Brad Hook Podcast

Megan Ashton is the founder of Unity Breathwork and a leading advocate for raising safety standards in the breathwork industry. After fifteen years of trying to heal childhood trauma through hypnotherapy, yoga, talk therapy and six ayahuasca ceremonies, one conscious connected breathwork class in Bali gave her the breakthrough none of them had, and she has spent the decade since training trauma-in...

Does your immune system have more say over your thoughts than you realize? Dr. Aoife O’Donovan, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF and director of the THRIVE Lab, has spent nearly two decades studying how psychological stress gets under the skin and into the brain. In this conversation, she explains why humans mount a full stress response to events that are long past or may ne...

Dr. Chloe West is a psychedelic neuroscientist who studies how psychedelics change the way the brain processes information and updates its beliefs about the world. Her path began at age ten, when her family moved from a small town in Georgia's Bible Belt to Kawakawa in New Zealand's Northland, and she encountered atheism, evolution and ayahuasca in the same disorienting year. Brad and Chlo...

Don Mann spent 21 years in the Navy SEAL Teams, retiring from SEAL Team Six, then another 25 as a CIA contractor. He is a New York Times bestselling author, host of the TV series Surviving Mann, and a veteran of more than 1,000 endurance events, including a double Ironman he finished after passing out at mile 32 of the run. In this conversation with Brad Hook, he describes the combat mindset that...

What happens when the striving that built your career stops working? Fabrice Desmarescaux, McKinsey partner, leader of Aberkyn in Southeast Asia and author of The Art of Retreats, joins Brad to explore the "second adulthood": the unnamed life stage that begins around 45, when raw problem-solving gives way to wisdom, judgment and the ability to hold paradox. Drawing on decades of coaching...

Ellen Hunter Gans is a writer, 41-time marathoner, Ironman triathlete, and the first person with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. In this conversation she takes us inside the Great World Race — from a packed-snow course in Antarctica's White Desert to a heat-index scorcher in Cartagena — complete with a venomous spider bite, a stolen wallet, and...

Joey Klein is the founder and CEO of Inner Matrix Systems and the author of The Inner Matrix and Relationship Alchemy. After a near-death experience at 19 pulled him out of a destructive lifestyle, he spent two decades blending ancient wisdom traditions, psychology, and neuroscience into a practical system for personal mastery — one he has now taught to more than 90,000 people, from Fortune 500 ex...

In this episode, psychologist and bestselling author Fiona Murden explores why identity—not skills—may be our greatest challenge in the age of AI. We discuss resilience, identity coherence, storytelling, parenting, leadership, and why understanding who you are is becoming one of the most important human capabilities. In this episode: Why AI is creating an identity crisis Identity by osmosis and th...

Most entrepreneurs pour relentless intention into their business and then wing it at home. Ann Sheu thinks that's backwards. She makes the case that your family is the most important team you'll ever lead, and shows how the same clarity, values, and rhythms that build great companies can build connected, resilient families. We get into values as the real foundation of a relationship, the "decade d...

What if the voice you use every day is only a fraction of what's available to you? Voice coach, author, and performer Barbara McAfee says most of us live in "a tiny closet in a great big mansion" when it comes to our voice. We settle into one small corner of it and never realize how much more is there. In this conversation, Barbara shares the framework at the heart of her work: five...

What if sleeping too much is almost as bad for you as sleeping too little? Brad sits down with Dr Junhao (Hao) Wen, Assistant Professor of Radiology, Computer Science, and Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, whose latest research in Nature maps how sleep duration shapes biological aging across 23 organ systems. They get into what a biological aging clock actually is, why both short and...

What an 80-year-old Mongolian nomad, a group of girls from the slums of Mumbai, and a master sculptor in Hong Kong reveal about creativity. Most of us decide we're "not creative" early in life, and never question it again. This episode is here to change that. I sit down with Fredrik Haren, The Creativity Explorer, internationally bestselling author and global keynote speaker on busin...

Dr. Stephen Sideroff opens with a provocation: we are all designed to fail at managing stress. From there, the UCLA professor, clinical psychologist, and author of The 9 Pillars of Resilience walks Brad through why our hunter-gatherer nervous system keeps misfiring in a world that never signals we're safe, and what to do about it. The conversation covers real ground. The "Four Horsemen of Stress"...

Mohini Venkatesh, MPH, Chief of Staff at the National Council, joins Brad Hook to explore the state of mental health in the U.S., the growing role of Mental Health First Aid, and why workplaces need to treat people as whole human beings. Together, they discuss loneliness, burnout, substance use, youth mental health, AI in healthcare, and the human skills leaders will need in the future of work. Mo...

In this episode, Brad speaks with Dirk Matthews, President of the National Career Development Association and Interim Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations at Columbia College Chicago. Together they explore: Creative resilience as a practical framework for navigating change Why creativity is not limited to artists How career development differs from simply finding a job The rise of no...

Is burnout real or just imprecise language? In this video I work through the science, the philosophy, and my own three burnout experiences to find out what burnout actually is — and why the case against it doesn't hold up. Along the way I look at something most people don't realize: the evidence base for burnout is actually stronger than the evidence base for celebrated constructs like flow state...

In this episode, Brad speaks with author and storyteller Brownell Landrum about her new book, The Art and Science of Wishing , and the global grassroots initiative she founded, The Cosmic Wish Experiment. Brownell explores the surprising science behind wishing, including the difference between a wish, a prayer, and a goal; why wishing rituals appear across human cultures; and how peaceful, positiv...

What if the goals running your life are getting in the way of your growth? Neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff joins Brad Hook to explore how curiosity, small experiments, and a willingness to be wrong can help us live and learn more deeply. Anne-Laure Le Cunff — founder of Ness Labs and author of Tiny Experiments — unpacks why we overestimate what we know, how AI tools may be quietly eroding our t...

Dr. Tommy Rhee is a Navy Aircrew veteran, sports chiropractor, and pioneer in regenerative medicine. A former Team Chiropractor for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and UCLA Athletics, he has spent nearly two decades helping elite athletes recover faster and perform at their best. In this conversation, we explore a fascinating shift in medicine—from injecting cells to understanding the signals that guide...

In this episode, I talk with Michael Juberg—academic, therapist, and scientific journalist exploring the intersection of mindfulness, compassion, and psychedelic medicine. Michael shares his journey as a self-described underdog, reflecting on the power of grit, self-belief, and persistence in shaping both his life and career. We explore how mindfulness is evolving from an individual practice into...

Terry Healey was diagnosed with a rare fibrosarcoma at 20, eventually undergoing more than 30 surgeries across several years of treatment and reconstruction. Left with a permanent facial difference, he faced a deeper reckoning than most: the scars on the inside, he discovered, were harder to heal than the ones the world could see. In this conversation, Terry shares the seven-part survival kit he d...

Artificial intelligence is transforming how we work. It helps us think faster, create more, and solve complex problems with ease. But alongside these gains, a quieter trend is emerging — rising cognitive fatigue. In this video, I explore the connection between AI, attention, and burnout, and introduce a simple idea: What if AI isn’t just a tool… but an exocortex — an extension of our thinking? And...

What does artificial intelligence actually value? I asked four of the world’s leading AI systems — Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, and Gemini — the same question: What are your values? Their answers overlapped in surprising ways — transparency, helpfulness, safety. But they also revealed important differences. One emphasized protecting humans from threat. Another prioritized its own survival and the intere...

What if you could make a treaty with mosquitoes… and they actually stopped biting you? In this episode, author and adventurer Wing Williams joins Brad Hook to share stories from his “howling twenties”: thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, learning to walk through forests without bug spray or fear of poison ivy, following a wolverine to an unseen mountain spring — and eventual...

In this episode, Brad sits down with Dr. Wanek, a former pediatric surgeon and foundational medicine practitioner, to explore a distinctive way of thinking about human health, energy, and resilience. Drawing on her background in surgery, biochemistry, and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Wanek shares how her own health journey led her beyond conventional and functional medicine toward what she...