Inner Pioneers

Why do we speak so easily about lifelong learning, yet almost never about lifelong inner growth? Tomas Björkman, author of The Market Myth, The World We Create and The Nordic Secret, and founding chair of the Inner Development Goals, has spent almost two decades on that question. In conversation with Chris, he traces his path from a Swedish family farm to founding a banking group, and then to a le...

Steven C. Hayes has spent fifty years asking a single question: what is the smallest set of psychological processes that does the most good for the most people in the most circumstances? His answer became Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), now supported by nearly 1,500 randomized trials, and the psychological flexibility model that underlies it. In this conversation with host Dmitrij Achelro...

Nadjeschda Taranczewski, psychologist, master certified coach, and author of Conscious You: Become the Hero of Your Own Story, argues that most personal growth is mistaken for itself: people leave a retreat able to talk fluently about trust and vulnerability, and treat the fluency as the change. Her standard is stricter. Real development shows up specifically with the people who trigger you most,...

What happens when the systems we rely on to understand the world are designed to capture our attention rather than help us make sense of it? In this conversation, Der Spiegel correspondent Stefan Schultz explores how algorithms, social media and increasingly AI are fragmenting our shared reality by rewarding outrage, fear and certainty. His response is a radically different vision of journalism: o...

Over 20 years and 73 high-dose LSD sessions, philosopher Christopher Bache systematically explored consciousness as a methodology - not for healing, but for understanding the deep structure of reality. What began as personal karmic work rapidly expanded into encounters with collective mind, archetypal reality, causal oneness, and finally the shattering clarity of diamond luminosity. These experien...

Dr. Stephanie Schoss has spent almost 15 years working closely with senior executives at the University of St. Gallen - often in small, confidential settings where CEOs say the things they would never admit in public. What she has observed challenges the image of the powerful, self-assured leader. Behind the polished exterior, many struggle with loneliness, fear of failure, self-doubt and the pres...

What still stands between today’s AI and a machine that could become conscious? Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano argues that the answer may not be some mysterious essence unique to biological life. Current AI does not yet build self-models in the same way humans do, nor does it have the embodied systems that give rise to human emotion, but Graziano believes these capacities can be built -...

Traditional trauma therapy often focuses on distressing events, but many people suffer primarily from absence: they were never soothed, protected, understood, or loved in the ways they needed. Dr. Laurel Parnell explains how attachment-focused EMDR expands the standard protocol by creating safety first and helping clients develop internal nurturing figures, protectors, wise guides, and peaceful pl...

What if the reason you're suffering isn't the reason you think? Most of us spend our lives trying to escape discomfort - avoiding difficult emotions, distracting ourselves from pain, and searching for ways to feel better. But according to meditation teacher and author Andrew Holecek, this instinct may be the very thing keeping us stuck. Drawing from decades of Tibetan Buddhist practice, intensive...

For years, Maj believed leadership meant performing, delivering, and demonstrating capability. But beneath the achievements were stomach aches, pressure, damaged relationships, and the exhausting pursuit of proving herself. In this conversation, she shares how repeated transitions taught her that leadership isn't about becoming indispensable - it's about creating spaces where others can flourish....

Why do so many people feel disconnected, anxious, and emotionally exhausted despite unprecedented comfort and progress? In this conversation, embodiment teacher Philip Shepherd argues that modern culture has conditioned us to live almost entirely from the head - valuing control, independence, productivity, and abstraction while disconnecting from the intelligence of the body. Together with Dmitrij...

Constanze Buchheim, founder and CEO of i-potentials and advisor to the German federal government, explores how leadership is deeply shaped by childhood conditioning, emotional imprinting, and unconscious relational dynamics. Through personal stories of entrepreneurship, responsibility, crisis, and self-reflection, she reveals why many leaders unknowingly operate from old survival strategies while...

In this conversation, Jeremy Lent challenges the assumption that our global system is simply “broken.” Instead, he argues that it is functioning exactly as designed - optimizing for extraction, exploitation, and growth at all costs. After building success within that system himself, he began to question its deeper consequences - and ultimately chose a different path. From the historical roots of t...

What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t confusion - but a misalignment with what you already know is true? In this episode, Dr. Martha Beck (Oprah's life coach) explores how deeply we internalize expectations from our culture, environment, and past - and how that leads us to “innocently lie to ourselves” in ways that create anxiety, disconnection, and a loss of direction. Martha breaks down the di...