The Soul of Life

**BONUS PREVIEW of S3E5 with IFS (Internal Family Systems) Lead Trainer Michael Elkin. This full episode drops on August 27th, 2021. Most of us have been conditioned our whole life to have strong moral judgments against things like addictions or suicide. Right? Aren't these just categorically bad things that we have to fight against? This is really what is so mind-bending and revolutionary about t...

**BONUS PREVIEW of S3E4 with PBS Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan. Full episode drops on August 20th, 2021. Hari Sreenivasan joined the PBS NewsHour in 2009. He is the Anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a Senior Correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he was at CBS News, reporting for the "CBS Evening News," "The Early Show" and "CBS Sunday Morning." Before that, he served...

In this preview of Episode 3 of Season 3 (releasing on 8/13/21), Drs. Harville Hendrix, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, are the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, a paradigm-changing and pioneering model of couples therapy that helped revolutionize the way psychotherapists view couples and the nature of healing through the lens of attachment-theory—the idea that, in a sense, we belong to one other an...

In this preview of S3E2 (full episode release: 8/6/21) you get a glimpse of my excitement about speaking with world-renown brain and trauma scientist, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Van der Kolk is a professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and president of the Trauma Research Foundation in Brookline, Massachusetts. ]Since the 1970s his research has been in the area of post-trauma...

In this preview of Season 2, Episode 1, you get a glimpse of my conversation with John Annerino, a renown adventure photographer, and author of literary essay books, photographic essays, and calendars of the American West and Old Mexico. His work has appeared in Time, LIFE, the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure and Scientific American, among many others. His map, "The Grand Canyon Expl...

Today I speak with comedian Paul Gilmartin, former host of Dinner and a Movie on TBS. After leaving standup and television, Gilmartin started The Mental Illness Happy Hour, a podcast that puts the world of living with mental illness into sharp focus and gets a laugh. Gilmartin came up on the comedy scene in Chicago at Second City with people like Bob Odenkirk of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul....

Is there a right way to have sex? Everybody thinks they're doing it wrong or someone else is doing it better. There's so much shame surrounding sex. Today on the Soul of Life I speak with two Brooklyn psychologists, Signe Simon and Simone Humphrey about their podcast, LoveLink, founded to help people talk more about sex and love. We talk about really common reasons people have problems with sexual...

Dominique Dawes is a three-time former U.S. Olympic gymnast and was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team and part of the gold-medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. Dawes recently opened her first gymnastics training academy in Clarksburg, Maryland to prove that there is a way to care for children and put the healthy minds and bodies of kids fi...

"Everything is magic until we understand it." - Arthur C. Clark How do you know that you're conscious? I mean, don't you just kind of know? "The single thing that we know best from our own first person perspective and understand least from the perspective of objective science." But are we seeing signs of a dawning enlightenment in this field—signs of progress in how we understand and study conscio...

Today I speak with Michael Goldberg, author of The 9 Ways of Working: How to use the the Enneagram to Discover Your Natural Strengths and Work More Effectively "The enneagram—while it's about individual personality types—it's really about a pathway through life, where are you?" I share with Michael the results of me taking a 20-minute online Enneagram test and we practice some armchair psychology,...

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with IFS lead trainer, trauma therapist and former Harvard psychiatrist Frank Anderson about the surge of young children questioning their gender or seeking to transition. One recent U.S. survey cited in a MedScape Psychiatry journal article found a 4000% increase (over 40-fold) in the number of gender dysphoria cases since 2006 (see www. SoulofLifeShow.com/Frank-...

1 in 13 kids have food allergies in the U.S. This scary condition that can lead to fatal anaphylaxis (the sudden constriction of airways) is debilitating to live with. Today on The Soul of Life I speak with a doctor that is part of a handful of allergists in the U.S. that are revolutionizing the way anaphylactic food allergies are treated.  Dr. Manav Segal is an allergist based in Philadelphia to...

Today on the Soul of Life I call in a professional hypnotist to help me keep my head in the game of tennis. I think you'll get a kick out of seeing Taylor Sherman try to improve my tennis game and you can follow right along as he uses a deep relaxation technique and guided imagery that may also help you deepen your own sharpness and energy level in your life. People know hypnosis for really three...

Do the phrases "feel good movie" and "rape culture" ever belong together? In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak again with Sandie Angulo Chen, a film critic and writer for Common Sense Media, about several new films and shows that handle some fairly radioactive cultural themes, like the Amy Pohler-directed Moxie, and Promising Young Woman. Then Sandie and I totally shift gears, into sci-fi e...

Why do we run? When Vybarr Cregan-Reid set out to answer this question, he began a journey into the science and psychobiology of the human body which—he says—is born to run. "We've been runners for probably about 2.3 million years." In this episode of The Soul of Life we talk about Cregan-Reid's book, Footnotes: How Running Makes us Human , and a passion for running that took him to the world's mo...

In the United States, the non-medical use of cannabis is decriminalized in 16 states and legalized in another 14 states. Enthusiasts say pot helps them deal with life better, manage their anxiety, and helps them with sleep. But what are the facts about marijuana? And are we ready for large-scale commercialization this is following the rapid movement to legalize weed? Today on The Soul of Life I sp...

Americans (and particularly Washingtonians) love coffee and they love cafes. You only have to look at the monopoly that Starbucks has created worldwide to see this phenomenon. But is the era of Big Coffee over? Is it possible that artisanal boutique coffee shops could be clawing back into the Green Giant's market share the way craft breweries have surprised behemoth beverage conglomerates? That's...

Eating disorders have a reputation for wrecking emotional havoc in a family and trigger strong emotional reactions by loved ones and therapists who can end up in a tug of war to make the disturbing symptoms stop. But eating disorder specialist Dana Harron says love and compassion are key ingredients to successful treatment. In this episode of The Soul of Life , I speak with Dana about the most com...

When you hear the music that 23-year old Seattle musician Alec Shaw is writing and performing you know he's headed somewhere big. But whether he knows that yet is a different story. Shaw had already dedicated himself to being a full-time musician and had cut three albums by the time the pandemic shut down gigs and performances that were just starting to give him a following in the Northwest. I ask...

Jessica Hansen is the voice of NPR's funding credits, and serves as in-house voice coach at NPR headquarters. She coaches voice for NPR, member stations, corporate groups, executives, professional theater companies, as well as hosts, journalists, and private clients nationwide. Jessica began acting at age 5, and was a cast member of a tween TV series at 12. She's performed Guest Star roles on NBC'...

"Mindlessness is pervasive. Virtually all of us, almost all of the time, are not there. But when we're not there, we're not there to know we're not there." Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University where she was the first woman to be tenured in the department. She has been described as the "mother of mindfulness" and has written extensively on the illusion...

Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert, and author of many books on sex including Getting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together. She's a psychotherapist, Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, university teacher, TEDx speaker and is the host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. Tammy is also a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT...

"Kurt Cobain had actually referred to The Dutchman as 'the grungiest place in Seattle.'" That's from Gary Mula, former owner of the storied Duchman recording studio, an artsy warehouse recording/rehearsal facility where Gary lived and made records until 2009, when it burned to the ground. We talk about the way music changed his life and how he developed his skill as a producer by learning when to...

Are we really such a divided country? You've heard me speak before about how our mindset—what we choose to focus on—determines the results we get. The more afraid and divided we feel, the more we tend to see fear and division in others. I wonder, can we actively cultivate peace and confidence in our own minds and hearts and call on our leaders to do the same? Today on The Soul of Life I speak with...

Dr. John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe. Mather was...