How Humans Work Podcast

Episode Summary

The highly informed and deeply compassionate Amy Emerson joins Jef Szi and the How Humans Work Podcast for a remarkable conversation about the evolving landscape of psychedelics.

With her extensive involvement and leadership in the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)* and their multi-year effort to get MDMA approved by FDA as a therapeutic medicine for PTSD. There are few better than Amy who can speak to the state of psychedelics for medical use in society.

Not only does Amy share her honest appraisal about FDA drug approval process and members...

Episode Summary

Author, healer, and ceremonialist Christine Olivia Hernandez joins the show for an in-depth conversation on the transformative power of gratitude, the wisdom that flows out of Mayan traditions, and the gifts to the heart and body in cacao. Through the lens of her newest book, Remember Your Roots, we dive into the relevance and importance of ancestral lineages, personal stories of loss and healing, the profound value of reclaiming our histories.

We begin with Christine introducing us to the beautiful, heart-opening practices of cacao. She shares its ceremonial significance in Mayan and other...

Episode Summary

Deb Dana L.C.S.W. joins the How Humans Work Podcast to illuminate how our nervous systems dance between the ancient survival responses and the instinct to be in states of connection and safety.

As an author, renowned Polyvagal Theory lecturer, Deb expertly and compassionately guides us through the ins-and-outs of Polyvagal Theory (PVT), and how it can help us find a more regulated nervous system. At the core, we explore the powerful, bottom-up role of our vagal nerves play in our ability to find safety and connection. Consequently, this show is...

Episode Summary

The storied and kind-hearted Jai Uttal drops into the show for an extended conversation about music, monkey gods, gurus, India, sobriety, family, and ultimately the spiritual path of healing through love.

We begin with an exploration of Jai’s current practice of hyper-local kindness in a world where that resource is becoming increasingly scarce. From there we dive into Jai’s latest musical offering, Hanuman Chalisa for World Peace. Not only does Jai share with us the intimate practice he’s had with this widely venerated chant for over five decades, but he walks...

In this snap, bonus episode, show host Jef Szi riffs on what he is calling, 'Alpha Masculinity,' as it emerges alongside Donald Trump election to a second presidential term.

In his eclectic style, Jef begins the show sharing his experience on a beautiful November night in San Francisco and going to see Leif Vollebekk in concert with his wife. Contrasting that with the pre-show UFC experience, Jef leans into evolution, mating strategies, and ironies that are unfolding as the majority of American Voters embrace the "big man" attitude and style of Donald Trump.

With...

Episode Summary

In episode 42, we take a deep dive into the realm of myth with insightful and heartfelt Chris Skidmore. As an astrologer, psychotherapist and host of the On the Souls Terms Podcast, Chris helps illuminate the meaning and embedded knowledge hidden inside the 1800 year old Roman novel: The Golden Ass. This text is where the first telling of The Marriage of Eros and Psyche is found. Together, Chris and your show host Jef Szi take an extended journey into these rich and poignant tales that are saturated with symbolism, archetypes, relatable folly, and knowledge that help...

Episode Summary

In this next adventure into our Systems of Knowledge theme, the highly relatable and beautifully honest Erin Gilmore joins the podcast. This conversation explores how various teachings are points of refuge and healing as we make our way on the path adulting. Erin opens up about her journey with ADHD and the knowledges that have helped her. Specifically, how how the practice of yoga and movement became a foundation for making sense and meaning in her life.

Along the way, we also learn how Meditation with Jeff Warren, Non-Violent Communication practices with Judith...

Episode Summary

Alice Treves is seasoned psychotherapist with a background in Hakomi, CBT, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. This is her second time joining the podcast. She and Jef Szi have been together for 27 years and have two daughters.

In this episode we dive into The 9 Negative Thinking Habits, a CBT framework* Alice uses as part of her therapy practice to help both teens and adults. By breaking down each of the 9 Habits (Catastrophizing, Fortune Telling, Mind-Reading, Blaming, I Can’t, Zooming in on the Negative, All-or-Nothing, I Should/You Should, & It’s No...

Episode Summary:

Dr. Scott Schmidt joins the podcast to share his knowledge about caring for those with serious illness and those who are in the dying process. As a medical doctor with an expansive background in Emergency Medicine, Hospice Care, and now as a leader in the Primary Palliative Care field, Scott invites us to consider how we go about the realities that surround end-of-life.

Along the way, we get a solid sense of what kind of attitudes, questions, and conversations are needed from both sides of the medical encounter. But don’t be fooled, th...

Episode Summary

In The Work of Repairing Harm, the warm-hearted Jeffrey Weisberg joins the podcast for a rich and moving conversation about his experience with Peacebuilding and Restorative Justice practices. As the Executive Director and co-founder of the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding, Jeffrey shares his perspective and insight on the incredible value these practices have for relationships of all shapes and sizes.

With equal amounts of energy, vision, and honesty, Jeffrey walks us through the key questions and approaches of what it takes to repair harm. Whether that is the challenges of refugees in...

Episode #37 Summary

Senior Zen Dharma teacher, Fu Schroeder, sits down with Jef Szi for a heart-felt and mind-opening exploration of Zen Buddhism. As a System of Knowledge, Zen is one of the great wisdom lineages—handed down across centuries and into the lap of Fu in the 1970’s.

This delightful conversation offers our community a nourishing encounter with a Zen elder—a holder of wisdom who can provide gems for facing life’s mysteries and hardships. With much kindness and a great deal of playful insight, Fu shares key elements of the Zen way and her path...

In Everything Under the Sun and Moon, show host Jef Szi continues his conversation with Tobin Mayell, as Tobin remembers the life of his late mother, Christine Waddell. Christine was a healer, teacher, mother, and grandmother who passed away suddenly in the Spring of 2023.

In this fluid conversation between enduring friends, Tobin weaves the experiences with his mom and Christine’s own life—as such, we learn a great deal about Christine’s journey and the arc of Tobin’s relationship with his mother.

Along the way we find that Christine was not only a life-lon...

In Bonus Episode #07, Tobin Mayell joins the show for the first of a two-part conversation honoring the lives of his late parents—Norm Mayell and Christine Waddell.

Here, Tobin recounts for us the core elements in his relationship with Norm—open-heartedly offering glimpses into the arc of the their father-son story.

From early, unrequited longings to adult acceptances and eventually to the transmissions found in Norm’s passing away from cancer in August of 2022, we come see that the father-son relationship has many moments over the course of time and just how much can live inside...

We kick off Season Four with the fun and forthright Dalanah Smith. Dalanah is an astrologer, stoic, palmist, biologist, and host of the Moon Matters Podcast. In this episode, she shares her take on one of the most ancient systems of knowledge around - Traditional Astrology, a.k.a. Hellenistic Astrology. Also joining the podcast is episode co-host, Tobin Mayell. Tobin is a dear friend and a student of astrology.

In this conversation, Dalanah illuminates how the astrological system can help us understand the fabric of our fate. By looking at the planetary placements at the time...

In episode #35, legendary professor and author Robert M. Sapolsky joins the show for a fascinating conversation about his most recent book: Determined. At length we discuss what life looks like when we accept the premise of Determined: free will is a myth and rewarding and punishing behavior is an outdated approach to running a humane and just world. Along the way we get into strange and groovy notions like Emergent Complexity, Chaoticism (a.k.a. The Butterfly Effect), the prefrontal cortex, and my personal passion, stress.

With abundant erudition and mirth, Dr. Sapolsky makes the case several...

Episode Summary

In episode #34, the esteemed author of Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, returns to the show for a fascinating conversation about stress, dopamine, and how the two intersect.

With an equal measure of kindness and expertise, Dr. Lembke walks us through the contours of both addiction and stress. Along the way she reinforces the challenges we face living in a time, what she calls the Plenty Paradox. Throughout this remarkable conversation, Anna gives compelling reasons to value hardship, stress, and truth-telling, for each of them has a convincing way of bringing balance back into...

Bonus Episode Summary

In The Power to Survive, show host Jef Szi shares an essay that connects the adaptive function of the stress system to the realms of fitness and the presence of genes. As critical parts of our adaptive powers for survival, he shows us how stress, fitness, and genes actually are at work on a continuum of time. This short bonus pod offers a spell-binding vision of the deep web at work in our bodies, illuminating how important stress, fitness, and genes all are for our current challenges. Perhaps most importantly, The Power to Survive...

Episode Summary

In Episode #33, Dameian Hartfield joins the podcast for a deeply honest conversation, recounting some of the major moments in his life. In many respects, this podcast is a continuation of an ongoing conversation we have had as friends for nearly two decades, where Dameian speaks his truth and in doing so acts as an ambassador for the greater good, sharing the realities of what comes with growing up in an at-risk community like the Nickerson Gardens Housing Projects in the Watts neighborhood.

Beginning the show with his reasons for a slow-cook approach to...

Episode Summary

There are few better equipped to take us into the fascinating world of the gut microbiome than University of Colorado professor Dr. Christopher A. Lowry. In addition to his rich understanding of humans ancient and critical relationship with the bacterial world, Dr. Lowry has a thorough understanding of the complex interactions of our biology as it relates to stress.

In this episode Professor Lowry helps us envision the amazing workings of our invisible interiors. From the role of stress hormones and neuronal connections in the Enteric Nervous System that tie the gut and...

In episode #31, Templates for Change, Darcy Ottey from Youth Passageways joins the show for an extended conversation about her love for Rites of Passage (RoP) work as well as her recent book on the subject: Rites and Responsibilities: A Guide to Growing Up.

With an extensive and deeply personal connection to Rites of Passage practices, Darcy helps us to see how these original cultural technologies offer us templates for negotiating the phases of our lives. In ROP practices, she says, we find the blueprints for helping us to honor the cycles of change with what Darcy calls...

Episode Summary

In this special episode of the How Humans Work Podcast, Juliet and Kelly Starrett from the The Ready State join the show to share all about their newest book: Built To Move!

With clear vision and simple practices, they provide a persuasive invitation to rethink our approach to a healthy life. Throughout the show they offer a powerful transmission about why it is most important that we move not just actively, but dynamically as well. If you’re not ready to give up on your body and want to live an active and fulf...

Episode Summary

Chase Jackson is a jazz vibraphonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator, and producer. He also just happens to be the beloved musical backbone for the How Humans Work Podcast. In Episode #29, Chase drops in for a lengthy exploration of how music and stress intersect. Fully saturated in the world of sound creation, we learn from this young master that sound, music and musicianship have much to teach. Indeed, they run parallel to other arts, sports and life endeavors when it comes to stress.

In LESSONS IN TENSION we don’t just come see the connection be...

Episode Summary

Dossie Easton is a co-author of The Ethical Slut and four other books on sex, BDSM and relationships. As a pioneer in the world of polyamory she renders fascinating and mirthful accounts of her hard-earned wisdom on navigating the dynamics of non-traditional relationships, particularly with the ethics of “sluthood.” Dossie is also a psychotherapist in private practice and an accomplished poet.

Episode #28 of the How Humans Work Podcast w/Jef Szi jumps right in, as Dossie spontaneously recounts a key psychedelic experience from 1969. Her visions in this pivotal “trip” made clear that the path for...

Episode Summary

The vital and lucid Dr. Kelly Starrett from The Ready State (TRS) joins the How Humans Work Podcast for a rich and captivating conversation about Stress, Fitness, & Society.

In this wide-ranging episode, we get a strong feel for Kelly’s learned perspectives on a host of matters like movement, behavior change, human nature, misguided approaches to fitness, the promise of performance sport and more.

With an extensive background coaching elite athletes and armed service members, Kelly breaks down why the most basic dimensions of human life (breathing, walking, fermented foods, community, et...

In Bonus Episode #05, Brent MacKinnon jumps into the interviewer chair, reversing the roles with show host- Jef Szi. At nearly eighty years of age and with a tremendous range of life experiences (poet, combat war veteran, grandfather, teacher ++), Mac brings a littany of inquiry with mirth and erudition. With the efficiency of a marine, he grills Jef to find out where his substance is and isn’t. Jef makes good on his promise to take Mac’s incoming fire, benevolent as it turned out ot be.

This bonus episode is a genuine conversation between these two men from...

Episode Summary

Marc Brackett is the author of Permission to Feel and the Founding Director at Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He is a driving force in bringing the power of emotional intelligence and basic emotional know-how into schools, communities, and professional settings across the world.

Marc joins us on Episode #26 for a dynamic and musing conversation about the vital role emotions do play in our lives. With equal measure of savvy perspective and humor, Marc helps us to see why emotions matter, how we can take a curious posture with them, and why it...

Dr. Kelly McDermott joins the show for a spirited conversation on the upstream factors which influence our health and impact our society. With her wealth of knowledge about research, policy and health behaviors, Kelly helps us make connections between chronic disease, Adverse and Positive Childhood Experiences, rites of passage, and stress.

Along the way we learn when Kelly’s professional trajectory aligned with her personal passions for yoga and meditation, she found herself researching things like the impact of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Body Awareness interventions on Veterans with PTSD.

These early windows into th...

Episode Summary

Brenton ‘Mac’ MacKinnon is an American poet, combat veteran, polyglot, world-traveler, and creative writing teacher. Mac joins us for a deeply moving conversation about his hard-earned knowledge of warfare, PTSD, writing, healing and the profound desire to be known and belong.

In After You Have Suffered; we come to know Mac as he recounts some of the life events which shaped him: the revelation writing was to his adolescent self and the tremendous bonding experience he had with Vietnamese villagers with wartime dangers about. We also explore how war intensifies the instincts which are...

In Episode 23 of the How Humans Work Podcast, wildly entertaining Jimmy Conrad joins us for a deep dive into his life in and beyond his tremendous thirteen year career as a professional soccer player. In Let’s Make This Matter we get a real and buoyant account of what it took for a lad from Southern California with a profound drive to prove his value, to move from being a perpetually underrated talent into a notable career littered with successes.

Equally vociferous, funny and honest, Jimmy breaks down not just the things he did to make himself in...

In Episode 22, violinist, poet and multimedia artist Zameen-a Iqbal joins the podcast for moving and insightful conversation around the transcendental nature of beauty. Describing an “unbearable ache of inspiration” she has experienced since childhood, we learn how across her life beauty became the virtue by which Zameen-a came to understand how knowledge expands in each of us.

We find in Zameen-a more than studied insight on the power and function of beauty beyond artifice, we find a blend of musing seeker and forthright teacher who imparts knowledge about art, music and writing as traditions across time which offe...

In Episode 21, master storyteller William J. Hornyak kicks-off our third season of the How Humans Work Podcast on The Nature of Stress. Will shows us how both stories and storytelling have power and medicine inside of them to aid us in our times of stress.

At the outset of this show we learn how the craft of storytelling came into Will’s life and what he discovered about stories and their telling: to trust in his love of story to carry the moment. Further, we hear from this master of lore how images and moments in a st...

In Deepening into the Small Soul, Jef Szi welcomes Rory Higham for another dive into the nature of the ego and its place in our lives. Picking up on Bonus Episode #3 - Compassion for the Small Soul, Rory and Jef continue the conversation, primarily through an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective on the relationships between Parts and the Self. Splashing through culture, spiritual traditions, life experiences and more, the small soul is reflected in a myriad of ways. In particular, Rory’s encounters with sadhus in India, sitting with the Dalai Lama and spending time with plant medicines in th...

In Compassion for the Small Soul show host Jef Szi welcomes special guest Alice Treves for a rambling and musing conversation about the value, function and limitations that come with our human ego. While the ego is often castigated and frequently misunderstood, this conversation explores and “defends” the egoic aspect of life as purposful and necessary, even with its notable imperfections.

As they reflect on the ego in light of evolution, the pressures and stimulation of modern times, as well as the inherent dance between our fractured and unified self, Alice and Jef lean on their years of p...

Episode Summary

Michael J. Meade, D.H.L., is a storyteller, author, scholar of mythology as well as the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation and the creator of the Living Myth Podcast.

In Standing in the Rivers of Time, Michael offers us his rich understanding of story and myth as we venture further into our season two conversation around passages in general, and rites of passage in particular. By focusing on the importance of ordeals and their role in challenging the ego and awakening the deep self, Meade shines a clear light into the territory...

Dr. Anna Lembke, MD is a psychiatrist, professor, researcher and the medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine. Dr. Lembke is also the author of Dopamine Nation, a salient book that explores the neuroscience of addiction and the lessons we can learn from those who’ve been caught in its powerful spell.

In episode #19 of the How Humans Work Podcast, Anna and show host Jef Szi have a deep and broad ranging conversation from the basics of addiction and how dopamine works in the brain to the greater implications our ancient pleasure and pain circuits have for us in...

Episode Summary

David M. Buss is a professor of evolutionary psychology and runs the Buss Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. For the past four decades he has focused his research on studying strategies in human mating. He has authored notable books on the subject, including The Evolution of Desire and his recent book on sexual conflict, When Men Behave Badly.

Dr. Buss possesses an unsurpassed knowledge about the evolutionary roots tied to solving the adaptive problem of finding (and keeping) a mate. In Making Sense of Mating of the How Humans Work Podcast...

Episode Summary

Listen in as Jef Szi welcomes the generous and joyful Tara Coyote to the show. In this remarkable episode Tara recounts the many trials and blessings that have been her companions over the last several years. From her picture perfect marriage and career that fell apart to the death of her best friend from leukemia, and onto her own Stage III breast cancer diagnosis in 2016 and all that followed, Tara’s recent passage has been intense and profound passage in equal measure.

Along the way we find a moving portrait (fully documented in he...

In Dreaming On Mother Earth show host Jef Szi weaves a morning dream with a figure of illness into an episode about personal and collective passages.

Beginning by recounting his lifelong connection to his dreaming-self, as well as a handful of some of the dreams that came along in key moments of his life, Jeffrey then lays the ground to look at the figure of illness as a teacher for the unwanted initiation that we are all caught up in with the increasing sense of stress in the world.

Relying on personal moments where the...

Ms. Amy Armstrong teaches AP Psychology and Major Religions at a private Catholic High School in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Resting in the Ancient we hear how chance, activism, and wisdom powerfully blend together in the dedicated heart of one teacher. Deeply attuned to the global challenges in which her students are coming of age, Amy sheds light on how she seeks to impart wisdom and trust in the deep self as an antidote to culture not interested meaningful identity formation.

Myth, wisdom traditions, cutting edge brain and social sciences are some of the rivers...

Episode Summary

Jennifer Berit Wilson is an author, writing coach and activist. In Episode #15 we journey with Jen into the difficult realities in parenting. Relaying the consuming blend of demands from sleep deprivation, work pressures, raising very young children in the absence of village and desire to commitment to be emotionally present, we can taste the bittersweet flavors that are part of modern life and contemporary motherhood.

Jen then takes show host Jef Szi and all of us with her into the indescribably intense encounter that labor and birth were for her. Recalling the hours...