circular Mirror","slug":"the-circular-mirror","published_at":"2026-02-25T01:19:10+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-am-optimist-7143643/the-circular-mirror","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-am-optimist-7143643","url":"https://www.monikabravo.blog/p/the-circular-mirror","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/189086197/ff838b76abd828b118bbe25d45b54de0.mp3","summary":"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 visualizing the different things that I wanted to do. Somehow I was projecting into my mind what I wanted to achieve. My mom would ask what I was doing, and I would say I am reading and daydreaming. She would answer keep on reading and daydreaming, and that became part of the understanding that my reality was something I could create. It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. — Jules Henri Poincaré, Science and Method (original French: Science et Méthode), 1908. When I was around thirteen and entered a darkroom for the first time, I witnessed the miracle of photographic pr…","meta_description":"Movement I: Epistemology Metacognition is the awareness of awareness itself; the capacity to observe the structure that generates thought while experience…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1641,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/i-am-optimist-7143643/episodes/the-circular-mirror/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-am-optimist-7143643/the-circular-mirror.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}