The Neuro's Journey

Ava Diamond Dreyer ran the addiction program at Yale's Child Study Center and has taught her own program at Yale Med School. Twenty years ago she built NQ, Neuroscience Intelligence, which she teaches in four pillars: nutritional psychology, specialized mindset, unique movement and restoration. For two years she carried grief for someone else, repeated one sentence about her heart out loud ove...

If your child stopped speaking to you, or you stopped speaking to a parent, this one is for you. Sean McAllister went six years without his daughter and nine without his son, and what brought them back was not trying harder. Sean McAllister is the Colorado attorney who helped write the state's psychedelic law and the lawyer who won federal recognition for two ayahuasca churches, the Church of...

Laura Weiner-Kiser is the founder of Change By Challenge, a behavior change specialist and a certified stress and mindset coach. She works underneath behavior, on the scripts and patterns and the nervous system that are running it, and she calls the goal becoming the CEO of your own mind. In this conversation she explains why reading about change never changes anyone, the four scripts she hears mo...

You have been told to open up. You did not, and this is the episode about why that advice was never going to reach you. Neil Smith ran some of the biggest production companies in the UK, making The Apprentice, Grand Designs and The Undatables, and dozens of shows with Bear Grylls. At fifty he remortgaged his house and left to build Mettle, a men's mental health and mental fitness app, with Bear Gr...

You can be surrounded by people all day and still feel completely alone. Jake Ross has spent his career on why that happens, and on what actually fixes it. He founded BelongTogether, studied the psychology of belonging at UC Berkeley and at the University of Pennsylvania, and recently worked with his father, Howard Ross, on a new edition of Howard's bestseller Everyday Bias, adding what social...

If you are doing the work, and you still catch yourself saying I used to be able to do that, this conversation is about the sentence underneath it. Greg Shindler is back for part two. Last week he told you his story. This week he tells you what he has built with it. He has spent a decade in longevity, starting with PCR testing sold to around 350 doctors' offices, then clinics in Oklahoma and H...

Identity is the thing running underneath almost everything you do, and Greg Shindler has spent most of his life working out how to change his. At 12, his world came apart. Then it happened again in 2010, in a completely different set of circumstances. For decades those events were not just his story, they were his identity. He was the person those things happened to. What changed, in his words: th...

What if psychedelics are not just a treatment, but one of our best shots at healing, as people, as communities, and maybe even as a planet? Joe Moore has spent over a decade at the center of the psychedelic renaissance. He co-founded Psychedelics Today, the biggest podcast in the space, and has interviewed hundreds of the researchers, clinicians, and visionaries shaping how we understand these med...

The most meaningful lives are not the happiest ones. That is not a slogan. It is what the research keeps finding. Dr. Ben Rogers studies where meaning actually comes from, and he has built something rare: a psychological intervention, tested in randomized experiments, that measurably increases how meaningful your life feels. He teaches at Boston College, and his work has been featured in Harvard B...

You made the decision before you knew you were making it. Then your brain went back and built the reason. Howard says the field he helped build got something wrong. After 40 years studying why good people make decisions that do not match who they are, he has come to believe that wagging a finger at people does not change them. People collapse when they are under attack. He tells you about the youn...

If you could give someone you love a 15% better functioning brain, would you do it? That is the question Steve started with when he thought about what to give his son for turning 18. Not a watch, not a car. A better functioning brain, and the 40 years of focus, sleep, and calm that could come with it. Then he asked the harder question. Could he do it for himself first? This week Steve walks you th...

Can trauma continue shaping your thoughts, emotions, and relationships long after the event itself has passed? In this episode of The Neuro's Journey, Steve Sapourn sits down with Dr. Will Van Derveer, board-certified psychiatrist, New York Times bestselling author, and pioneer in integrative psychiatry and psychedelic-assisted therapy. Together, they explore why trauma is often the hidden dri...

Have you ever made a small mistake and felt every negative belief you've ever had suddenly take over? In this solo episode of The Neuro's Journey, Steve Sapourn shares a deeply personal story about a moment that could have sent him into a familiar pattern of shutdown, self-judgment, and emotional collapse. Instead, for the first time, he interrupted the spiral in real time. Steve explores...

What if ADHD isn't just about attention? In this episode of The Neuro's Journey, Steve sits down with ADHD Performance Coach Ian Mai to explore the deeper connection between ADHD, dopamine, burnout, emotional regulation, addiction, focus, and mental performance. Ian shares his personal journey from high-achieving engineer, tech sales leader, and competitive bodybuilder to helping others un...

What happens when childhood trauma shapes the course of an entire life? In this powerful conversation, Steve Sapourn sits down with Laurie Dhue, former CNN, NBC, and Fox News anchor, recovery advocate, and one of the most recognized voices in addiction recovery and trauma awareness. For the first time publicly, Laurie shares a deeply personal story about a traumatic experience she endured as a chi...

What happens when the life you've spent years building suddenly falls apart? In this episode, Steve Sapourn and Kyle explore why so many successful men feel empty after achieving everything they wanted, the hidden costs of hustle culture, what burnout actually does to the nervous system, and how fear became Kyle's teacher instead of his enemy. They discuss the difference between ego-driven confide...

This one is different .. Today Steve Sapourn switches seats. His brother from ten years of men's group, Bill Giebler, accomplished musician, award-winning memoirist, and journalist, takes the host chair and asks the questions Steve has never fully answered in public. What created this man? What was he running from? And what finally made him stop? This is Steve's story. Act one, act two, an...

What if the thing keeping you from the relationship you actually want was not a communication problem but a nervous system problem? And what if there was a tool that could get you there in one afternoon instead of two years? In this episode, Steve Sapourn sits down with Jonathan Robinson, therapist, two-time New York Times bestselling author, and one of the most experienced MDMA-assisted therapy p...

What do you do when the man in the mirror is a stranger? Dr. Baruch Halevi, known as Dr. B, knows that question from the inside. His father took his life. His grandmother before that. And possibly her father before her. Instead of becoming the next chapter in that story, he made a choice. In this episode, Steve Sapourn sits down with Dr. B, former rabbi, logotherapy practitioner, men's group l...

You have been trying your whole life. To be more patient. More present. To keep the lid on. And if it is still not working, if you are still blowing up when you do not want to, or the wins never quite land the way you thought they would, this episode is for you. In this solo episode, Steve Sapourn breaks down the one thing most men never consider: it is not a willpower problem. It is a nervous sys...

What happens to a man when his career collapses in public, at the height of his rise, in the middle of a political firestorm he did not create? Eric Letsinger knows that story from the inside. Fired as COO of Baltimore City Public Schools in 2006 after an internal investigation, he spent nearly two decades never speaking about it publicly. Until now. In this episode, Steve Sapourn sits down with t...

You've checked all the boxes: career, income, the house, the family. So why does a quiet voice keep showing up at 2 a.m. asking: is this really all there is? In this episode, Steve Sapourn reframes midlife not as a crisis, but as a crossroads, a pivotal moment that research shows isn't a malfunction. It's the next transition trying to happen. In this episode Why "midlife crisis&qu...

What if your nervous system isn’t just biological… but spiritual? In this episode of The Neuro’s Journey, Steve sits down with Jake, spiritual teacher and founder of Ascension University, to explore how breath, emotion, and the body reconnect us to our true self. Together, they unpack the deeper purpose behind emotional pain, the role of shame in disconnection, and why feeling everything might be...

What if the parts of you that feel out of control… aren’t personality flaws, but brain adaptations? In this solo episode of The Neuro’s Journey , Steve breaks down the real reason behind: Sudden anger and emotional shutdown Feeling stuck in patterns you “can’t change” Addiction, anxiety, and hypervigilance The gap between who you are and who you want to be If you’ve ever felt:  “I know better… but...

This week’s episode of The Neuro’s Journey is for the driven men who have achieved career success but find themselves hitting a ceiling in their personal relationships. Steve sits down with global relationship coach, author, and founder of The Relationship School, Jayson Gaddis , for a direct, challenging, yet deeply compassionate conversation about what it actually means to be an empowered human....