A lot of what Jeffrey Kripal writes about and explores doesn’t fit into our current worldview. A professor at Rice University, where he holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought, Jeff specializes in extreme religious experiences, a new comparativism in the study of religion, the paranormal, and the extraordinary dimensions of human existence. He helped create the groundbreaking GEM Program (Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism) and serves on the board of the Esalen I...
Apr 01, 2025•54 min•Season 3Ep. 24
What if pain wasn’t just a problem to fix, but a portal to something deeper? Diane Goldner didn’t set out to become a healer. As an investigative journalist writing for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, she approached energy healing with the sharp eye of a skeptic, ready to expose what didn’t hold up. But instead, she found something that flipped her world upside down. Today, she’s an internationally recognized healer and medical intuitive, helping people unlock their body’s hidden...
Mar 25, 2025•1 hr 22 min•Season 3Ep. 23
John Cleese and Dr. Iain McGilchrist are good friends who share a deep appreciation for the power of humor and a fascination with neuroscience and consciousness. McGilchrist recalls falling asleep laughing at an episode of Fawlty Towers—only to wake up the next morning still laughing. Cleese has spent a lifetime using humor not just to entertain but to challenge rigid thinking, expose absurdities, and reveal truths hiding in plain sight. McGilchrist, a psychiatrist, philosopher, and neuroscienti...
Mar 18, 2025•50 min•Season 3Ep. 22
A lot of what Dr. Alex Gomez-Marin explores challenges the boundaries of traditional science. A physicist and neuroscientist, Alex leads the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, Spain, and serves as the director of the Pari Center in Italy. His groundbreaking work spans neuroscience, physics, and the study of consciousness, with a focus on what he calls “the edges of consciousness.” In this episode, Elizabeth joins Alex for a mind-expanding conversation...
Mar 11, 2025•53 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Vandana Shiva is not just an activist, she is a visionary, a force of nature, and a firebrand for a world in crisis. She doesn’t merely challenge the mechanistic view of life; she dismantles it with the precision of a physicist and the passion of a poet. In its place, she offers something far more powerful: a universe alive with intelligence, diversity, and self-organization. This is a cosmos where everything pulses with meaning. A scientist and warrior for the Earth, Vandana bridges worlds that...
Mar 01, 2025•42 min•Season 3Ep. 20
For Wonderstruck's Season 2 finale, host Elizabeth Rovere introduces a special conversation between Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi, one of Zen's leading voices, and his Dharma Successor and Dharma Sangha colleague Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi. The mentor-protégé duo display their compassion and respect for one another while introducing vital ideas about navigating existence, seeking connection, and recalibrating perception. https://wonderstruck.org https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ https://...
Jul 15, 2024•12 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Healer, author and world-renowned qigong master Robert Peng traces his singular journey and shares stories about the teacher that changed his life. Recovering from a childhood illness during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Peng started apprenticing with a legendary monk named Xiao Yao. Having witnessed and learned from his master’s extraordinary, and seemingly supernatural powers, Peng himself developed his own remarkable capabilities, feats of strength and healing which many would consider imp...
Jun 17, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Emma Mumford is the best-selling author of Hurt, Healing, Healed, and Spiritual Queen , and host of Spiritual Queen’s Badass Podcast . There, she covers topics like manifestation, out of body experiences, The Law of Attraction and processing trauma. Emma’s own spiritual awakening came as a surprise. She had found professional success after years of personal struggle, becoming a popular couponing advocate and presenter in the UK. Nevertheless, she still suffered from depression and anxiety. A mom...
May 27, 2024•41 min•Season 2Ep. 17
What do you want? Who are you bound to? Who are you, really? And what will you do when faced with difficult decisions? These are some of the questions at the heart of religion and tragedy, dramas about extreme situations, impossible choices, and their consequences. William Robert, a professor of religion at Syracuse University, studies religion by studying tragedies, since both ask the same kinds of big questions about being human: questions about love and connection, about purpose and passion, ...
May 13, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Seeking relief from her migraine headaches, Dr. Sue Morter turned to meditation. As a new meditator, 24 years ago, she sat down to meditate as part of a group. As she followed along chanting a mantra, her mind was stilled and she was instantaneously transported into a higher state of consciousness, that she explains "was completely altered from where we operate on a daily basis." Dr. Sue shares with Wonderderstruck's Elizabeth Rovere, "I could see 360 degrees...I could see in every direction sim...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Nicole Baden's life in Zen began with a crisis. She was 17, overwhelmed and felt she may not survive. With help from her father, and her own intuition, Nicole looked for relief in the form of her 18th birthday gift: a trip to a Zen meditation retreat. Hoping to quiet her existential dread, what Nicole took away from that trip was even greater. It set her on a path that would entirely change her concept of self, and the way she'd experience being in the world. Now known as Tatsudo Nicole Baden Ro...
Apr 15, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 2Ep. 14
In 1950, a 19-year-old Stanford University sophomore named Michael Murphy had a serendipitous encounter that changed his life. Murphy had prepared to sit through more of his pre-med coursework. Instead, he wound up in a lecture hall where the great religions scholar and professor Frederic Spiegelberg delivered a message that shook Murphy to his core, altering his ambitions, his career trajectory and his spiritual outlook. "Walking out of there, one sentence kept going through my head," Murphy, n...
Apr 01, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Doctor John Douillard is one of the world’s foremost natural health experts and a leading voice in the fields of Ayurveda and sports medicine. As a certified ayurvedic practitioner, John draws from ancient Indian medical knowledge and cutting edge medical research to treat the ailments of the modern world. A prolific author, podcaster and YouTube presence, millions of viewers have watched John's videos about topics like sleep improvement, brain detoxing, healthy aging, and longevity. On Wonderst...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Visionary creator of communities and author of the book Belong, Radha Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Daybreaker, a one of a kind wellness movement and gathering of sunrise dancers that has held extraordinary events on five continents—for almost half a million people, including Oprah—over the course of the last ten years. While integrating music, movement and community, all in a substance-free, sun up setting, Radha has developed powerful, transformative ideas about moving past judgment tow...
May 03, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Focusing on esoteric rituals, gender and bodies in Hindu traditions, Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a research fellow at Harvard Divinity School, an instructional assistant professor of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston, and sits on the Board of Trustees at Esalen Institute. From early childhood, Sravana experienced both clairvoyance and clairaudience. She sees and hears things others cannot perceive. At eight years old, mindful of these gifts, she began her initiation into T...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 10
In Father Francis Tiso’s second Wonderstruck sit-down with host, Elizabeth Rovere, he reveals more about his Himalayan adventure and gets personal about his own experiences with wonder and awe. From visions of Jesus Christ, to encountering holy visitors in his dreams, Father Tiso shares how his own spiritual practices, and his pursuit of wisdom, prepare him to embody and understand different levels of consciousness across life and death, even soothing cancer patients with visualization and guide...
Apr 19, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Father Francis Tiso, a Catholic Priest and renowned scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, shares the unforgettable story behind his riveting book Rainbow Body and Resurrection: Spiritual Attainment, the Dissolution of the Material Body, and the Case of Khenpo A Chö . Khenpo A Chö was a Tibetan monk who, through retreat, prayer, and meditation, prepared his body to turn into radiant light upon his own death. When Khenpo A Chö died, he achieved this phenomenon (it's called the rainbow body), and in the yea...
Apr 12, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Mary Reilly Nichols, director of the Yoga Studies program at Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science in New York City, reflects on her transformational relationship with wonder, dating back to her time as a student at Harvard in the 1970s. When Mary first began feeling currents of energy coursing up her spine and into the crown of her head, hearing wind chimes and choral music unheard by others, she tried to distance herself from what it all would mean to her life. “I was trying to tamp it d...
Apr 05, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Through setting out to find meaning in his own life, John Vervaeke, a professor in the psychology department at the University of Toronto—and a YouTube sensation—has developed a fascinating framework and adopted a series of practices through which others can pursue and achieve a deeply meaningful life, too. In sharing his research and findings from the world of 4E cognition and consciousness (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended), with Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere, John reveals the signi...
Mar 29, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 6
As a student of Bharatanatyam, a form of sacred Indian classical dance, Daniela Riva connects with the divine using choreography that dates back more than two millennia. In developing her expertise, and her following as a performer, teacher, and author, Daniela tells Wonderstruck's Elizabeth Rovere that it took years of dedication and surrender to understand how to move profound currents of energy throughout her body. During a period of awakening, while stomping her feet in service of her dance ...
Mar 22, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Groundbreaking scientist, psychology professor and best-selling author Dacher Keltner's latest book, AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life is an instant classic. Supported by field work, cultural survey, and autobiography, this essential volume explores the many benefits of pursuing, encountering, and embracing awe as an emotion--and as a regularly occurring experience to which we all have access. As Dacher tells Wonderstruck's Elizabeth Rovere, awe is also c...
Mar 15, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Russell Brand, comedian, actor, author, seeker, and Stay Free podcast host reveals to Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere why spiritual pursuits keep him alive, which teachings anchor him, and how he manages his own “beautiful monsters” in the hope of converting anxiety into action and accessing efficacy through chaos. With singular humor, wide-ranging scholarship, and a heart-led connection to the profound, Russell shares how he negotiates the pull of ecstasy against the need for serenity, why he t...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Through her private yoga and coaching practices, and in her role teaching Compassion-Based Resilience Training at Nalanda Institute in New York City, Rahshaana Green helps students manage stress and heal reactivity by developing greater clarity, self-knowledge, and grace. But, as Rahshaana tells Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere, her own path to becoming a practitioner meant overcoming pain and trauma. “When you literally have to have an injury make you stop and pause,” Rahshaana says, “there’s a ...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 2
Growing up in a British working class, non-religious family, TV presenter, best-selling author and Happy Place podcast host, Fearne Cotton, felt the presence of the spiritual world from an early age. "I just looked at the stars and felt completely overwhelmed," she tells Wonderstruck host, Elizabeth Rovere. "It was like, wow, there's something else going on here. It can't just be going to school, coming back, and having my tea." As a girl, Fearne's mother encouraged her daughter's nature as seek...
Mar 01, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Be open to the wonder in your own life! Host Elizabeth Rovere, clinical psychologist, yoga teacher, Harvard Divinity School graduate, and seeker, introduces Wonderstruck, a new podcast about the transformational experiences of awe and wonder. From radical visions to fire-based rituals, from pursuing a rainbow body in Tibet to finding the luminous in your everyday walk, we dive deep into the what, wonder and wow of being with levity and thoughtful curiosity. Starting March 1st, join Elizabeth and...
Feb 14, 2023•2 min
