How Humans Work Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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How Humans Work Podcast

Jef Szi

Education

Society & Culture

Religion & Spirituality

Frequency: 1 episode/32d. Total Eps: 50

Join Jef Szi—renaissance acupuncturist and insatiably curious show host—as he guides us into the labyrinths of human nature. Each season and each episode explores a central theme through conversations with guests from diverse traditions: thinkers like Robert Sapolsky, Deb Dana, and Michael Meade, alongside artists, activists, and explorers such as Luis J. Rodriguez, Orin Carpenter, and Dossie Easton. Together, we uncover personal stories and timeless wisdom—insights that stir, resonate, and inspire. Tune in and journey into the forces that shape who we are and how we live as we navigate the personal and the profound. Consider yourself invited to walk the winding path with the How Humans Work Podcast.

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🇬🇧 Great Britain - selfImprovement
15/08/2025
#98

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https://www.iamchristineolivia.com/
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https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/robin-dunbar
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https://www.jenniferberitbooks.com
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https://www.instagram.com/jefszi
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https://www.instagram.com/how.humans.work.pod
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https://www.instagram.com/taracoyote
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https://www.patreon.com/howhumansworkpod
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Score global : 53%

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#50: Dr. Arielle Schwartz - How We Heal

Season 5 · Episode 50

Saturday, August 2, 2025 • Duration 50:32

Episode Summary

Dr. Arielle Schwartz, Ph.D, is a clinical psychologist, internationally respected teacher, and leading voice in the healing of PTSD and complex trauma. For more than twenty years, Dr. Schwartz has guided therapists in the how-tos of trauma treatments—including EMDR, somatic psychology, parts work therapy, and applied polyvagal theory in yoga and other embodiment practices.

In How We Heal, Dr. Schwartz brings her rich expertise of trauma and healing to the podcast. With equal portions of precision and compassion, she provides essential insights into the nervous system, the kinds of stress that drive trauma, and orientations we can embody in the face of today’s social divisiveness.

In particular Arielle talks us through Dan Siegel’s “Window of Tolerance” and how we can use awareness of our nervous system tone to improve our mental health. She shows us how isolation is both a source and consequence of trauma, and provides multiple, nuanced distinctions that clarify matters like developmental trauma in childhood, Big T trauma, complex trauma, and the “trauma time” of PTSD.

Consider yourself invited to listen-in, as Dr. Schwartz gracefully illuminates the intersection where trauma and society meet. With her wisdom, we come find how trauma-informed communities can foster the heart of goodness, allowing us to mend the frays of our social fabric.

*****Books by Dr. Schwartz:

Find a full list of books, trainings, and more at her website.

Follow Dr. Schwartz on IG * FB

*****

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#40: Alice Treves - The 9 Negative Thinking Habits

Season 4 · Episode 40

Monday, August 12, 2024 • Duration 01:07:00

Episode Summary

Alice Treves is seasoned psychotherapist with a background in Hakomi, CBT, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. This is her second time joining the podcast. She and Jef Szi have been together for 27 years and have two daughters.

In this episode we dive into The 9 Negative Thinking Habits, a CBT framework* Alice uses as part of her therapy practice to help both teens and adults. By breaking down each of the 9 Habits (Catastrophizing, Fortune Telling, Mind-Reading, Blaming, I Can’t, Zooming in on the Negative, All-or-Nothing, I Should/You Should, & It’s Not Fair) we peer under the hood of our mental habits. Alice shows us how "The Four C’s" -- catching, checking, getting curious, and changing habitual thinking with helpful thoughts, can improve our cognitive experience.

Along the way, Alice and Jef lean on their marriage and shared intellectual interests to deepen the exploration of our mental capacities by considering how our thoughts are expressions of developmental needs, evolutionary adaptations, and a validation of the parts perspective found in Internal Family Systems Model.

With equal measure of compassion and insight, Alice’s experience gives us a valuable sense that we don’t have to be run by our thought habits. Indeed, there are tools and perspectives that can help change.

In the last portion of this conversation, Alice enrichens our sense of negative thinking patterns by tying them to the archetypes found in astrology. By making a connection between the hard lessons of life (which are attributed to the planet Saturn in astrology) and our encounters with thinking habits, she fosters a greater sense of the mind’s depths and how we can work with our human nature.

About Alice: Alice Treves LCSW is a psychotherapist who works with adults, teens, and families, offering guidance and support for life’s many challenges. To learn more about her practice, you can visit her website.

About The 9 Negative Thinking Habits: The negative thinking types are sourced from a workbook that helps teens (and adults) work with their negative thinking habits. The title is , written by Mary Karapetian Alvord and Anne McGrath. We thank the authors for their work and insights.

#39: Dr. Scott Schmidt - Navigating the Inevitable

Season 4 · Episode 39

Friday, July 12, 2024 • Duration 53:54

Episode Summary:

Dr. Scott Schmidt joins the podcast to share his knowledge about caring for those with serious illness and those who are in the dying process. As a medical doctor with an expansive background in Emergency Medicine, Hospice Care, and now as a leader in the Primary Palliative Care field, Scott invites us to consider how we go about the realities that surround end-of-life.

Along the way, we get a solid sense of what kind of attitudes, questions, and conversations are needed from both sides of the medical encounter. But don’t be fooled, this episode has teachings for the healthy as much as for those with serious health challenges. In considering the inevitable fate of all bodies, Dr. Schmidt shows us how we can be more prepared and receptive to our individual impermanence at any point in our lives. Indeed, we come to see how forethought can help us be present and feel less overwhelmed in more trying times.

Further on in the podcast, we learn how Scott’s encounters with live-saving measures and his natural inclination toward helping those facing illness and death pushed him forward to being a leader in the Primary Palliative Care approach.

Towards the end of the show, we get a very real glimpse into the difficulty of modern medicine, with its messy and often morally distressing dilemmas.

With depth and humility in the face of the unknowable, this conversation is a remarkable one for both the significances that occur in the latter stages of life, and also with the genuine soulfulness Dr. Schmidt brings to these moving encounters. As he says, navigating serious illness and the inevitability of death is no simple thing.

About Dr. Scott Schmidt: Scott Schmidt is an Emergency Medicine doctor and cultural change leader who is charged with developing Primary Palliative Care competencies.

About Primary Palliative Care: is a subspecialty of medicine, that seeks to plan and address serious illness situations with an orientation to minimize suffering while tending to the whole person. Considered an upstream evolution from Palliative Care, Primary Palliative Care seeks to support Palliative Care competencies in all providers and teams.

#38: Jeffrey Weisberg — The Work of Repairing Harm

Season 4 · Episode 38

Sunday, May 12, 2024 • Duration 01:02:17

Episode Summary

In The Work of Repairing Harm, the warm-hearted Jeffrey Weisberg joins the podcast for a rich and moving conversation about his experience with Peacebuilding and Restorative Justice practices. As the Executive Director and co-founder of the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding, Jeffrey shares his perspective and insight on the incredible value these practices have for relationships of all shapes and sizes.

With equal amounts of energy, vision, and honesty, Jeffrey walks us through the key questions and approaches of what it takes to repair harm. Whether that is the challenges of refugees in Uganda trying to work through the pressures and hardships of living in a refugee camp, the impact fights on school campuses can have, or the longstanding mistrust between black and brown youth and police departments across America, Jeffrey provides a convincing portrait of how Restorative Justice and other Peacebuilding efforts are a profound resource for dealing with conflict. Specifically, he describes how four key questions and a good dose of thoughtful preparation and finesse, can create a space for repairing harm by discovering 1) What happened? 2) What was the impact? 3) How can we repair the harm? and 4) How can we ensure it doesn’t happen again?

Later in the show, Jeffrey emphasizes the importance of multipartiality in his work. Multipartiality advocates for ensuring all voices are elevated in the Restorative Justice process and equity work in general. It is essential for trust-building across communities with different concerns and experiences, particularly in light of racial disparities still happening. With nuance and humility, we come to learn that, yes, the work of equity requires sincere effort and care from everyone involved.

We also get a powerful glimpse into why truth-telling and deep listening are at the core of repairing human relationships as we discuss the Police Youth Dialogue Model. Police Youth Dialogues bring together Police officers and the black and brown youth in the communities they serve to listen to each other’s experiences. Jeffrey’s tales from these events prove to be a moving and inspiring example of how differences can be bridged through communication.

Throughout Episode #38, we get real and vital pictures of how peacebuilding and restorative justice can transform relationships, support communities, and change the way we deal with transgressions and injuries. Ultimately they offer us a pathway to reconnection. It is an honor to hear tales from one so heartfully committed to doing The Work of Repairing Harm as our guest, Jeffrey Weisberg.

#37: Fu Schroeder - Leaping Into the Yellow River

Season 4 · Episode 37

Friday, March 8, 2024 • Duration 01:05:28

Episode #37 Summary

Senior Zen Dharma teacher, Fu Schroeder, sits down with Jef Szi for a heart-felt and mind-opening exploration of Zen Buddhism. As a System of Knowledge, Zen is one of the great wisdom lineages—handed down across centuries and into the lap of Fu in the 1970’s.

This delightful conversation offers our community a nourishing encounter with a Zen elder—a holder of wisdom who can provide gems for facing life’s mysteries and hardships. With much kindness and a great deal of playful insight, Fu shares key elements of the Zen way and her path with it. She offers us gems for how we can face our mind, our suffering, and the vastness of being. She shows us how the path of Zen—quietude, or “just sitting,” gives us access to calm and negotiate change and the jaw-dropping truth of impermanence.

In this show, we come to learn how Zen offers mental clarity and abiding presence for the human soul. Born out of Buddha's path and transmitted for generations, Fu walks us through the accuracy and the medicine of the Four Noble Truths. We find we are not the first to struggle with the nature of the mind or the reality of death.

Episode #37 invites us into the teachings of the Zen path. In Fu, we find a kind, frank, and mirthful sojourner, who is not only a fantastic conversationalist but a teacher who is equally poetic and practical.

Listen in to this one because it is not often in today’s world someone can steadfastly point us toward the vastness of reality—be it the experience of the Moon, the sound of the rain, or the courage to Leap into the Yellow River.

About Fu: Furyu Nancy Schroeder, a resident of San Francisco Zen Center since the 1970s, became Abiding Abbess at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in March 2014 and stepped down from that role in March 2023. Fu has held most of the monastic positions at SF Zen Center and has been an active supporter of programs for children, people of color, the gay and lesbian community, and the interfaith community. In 2008 she was elected to the Marin Women's Hall of Fame, and in 2010 she was appointed to the Board of the Marin Community Foundation. In addition, she has previously co-led SF Zen Center's Contemplative Caregiver Course. She received Dharma Transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1999.

Bonus Episode #08: Tobin Mayell—Part Two—Everything Under the Sun and Moon

Monday, February 5, 2024 • Duration 48:21

In Everything Under the Sun and Moon, show host Jef Szi continues his conversation with Tobin Mayell, as Tobin remembers the life of his late mother, Christine Waddell. Christine was a healer, teacher, mother, and grandmother who passed away suddenly in the Spring of 2023.

In this fluid conversation between enduring friends, Tobin weaves the experiences with his mom and Christine’s own life—as such, we learn a great deal about Christine’s journey and the arc of Tobin’s relationship with his mother.

Along the way we find that Christine was not only a life-long seeker, but also a highly respected wisdom-keeper, healer, and guide to her clients.

By hearing stories about her early hopes for enlightenment, her discovery in her 30’s that her biological father was someone else, and her joyful penchant for gardening, we get powerful glimpses into core elements of Christine’s completed life.

And like his relationship with his father, Tobin also found his need to individuate from his mom. In this case, it meant finding ways of taking space from a highly invested mothering style, prone to “polishing” Tobin’s sense of self through astrology and emmeshed encouragements.

And yet, as with his father, we find the transmissions in life and death still take place. Not only did Christine’s search for belonging in her life help her and profoundly benefit her clients, we come to see how it bestowed on Tobin an emotional permission that carries on inside him today. Christine’s passion for astrology lives on in Tobin as well—ironically shedding light on how Tobin can now understand her deepest pains.

Through this show—and the one before—we get an intimate portrait of how death, the journey of memorialization, and continuing the thread of life after our relatives pass are all riddled with unexpected teachings—as if the web of life has strands reaching through death’s mysterious gateway onto the other side.

As always, you are invited to listen-in, because in these two episodes that dive into Tobin’s very personal journey of losing both his parents within months of one another, we get a real dose of how life and death collaborate in ways that are impossible to know beforehand.

Bonus Episode #07: Tobin Mayell—Part One—Looking Into the Beyond

Monday, February 5, 2024 • Duration 47:06

In Bonus Episode #07, Tobin Mayell joins the show for the first of a two-part conversation honoring the lives of his late parents—Norm Mayell and Christine Waddell.

Here, Tobin recounts for us the core elements in his relationship with Norm—open-heartedly offering glimpses into the arc of the their father-son story.

From early, unrequited longings to adult acceptances and eventually to the transmissions found in Norm’s passing away from cancer in August of 2022, we come see that the father-son relationship has many moments over the course of time and just how much can live inside one parent-child relationship.

We learn that Norm was a drummer in such bands as Sopwith Camel, Blue Cheer, and Norman Greenbaum, frequently taking him on the road while Tobin lived with his mother. We also learn that Norm later became a devout golfer, finding a spiritual magic in the game. Across his life we come to see that among other things, Norm lived with a kind-of private wisdom and natural magnetism that drew people towards him.

Through this conversation with the How Humans Work show host, Jef Szi, Tobin helps us realize how death and life work hand-in-hand to give us unexpected teachings. Much was born for Tobin in his father’s dying process.

Tobin’s own musical calling found new energy as the journey to memorialize his father placed Tobin—literally and figuratively—behind Norm’s drumkit. As Tobin finds himself playing Norm’s drums, singing his songs, and playing with Norm’s former bandmates is a symmetry that is as satisfying as it is moving. Equally profound is hearing the unguarded connection that accompanies the moment—how childhood hungers were able to come full circle in ways that only Tobin can express.

Looking Into the Beyond offers a profound validation the web of life. It shows us something of the essence of Norm’s life as a man, a father, and musician, but it also shows us how the act of death is generative to those that live—releasing unfinished hurts and inspiring the energy of life to continue.

#36: Dalanah Smith - The Wisdom of Astrology

Season 4 · Episode 36

Saturday, December 23, 2023 • Duration 01:24:30

We kick off Season Four with the fun and forthright Dalanah Smith. Dalanah is an astrologer, stoic, palmist, biologist, and host of the Moon Matters Podcast. In this episode, she shares her take on one of the most ancient systems of knowledge around - Traditional Astrology, a.k.a. Hellenistic Astrology. Also joining the podcast is episode co-host, Tobin Mayell. Tobin is a dear friend and a student of astrology.

In this conversation, Dalanah illuminates how the astrological system can help us understand the fabric of our fate. By looking at the planetary placements at the time of our birth, we have an interesting skeleton key to who we are and how our life progresses.

In this wide-ranging show, Dalanah shares what called her to a path rich with astrology and myth, and how the astrological worldview, along with stoicism, has offered her a kind of cosmological guidance that is helpful to her and her clients.

Along the way, Dalanah offers up a healthy buffet of astrological basics, including the seven planets, the 12 houses, the moon in different elements, and the lunar nodes with a very cool myth about Rahu and Ketu.

Dalanah also reads a handful of placements in Jef’s Natal Chart, demonstrating the power of astrology to see into people’s innermost natures.

In the face of life’s twists and turns, Dalanah teaches us how the knowledge of our astrological configurations can help us recognize and navigate various tensions in our lives, making astrology an ally for development and self-cultivation.

If you are curious about Systems of Knowledge and how they can help make sense of our human nature, then an encounter with the astrological imagination is a legitimate place to begin. For in metaphor and thought, the body of ideas in the ancient ways of astrology have something very direct and intimate to say to all of us.

About Dalanah Smith: Dalanah wears many hats, but the ones closest to her heart are Astrologer and practicing Stoic. Her formal education is in science, as she has a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Psychology. During her time in school, she was focused on learning hard science. After a decade of being a scientist, she now uses those skills of critical analysis to assist her in navigating a more spiritual landscape. She often credits her days in the laboratory for allowing her to view the world with a non-biased lens and for her knack for pattern recognition.

How Humans Work Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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How Humans Work Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

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