Innerspace: Deep, Meaningful Conversations with Brett Kaufman

Truth Medicine: From Holocaust Shadows to Psychedelic Healing with Michael Shapiro

Michael Shapiro grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. His grandmother survived Auschwitz. His grandfather was a Nazi slave soldier. By the time Michael was 12, he was self-medicating with drugs. By 15, he was having mystical experiences in the forest. By 48, he had become a Buddhist monk, a clinical psychologist, a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, and the author of Truth Medicine: Healing and Living Authentically Through Psychedelic Psychotherapy.This is a conversation about what it actually takes to heal. Not the shortcut version. The real version.Michael and Brett go deep on intergenerational trauma and why we carry our ancestors' wounds in our bodies, the difference between using psychedelic medicine recreationally and using it as a doorway into serious inner work, the sister's letter that cracked Michael open at 19, and why true transformation requires community, not just ceremony.If you've ever wondered whether you're doing enough work, or whether the work is even worth it, this episode is for you.Truth Medicine is available wherever books are sold.

Jenny Shuman: How a Midwest Teen Mom Became the Bead Artist for the Grateful Dead's Greatest Musicians

Jenny Shuman didn't map any of this out.She became a mother at 16. She picked up her first loom at a summer powwow in 1992. She spent years selling beadwork from a booth while her daughter danced beside her in full regalia. She built a quiet, intentional life in Michigan and then left all of it behind for Oregon, her husband, and a new beginning she couldn't quite see yet.Today, her work is worn by Bob Weir, Oteil Burbridge, Duane Betts, Anders Osborne, Derek Trucks, and Michael Franti. She's crafted straps for some of the most sacred instruments in music, including Jerry Garcia's Wolf and Alligator Guitars. Each piece carries a story. A family. A soul.In this conversation, Brett and Jenny trace the full arc. The loving childhood in Rockford, Michigan. The grandmother who first put a needle in her hand. The teenage pregnancy, the alternative high school, the powwow trail with a toddler in tow. The sister she lost too young. The cross-country leap that cost her a pension and a paid-off house and opened something she never could have engineered.And always, the loom. The meditation of it. The intention woven into every bead.Jenny's story isn't a straight line. It's a perfectly imperfect tree, bent by wind and weather, shaped by love and loss, growing toward something most people spend a lifetime searching for: a life that is completely, unmistakably yours.Learn more about Jenny here: Beadworkbyjenny.net

The Hero's Journey to Wholeness: Ben Katt on Burnout, Belonging, and Coming Home to Yourself

Ben Katt spent a decade building something rare: a contemplative community center in Seattle rooted in belonging, service, and inner life. From the outside, it looked like purpose-driven work at its best. Beneath the surface, the same old patterns were quietly running the show — achievement, performance, the hunger for approval.It took a single moment on a morning run and the words if you don't have your heart, you have nothing to stop him cold.In this conversation, Brett and Ben trace the arc of Ben's life from a childhood shaped by church, brotherhood, and the need to earn love through performance, through a decade of entrepreneurial ministry, through burnout and unraveling, and into the clarity that eventually became his book, The Way Home: Discovering the Hero's Journey to Wholeness at Midlife.They explore why high achievers often do the most soulful work while still playing the same exhausting game. Why transitions are portals, not problems. And what it actually looks like to renovate your being from the inside out not just restructure your career.Ben is a coach, meditation teacher, author, and faculty-in-residence at the Modern Elder Academy. He's also living proof that the unknown isn't something to rush through, it's where everything changes.

The Calm Advantage: Chris Voss on Negotiation, Empathy, and the Psychology of Influence

Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator, bestselling author of Never Split the Difference, and one of the world’s leading experts on high-stakes communication. In this conversation, Brett and Chris explore what negotiation really is and why most of us misunderstand it entirely.Before he was teaching executives and founders how to navigate boardrooms, Chris was negotiating with terrorists, kidnappers, and people on the brink of taking their own lives. What he learned in those moments wasn’t about dominance or control. It was about understanding.They discuss the neuroscience of calm, why your nervous system is always negotiating before your words are, and how empathy, not agreement, not sympathy, becomes the most powerful tool in moments of conflict. Chris breaks down the internal “chatter” that sabotages us in difficult conversations and explains why curiosity is a competitive advantage in leadership, relationships, and business.This episode moves beyond tactics and into something deeper: how we regulate ourselves under pressure, how we create psychological safety, and why feeling understood can release potent forces for change.Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes negotiation, leading through tension, or simply trying to communicate more effectively in your personal life, this conversation reframes what influence truly means.

The Psychology of the Soul: Vanessa Bennett on Depth Healing, Motherhood, and Breaking Generational Patterns

Vanessa Bennett is a depth psychologist, therapist, and author of The Motherhood Myth. In this conversation, Brett and Vanessa go all the way back. Vanessa grew up as a parentified child in a single-parent home — the overachiever who learned early that love was something you earned through achievement, not something freely given.At 25, a close friend told her she always seemed angry. That one honest observation cracked her open. It sent her into therapy, yoga, Al-Anon, and eventually across the country — alone, at 30 — to leave her career in New York advertising, end a long-term relationship, and start over completely. Her work now sits at the intersection of depth psychology, spirituality, and the real, unfiltered experience of being human. And when she became a mother, two weeks before COVID lockdown, the myths she'd spent years studying became impossible to ignore. This is a conversation about what actually heals us. And what gets in the way.