Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Ever notice how a tiny criticism can send you into a full-blown spiral, and then you spend the rest of the day furious at yourself for spiraling? Dr. Jeffrey Rutstein has a theory about why that happens, and it starts before you ever had a say in the matter: with the nervous system you were born with. Rutstein, a clinical psychologist, Hakomi-certified somatic psychotherapist, and host of Sounds T...

What if the type you've been typing yourself as isn't the whole story? Tami Simon sits down with Enneagram pioneer Beatrice Chestnut to mark the re-release of her classic guide, The Complete Enneagram , and to ask why facing our shadow, not avoiding it, is the real path to waking up. Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, is a global expert, researcher, and educator on the Enneagram. She holds a PhD in communica...

Why do some of the most hardened people—lifers on death row, people who've killed—turn out to be, underneath it all, remarkably sensitive? Physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté has spent decades working with addicts and prisoners, and he's found a pattern that upends how we usually think about cruelty and compassion. Dr. Gabor Maté is a physician and bestselling author whose work on trauma an...

Tami Simon speaks with author, mystic, and racial equity educator Michelle Cassandra Johnson about her new book, You Are Protected . Together they explore malevolent energies, calling on ancestors and archetypes for spiritual support, the practice of spiritual hygiene, and how spells work, sigils, and simple rituals like salt can help us stay grounded, protected, and connected to our own energy am...

Physician Lissa Rankin says trauma doesn't just live in the mind, it can trigger measurable physical disease, from autoimmune conditions to chronic illness that conventional medicine can't explain. But her most provocative claim is the reverse: that healing the nervous system may be the missing piece in reversing illnesses that have resisted every other treatment. Dr. Rankin, a physician and autho...

Psychologist Laurel Parnell, a pioneer of EMDR and the creator of resource tapping, speaks with Tami Simon about her boldest evolution yet: multidimensional integrative healing. Forged in the wake of profound personal loss, this new approach draws on spirit release work, ancestral healing, and cross-cultural wisdom to ask what happens when trauma therapy meets the mystery of what isn't fully ours...

Is a spiritual awakening only real if it completely rearranges your life? That's the question Tami Simon puts to Adyashanti in this episode of Just One Question, and his answer digs into something a lot of seekers wrestle with: the gap between a powerful glimpse of clarity and the ongoing work of actually living from it. Adya also shares his own journey of awakening in a fascinating look at what a...

What if aging isn't the end of your erotic life, but its deepening? Tami Simon speaks with somatic sex educator Kimberly Ann Johnson, author of Erotic Seasons, about erotic sovereignty, why the female body is its own spiritual path, and how the thresholds of menstruation, birth, and menopause carry built-in rites of passage most of us were never taught to honor. Please note: this episode includes...

An archetypal astrologer once named Tami Simon's deepest wound in the first thirty seconds of a live interview. In this month's Point of Insight , Tami traces how that moment—layered onto decades of "drops" from therapy, friendship, and interviews with teachers like Seane Corn and Joanna Macy—revealed a single truth: our karma becomes our dharma, and our medicine lives inside the wound. Find the o...

We are devoted to our phones, but not to much that is real. Tami Simon speaks with yoga nidra teacher Tracee Stanley—author of the new book Living Ritual —about ritual as an antidote to distraction and loneliness, the practice of asking what within us is dying and what is waiting to be born, and how devotion becomes the one thing we can count on. This conversation offers genuine transmission, not...

Let’s hop in our time machine and head back to the very first episode of Insights at the Edge , with Tami Simon interviewing Geneen Roth in 2009. Geneen, who’s also been on Insights as recently as this year, was fresh off losing decades of savings in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Tami asked her how to work with the voice that says “ you idiot !” Geneen's answer separates honest grief from self-c...

You've read the books, said the affirmations, made the plan—so why hasn't anything actually changed? Tami Simon speaks with Michelle Masters, a coach's coach and author of Wired for Money , about the survival wiring that locks in before we turn six, the family loyalties we inherit without knowing it, and what money looks like once you strip away everything we've projected onto it. This conversatio...

Journalist Matt Gutman hid his panic attacks for twenty years—until one hit him live on air. Tami asks him which of the psychedelics he tried actually changed things. His answer takes us to a mat in Peru's Sacred Valley, through something like ego death, and into a scream he didn't know he'd been holding. Find the complete interview, "Conquering a Lifetime of Panic Attacks," here: https://bit.ly/m...

What if what ails us isn't a problem to be solved, but a dimension we've forgotten? Tami Simon speaks with Thomas Moore—bestselling author of Care of the Soul and, at 85, still writing—about his new book, The Cure at Walden Pond . Moore makes the case that Thoreau was never really a naturalist, and that what he found at Walden is the cure our culture is starving for. This conversation offers genui...

Pānquetzani's ancestors survived colonization. Her response is to make her life an altar to them—slowing down, dancing, feeling pleasure, doing the healing they never got the chance to do. The traditional healer tells Tami what it means to raise children with a freedom her grandparents didn't have, and how a fifteen-year-old's metalwork revealed a family legacy nobody had mentioned. Listen to the...

At 36, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche walked out of his monastery in the middle of the night with a few thousand rupees and no plan. Weeks later, he was dying of food poisoning on a street in India—and chose not to call for help. In this encore episode, Tami Simon speaks with the beloved Tibetan Buddhist teacher about what he found on the other side of that night. Rinpoche is now partnering with Sounds T...

What if you're only half human? In this Point of Insight , Tami Simon traces a thread from decades of her own practice and the discovery of the central channel to a startling moment mid-interview with Lee Harris—when she suddenly felt wings. A reflection on angelic support, the mystery each of us carries, and what it takes to finally fall back and trust. Find the original Insights at the Edge epis...

Heart attacks spike 20% on Monday mornings. That might just be a business problem, according to Raj Sisodia. Tami Simon speaks with the conscious capitalism pioneer and author of Healing Leaders about why a leader's unhealed trauma becomes everyone's burden, what it takes to run a company on love instead of fear, and why doing your own inner work isn't self-indulgence—it's a sacred obligation. Raj...

Most of us hear placebo and assume we're being fooled. Tami thought so too. Then Shamini Jain — clinical psychologist, biofield scientist, and author of Healing Ourselves — told her the placebo effect is actually our own healing response at work. You don't have to be tricked to get better. Mallory and Chris have spent the past year and a half working on a podcast about energy healing and Sounds Tr...

We usually frame it as risk versus safety. Rob Bell doesn't buy it—in his experience, it's risk both ways. Tami Simon speaks with the New York Times bestselling author, artist, and former pastor about leaving a role that stayed lodged between his ears, the years he spent hiding behind a microphone, and what it costs to keep saying no to the thing pulling at you. This conversation offers genuine tr...

James Hollis was in the hospital, unsure whether he'd live, and what he felt wasn't despair — it was curiosity. In this episode the Jungian analyst flips the format on us and asks Tami Simon his own question instead: why am I here? His answer takes in Heidegger, the abyss, spinal surgery, and the strange freedom on the far side of certainty about death. Full episode at “Find What You Love and Let...

A client arrived with a brain tumor and thirty days to live. Fifteen years later, she's still here. Tami Simon speaks with intuitive energy healer, medium, and educator Laurie Nealon about what actually happens in the room during a healing—the presences she perceives, the blocks she clears, and the "spiritual support group" she says is working alongside every one of us. This conversation offers ge...

Reverend angel Kyodo williams says that if you go all the way into your suffering, right to the center of it, that's where you'll find your joy. Tami's response: really? What follows is a case for radical dharma, and for why the pain we package away and shelve is the exact thing standing between us and a joy that's already available. Full episode: Reverend angel Kyodo williams: Warrior Spirit. Lis...

How badly do you want to be free? Tami Simon speaks with Reverend Dr. Michelle Wadleigh, minister, retreat facilitator, and author of Dance Like Nobody's Watching, about the uncomfortable precondition for forgiveness: wanting freedom more than you want to be right. A conversation on shadow work, the courage to take up space, and the bold affirmation at the heart of her new book: I demand to be me...

In the first episode of The Point of Insight , a new monthly reflection from Insights at the Edge , Tami Simon shares the transmission she received while preparing to interview ethnobotanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass . Tami explores reciprocity, what it means to truly receive the natural world's generosity, and the deep, natural desire to give back in return. Find the orig...