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Meet Your Host Tami Simon
Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.
Author photo © Jason Elias
Most Recent
Just One Question | Shamini Jain: How Can You Heal Fro...
There’s an elephant in the room anytime someone talks about energy healing, an elephant named Placebo.
For most of us, placebo means you got the sugar pill. It means whatever’s happening is all in your mind, not in your body. That’s even what Tami thought when she sat down to talk with award-winning researcher in psychoneuroimmunology and trained clinical psychologist Shamini Jain, PhD, in 2023.
But here’s the thing—placebo isn’t the thing science needs to control for and throw out. It’s the measurable evidence of what our bodies do on their own, and Shamini makes the case with research most of us have never heard about.
In this episode:
- The open-label placebo studies where patients are told outright they’re receiving a placebo—and improve anyway
- The four elements Shamini says show up in every healing encounter: expectation, conditioning, relationship, and meaning and ritual
- Why placebo-controlled surgery trials should make all of us ask harder questions
- What the antidepressant data actually says—and why “we work” may be the better takeaway than “the drugs don’t”
Mallory and Chris have spent the past year and a half working on a podcast about energy healing (Phenomena) and Sounds True is offering—right now—an immersion course on energy healing featuring Shamini Jain as well as Robert Peng and Laurie Nealon…so now felt like the perfect time to bring this conversation back. And maybe rename that elephant for good.
Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Shamini Jain.
E209: The Science and Spirituality of Consciousness
Most human beings mistakenly identify with the mind and live inside its endless stream of thoughts rather than directly experiencing reality. Reality can be defined as different vibration rates of energy, from matter to emotions to mind to blissful consciousness. Human suffering arises because of the mind’s preferences and judgments that cause us to resist some experiences and cling to others. The spiritual path is one of openness, surrender, and allowing life to pass through, which ultimately leads to realizing oneself as the conscious awareness that is observing all experiences.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2026 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
Rob Bell: “The Risk of Not Becoming More YouR...
What if not doing the thing is the riskier choice?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Rob Bell—New York Times bestselling author of 14 books and plays, host of The RobCast, and a former pastor—about what he calls his civilian phase. Rob left the role years ago. What surprised him was how long the role stayed with him afterward: “We leave an external form, and then over the years, the form begins to leave us.”
This is an unusually candid conversation. Tami goes first, admitting she didn’t feel free to fully reveal herself until she had economic security—and Rob meets her there without a tidy answer.
Join Tami and Rob to explore:
- Why he doesn’t believe in risk versus no risk—only in risk management, and which risk is actually smaller
- The “answer man” conditioning of a job that expected crisp soundbites about the deepest human questions—and what it did to his nervous system
- Hiding in plain sight: how public visibility can be its own kind of concealment
- The abyss, the void, the fallow field—learning to stop fighting the empty seasons
- “And then I kept going”: the phrase that came out of pandemic sessions, and why people can’t see their own resilience
- What shifted when a plant medicine experience dropped his head into his heart
- Toxic positivity, a lineage that didn’t know what to do with pain, and the son who taught him it’s okay to be sad
- Why a birch tree scatters 250 million seeds and doesn’t seem worried about efficiency
- His father’s dementia, temporariness, and the strange way mortality heightens aliveness
Rob will lead an immersive workshop, The Ongoing Creation of Your Life, at Omega Institute, August 30–September 4.
Listen now and hear what it costs to keep standing at a distance from your own life. →
This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and originally aired on Sounds True One.
Customer Favorites
S1 E5: Your Highest Intention: Self-Realization
Have you ever pushed a thought aside or stuffed an emotion away deep inside? Most of us have! Michael Singer teaches that this is an act of will stemming from a simple intention: to feel better. In this podcast, he discusses the incredible power of our human will and how we use it, (for better or worse) in this deep exploration of intention and the pathway to self-realization and spiritual freedom.
For more information, go to michaelsingerpodcast.com.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2024 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
Gaur Gopal Das: Your Greatest Power
Gaur Gopal Das is a former Hewlett-Packard engineer who joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as a monk in 1996. Since then, he has become a popular speaker and motivational coach both on YouTube and in public. In this podcast, he speaks with Sounds True founder Tami Simon about his new book, The Way of the Monk. Tami and Gaur also discuss his journey of becoming a teacher and sharing spiritual wisdom with others, the power of choosing to be positive, the practice of “feeding your faith,” and much more.
Owning Your Neurology and Being the Light
In this podcast, Sounds True’s founder, Tami Simon, speaks with “The Iceman,” Wim Hof, about how we can each shine the light of our souls brighter and brighter, for the good of all beings. Tune in as they discuss getting out of our comfort zones to activate the body’s natural healing abilities; how we can begin to control the body’s autonomic nervous system to release trauma, boost energy, and do things we never thought possible for ourselves; the three pillars of the Wim Hof Method—cold exposure, breathwork, and the power of the mind; the metaphor of the Crown and the king/queen in each one of us; accessing the depths of peace and stillness; planting the seed of the impact we want to make in the world; finding our empowerment at this particular time we’re in; and more.
Timeless Classics
Lance Allred: The New Alpha Male
Lance Allred is a former NBA player (who was the first legally deaf player in the league), public speaker, and author. With Sounds True, he has published The New Alpha Male: How to Win the Game When the Rules Are Changing. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lance about the experiences he had in professional sports that led him to reevaluate what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Lance explains how his upbringing in a rural, polygamous commune informed his original ideas about masculinity, highlighting the subconscious assumptions about money and power that affect American men’s self-worth. Tami and Lance also discuss the roles of emotional vulnerability and surrender in the lives of modern men. Finally, they talk about the principle of perseverance and the increasingly urgent need for all cultures to reexamine their assumptions and core values.(63 minutes)
Micah Mortali: Rewilding
Micah Mortali is the director of the Kripalu School, a certified yoga teacher, and a longtime wilderness guide. With Sounds True, he has published Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Micah about humanity’s growing disconnection from the earth and how “rewilding” can help slow that trend. They talk about rewilding both as individuals and as part of whole ecosystems. Micah also shares the story of an intense, revelatory trail encounter with a bear and comments on the “species loneliness” of urban environments. Mulling the sense of grief they have for humankind’s effects on the environment, Tami and Micah consider how modern people can grapple with being in exile from the natural world. Finally, they discuss the barriers many have to reentering nature, as well as ways to initiate your own rewilding experience no matter where you are.(64 minutes)
Christian Conte: Healing Conflict: Listen, Validate, a...
Christian Conte, PhD, is a mental health specialist and leading authority on anger management. With Sounds True, Christian has published Walking Through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon talks with Christian about his Yield Theory of emotional management, focusing on the process of “listen, validate, explore options.” Christian explains the events that led to his interest in anger management, as well as the origins of Yield Theory. He emphasizes the importance of meeting others where they are, giving them the opportunity to drain anger’s charge from their limbic system. Christian and Tami discuss why it’s necessary to cultivate humility and how Yield Theory might be applied to our currently divisive culture. Finally, they speak on “the cartoon world” that angry responses often create, as well as the importance of watching what we add to our minds.(63 minutes)
