How Humans Work Podcast

Ms. Amy Armstrong teaches AP Psychology and Major Religions at a private Catholic High School in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Resting in the Ancient we hear how chance, activism, and wisdom powerfully blend together in the dedicated heart of one teacher. Deeply attuned to the global challenges in which her students are coming of age, Amy sheds light on how she seeks to impart wisdom and trust in the deep self as an antidote to culture not interested meaningful identity formation. Myth, wisdom traditions, cutting edge brain and social sciences are some of the rivers of knowledge that Armstrong relies upon to guide her students who are faced with navigating the passage of growing-up in a radically changing world. In this show we find a moving portrait of how teaching can be a sacred responsibility in the continuity of time which contributes to and fosters a more holistic sense of self for young people. Furthermore we learn how activism, books, and synchronicity pulled Amy into a career as an educator and the wonderful ways she embraces her ‘weird,’ encouraging her students to do the same.Along the way we learn how many, many years of teaching social justice and Peace and Conflict Studies required effort that once again, by chance, transformed into another kind of mode; that of the mystic. No longer driven to be a warrior dedicated to the hardwork of addressing social justice education, Ms. Armstrong now is turning her teaching toward the deepest part of the self, willing to acknowledge life’s miracles and accept the power of the mystic within. Always ready to grab threads of value and meaning, in Amy’s personal passage of coming to rest in the ancient as well as being a much needed guide for young adults about to take flight, we find in her a compelling voice for the power of education that blesses young people with the radical notion that they too have a living wisdom within which they can rely on.Connect with Amy professionally on LinkedInJoin Amy in Protecting Native Elders with PPE Supplies***Support the How Humans Work Podcast***

Episode SummaryJennifer Berit Wilson is an author, writing coach and activist. In Episode #15 we journey with Jen into the difficult realities in parenting. Relaying the consuming blend of demands from sleep deprivation, work pressures, raising very young children in the absence of village and desire to commitment to be emotionally present, we can taste the bittersweet flavors that are part of modern life and contemporary motherhood. Jen then takes show host Jef Szi and all of us with her into the indescribably intense encounter that labor and birth were for her. Recalling the hours of work and psychedelic like visions therein, we learn that in the monumental effort in labor there is the possibility for dramatic encounter with the profound forces of both beauty and terror. Taken far beyond her edge and into the muddy underworld, Jen wakes us up to what dwells between the thoughts she had prior to birth and how it actually was experienced. From it she draws teaching on how birthing holds guidance for our difficult global times. They also explore the essential connection between birthing and the initiation needs and practices for men from ceremonies like The Sun Dance and others. Gradually they wind their way into another passage in Jen’s life, where Jen found herself willingly walking toward a dark night of the soul. As she freed herself out of her persona and privilege she thought here life was suppose to be, a more genuine and satisfying self followed, slowly and assuredly. We hear not just the value of those hard times, we hear the poetry that came from it. Throughout The Moon Dance of Motherhood we find that the intrinsic wisdom of life is alive and at work, moving Jen toward a fuller sense of self. From her transformations we can garner inspiration knowing that in life’s most potent passages, we too shall become more authentic in ourselves… even as we encounter sacrifice, surrender and the touch of death on the way.Learn More About Jennifer Berit Wilson***Support the How Humans Work Podcast***

Episode SummaryIn Episode #14 Jef Szi welcomes poet, memoirist, and writing coach Albert Flynn DeSilver to the podcast for an engaging conversation about the personal passages in his life as well as the passages that have come with being a writer. We begin by exploring Albert’s latest book project on consciousness and addiction. On the heels of that we are given a few of Albert’s secret sauce ingredients for guiding writers in particular, but creatives in general. Albert’s then takes us into the moving contours of how the writing process awakens us to the unseen field of possibility and self-discovery, both in grace and in hardship. Not just in theory, but from the ache of his own adversities. Trusting the Wild Mind then turns toward Albert’s own upbringing and intiations into, among other things, the problematic side of alcohol at sleep-away camp and at the neighborhood “Derelict Den." Along the way we come to see how the destructive elements of Albert’s coming-of-age was rooted in childhood pains but would eventually lead to crisis moments that brought Albert to a life more connected to nature, words and art, and the depths of his own nature.In this heartful episode with Albert, we can hear an intimate portrait of change and healing and how chance and calling come together in on the long road of one life. Sharing a mosaic of passages, we eventually arrive with Albert as he finds Spirit Rock Meditation Center and where meetings with Jack Kornfield and Anjahn Jumnian brought Albert further along on his destiny to blend the art of writing with dedication to the practices of awakening to a deeper connection to his original nature. Connect with Albert on Social ***Support the How Humans Work Podcast***

Episode SummaryIn Episode #13 Jef Szi welcomes Randy Fortes for a dynamic conversation about his passage into becoming a social-emotional facilitator. In it we hear how Randy began his journey first working with young children then teaching hip-hop culture at his local community center before an epic encounter with young people around the world as a Challenge Day facilitator for eight years. Along the way Randy takes us into his nature with an honest, wise and heart-full account of what moves him and how he’s had learned to move others toward the most essential aspects of human experience. In Warrior of the Forgotten, we feel the pain and the beauty in life’s difficult edges and empowering blessings. As Randy takes us with him into varied and authentic emotional tones: creativity, empathy, grief, humor, curiosity and more, we find an incredibly kindred spirit, willing to share what is most real in his personal and generational passages, his growing connection to his native roots, and inspire us with his fountain of timeless creativity! Connect with Randy on social….InstagramFacebookBring Randy into to do Soul Shoppe work with your community…SoulshoppeCheck Out Randy’s Freedom Flow Internet Radio ShowFreedom Flow Radio ShowClips on teaching B-boy Dance in Livermore (note: turn volume down)Learn more about the the Tohono O’ odham Nation and PeopleOfficial websiteWiki summaryView a Map of Native Nations and Tribal Communities

Episode SummaryIn Episode #12 Popa (Kaiwann King) is our first and much welcomed guest for the new season. In this show, North Heaven, Popa and Jef talk about their recent times from first meeting in Watts to having a community weekend in the Sierra mountains. Gradually they find their way toward two great passages in Popa’s life that he wanted to share on the show. The first one happened after school one May day when Popa was in third grade. On that fateful afternoon, Popa had an accident that changed him forever. Overtime, he came to believe the power of “the man above” is what gave him the strength to overcome and adapt to his physical and situational hardships. This show is the first time Popa has ever shared his profoundly personal story. The second passage Popa shares is one that is happening right now. Just 17 years young and Senior in high school with a great love for basketball, Popa is taking hold of his future in a creative way by blending his vision for a postive social message for the urban realities and deep gratitude and faith in Jesus into a vibrant clothing brand. North Heaven Clothing Brand seeks to resonate with a hip and spirited approach to life, offering a values based message in the complex conditions to inner-city life. In his ambition and courage we can see how Popa is setting up his many tomorrows in extremely admirable way. North Heaven, the show, is a chance to hear from a brave heart and patient soul rising from great adversities to claim something that’s both chill and profound at once. North Heaven, the brand, is something listeners are invited to get behind. In so doing we can all add oxygen to a young fire inside of a knowing mind. Connect with Popa on….InstagramEmail PopaSupport North Heaven BrandShop North Heaven BrandFollow North Heaven on Insta

In this short, solo episode Jef Szi kicks-off season two by laying-out the intention and the shape of what's to come. He invites the listeners to expand his reach for guests beyond his social set. After a short musical break, Jef shares his new found passion for the language of astrology and how it is helping him rethink what's at play in human life. In paticular he compares and contrast the earthly studies of stress with the invisible forces at play in astrology and how both influence human life. About Season Two: PassagesSeason Two will be another sojourn into the contours of our human nature. In these episodes we will explore the impacts of tranformative journeys, be they marked or unmarked, purposeful or accidental, that help define and direct the course of our lives. This season’s guests share with us the real events the shaped them. As we listen to their stories we get closer in someway to what’s at stake and what’s at work in the passages we all find ourselves in, especially the great passage of time. Come sit by the fire and listen in as we travel through yet another array of human stories. Navigated by Jef Szi and his mosaic of guests, let yourself get inspired by tales of all kinds which reveal and renew our sense of how humans work.

Episode SummaryIn Episode #10, Jef Szi reflects on the personal impact Season One’s shows has had on him. He also opens up about about a few memories he carries of his own late father, Bill Szilagyi. Among them, Jef recounts how his dad tended to him when he was injured in minor household accident. Another is how his father directed his sense of injustice and anger over a murder of teenager into helping start the South Tahoe Secret Witness program. Later Jef shares a deeply personal story that took place in the moments after his father died. Listen in to Recasting Fatherhood as Jef speaks out about how a season of podcasting on the subject of fathers and fatherhood has deepened his sense of How Humans Work.

Episode SummaryIn Episode #09 Lakshmi DelSesto joins the show for beautiful conversation about music, fathering, and spirituality. In Lakshmi’s life we can gather much about the sacred and healing power of music, the challenge of coming-of-age without an invested father and the moving way a nomadic heart reconciles life’s adversities with creativity. Leading a self-described ‘unconventional’ path into adulthood, we can see both the beauty and tenderness that comes when a daughter’s unique spirit is untended by a father caught-up in religious beliefs and generational limitations. Ride the Mystic Dragon gives us a brave portrait of the contours of the heart, the impact in a father’s choices, and the way the inborn spirit will find a way to make a meaningful life no matter what. By the shows end, we not only melt into the sonic genius of Lakshmi’s gifts, we taste how love can still flow in the heart, even in the face of disappointment, especially when one is willing to honor the threads of connection beyond differences. Connect with Lakshmi on….InstagramSpotifySound Cloud

In Episode #08, Jef Szi welcomes the high energy and creative Ned Schaut to the podcast. In Getting Beyond Good Ned reflects on his his adventuresome father Richard, whose long-leash and experience focused fathering style contrasted with his mother’s strong religious values and morality. Through his stories about growing up in a tiny Northern California town of Hidden Valley, spending massive amounts of time outdoors with his brother, and having long summer roadtrips with his family, we come to learn how Ned found his way between the unique parenting value sets each of his parents provided him. We also discover the important influence his faith played in his development and sense of self.We come to learn how Ned’s dream to create an out of this world youth center imploded into something far more important, waking up to the gifts in fatherhood. Being the father of five children turned out to be the overlooked opportunity to affirm Ned’s search for meaning and value in his life. Embracing the hidden treasure of fatherhood brought about a wave of creativity in Ned’s life. Writing the books Rebel and Create and Fatherhood Legacy Journal, as well as creating the Fatherhood Fieldnotes Podcast with more than 140 episodes followed his life-changing insight.You're invited to listen in as we journey with an affable and open man on the road of fatherhood and faith, who is finding for himself that a father's teachings can be sitting there, patiently waiting for us to discover them.

Episode SummaryIn Episode #07, Jeffrey welcomes Amir Ebrahimi to the podcast. We begin by learning about why Amir’s passions for the cutting edges of computer science has become a spiritual quest that provides a sense of home in and a connection to the greater nature of the universe. The show turns toward Amir’s sense of self and how it was influenced by his father Noujan. Growing-up mainly in Alabama as the son of a Haitian mother and Persian father, the podcast get’s into some of the roots of his father’s life and how Noujan’s fathering style didn’t fully meet with Amir’s introverted nature, seeding questions for Amir about their relationship. We then come to know a few of the many other men in Amir’s life who offered a quality of attention the begat trust and more confident self. In particular we hear about Steve, Brad’s father and especially Ed Morrison, a onetime business partner of his parents who fostered Amir’s interest in computers and reassured Amir’s growing personhood. In this episode we find again the utter importance of present and attentive fathers who attune the energy inside of, in this case, a boy on his way to becoming a man. In Amir’s brave portrait of his felt world, we can hear glimpses of the too common tale about a father who isn’t quite tooled, for whatever reason, to bless and welcome the soul of his children. We also hear, again, how community and the instincts find surrogate sources of fathering energy that aid in the project of becoming a full and adult human. Later in the show Amir turns the interview back on Jef and asks him about his Hungarian name and lineage. After reflecting on the temperament of his father’s line and sharing a vision of long ago Central Asian ancestors whilst taking part in a medicine ceremony inside an ancient stone temple in Ireland, Jef opens up about the harder aspects of finding the father within himself and why the Odyssey was a seminal book for him on the way to becoming a father. In this episode we can not only find the inspiring connection between the quantum dimensions of the universe and the quest of human technology, but we find the delicate understory in the ecology of when a son misses a father.

In Episode #06, Jeffrey welcomes respected friend and dedicated father Alexie Dossa to the show. A man rich with stories, Alexie recounts the forceful life of his late father Ramzan Dossa and how he connected with his father’s heritage and legacy through an old leather suitecase filled with mementos. Alexie shares what it was like growing-up in the wake his father’s untimely passing at the young age of 36, and how he found an important connection to him through yoga, mindfulness and his father’s academic achievements and spiritual traditions. Through these and other tales, we come to learn who the men were that came into Alexie’s life and stood-in as father-figures, including the eccentric restaurateur Angelo. Spending over 1,000 nights talking into the late into night, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and coffee and playing chess, Alexie became a son-figure to Angelo who imparted his hard-earned life-wisdom. We also learn how, eventually, Alexie came to find the father within himself in ways that he never thought possible.This episode bends the contours of time and energy as it reveals fathering energy to be working in part, beyond the bounds of life and death.

In Bonus Episode #01, listen in as Jef Szi aims to make sense of the failed insurrection of January the 6th by connecting the dots between stress, convenience and deception. By tying the willingingness to buy into the Big Lie about the election results to the evolved benefits of deception and the need to do things cheaply, Jef lays out a way to understand the incentive behind the behaviors in the US Capitol. We will use these ideas as a foundation for talking about solutions in his future bonus episodes as we continue to consider How Humans Work.

Episode SummaryIn Episode #05, Jef Szi welcomes the always forthright and more than occasionally provocative Robert Trivers. Together they discuss one of Robert’s many seminal papers in the field of Evolutionary Biology: Parental Investment and Sexual Selection. Written in 1972, this paper lays bare how time and energy investment differences between the sexes of any species (maternal/paternal) influence who makes the mating choices and who competes to be chosen.Joining the show by Zoom over a couple of beers at an increasingly noisy Jamaican saloon, Trivers waxes professorial while never shying away from explicit and sometimes abrasive thoughts on matters of relationship, sex and violence.In Episode #05 we get a sense of not just the brilliance of strong-willed biologist who made waves across academia, but also one of a man, a son, and a father in whose life we can hear the hurtful, the turbulent, the unreconciled and the messy. Among the stories Robert recounts are a few searing memories about his father's harsh ways of parenting.Through it all, we come to see Robert Trivers in his human complexity. He has clear biological theories for our collective condition but becomes more opaque, in some measure, with his personal understandings…something we can all relate with to one degree or another.Buckle-up for this one, because the father of modern evolutionary biology is not only an insightful genius that transformed a field, but a maverick and forceful soul not who rides roughshod over conventions and decorum as he gets real with his life and the ways of evolution.

In Episode #04, Jeffrey welcomes Chris Brown from the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) for an in-depth look at why fathers matter and how Father Absence adversely impacts children, mothers, and society.As an expert in building-up men and transmitting fathering know-how, Chris generously walks us through not only the problematic outcomes that arise when dads aren’t actively and holistically involved in the lives of their children, but what he, as the president of NFI, and others are doing to alter the course of lives of men and by extension their families and communities.In this episode we get a look at the backbone of social good happening in America and the way supporting father’s is an essential ingredient in the larger effort of Family Strengthening Work. We also learn how NFI collaborates with local organizations and agencies to deliver facts, resources, and training to improve the fathering support wing of their services.Along the way, we talk about race and gender dynamics as they pertain to fatherhood, as well as hear Chris open up about the failed All-American moment between him and his own dad that led, in part, to Chris dedicating the past two decades of his life to helping dads be better dads.

In Episode #03, Jef welcomes yoga teacher, life coach, spirit warrior, and local treasure Araceli Santos Bieber. Looking at all facets of life bravely, Araceli offers us an honest look at the landscape inside her relationship with her father, her mother, husband and more. She also brings us along to the vital transformations she experienced as daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, and especially as a woman who has always oriented toward the practice of love. After the life-shaking loss of her younger sister's passing in 2004, Araceli recounts how she turned toward a deeper relationship with yoga, prayer, and finally speaking the unspoken truths that lived in the shadows of the many great loves in her life.Araceli’s father stories shows us there are still important lessons that happen even when a father is loving, present, and consistent in the lives of his children. In Araceli’s heartfullness we find there are still thresholds to cross to find one’s true self and honest voice, and from her we can learn how to do that with a full heart and sincere commitment.

In Episode #02, Jef Szi welcomes poet, novelist, community activist and admired friend Luis J. Rodriguez for a powerful look at fathers, society and one man’s gradual yet epic arrival into healing the difficult legacies in his family.Luis recounts his many migrations from gang affilated and homeless youth to the how social justice, activism, literature and black revolutionaries pulled him out of addiction and la vida loca, eventually finding a life rich with words, community and meaning.Listen in as Luis reflects on the currents of Black Lives Matter in light of his own experiences with social change in the 60’s. Luis also tells us the incredible story of how being honored as the poet laureate of his hometown of Los Angeles carried threads to his homeless years on the streets and the way he encourages gang-affiliated youth and prisoners he works with today to Own Their Life. Along the way, Luis gets real about his own journey as a father and the rivers of pain and forgiveness he needed to cross in confronting his own father’s misdeeds. Episode #02 will take your breath away, because in it we find a man who is not only an important voice in the American Experience, but you will hear from the fierce heart of a man who knows pain, knows love and something about the healing road. From Luis's stories as well as his courage to talk about them, he gently brings us all a little closer to home.

Jonah Larkin is a performance coach and habit expert who specializes in getting his clients aligned and empowered to achieve their goals. As a well-known early adopter, Jonah fittingly joins show host Jef Szi for the very first episode in the very first season of the How Humans Work Podcast. On the way to sharing an extended account of his early memories with his father and his upbringing in the somewhat idyllic Mendocino coast, Jonah provides key insights into the art of creating successful habits and the power of starting your day with a morning rhythm.Jonah gives us a real look at how he experienced his father from the special moments when his father Steve imparted significant values to the tensions that showed up as his heroic father gave way to the human father.The conversation ventures further into other father-like figures as well as self and self-care, revealing the inner workings of how one fellow human is finding his way in the middle of life, still holding the echoes of what fathering and mothering still mean today.The episode closes with Jonah recounting the time he had to perform CPR on a surfer and how that moment altered the way he thinks about his life and his commitment to live with heart.Work with JonahFollow Jonah