This week we’re talking about psychedelics — the consciousness altering substances, and the extraordinary moment they are having in our culture at this time. We explore the reasons that popular interest in psychedelics has risen dramatically in recent years — although certainly not for the first time — and we consider the historical and emerging sc…

This week we're talking about Nutritious Movement, the brainchild of our brilliant friend, biomechanist, fitness expert, and best-selling author Katy Bowman. Katy's term "nutritious movement" refers to the type of movement that nourishes, educates, shapes, energizes, and repairs us in ways that support optimal health and vitality. And, as Katy expl…

This week, we're talking about Pandemic Era Discoveries. Last winter, after two years spent in various forms of social isolation, Dallas and Pilar met up at an improvised San Diego studio to catch up live and in person. We compared notes about how we'd weathered the weirdness of COVID reality, where we're at now, and some of the most rewarding stuf…

This week we’ve got a special guest episode with Brian Johnson, the creator of Optimize and the Founder + CEΦ of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. Brian has spent half of the last twenty-five years as a Founder/CEO and the other half as a Philosopher, creating hundreds of his PhilosophersNotes summaries of all sorts of brilliant books worth readin…

This week, Pilar talks with special guests Leslie Salmon Jones and Jeff W. Jones, co-founders of Afro Flow Yoga. Leslie and Jeff created Afro Flow Yoga in 2008, fusing a new blend of expressive movement and rhythmic music from their own explorations of healing and their African-American and Caribbean heritage, in West Africa, Haiti and Jamaica. Les…

This week Pilar talks to a special guest — James Beard award-winning journalist, author, and food legend Dorothy Kalins. Dorothy is the founding editor of Saveur magazine and Metropolitan Home. She's also a celebrated cookbook creator and the author of a terrific new book, The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends.…

This week on The Living Experiment we bring you an episode that has been a very long time coming — a special guest episode with New York Times bestselling author John Zeratsky. John is the co-author — with Jake Knapp —  of two terrific books, Sprint (a popular business title from 2016) and Make Time: How to Focus On What Matters Every Day, which ca…

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about the concept of the New Year — from meaningless consumer hype to contemplative pursuits that really can make a difference. We explore the potential pros and cons of leveraging the New Year as an opportunity for self-improvement, and we share the approaches we like best for pursuing change in ou…

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about Midlife — that fun and potentially funky moment when you realize you might well have fewer years ahead of you than you've already put behind you. It's a clarifying moment for many, and a moment of crisis for others. A moment when we realize that we may not have lived our own highest choices up…

Life continues to be weird. So we are just rolling with it. This week on The Living Experiment, Pilar offers some updates and options for folks who want to stay connected and who are eager keep experimenting through the rest of 2020. Get full show notes and resources at http://livingexperiment.com/mini-update/…

This week on The Living Experiment, Pilar interviews a special guest, hunter-gatherer and rewilding enthusiast Daniel Vitalis. Daniel is a well-recognized advocate for what's known as rewilding, a term that he points out means very different things to different people. To Daniel, and also to Pilar, it means reclaiming and reconnecting with aspects …

This week on The Living Experiment we're talking about Moving Forward in this unusual time in history. Thanks to COVID-19, we're still recording from a distance. Since we were last in the studio though, and even since the last time we did one of our COVID-edition Facebook Live episodes, so much has happened. We've seen new waves of conflict around …

This week our guest is Terry Wahls, MD, a physician and scientific researcher best known for her groundbreaking work reversing autoimmune diseases — including her own disabling case of multiple sclerosis, which for a time had her confined to a wheelchair with very little hope of recovery. But recover she did, and what produced her recovery was an e…

This week on The Living Experiment, our guest is Dr. Frank Lipman, one of the world's leading integrative physicians, a thought leader and innovator in the realm of disease reversal, and the author of a bunch of books, including his most recent, How to Be Well: The 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life. Frank Lipman, MD, is best known for helping high…

This week on The Living Experiment we have an extraordinary guest, functional medicine pioneer Dr. Jeffrey Bland. Dr. Bland is something of an international legend in functional medicine circles. A preeminent scientist dedicated to systems thinking, and a thought leader intent on transforming health care as we know it. Dr. Bland is a former biochem…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Dallas’s new book, The 4 Season Solution, which is now available in bookstores everywhere! In addition to recapping the central themes of the book, and hearing about the response it has gotten from early readers, we talk about the relevance of the book’s themes to the challenges so many of us …

This week on The Living Experiment we're talking about chronic disease reversal. Over the past decade there's been an emerging clinical awareness, with increasing research support, that many diseases we've been told are progressive and incurable can in fact often be turned around — or at least significantly ameliorated — through systems-based funct…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about biometric devices — the appeal these fascinating little gadgets hold and the distractions they can present. From Fitbits and Apple Watches to Muse Headbands and Oura Rings, we evaluate the ways knowing more about our own biomarkers and daily patterns can help us become better stewards of our b…

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking, once again, about trauma - this time with internationally renowned trauma expert Dr. James Gordon. Pilar talks with Dr. Gordon about his new book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma, about how we tend to get stuck in traumatic experiences of all sorts, and how we can…

This week on The Living Experiment we’re talking about Love — the romance, the heartbreak, the profound sense of connection that most of us are after. Both our desire for love and our struggles to navigate it are some of the biggest opportunities we have for growth, and for stress, both of which can have huge impacts on our health and happiness. So…

This week on The Living Experiment Pilar interviews a very special guest, clinical therapist and author Resmaa Menakem. We're talking about trauma, the effect it has on us as individuals, and also the impact it has on us in groups and as members of society. Resmaa's most recent book, My Grandmother's Hands, explores themes of ancestral and racializ…

Last week, after nearly a year away working on our books, Dallas and Pilar returned with a brand new "We're Back" episode of The Living Experiment. Soon, we'll be back again with a second new episode of the season. But in the meantime, by popular demand, we wanted to bring you a replay of our "Autumn" episode. This is the final installment in a ser…

This week on The Living Experiment, we return from a nearly one-year recording hiatus with a report from the outer limits of book writing and creative life. Dallas unpacks the contents of his forthcoming title, The 4 Season Solution. And Pilar reflects, with unexpected emotion, on both the final push to turn in her book, The Healthy Deviant AND one…

Happy Spring, everybody! It's that time of year when our bodies come out of hiding, and when it seems like everybody has a plan for improving them. Bikini body workouts, beach-ready diets, perfect tan tips, the whole bit. So we thought that this might be a good time to roll out our "Healthy vs. Hot" episode. If you're at all inclined to feel like y…

This week on The Living Experiment, in celebration of Valentine's Day, we bring you a replay of the third in a series of four special guest episodes featuring teachers from Lafayette Morehouse. For more background on this series, check out the introduction to the first Lafayette Morehouse episode, "Resistance to Pleasure". In this episode, Pilar ta…

Every season has its gifts, but we live in a culture that prefers to celebrate the bright, "go-go" energy of summer. Without the haven of a winter recovery cycle to replenish us, though, we get depleted, overstimulated, and overwhelmed. So in this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we talk about the important and under-appreciated aspects of …

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about the concept of the New Year — from meaningless consumer hype to contemplative pursuits that really can make a difference. We explore the potential pros and cons of leveraging the New Year as an opportunity for self-improvement, and we share the approaches we like best for pursuing change in ou…

There’s so much merriment, so much anticipation, and yet … the holidays can also feel like a lot of pressure to perform, to conform, to consume. Here, we share our thoughts on navigating this season with your sanity and sense of inner peace intact. From challenging the shop-and-spend cycle, to speaking your truth without inciting unnecessary confli…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about taking a Break — the value of choosing to pause a project or commitment, and the factors you might consider in doing so. We share the reasons, after 100 episodes, close to a million downloads, and 10 full seasons of live-and-in-person collaboration, we’re choosing to take a breather from our e…

This week on The Living Experiment we’re talking about Healthy Deviance (again!), so we’re calling this episode Healthy Deviance 2. First, we explore the evolution of Pilar's notion of Healthy Deviance, reflecting on how it has taken ahold and become part of a larger conversation about how to be a healthy, happy person in an often unhealthy, unhapp…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about coping — the base level, essential things we do to get through our days, particularly when we’re under pressure and stress. In a world that can lead us to feel helpless, reactive, and overburdened, it’s important to have strategies for calming our nervous system, for managing our internal and …

This week on The Living Experiment we're talking about Introverts and Extroverts — from the different ways these two distinct types show up in the world to the sometimes perplexing ways they can relate. In the process we unpack our own introverted and extroverted tendencies, and we share expert insights on what both these types have to share with, …

This week on The Living Experiment we’re talking about Motivation — the force that gets us to do, accomplish, and change the things we want to. And the force that sometimes fizzles without our really understanding why. So here, we talk about the nature and source of motivation, and the art of cultivating it in the service of our highest goals. From…

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about Meditation — its near-countless benefits for body and mind, and also the real and perceived barriers that keep many from embracing it. From the challenges of making space for a regular practice, to the frustration that can set in when we attempt to calm our chaotic minds, we talk about the blo…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about the Enneagram — a personal wisdom tool that has been transforming lives and relationships for thousands of years. The Enneagram is generally thought of as a personality typing system, and it does sort people into 9 primary types, but it's different from other personality typing systems in a va…

This week on The Living Experiment we’re talking about Weight Loss — the myths, the methods, and the massive struggle it represents for the majority of Americans today. Starting with our own frustration with the muddled messages often broadcast on this topic, we strive to set the record straight. From the madness of trying to control one’s weight t…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Quitting — the importance of knowing when to do it, and the stigma that so often accompanies that decision. From jobs and relationships, to projects and attachments, we talk about both the pain and the relief of letting go of the things we once decided to pursue. And we point out that quitting…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about being Childless by Choice. That’s a decision that an increasing number of people are making these days, so the assumption that any given person is hoping to someday "get married and have babies" is increasingly a questionable one. And yet, those who consciously decide not to have kids are ofte…

This week on The Living Experiment we’re talking about Questions — the value of asking more of them, and the potential of making inquiry a regular life practice. Rainer Maria Rilke once advised a young poet to "live in the questions," and that advice can serve all of us. So here, we share the questions we’ve found most helpful in keeping us on a go…

This week on The Living Experiment we’re talking about Suicide — the fact that it has become tragically more common in recent years, and some reasons we think that might be. We also talk about how we personally view suicide, and what we’ve learned about it in our own lives. We share expert insights about the signs that someone near you might be hav…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Orthorexia — an eating disorder in which a person becomes so obsessed with what they think of as “healthy” eating that they over-limit their diet and become unhealthy as a result. Dedicated healthy eaters sometimes write off orthorexia as nonsense, seeing the diagnosis as just another way of m…

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about Fats — the role they play in healthy eating, and the fact that a lot of what we've been told about them is all wrong. From the healthy fats your body probably needs more of, to the inflammatory fats it most definitely does not, we share what we know about America's most misunderstood macronutr…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Supplements — why you can’t rely on pills and powders for all your nourishment, and why you still might want to take some anyway. We cover the value that both multis and targeted nutrients can have in filling dietary gaps, and why what works for your friend or partner might not work for you. W…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Imposter Syndrome — that disconcerting sense you may not be entirely worthy or qualified to be doing whatever it is you are doing, and that accompanying sense of dread that it’s just a matter of time before everybody else figures that out. Imposter syndrome is a well-recognized phenomenon that…

This week we’re talking about How We See the World. This episode started out as an answer to a listener question — and then morphed, evolving into a big rambling conversation about hope and doubt, energy and attention, agency and activism, and more. It became one of those conversations where you discover what you think and feel as you are saying it…

This week on The Living Experiment, by listener request, we’re doing a special guest episode follow-up on the topic of Conscious Language, a subject we originally addressed way back in episode #66. Joining Pilar this week is Cat Thompson. She’s the teacher and friend who originally introduced Pilar to the study of Conscious Language. Conscious Lang…

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Libido — the nature of our drive for sensual and sexual contact, and the variables that can affect it, for better or for worse. We start from the assumption that a healthy libido means different things to different people, and that there is no "right" way to feel it, or do it. We explore some …

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about Functional Medicine — a systems-based approach to addressing the fundamental causes of disease and distress. Both of us have been immersed in the functional medicine movement for years — Dallas as a practitioner and Pilar as a health journalist — and we both see it as a science whose time has …

This week on The Living Experiment, we bring you Part 2 of Pilar's conversation with New York Times best selling author and teacher, Geneen Roth. Geneen has been teaching and writing about conscious eating and living for the past 30 years. Her most recent book is This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide. Through keen observation, reflection, and …

This week on The Living Experiment, while Dallas is off on adventures, Pilar has a very special guest: Geneen Roth. Geneen has written close to a dozen terrific books, including Lost and Found: One Woman's Story of Losing Her Money and Finding Her Life and When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair. She also teaches life-changing workshops a…