Life on Purpose: Insights on well-being and education from Ira Bedzow, PhD, Executive Director of the Emory Purpose Project Purpose and meaning are foundational to any definition of the good life. They are also a trendy topic these days. Like all trendy topics, they risk being trivialized by our intense hunger for easy answers to life’s difficulties. Enter Ira Bedzow, PhD, Executive Director of the Emory Purpose Project, one of the signature elements of the University’s Student Flourishing Initiative. In this podcast, Dr. Bedzow provides an inspiring, holistic, and challenging take on how to b ..read more

Oxytocin the Human Hormone: A Report from a Life in Science If you are not holding the hormone oxytocin in the highest regard now, you will after listening to this episode’s guest, Sue Carter, PhD, as she explains how this remarkable hormone may hold the key to much of what makes us who we are. In particular, Dr. Carter describes the myriad ways that oxytocin allows humans to feel safe enough in the world and with each other to engage in the many types of bonding/sharing behaviors that have allowed us to create the world in which we live. The science is fascinating and highly relevant to our h ..read more

Want to Change Your Life? Take a Breath, Part 2 This conversation between host Charles L. Raison and Donald J. Noble, PhD, picks up where the first part of this series left off by extending our discussion of the potential health benefits of breathing into more esoteric domains. We explore breathholding and its role in advanced Tibetan Buddhist meditation practices before turning to a discussion of the psychedelic effects of rapid breathing, especially as exemplified by holotropic breathwork, a practice that reliably induces experiences akin to those occasioned by drugs such as LSD or psilocybi ..read more

How One Valley Changed the Equation: A Roadmap for Transforming Behavioral Healthcare in the United States It’s no secret that the United States is in the midst of a mental health crisis. There are a number of reasons why this is occurring, but none is more important than the fact that good mental health care is often somewhere between difficult and impossible to find. And when one can get in to see a provider the services offered are often inadequate: visits are short, help is usually unavailable to address all the problems of life that make us depressed or drive us to drugs or alcohol, and t ..read more

Demystifying Purpose with Emory’s New Purpose Professor: What Matters Most to You and How to Make it Happen Purpose is one of those big ideas that we muse about in late-night conversations … and promptly put aside in the light of day. It’s a concept that can feel a little daunting, but research points to the fact that boosting our sense of purpose is good for our health and well-being. Living purposefully leads to more fulfilling relationships, better sleep, better sex, and even more rewarding and profitable careers. Host Charles Raison is joined by Dr. Christine B. Whelan, Emory University’s ..read more

Psychedelics as the Start, and Not the Ending, of the Journey of Healing After decades of stigmatization, psychedelic medicines have re-emerged onto the world stage as the most promising new mental health treatments in a half-century. Our guest for this podcast, Dr. Rosalind Watts, has played an outsized role in these remarkable developments. Dr. Watts is internationally recognized as a leader in the study and implementation of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. She developed and led the psychedelic-assisted therapy program used in two of the first modern studies of psilocybin for the treatme ..read more

Want to Change Your Life? Take a Breath, Part 1 Breathing is the most natural thing in the world; we do it all the time and pay no attention to it. And yet, this simple act holds huge potential for enhancing our physical and mental wellness. In this podcast, host Charles L. Raison discusses the health benefits of breath work with Donald J. Noble, PhD, an instructor in the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University, continuing a conversation started in a prior “Health is Everything” podcast. In this installment Raison and Noble open up a wide-ranging discussion on topics ranging f ..read more

If You Are Lonely, You Are Not Alone: Explorations Into the Lonely Society This podcast brings us face to face with one of the most distressing issues of the modern world. Despite unprecedented wealth, security and opportunity, rates of suicide have risen more or less continuously over the last generation. Young people, who have their entire lives before them, have been especially hard hit. Although we usually think of suicide as an individual problem, in this podcast Chikako Ozawa de Silva, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, shows how intimately suicide is connected with ..read more

It’s time for some “real talk” about kids’ mental health. This week Eleanor and Dr. Raison discuss the evolution of depression and tools to help kids cope with depression. Featuring: Dr. Charles Raison, Psychiatrist & Depression Researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Host of Health is Everything Podcast Host: Eleanor Barrett, 5th Grader About Emory University's Center for the Study of Human Health: The Emory Center for the Study of Human Health was developed to expand health knowledge and translate this knowledge to all aspects of life – for the individual and populations as a ..read more

Juan Carlos Avila, founder and creator of HappiLyfe, and Eleanor discuss how taking small steps to make positive changes can impact one’s quality of life. Featuring: Juan Carlos Avila, Founder and Creator of HappiLyfe, a purposeful living and wellness aggregator app for all ages (including teens!). Host: Eleanor Barrett, 6th Grader About Emory University's Center for the Study of Human Health: The Emory Center for the Study of Human Health was developed to expand health knowledge and translate this knowledge to all aspects of life – for the individual and populations as a whole. The Center ass ..read more