In this episode I speak to Norma Stevens, LCPC, the Director of Therapy Operations at Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland. Sunstone partners with companies like Beckley PsyTech, COMPASS Pathways, MindMed, MAPS (Lykos Theraputics), Reunion Neuroscience, and Usona to run studies that aim to establish the gold standard for psychedelic treatments…

You're in for a treat! Kathryn DeYoung and Zach Berman are two friends and colleagues who are also therapists that got roped into joining one of Calliope's ketamine-therapy retreats. Actually they both volunteered, each for interesting personal reasons. Each of the several ketamine experiences I facilitated for them were always equally profound, hi…

In this episode I interview the brainchild behind an increasingly influential online wiki for psychological healing, The Integral Guide to Well-Being. Levi, who prefers to stay behind-the-scenes and doesn't publicize his identity, created an interactive, graphic notebook that has around 1,300 pages, and has tens of thousands of unique readers each …

This episode features Paula Marie Scatoloni, a psychotherapist that uses sound vibrations to reset hyper- or hypo-active nervous systems after trauma. This method is called psychoacoustics, and Paula uses a tool called the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) to stimulate the tiny muscles of the inner ear, "massaging" the polyvagal nerve, and activating t…

I believe that therapists, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who recommend ketamine--and more and more are doing just that--should have a firsthand experience of ketamine themselves. Today I speak with Maria Hernandez, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia, who did just that. Maria was a participant at our Bethesda, Maryland ketamine assisted psychothe…

I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion. She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. Kristin …

Dr. John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.* He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally …

* Replay from S2 * Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert, and author of many books on sex including Getting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together. She's a psychotherapist, Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, university teacher, TEDx speaker and is the host of the podcast The Tro…

How do you know that you’re conscious? I mean, don’t you just kind of know? "The single thing that we know best from our own first person perspective and understand least from the perspective of objective science." But are we seeing signs of a dawning enlightenment in this field—signs of progress in how we understand and study consciousness? I thin…

In this replay from Season One, I speak to Deirdre Wolownick-Honnald, the mother of Free Solo superstar rock climber Alex Honnald. I learn from his Mom about the human side of this person so many think of as superhuman. Alex’s Dad, she says, was a person with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. “He was in a bubble and no one could get in.” I ask Dierd…

I speak with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of an evidence-based psychotherapeutic model called Self-Leadership (also known as Internal Family System’s therapy or IFS) that is widely recognized as one of the most compassionate and comprehensive psychotherapies available. He is on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical…

This episode is a "best-of" replay from S1 of The Soul of Life. In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Michael Mithoefer, the lead investigator that has successfully piloted the first-ever study of MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, into the third and final stage of FDA approval for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. …

"What if I could show you a way to reconnect with the whole of who you are, in service to your highest purpose as you know it? What if I could help you break out of the invisible prison in which you have been living--the one that keeps you small and scared?" Today on the Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Angela Heubner, author of Jailbreak: The Making …

George and I talk about the tragic mistake of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who actually encouraged people to smoke if it helped them quit alcohol. "My alcoholic and drug addict people painfully but successfully get sober only to die of nicotine." Bill Wilson himself died a miserable death. Kolodner has been learning the cutting…

"Your doctor doesn't even know what the nerve innervation of the female genitalia is—which in 2022 is mind boggling." Today I speak with Dr. Rachel Rubin, a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist. "I’m a boner doctor." To talk with her about the most common and serious sexual problems: Problems regarding libido, orgasm, arousal, a…

"'God' is not God’s real name." Spirituality does not shrink and fold itself tightly into the pages of a how-to manual. "The word 'soul' is one of those finger-pointing-at-the-moon words. I can’t see my soul. I can’t see your soul. I can’t measure it with a tape measure or weigh it on a scale." Russell Siler Jones wrote "Spirit in Session: Working …

We know that there is a direct link between human well-being and the health of the natural environment. When I heard about Tierra Curry’s ecological conservation work it wasn’t from reading a scholarly article about forest bathing or how much green space there is per square mile. I heard about Tierra because she had the brass to use her own body as…

Today on the Soul of Life I speak to Dr. Lesley Tate-Gould, a psychotherapist that uses Somatic Experiencing to help people overcome trauma. Lesley runs the Lido Wellness Center, an outpatient trauma and counseling practice in Newport Beach, California. We talk about her specialization in a form of body-focused trauma treatment called Somatic Exper…

Today I speak with Dr. Daniel Siegel, founder of Interpersonal Neurobiology, about the mind and how Internal Family Systems (IFS) may function in the brain. Dr. Siegel is someone I consider to be one of the most thoughtful and clear innovators in teaching and talking about neurobiology and how it affects our behaviors—and not just behaviors we can …

This video was livestreamed on 1/28/22 and can be watched here: https://youtu.be/qs-2QGsjuWE My heart is broken and grieving with the Thomas family and the Magruder community after the shooting of a 15 year-old at Col. Magruder High School in Rockville, MD on January 22nd. I'm speaking today to help create a public space where other parents can con…

Brian Lagerstrom shows people how to make food on YouTube. But he's also a chef in the real world. "You can make world class dough with a bowl and a spoon. Truly. That’s all you need." Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindful…

The James Webb Space telescope—decades in the making—finally launched from Earth recently and promises to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Who better about this milestone in astronomy than astronaut veteran of 5 space flights and former NASA science administrator, John Grunsfeld. Grunsfeld became known as the Hubble Telescope’s…

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie, a short story that is the first work of fiction to sweep the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy awards. Ken is the author of an epic fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty, in which the heroes are engineers, not wizards. Some of Ken’s stories have been adapted …

Dave Ungrady has been a man on a mission to tell the story of University of Maryland Basketball star Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose two days after he was drafted to the Boston Celtics in June 1986. He's the author of Born Ready: The Mixed Legacy of Len Bias. Next week Len Bias will finally be inducted into the NCAA Hall of Fame. For a lon…

I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion. She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. Kristin …

I speak with Father Isaac Keeley, Trappist monk and Director of the Spencer Brewery at St. Joseph’s Abbey in the Central Massachusetts town of Spencer (my hometown). The Trappist monks of Spencer have lived a life of solitude and prayer on a 2,000 acre farm with a modest business selling jams, preserves, and handmade ceremonial garments. But 10 yea…

Today I speak with Jaime Clemmer, author of Heartbroken, But Not Broken, which offers readers an intimate recounting of how she got through any parent's worst nightmare–her son’s sudden death at the age of 10. Clemmer shares the details of her unfettered grief to offer license to anyone struggling to tell their own story. She invites you to walk wi…

Today I speak with Dr. Patrick Oliver about the only drug approved currently to treat suicidal ideation: Ketamine. "Where this works is literally in making connections in the brain." Dr. Oliver is an emergency room physician that left the ER to start his own Ketamine infusion clinics because he saw a need that no one else was filling to offer life-…

How did fish evolve to walk on land? What are the details of how that process happened? Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Neil Shubin, the 2004 co-discoverer of Tiktaalik, a fish fossil that is the first evidence of so-called bridge animals with features that show the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and land mammals. Shubin is th…

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Lou Lucas, chief of Palliative Medicine at the Nebraska and Western Iowa Veterans Health Care Systems. As a palliative medicine doctor, Dr. Lucas is trained to pull together all of the specialists that might be caring for a patient with a life threating disease and implement a cohesive treatment plan that …

The pandemic of 2020 brought us supply shortages. Basics like sugar and flour were scarce. But a truck driver in Houston was making sure people didn’t run out of cake. Mark says "It’s Texas, so you know, we do things a little bit different from the rest of the country here...Gotta have cake." If you’ve ever woken up and wondered if you’re following…

Dr. Betty Martin has had her hands on people professionally for over 40 years, first as a Chiropractor, and upon retiring from that practice, as a certified Surrogate Partner, Sacred Intimate, and Somatic Sex Educator. Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Betty about the importance of getting to know your own body and your own sexuality. “My sexu…

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Jay Earley, author of Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Wholeness Using IFS. A frequent subject on this show, Internal Family Systems is a model of spiritual and therapeutic growth that I’ve practiced for the last 12 years or so that to me is the most effective tool box that I’ve ever found to addres…

David Wilcox is a quintessential folk singer, telling stories full of heart, humor, and hope, substance, searching, and style. His innate sense of adventure and authenticity is why critics and colleagues, alike, have always praised not just his artistry, but his humanity, as well. In this episode of The Soul of Life David treats me to several live …

Today on the Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Corey Allan, Sex and Marriage and Family Therapist, author of Naked Marriage, and longtime host of Sexy Marriage Radio, a podcast devoted to straight forward, honest conversations about what goes on behind closed doors in your marriage. "We don’t have sex by accident. You don’t trip and fall and wind up in…

Most of us have been conditioned our whole life to have strong moral judgments against things like addictions or suicide. Right? Aren’t these just categorically bad things that we have to fight against? This is really what is so mind-bending and revolutionary about the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychology. Michael Elkin has a reputatio…

Hari Sreenivasan joined the PBS NewsHour in 2009. He is the Anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a Senior Correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he was at CBS News, reporting for the "CBS Evening News,” "The Early Show" and "CBS Sunday Morning." Before that, he served as an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, working ext…

Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt are the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, a paradigm-changing and pioneering model of couples therapy that helped revolutionize the way psychotherapists view couples and the nature of healing. Imago uses the lens of attachment-theory—the idea that, neurobiologically, we belong to one other and are exper…

Today I speak with Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, about his trailblazing work educating a generation of doctors and therapists about how to heal from trauma. His book has been on the NYT paperback nonfiction bestseller list for 141 weeks, 24 of them in the #1 spot. We talk abo…

This episode is also available as a special visual presentation of the author's stunning photographs. John Annerino is believed to have run the longest wilderness ultramarathon ever, covering 750 miles of daunting Arizona wilderness from Mexico to Utah. In this episode of The Soul of Life we explore John's long and distinguished career a photograph…

**BONUS PREVIEW of S3E5 with IFS (Internal Family Systems) Lead Trainer Michael Elkin. This full episode drops on August 27th, 2021. Most of us have been conditioned our whole life to have strong moral judgments against things like addictions or suicide. Right? Aren’t these just categorically bad things that we have to fight against? This is really…

**BONUS PREVIEW of S3E4 with PBS Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan. Full episode drops on August 20th, 2021. Hari Sreenivasan joined the PBS NewsHour in 2009. He is the Anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a Senior Correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he was at CBS News, reporting for the "CBS Evening News,” "The Early Show…

In this preview of Episode 3 of Season 3 (releasing on 8/13/21), Drs. Harville Hendrix, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, are the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, a paradigm-changing and pioneering model of couples therapy that helped revolutionize the way psychotherapists view couples and the nature of healing through the lens of attachment-theory—th…

In this preview of S3E2 (full episode release: 8/6/21) you get a glimpse of my excitement about speaking with world-renown brain and trauma scientist, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Van der Kolk is a professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and president of the Trauma Research Foundation in Brookline, Massachusetts. ]Since the 1970…

In this preview of Season 2, Episode 1, you get a glimpse of my conversation with John Annerino, a renown adventure photographer, and author of literary essay books, photographic essays, and calendars of the American West and Old Mexico. His work has appeared in Time, LIFE, the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure and Scientific American, …

Today I speak with comedian Paul Gilmartin, former host of Dinner and a Movie on TBS. After leaving standup and television, Gilmartin started The Mental Illness Happy Hour, a podcast that puts the world of living with mental illness into sharp focus and gets a laugh. Gilmartin came up on the comedy scene in Chicago at Second City with people like B…

Is there a right way to have sex? Everybody thinks they’re doing it wrong or someone else is doing it better. There’s so much shame surrounding sex. Today on the Soul of Life I speak with two Brooklyn psychologists, Signe Simon and Simone Humphrey about their podcast, LoveLink, founded to help people talk more about sex and love. We talk about real…

Dominique Dawes is a three-time former U.S. Olympic gymnast and was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team and part of the gold-medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. Dawes recently opened her first gymnastics training academy in Clarksburg, Maryland to prove that there is a way to care for childr…

“Everything is magic until we understand it.” - Arthur C. Clark How do you know that you’re conscious? I mean, don’t you just kind of know? "The single thing that we know best from our own first person perspective and understand least from the perspective of objective science." But are we seeing signs of a dawning enlightenment in this field—signs …

Today I speak with Michael Goldberg, author of The 9 Ways of Working: How to use the the Enneagram to Discover Your Natural Strengths and Work More Effectively "The enneagram—while it’s about individual personality types—it’s really about a pathway through life, where are you?" I share with Michael the results of me taking a 20-minute online Enneag…