Life is a Festival

With the rapid fall of Afghanistan, veterans in our communities need our care and support now more than ever. So I called up Army Ranger Jesse Gould who supports psychedelic healing for soldiers to talk about his experience and what we can do to help. On the podcast Jesse explains the complex reactions veterans are feeling about the end of operations in Afghanistan. We discuss PTSD and why both th...

What is our responsibility for kinship and reciprocity as we explore the healing power of plant medicine? Sutton King of the Menominee and Oneida Nations, Head of Impact at the psychedelic drug development company Journey Colab, can show us the way. On the show we explore Sutton’s commitment to healing and service from her early days dancing jingle dress to her work with the Urban Indigenous Colle...

Recently, in the bouldered desert outside of San Diego, I joined the Embodied Masculine Experience created by Sacred Sons. Today on the podcast, I’m honored to bring you the co-founder and the voice of Sacred Sons, Adam Jackson, for a deep dive on modern mens work. On the show we discuss the need for embodied masculinity and the evolution of Sacred Sons from the Mythopoetic Men's Movement and the...

Today we welcome back the mighty Tony Moss for a deep dive on ayahuasca healing for ancestral trauma and post traumatic slave syndrome. On the show we discuss Tony’s first experiences with ayahuasca over 20 years ago through the Santo Daime church. Tony shares his own experience healing ancestral trauma in ceremony. We talk about epigenetics and the current understanding of ancestral healing from...

“Stay awake, build stuff, and help out.” Jamie Wheal’s masterful new book Recapture the Rapture is a wokeup call for all of us hedonistic Lizard Brain Fuck Monkeys who need to get our shit together and save the world. On the show we talk about the Pareto effect for peak experiences; protocols for a global nervous system reboot; the unintentional outcomes of intentional communities; designing vibra...

I first experienced the actor Adrian Grenier, like many of us did, as the charismatic boy prince Vincent Chase on the show Entourage. We met in person at a masculinity talk at Burning Man as a man going through a profound spiritual journey, which is the subject of today’s podcast. On the show we look at Adrian’s life through an archetypal lens from the puer aeternus (the boy who won’t grow up) to...

Feeling a little nervous about post-pandemic gatherings? You’re not alone. Luckily we have a master community builder, Radha Agrawal of the sober morning dance party Daybreaker, to give us some wise words and a gentle nudge back to IRL connection. Our show starts with Radha’s own experience intentionally crafting a new group of friends in her 30s. She shares some social alchemy techniques from her...

For the 100th episode of Life is a Festival, I’m honored to bring you this conversation with my dear friend and spiritual teacher Benjamin. On the show we discuss the consequences of self-indulgence and how to construct a yang container in order to bring structure to an overripe yin. We talk about mentorship through the mirror of deep listening and we explore Benjamin’s lifestyle of radical openne...

Does your inner world sometimes feels like a squabbling family, always reacting to the outside experience and to itself? You’re not alone. In fact there’s an entire style of therapy that specifically seeks to bring harmony to our Internal Family Systems. As part of the inner work I undertook over this winter, I had the honor of working with IFS founder Richard Schwartz. After a series of sessions,...

To succeed as artists, the muse must find us working, but how do we maintain the play and passion that lit our creative fire to begin with? Today’s guest, the delightful Autumn Skye, is a luminary in the Visionary Art world and a true artist of the creative life itself. On the show we discuss Autumn’s artistic childhood and how she developed her craft. We talk about the gap between vision and abil...

This week the Life is a Festival Saturday Club continues with the second installment of Healing New Age Narcissism. Alex Ebert, enigmatic frontman of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros returns with his ideas for “Refestivalizing Spirituality.” On the show Alex gives us a robust history of the dark side of New Age thought from the Law of Attraction to the Power of Positive Thinking to the Secret....

The Life is a Festival Saturday Show on Clubhouse is heating up! This week, Jamie Wheal joined in place of Alex Ebert who had a tooth infection, but we ended up getting Alex too! We also had a guest appearance from the psychedelic luminary Erik Davis, as well as musician and community leader Turquoise Sound. On the show we define narcissism and bemoan the worrying prevalence of dark triad personal...

I’ve gotten a lot of requests through the Life is a Festival survey to interview large-scale installation artists. Well, today we’re going to hear from one of the biggest: Daniel Popper, the South African creator of Tulum yogis and Boom shamans. On the show we go deep into Daniel’s creative process and what it takes to build big art. We discuss instagram culture, Disney World, and building with br...

As the Psychedelic Renaissance heats up, people are experiencing spiritual emergence left and right. At times like these we need a healthy dose of a healthier dose. Luckily Dr. Molly stopped by the Life is a Festival Club on Clubhouse to share her wisdom. 
 On the show we talk about harm reduction, pseudo-shamanism, and the unfortunate prevalence of bad medicine. We discuss how to prepare your bod...

The great LSD psychiatrist Stanislav Grof referred to the collection of cognitive, emotional, and spiritual disturbances that can follow a powerful psychedelic experience as a “spiritual emergence.” He saw this an evolutionary crisis rather than a mental disease. So how do we know if we are in a soul’s initiation or simply a Sisyphean loop of our tormented mind? Like many of us in this difficult p...

The image of the QAnon Shaman in the United States Senate is the perfect symbol of how unfortunate members of the psychedelic community have fallen down QAnon trapdoor during this pandemic. Today on the show Erik Davis, renowned psychedelic author and wizard of the weird, returns to Life is a Festival to address the worrying trend of “conspirituality” and what we can do to inoculate ourselves agai...

Today on Life is a Festival I am honored to share the delightful and mesmerizing voice of one of Europe’s most renowned storytellers. Jan Blake has been tellings stories around the world for 35 years and has recently been going through a transformational process herself! Our conversation unfolds through six stories, beginning with “Abiyoyo,” Jan’s favorite tale as a child and ending with “The Keys...

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk, is a seminal work in the field of trauma studies. I had the privilege of interviewing Bessel last year for The Psychedelic Therapy Podcast, which I host for Maya, a software platform that supports psychedelic practitioners. To start 2021 on a hopeful note, I wanted to share that episode with you. On the show we discuss Bessel’s work with the Multid...

Today’s podcast is all about the healing power of steam and was recorded early last year before the pandemic. I’ve decided to release it now during this difficult winter to help us remember the power of ceremony and communal healing and because I have myself been recently working with other traditional sweat ceremonies. My guests are none other than Sasha Baibarin and Boris Ryabov founders of the...

We all need a little silliness in our lives right now so today on the show I have the king of “lowbrow visionary art” to give us his own version of making lemons into lemonade. Brad Rhadwood has spent years crafting strange beings from plywood and building a following in the festival world. Today he shares his personal life philosophy: You must always derp the flail, but you must never flail the d...

Two weeks ago, with heartache swirling in my soul, I sought refuge at the Guru Ram Das Ashram in Portugal. After days of chanting mantras, performing seva (selfless service), and doing kundalini yoga, I was granted an audience with the founder of the ashram, acclaimed spiritual teacher Shiv Charan Singh and took the opportunity to create this podcast for you. On the show we talk about how an ashra...

Can we heal the wounds of love and share lives of both dedication and erotic adventure? Today’s guest, Sabine Lichtenfels, cofounder of Tamera, has dedicated her life to this question. Tamera is a world famous community and peace research center in Southern Portugal which hosts the Global Love School, a program that radically reimagines romance and relationships. Though often referred to as polyam...

I have wanted to have Camille Barton on this show ever since they blew my mind at the Psychedelic Seminars’ presentation of “History of the Drug War, Colonization, & Racism.” And, perhaps as expected, they absolutely knocked it out of the park on today’s episode. On the show, we cover a wide range of topics threaded through with the theme of understanding colonization's impact on our world, our cu...

Every few months I like to offer an update on my personal journey by sharing an interview I did with another podcaster. This week’s episode is a repod from Eric White’s show theEWpodcast. Although Eric’s intention was initially to talk about festivals, we move quickly into a conversation about mental health. We discuss techniques for meeting depression and anxiety as teachers. We talk trauma work...

With a world on fire and a pandemic raging, it sure makes sense to want to escape into the utopian vision of an intentional community. But is that in integrity with the beautiful world we want to create? And would it even work? Today on the show I’m talking to activist Ashoka Finley about the power and privilege inherent in creating land-based communities. We discuss the enormous grief of the clim...