Don't Fear Life — A Conversation with Philip Cozzolino

What does a research psychologist who has spent 25 years studying mortality do when he realizes he's been cocooning?

He gets a motorcycle.

In this episode of Miles Shared, I sit down with Philip Cozzolino — a Research Associate Professor at the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, an accomplished singer-songwriter, and a rider with less than a year on two wheels. Philip's research focuses on how accepting our mortality, rather than denying it, changes how we live. His central insight: fear of death often plays out as fear of life.

He came to motorcycling through a familiar door — Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Down planted a seed — but what he brought to it is anything but ordinary. After nearly two decades in England, a return to the US, Covid, and a string of family losses, Philip found himself cocooning. He decided to do something about it. At 56, he took the MSF course, bought a 2022 Triumph Street Twin 900, and hasn't stopped riding since.

We talk about the mindfulness bubble that hits him the second he throws a leg over the bike, why motorcyclists are dispositionally optimistic in a way that's worth understanding, what it means to make creative work — music, videos, a conversation like this one — and put it into the world, and what he'd say to anyone who's been cocooning and thinking about doing something different.

Philip also runs his own YouTube channel, The Inner Road — thoughtful, unhurried videos about riding and the psychology behind it. Worth a look.

His music is at philipmarino.bandcamp.com.