Health is Everything™

What happens when the worlds of technology, medicine, and spirituality collide? In this fascinating episode, Dr. Charles Raison sits down with Fayzan Rab, a former Silicon Valley tech professional turned medical student and researcher, to explore how psychedelics are reshaping mental health as well as our understanding of the role of spiritual experience in mental health more generally. Fayzan shares his personal journey from being...

In this thought-provoking podcast, Christof Koch, Chief Scientist at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, delves into one of humanity's most profound questions: What is consciousness, and where does it come from? With decades of experience studying the brain's mysteries, Koch offers insights into why consciousness is central to our existence and why understanding it i...

How Your Immune System and Metabolism Shape Depression with Dr. Mandy Bekhbat

In this episode, Dr. Mandy Bekhbat, a neuroscientist and assistant professor in the Emory University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, takes us on a deep dive into the surprising relationship between the immune system, metabolism, and mental health. Her groundbreaking research is reshaping how we think about depression by exploring how thes...

Exploring The Often Under-Appreciated Risks of Meditation and Psychedelics: a Conversation with Roman Palitsky, PhD

In this episode, Dr. Roman Palitsky, a clinical psychologist and Director of Research Projects for Emory Spiritual Health, dives deep into the complex interplay between spirituality, meditation, and mental health. Drawing from his extensive research, Palitsky highlights the lesser-known risks of meditation and psychede...

In Search of Good Sauna: Heat, Tradition and Connection, with Glenn Auerbach, Founder and Editor of Sauna Times

Heat is really having a moment. And not just heat, but cold, too. Saunas and cold plunges, sweat lodges, and swimming in freezing oceans. Infrared home saunas and cold showers. In the last year, all of these and more have been featured in every conceivable form of media. Why the sudden fad?

While there i...

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, o...

Sanity in the Wild New World of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy

The buzz about psychedelics is everywhere these days, especially in the mental health space, where these compounds are being hailed as the greatest potential therapeutic breakthrough of the last 50 years. What was once elemental to the hippie movement of the 60s and then stigmatized and forgotten is now all over the news. Billions of dollars have flowed into comp...

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 oth...

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 o...

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...

Transcendent Experience and the Psychedelic Renaissance: A Conversation with the Co-Founders of the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, Part 2

Anyone interested in mental health knows about the so-called psychedelic renaissance that has been gathering steam for the last half-decade. Compounds such as LSD and psilocybin lauded for their mind-expanding potential in the 60s, and then demonized for a generation, ha...

Transcendent Experience and the Psychedelic Renaissance: A Conversation with the Co-Founders of the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, Part 1

Anyone interested in mental health knows about the so-called psychedelic renaissance that has been gathering steam for the last half-decade. Compounds such as LSD and psilocybin lauded for their mind-expanding potential in the 60s, and then demonized for a generation, ha...

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 ful...

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 implementati...

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 Unive...

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 sui...

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 ...

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...

Spirituality, Health and Compassion: a Conversation with the Reverend Maureen Shelton, Part 2

More than other healthcare professions, chaplaincy is undergoing profound change, and nowhere is this change more apparent than in the Emory Department of Spiritual Health, where chaplaincy is being transformed from an ancillary hospital offering to an integral component of the healthcare system. In this second part of a two-part ...