How do we go forward in our psychoanalytic understanding of transgender children? This highly contested issue is at the core of an interesting edition of the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (Volume 75, Issue 1, 2022), titled “Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue”, and edited by Jordan Osserman and Hannah Wallerstein. To counter the feeling of being stuck in an endless spiral of splitting and binary thinking in the field, they have proposed a new model of dialogue: Fou...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 191
In Botanical Ecstasies: Psychoactive Plant Formulas in India and Beyond , Dr Matthew Clark proposes that soma / hoama is instead an ayahuasca-like plant complex made from many different species. He discusses a range of candidates that reliably grow in the right areas and which in combination might produce an effect similar to the so-called 'classic' psychedelics. These early ecstatic experiences, he suggests, contributed to the emergent concept and ritual techniques of mysticism. Raj Balkaran is...
Jul 07, 2022•58 min•Ep. 196
'Whiteness' is a politically constructed category which needs to be understood and dismantled because the system of racism so embedded within our society harms us all. It has profound implications for human psychology, an understanding of which is essential for supporting the movement for change. Helen Morgan's The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (Routledge, 2021)explores these implications from a psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic perspective. The 'fragility' of whiteness, the ...
Jul 06, 2022•53 min•Ep. 192
In Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment (UNC Press, 2022), Cristina Ramos tells us the story of Mexico city’s oldest public institution for the insane, the Hospital de San Hipólito . This institution, founded in 1567, was the first mental hospital in the New World. Remarkable as this fact may be, this book is not simply about the singularity of this institution––though by placing this institution au pair with similar ones in the European context Ramos refram...
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 162
Hannah Zeavin talks about teletherapy, from Freud’s letters to suicide hotlines to therapy apps. If therapy is always mediated, teletherapy is any form of therapy in which that mediation is more clearly legible. This mediated practice is the topic of her new book The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT Press, 2021). Hannah is a Lecturer in the departments of English and History at UC Berkeley, where she is affiliated with the Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Societ...
Jun 30, 2022•19 min•Ep. 70
Today I talked to Greg Hoffman about his new book Emotion By Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike (Twelve, 2022). For this week’s guest Greg Hoffman, the characteristics of empathy and curiosity are central to everything from finding your place in the world, to connecting with others, and building a brand that exhibits a true sense of purpose by empowering people to realize their potential. Along the way, this episode explores both the value and limits of data-driven marketing...
Jun 30, 2022•31 min
Senior Sociopaths: How to Recognize and Escape Lifelong Abusers (Anderly Publishing, 2022) is the first book to examine antisocial behavior in the over-50 crowd. This is a far bigger problem than anyone realizes. In America, 14 million people over age 50 could be diagnosed with antisocial, narcissistic, borderline or histrionic personality disorders, or psychopathy. They are not locked up in jails or mental institutions. They live among us, scamming and abusing almost everyone in their lives. Th...
Jun 28, 2022•32 min•Ep. 176
Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind was that rare publishing phenomenon--a mind-changer. Widely read by the general public as well as by educators, this influential book laid out Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. It debunked the primacy of the IQ test and inspired new approaches to education; entire curricula, schools, museums, and parents' guides were dedicated to the nurturing of the several intelligences. In his new book, A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intell...
Jun 23, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 18
Today I talked to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz about his new book Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe (Dey Street Books, 2022) Looking for advice on how to get a date, how to have a successful marriage, or just how to have a happier life? Don’t trust your gut, don’t trust conventional wisdom, and put down that self-help book full of plausible arguments and compelling anecdotes that just happens to contradict the advice you got from the self-help book you. Instead, le...
Jun 22, 2022•58 min•Ep. 107
In this podcast we will be chatting with EWP PhD student Reise Tanner about her unique approaches to birthing through her work as a midwife, doula and birthing coach. She shares her experiences in learning how to hold space to help mothers feel their belonging during the birthing process, and discusses how birthing can be approached as a form of sacred activism. Reise talks about how to reclaim the deep feminine and the role of the earth as the divine feminine in holistic transformation, which l...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 12
Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life (Harriman House, 2022) is a book of inspiring stories and hard-won lessons on how to live a meaningful life, crafted by investor and writer Vitaliy Katsenelson. Drawing from the lives of classical composers, ancient Stoics, and contemporary thinkers, Katsenelson weaves together a tapestry of practical wisdom that has helped him overcome his greatest challenges: in work, family, identity, health--and in dealing with success, failure, and more. Part a...
Jun 17, 2022•57 min•Ep. 175
In the early 1960s, Massachusetts writer and homemaker Clara Park and her husband took their 3-year-old daughter, Jessy, to a specialist after noticing that she avoided connection with others. Following the conventional wisdom of the time, the psychiatrist diagnosed Jessy with autism and blamed Clara for Jessy's isolation. Experts claimed Clara was the prototypical "refrigerator mother," a cold, intellectual parent who starved her children of the natural affection they needed to develop properly...
Jun 17, 2022•53 min•Ep. 2
Today I talked to Ximena Vengoechea about Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection (Portfolio, 2021). What’s your default listening mode? Are you perhaps a pivoter, a distractor, a withdrawer, an explorer or, like today’s guest, an innate problem-solver trying to find a solution to whatever is troubling the person you’re having a conversation with? Three different kinds of difficult conversations get covered here: 1) an imbalance-of-power conversation between a boss an...
Jun 16, 2022•28 min•Ep. 109
According to the medical world, hysteria is a thing of the past, an outdated diagnosis that has disappeared for good. Hysteria: Crime, Media, and Politics (Routledge, 2021) argues that hysteria is in fact alive and well. Hyperventilating, we rush from one incident into the next - there is hardly time for a breather. From the worldwide run on toilet paper to cope with coronavirus fears to the overheated discussions about immigration and overwrought reactions to the levels of crime and disorder ar...
Jun 15, 2022•43 min•Ep. 236
As a trainee doctor, A. J. Lees was enthralled by his mentors: esteemed neurologists who combined the precision of mathematicians, the scrupulosity of entomologists, and the solemnity of undertakers in their diagnoses and treatments. For them, there was no such thing as an unexplained symptom or psychosomatic problem--no difficult cases, just interesting ones--and it was only a matter of time before all disorders of the brain would be understood in terms of anatomical, electrical, and chemical c...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 17
Today we will be speaking to Marta Rubinart, EWP adjunct faculty and recent Phd graduate, about her spiritual experiences that lead her to pursue a phd through EWP on the role of the heart in personality integration and spiritual growth. We discuss her recent dissertation “The Heart-Soul Axis in the Jesus Prayer and the Integral Yoga Sadhana” and explore mystic contemplation, embodied prayer, as well as some of the academic challenges she encountered in her comparative and cross-cultural inquiry...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 11
The Restorative Nature of Ongoing Connections with the Deceased: Exploring Presence Within Absence (Routledge, 2022) is a guide to stimulating thought and discussion about ongoing attachments between bereaved individuals and their deceased loved ones. Chapters promote broad, inclusive training and dialogue for working with clients who establish and/or maintain a restorative connection with their deceased loved one as well as those who find aspects of such connections to be psychologically or spi...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 174
In a world facing more shootings, suicides, substance abuse, and sexual violence than ever before, there is more that we can do as educators, as parents, and as adults committed to leaving this world better than we found it. Research shows that just one trusted adult can have a profound effect on a child’s life, influencing that young person toward positive growth, greater engagement in school and community activities, better overall health, and prevention of risky and threatening behaviors. Fro...
Jun 07, 2022•58 min•Ep. 173
Today we will be speaking with EWP adjunct faculty Sophia Reinders, about her academic and personal journey from phenomenology, to Jungian depth psychology, expressive arts and eco-arts therapy to ecopsychology and evolutionary cosmology. She shares with us the life changing experience of discovering her earth soul at the depth and as the depth of the psyche, embedded in earth. This led her to a deep and passionate exploration of the intricate intertwinement of the human community with the more ...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning (MIT, 2022), Sheila L. Macrine (Professor in Cognitive Science, UMass Dartmouth) and Jennifer M. B. Fugate (Associate Professor in Health Psychology, Kansas City University) bring together experts to translate the latest findings on embodied cognition to inform teaching and learning pedagogy. Embodied cognition represents a radical shift in conceptualizing cognitive processes, in which cognition develops through mind-body ...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 169
Today I talked to Richard Chataway about his book The Behaviour Business: How to Apply Behavioural Science for Business Success (Harriman House, 2020). Ever seen the TED talk video on Youtube where Capuchin monkeys get enraged when some receive cucumbers and other monkeys more delicious grapes for completing the same task? Welcome to the inequality basis, whereby a lack of fairness drives all of us crazy. Whether it’s a matter of employees getting different pay for the same job, or consumers fee...
Jun 02, 2022•33 min•Ep. 108
The King of France - thinking he was made of glass - was terrified he might shatter...and he wasn't alone. After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France's asylums. Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead. For centuries we've dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks - they hold the key t...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 169
When people describe the brain they often compare it to a computer. In fact, the metaphor of the brain as a computer has defined the field for decades now. And in many ways, it works – the are many respects in which the brain is like a computer. But there are other aspects of the brain which are not captured by the computer metaphor which is why the neuroscientist Daniel Graham is suggesting another paradigm for understanding the brain. In his book An Internet in Your Head: A New Paradigm for Ho...
May 31, 2022•44 min•Ep. 15
This episode features Silvia Nakkach, a Grammy® nominated musician and cross-cultural explorer of musical worlds. Silvia will enchant you as she shares her journey searching for the cosmic source of sound from her home in Brazil, to the Bay area where she learned North Indian Raga music under maestro Ali Akbar Khan for more than 30 years, as well as experimental and electronic music while at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros and Anthony Braxton. We will discuss the integrative power of the mys...
May 30, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Few substances have been researched as extensively, and debated as fiercely, as cannabis. In Marijuana on My Mind: The Science and Mystique of Cannabis (Cambridge University Press, 2022), psychiatrist Timmen Cermak offers a balanced, science-based analysis of how marijuana affects people physiologically, psychologically, and spiritually. Cermak draws on current understandings of the brain and nervous system to describe how cannabis achieves its effects as well as how it can pose risks to some in...
May 24, 2022•56 min•Ep. 47
Today Stephen and I talk with EWP Phd grad and adjunct faculty, Heidi Fraser. She is also the Director of the CIIS Center for Writing and Scholarship, and was a former EWP program manager. We explore aspects of Integral Yoga as taught by Hari Das Chaudhuri and Bahman Shairazi and it’s applications in scholarship and activism. We also discuss approaches to understanding Integral education based on Heidi’s dissertation research on the nature of Integral Education at CIIS. Heidi Fraser Hageman comp...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain (U Chicago Press, 2021), religious studies scholar John Lardas Modern offers a sprawling examination of the history of the cognitive revolution and current attempts to locate all that is human in the brain, including spirituality itself. Neuromatic is a wildly original take on the entangled histories of science and religion that lie behind our brain-laden present: from eighteenth-century revivals to the origins of neurology and my...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 239
Focusing on your mental health can feel overwhelming, but with this supportive mindfulness journal, you’ll learn how your faith can guide you to a happier, healthier life. Inside you’ll find Biblical quotes and prompts to remind you of God’s unconditional love, plus short, therapeutic practices to help you take charge of your mental well-being. What sets the Mental Health Journal for Christians: Faith-Based Prompts to Improve Your Mind, Body & Spirit (Rockridge, 2022) apart from other guided...
May 19, 2022•41 min•Ep. 199
In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast , Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to renowned cognitive psychologist Stephen Kosslyn about how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced, or didn't influence, our understanding of the learning process. Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with m...
May 18, 2022•52 min•Ep. 119
This installment of the EWP podcast will conclude our double episode feature on Haridas Chaudhuri and the roots of the California Institute of Integral Studies. This episode features a talk by Jim Ryan, who started teaching at CIIS in 1981, and became core faculty in 1986. He is the former Director of the Asian and Comparative Studies program in the Philosophy and Religion department. Jim takes us on a deep historical and cultural journey, recounting Haridas Chaudhuri coming from Kolkata to San ...
May 16, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 7
