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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
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.
E208: Living Beyond the Personal
Every genuine spiritual tradition teaches that the highest path is letting go of the personal ego and living according to a greater guidance than our personal desires. The suffering we experience comes from identifying with our preferences, fears, and self-concepts, instead of recognizing ourselves as the awareness that is experiencing our experiences. As we surrender self-interest, act without attachment to outcomes, and become instruments of something greater than ourselves, we discover true freedom, joy, peace, and the ability to serve life with clarity and love.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2026 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
Just One Question | James Hollis: Why Am I Here?
Tami came to Living with Borrowed Dust wanting to talk about the abyss — the chapter that held her attention most. James Hollis offers Heidegger’s framing of it: not the pit that swallows you, but the openness of being.
Then he does something guests rarely do here. He takes the question back. The abyss opens, he says, every time we ask a truly radical question — radical from radix, root — and there is none more radical than “Why am I here?”
He answers it from inside a hospital bed. Two serious spinal surgeries, real doubt about whether he’d come through, and what he describes feeling is not despair but something closer to adventure. He thanked his surgeon on the way into the operating room. Fear is normal, he says, and anxiety is real — but neither one has to be the thing that decides how you live.
In this episode:
- Heidegger’s abyss as the openness of being, and how that reframe exposed Hollis’s own defenses
- The patterns we build against the unknown: power over small things, staying out of harm’s way, narcissistic inflation
- Why mortality is the one statistic with no uncertainty in it, and what that should free us to do
- Keep walking — if you’re in the middle of the forest, you’re halfway through
- Dignity over pride, and the one thing nobody can take from you unless you give it away
Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with James Hollis. Find the complete interview in this feed or at soundstrue.com
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)
