Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Dan Koch just finished a seven-and-a-half-year process and came out the other side a fully licensed clinical psychologist. So I did what any friend would do — took over his podcast, gave him a week off from prepping, and made him answer every question I have been saving. He did zero prep on purpose. What we got is the conversation you have with someone you have known long enough to skip the throat-clearing: what existential therapy actually gave him clinically, why he moved from the big abstract questions toward attention and embodiment, why he thinks Byung-Chul Han is right but needs to be cut with whole milk, and then two hours on music, which is where both of us actually live. Dan was in an emo band for ten years and a commercial composer for ten more before any of the psychology happened, and he is currently building something on the psychology of music. Somewhere in there we get to the mosh pit as endorphin technology, the irreducible amateurism of punk as a kind of human dignity, why the Refused frontman walked backstage before "New Noise" to tell my thirteen-year-old do you want to know why I do this, and my ongoing public campaign to get Five Iron Frenzy to play Theology Beer Camp. This is the full Substack version. Bring your record collection.
You can get the second hour of the conversation and the ad-free podcast feed by joining up at ProcessThis.SubStack.com
Dan Koch just finished a seven-and-a-half-year process and came out the other side a fully licensed clinical psychologist. So I did what any friend would do — took over his podcast, gave him a week off from prepping, and made him answer every question I have been saving. He did zero prep on purpose. What we got is the conversation you have with someone you have known long enough to skip the throat-clearing: what existential therapy actually gave him clinically, why he moved from the big abstract questions toward attention and embodiment, why he thinks Byung-Chul Han is right but needs to be cut with whole milk, and then two hours on music, which is where both of us actually live. Dan was in an emo band for ten years and a commercial composer for ten more before any of the psychology happened, and he is currently building something on the psychology of music. Somewhere in there we get to the mosh pit as endorphin technology, the irreducible amateurism of punk as a kind of human dignity, why the Refused frontman walked backstage before "New Noise" to tell my thirteen-year-old do you want to know why I do this, and my ongoing public campaign to get Five Iron Frenzy to play Theology Beer Camp. This is the full Substack version. Bring your record collection.
You can get the second hour of the conversation and the ad-free podcast feed by joining up at ProcessThis.SubStack.com
