Radical Health Radio

My secret for getting better at everything while stressing less? I stopped being so hard on myself.

That sounds backwards, especially coming from a working-class bloke who grew up on grit, rugby, and MMA. But every measure that actually matters to me improved once I loosened the grip: my work, my health, my relationships, my presence with the people I love.

If your whole life requires white-knuckling to hold it together, the problem isn't your discipline. It's your alignment.

Culture's answer to a hard life is always the same. Go harder. Get up earlier. Add a cold plunge. Stack another habit. You can go a long way on willpower and spite. Believe me, I've done it. But you can also discipline your way into a successful life you don't really want.

Alan Watts and the Taoist idea of wu wei sit at the heart of this. So does Tim Cook's take on loving your work, and a Jocko line I think needs an asterisk. There's also the concept of "discipline miles per gallon", and why running downhill is not laziness; it's alignment.

If you're tired of white-knuckling your entire life, always forcing and never flowing, this one's for you.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[2:50] Discipline as a gauge, not just a virtue

[3:56] The cult of seriousness convinces us to be hard on ourselves

[5:53] The highest form of discipline is not needing it

[7:26] Flow removes friction, not the hard part

[9:43] Why discipline goes further when you’re in alignment

[11:36] Freedom never comes from force; it comes from flow

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Cannabis today is stronger and more habit-forming than ever, but used with intention, it can still be powerful medicine.

Corinne Tobias came to cannabis as medicine in her mid-20s with herniated discs, opiate use, and a prognosis that said she probably wouldn't be walking well by 30. A stack of CDs, a few small joints, and a very different intention changed her life's trajectory. She now trains coaches, sits on the scientific advisory board of a cannabinoid company, and is working toward legal facilitation licensure in Colorado.

Three years after her husband died, Corinne did her first mushroom journey alone at home, convinced she'd already grieved his loss. The medicine disagreed almost immediately and put her in the bathtub for hours, talking to him.

Corinne is direct about what she's seen inside underground ceremonies, including sexual abuse rates in ayahuasca settings, and why "just take a heroic dose" isn't the right path for everyone. She's also honest about her own kambo experience in Tulum, where a practitioner kept pushing her to drink more and more water - a real danger with kambo - and she went along with it despite her gut telling her something was off.

If you've ever wondered whether your relationship with cannabis has drifted somewhere you didn't intend, or whether microdosing is actually as productivity-hacky as the internet makes it sound, listen through to the end.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[6:36] Corinne was told she might not walk by 30

[9:02] Off opiates within weeks of smoking medicinally

[16:11] Losing her husband at the peak of girl boss mode

[25:58] The Terence McKenna conviction that caused real harm

[35:39] THC in flower went from 1 percent to 30 percent

[39:24] She's never seen proof that vape pens are safe

[47:40] More pain is an invitation to go inside

[55:31] Sexual abuse reported in underground ceremonies

[1:04:41] Never betray the body speaking over the mind

[1:13:41] Preparation matters as much as integration

[1:19:49] Huxley's Island and raising children who never need it

Resources Mentioned:

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan | Book

The Secret Chief Revealed by Myron Stolaroff | Book

Island by Aldous Huxley | Book

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley | Book

FK+ | Website

Find more from Corinne:

Corinne Tobias - Wake + Bake | Website | Instagram

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

8 weeks of meditation is enough to produce measurable changes in the connectivity of your prefrontal cortex. But most people won’t do it because they don’t see immediate results.

My guest this week is Brandon Cowling, a neuroscience student at the University of Texas and the voice behind Brandon's Brainwave, where he’s making the science of self-change something anyone can use.

Predictive processing was the first idea that stopped me. Your brain is not showing you the world. It's showing you a filtered version based on beliefs you probably didn't choose. The lion is gone, but your amygdala still thinks the boss meeting is one, and your prefrontal cortex pays the price.

Brandon describes long-term potentiation, why meditation measurably shifts the default mode network, and the concept of limbic friction, which reframes willpower as a design problem instead of a character flaw.

If you've ever wondered why the phone wins every time, the answer is not that you're weak.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:45] Becoming your greatest self when your brain is wired to predict and protect

[14:26] Simple but not easy, how practice physically rewires the brain

[21:03] Deconstructing a 36-year habit and how quickly the brain can change

[28:22] Phones prey on unconscious processes by design

[35:21] Limbic friction and buying back mental real estate from decision fatigue

[42:54] Escaping the cult of seriousness to explore the mystery of consciousness

[53:32] Pornography's effect on the brain and refusing the defeatist mindset

[59:42] Bridging neuroscience and spiritual awakening through the brain's built-in blueprint

[1:04:54] Rejecting doom thinking and training your brain to spot opportunity

Resources Mentioned:

Brick | Website

Brain Performance Institute at the Center for Brain Health | Website

Find more from Brandon:

Brandon Cowling | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Can you really channel creativity on command through your subconscious?

My guest, James McCrae, is a poet, author, and artist behind the WordsAreVibrations project. His take on creativity as channeling reshaped how I think about the creative process.

The opening question I ask him is what it actually feels like to have that many people experience something you posted without a strategy behind it. His answer sets up the rest of the conversation.

We get into the subconscious as a portal, why the conscious mind is like a hard drive and the subconscious is the internet, and how the collective unconscious explains why the same ideas surface around the world at once.

James talks about art as the soil where new mythology gets planted, memes as the smallest unit of a cultural idea, and why politics and culture are downstream of the artists willing to sit still long enough to receive something real.

The cult of seriousness comes up, along with why stillness terrifies most people, AI as a tool rather than the artist, the trap of vanity metrics, and how personal reinvention actually works when the old version of you stops fitting.

Press play if you have been avoiding the thing you know you should be creating.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:14] Creativity as widening access to the subconscious

[8:23] What blocks people from their own intuition

[13:06] Why life is not a problem to solve

[16:45] Terence McKenna and the acceleration of human novelty

[24:09] Memes as the smallest unit of a spreading idea

[31:29] The danger of justifying atrocities for your own team

[41:24] Creativity as a way to reinvent your whole life

[47:30] Why stillness is something people are desperate to avoid

[54:14] The surrender that let grace bring the poetry back

[1:07:29] Vanity metrics feel like cocaine

[1:16:05] Whether the best art really comes from heartbreak

Resources Mentioned:

Allen Ginsberg | Website

Find more from James:

James McCrae | Website | Instagram | Substack

Instructions Before Visiting Earth | Poem

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Most chefs teach urgency in the kitchen. Chef Aran Goldstein thinks that's exactly what's severing us from our own dinner tables.

Aran is a chef, writer, and founder of Unprocessed who's cooked from Tuscany to China and now feeds kids at private schools using nose-to-tail, farm-sourced ingredients most parents wouldn't dream of putting in a lunchbox.

He grew up as the overweight kid glued to Julia Child reruns while eating two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches on a Saturday. In Piedmont, he served blood sausage roasted over potatoes and tripe terrine on Fridays to schoolchildren, and they ran full-sprint to get it.

Aran hasn't bought grocery store pork or chicken in almost two years. He talks about drawing hard lines: never McDonald's, never Chick-fil-A, and the mantra he uses before crossing the threshold into his own house so he doesn't dump frantic energy on his wife and kids.

Paul Chek once said, “Your ‘yes’ has no value until you learn to say ‘no’”. Chef Aran has built a life around that sentence, and he doesn't sell an easy version of it.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[4:45] Food as a lifelong thread, from an overweight kid to a career

[10:56] Waking up before it's too late to change

[18:57] Whether anyone can be truly healthy inside a city

[24:42] The surrender experiment that led Chef Aran to Tennessee

[35:03] Passing on stress instead of nourishment, without slipping into a purity spiral

[50:06] The stress of perfection harms more than the food itself

[57:50] Power follows the blame finger and self-governance

[1:05:12] Men have to move their water every day

[1:18:18] The travel, obsession, and unconventional school kitchens that shaped his career

Resources Mentioned:

The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson | Book

Lineage Provisions - Grass-Fed Air Dried Beef Snacks | Product

Heart and Soil - Beef Organ Supplements | Product

Find more from Chef Aran:

Chef Aran Goldstein | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | LinkedIn

Unprocessed Podcast | Spotify or YouTube

Unprocessed | Substack

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | InstagramRadical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube