Human Amplified

Chronic illness forced Hannah Bethel to slow down long enough to reconnect with her body. In this episode, the Nashville singer-songwriter, hypnotherapist, and reiki master shares her experience navigating Lyme disease, medical dismissal, holistic healing, and the long process of rebuilding her health through intuition, body awareness, grounding practices, and radical self-trust. We explore the re...

You can eat healthy, work out consistently, and still feel exhausted, inflamed, anxious, bloated, foggy, or completely disconnected from your body. Before Samantha Lander became a functional diagnostic nutritionist helping people heal chronic symptoms naturally, she spent years struggling with gut issues, hormone imbalance, food sensitivities, addiction, overtraining, and severe inflammation witho...

Modern self-improvement culture often promises peace through discipline, consistency, optimization, and control. But for many people, trying to follow the “right” routines only creates more anxiety, perfectionism, overthinking, and disconnection from themselves. In this episode, Rebecca Hulse (author, creative business coach, and former professional dancer) shares how years of chasing achievement,...

Somewhere along the way, exhaustion became aspirational and burnout became proof that you were working hard enough. In this episode, Elizabeth Moore, co-founder and co-CEO of Triluna, shares how hustle culture and chronic stress led to panic attacks, anxiety, and burnout severe enough to make her leave corporate life entirely. We explore workplace stress, nervous system regulation, toxic productiv...

Self-care can sound small compared to grief, violence, burnout, or collective trauma. But for Coco Kennell, the rituals of soap making and skincare became a way to process all of it. After the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the Soap Life 360 founder found herself navigating exhaustion, heartbreak, racial tension, and deeply personal wounds while still trying to care for herself, her family, and her...

Long before social media intensified the pressure to perform identity, many people were already learning how to survive by hiding parts of themselves. For Brendon Watt, that started early. Growing up feeling deeply sensitive and different, he learned how to shape himself around other people’s expectations in order to belong. Over time, that pressure to fit in turned into people pleasing, self-judg...

At some point, many people stop listening to themselves. Not all at once, but slowly through years of pushing through exhaustion, overriding discomfort, prioritizing everyone else’s needs, and convincing themselves their feelings are something to ignore instead of something to trust. Carrie Akre reflects on the emotional process of reconnecting with yourself after years of self-abandonment. The mu...

When Jon Mullins sat down to write “Better Man,” he wasn’t trying to create a viral song. He was trying to survive one of the hardest seasons of his marriage. The Nashville singer-songwriter and former The Voice contestant opens up about his wife Whitney’s traumatic brain injury, the emotional toll it took on their relationship, and how music became both therapy and a lifeline.  From relearni...

Ron Karr spent much of his childhood learning how to read a room before anything exploded. Growing up as the son of a Holocaust survivor meant living around unpredictability, hypervigilance, and chronic stress. Those early experiences shaped the way he approached trust, conflict, communication, and emotional safety in relationships for decades afterward. Ron shares how trauma and stress eventually...

Anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, emotional overwhelm, and chronic stress often become so normalized that people stop recognizing them as signs of survival mode. For trauma therapist and ascension coach Amie Dean, healing meant learning how to reconnect with the parts of herself buried underneath fear, grief, chronic illness, and years of emotional survival. We look at inner child healing, spiritua...

What does systemic racism in America actually look like in real life? Former police officer and criminal justice expert Peggy Kingsbury opens up about growing up white in the Jim Crow South, surviving childhood trauma, and realizing decades later that white privilege changed the course of her life. She shares how racism shaped schools, policing, foster care, opportunity, and the assumptions she ca...

Black philanthropy is about far more than charitable giving. For Kia Jarmon, it’s about who gets to define community needs, who holds power, and why the racial wealth gap continues to shape nearly every part of American life. That conversation opens into something much bigger: systemic racism, cultural appropriation, collective trauma, white supremacy, and the emotional labor Black Americans are s...

If you don’t already know me, or you want to get to know me a little better, I’d love to get to know you too! To start, here’s a little bit about me and why I’m here with Human Amplified:  Hi, I’m Brandi Fleck. I’m a storyteller, writer, artist, avid student of human nature, recognized communications and interviewing expert, and the found of Human Amplified I care about you more than anything...

I’m your host, Brandi Fleck , and this is Human Amplified.  I hope you’re ready to ditch the small talk and get really human, because you just found the go-to podcast for thinkers who want to be better humans and rock out doing it.  We get there with soul-exposing personal stories + expert advice.  So, come hang out with us where you get to:  -Build your empathy muscle -Hear ab...

Most people leave their childhood fantasies behind, but Hannah Mermaid built an entire life around hers. In this episode of Human Amplified, the world-famous professional mermaid shares how a childhood obsession with mermaids evolved into a career in underwater performance art, freediving, ocean conservation, and environmental activism. What starts as a conversation about mermaid tails and swimmin...

This episode has been maintained in loving memory of Dan Strelan. Modern life trains people to override their instincts, disconnect from nature, and chase external validation while ignoring what their body and emotions are trying to communicate. Health coach Dan Strelan reflects on the deeper relationship between emotional health, nervous system regulation, creativity, spirituality, and authentic...

What happens when tattooing becomes more than art? Tattoo artists Jeff Barnard and Caitlyn Campbell explore the emotional side of tattoo culture, from memorial tattoos and scar coverups to free areola tattoos for breast cancer survivors at Golden Yeti Art Collective in Franklin, Tennessee. They discuss how tattoos help people reclaim their bodies after trauma, grief, abuse, and cancer, and why the...

What happens when your struggle with identity doesn’t fit the narrative people expect? For Winter Breedlove, gender transition was never a clean, linear story. It was tangled up with religious shame, sexual trauma, perfectionism, HIV stigma, heartbreak, addiction, family conditioning, and years of trying to survive inside an identity that never fully felt like her own. Winter opens up about what i...

Sex work is one of the most talked-about and least understood professions in modern society. Sex therapist Dr. Miro Gudelsky shares what she's learned from years of working with sex workers and their patrons. Together, we explore mental health, stigma, relationships, shame, identity, and the role of sex work in modern society. Whether you agree with the industry or not, this conversation challenge...

What happens after service ends? For many veterans, coming home is not the relief people imagine. It can mean losing structure, identity, purpose, and the sense of belonging that military life once provided. Marine veteran and Angels Alive founder Oscar La Madrid shares how immigrating from Peru, growing up in poverty in Georgia, and serving in the Marines shaped his mission to help veterans rebui...

At 370 pounds, Dustin Rochester knew his health was headed in the wrong direction. What he didn't realize was that food wasn't the real problem. Like many people, he had learned to use food for comfort, stress relief, and escape. The temporary relief was followed by frustration, guilt, and a cycle that felt impossible to break. A frightening doctor's appointment eventually forced him to confront t...

The future is easy to ignore when you assume you'll stay healthy. Nathan Peck doesn't have that option. Diagnosed with VCP disease, a rare inherited condition that can cause progressive muscle weakness, bone disease, dementia, and ALS-like symptoms, Nathan lives with the knowledge that his independence will likely diminish over time.  But instead of retreating, he has spent the last several y...

A doctor sat across from Mark Dant and told him his young son likely wouldn't live past age 12. In an instant, the future he and his wife imagined disappeared. What followed wasn't a story about medicine alone. It was a story about grief, fear, hope, persistence, and the ordinary decisions that eventually create extraordinary outcomes. Mark shares how a police officer with no scientific background...

Trigger Warning: This conversation includes discussions of addiction, trauma, childhood abuse, incarceration, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Please take care while listening and engage with this episode at your own pace if these topics are difficult for you. For years, Kevin Clark thought his problem was addiction. What he eventually discovered was that addiction was only part of the story. Lo...

What happens when boys grow up without a clear path into manhood? Mike Hutchinson (Hutch) expands on themes from his adoption story to explore masculinity, rage, emotional resilience, and the challenges facing men today. Drawing from his experiences with adoption, military service, martial arts, fatherhood, and faith, Mike shares how his understanding of masculinity was shaped by the people who ra...