This week we’re talking about psychedelics — the consciousness altering substances, and the extraordinary moment they are having in our culture at this time. We explore the reasons that popular interest in psychedelics has risen dramatically in recent years — although certainly not for the first time — and we consider the historical and emerging scientific research that supports their use in a variety of applications. We also share our own range of lived experiences with psychedelics and why we have both chosen to dabble with — or avoid — them over the years. Finally, we offer some considerati ..read more

This week we're talking about Nutritious Movement, the brainchild of our brilliant friend, biomechanist, fitness expert, and best-selling author Katy Bowman. Katy's term "nutritious movement" refers to the type of movement that nourishes, educates, shapes, energizes, and repairs us in ways that support optimal health and vitality. And, as Katy explains during the conversation, that does not describe most conventional fitness approaches. So here, Pilar talks with Katy about a great many science-y things very few of us have ever learned about movement and exercise, including some key d ..read more

This week we’ve got a special guest episode with Brian Johnson, the creator of Optimize and the Founder + CEΦ of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. Brian has spent half of the last twenty-five years as a Founder/CEO and the other half as a Philosopher, creating hundreds of his PhilosophersNotes summaries of all sorts of brilliant books worth reading. As a Founder/CEO, he’s built and sold two market-leading social platforms. As a Philosopher, he’s served tens of thousands of people from every country in the world with his Optimize membership, and he has also trained over 3,500 people from 90+ c ..read more

This week, Pilar talks with special guests Leslie Salmon Jones and Jeff W. Jones, co-founders of Afro Flow Yoga. Leslie and Jeff created Afro Flow Yoga in 2008, fusing a new blend of expressive movement and rhythmic music from their own explorations of healing and their African-American and Caribbean heritage, in West Africa, Haiti and Jamaica. Leslie and Jeff describe Afro Flow Yoga as an embodied practice, integrating dance movements of the African Diaspora with meditative yoga and live healing music, promoting individual and collective healing in a compassionate, inclusive, non-judgmental a ..read more

This week Pilar talks to a special guest — James Beard award-winning journalist, author, and food legend Dorothy Kalins. Dorothy is the founding editor of Saveur magazine and Metropolitan Home. She's also a celebrated cookbook creator and the author of a terrific new book, The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends ..read more

This week on The Living Experiment we bring you an episode that has been a very long time coming — a special guest episode with New York Times bestselling author John Zeratsky. John is the co-author — with Jake Knapp —  of two terrific books, Sprint (a popular business title from 2016) and Make Time: How to Focus On What Matters Every Day, which came out in the fall of 2018. In this episode, recorded in the fall of 2019, John and Pilar talk about both titles, and about the themes connecting them. From the value of creating clear mental space for our most pressing priorities to t ..read more

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about the concept of the New Year — from meaningless consumer hype to contemplative pursuits that really can make a difference. We explore the potential pros and cons of leveraging the New Year as an opportunity for self-improvement, and we share the approaches we like best for pursuing change in our own lives. From expert theories of change to the awkward realities of working on a goal that eludes you, we take a thoughtful look at New Year's conventions, and we offer some experiments to help you establish a better, more self-compassionate plan ..read more

This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about Midlife — that fun and potentially funky moment when you realize you might well have fewer years ahead of you than you've already put behind you. It's a clarifying moment for many, and a moment of crisis for others. A moment when we realize that we may not have lived our own highest choices up until now — and that if we're going to make the rest of our lives more the way we'd like them to be, this is the time to make that happen. In the midst of all of this is the anxiety about getting older, looking older, being seen as just plain old in ..read more

Life continues to be weird. So we are just rolling with it. This week on The Living Experiment, Pilar offers some updates and options for folks who want to stay connected and who are eager keep experimenting through the rest of 2020. Get full show notes and resources at http://livingexperiment.com/mini-update ..read more

This week on The Living Experiment, Pilar interviews a special guest, hunter-gatherer and rewilding enthusiast Daniel Vitalis. Daniel is a well-recognized advocate for what's known as rewilding, a term that he points out means very different things to different people. To Daniel, and also to Pilar, it means reclaiming and reconnecting with aspects of our own wild-creature origins, and for getting into a closer, more intimate connection with our natural world. Daniel visited Pilar's family farm in Wisconsin in summer 2019 to film an episode for his forthcoming TV series, called "WildFed." In th ..read more