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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
E118: You Are Not Your Mind: The Journey Back to Self
The spiritual journey explores the fundamental question of identity—not who you think you are, but who you truly are: consciousness itself. Ego, the false concept of self, is created when the mind clings to certain events and forms rigid preferences, desires, and identities around them. True freedom lies in ceasing to store these inner impressions and letting the energy of Shakti rise unimpeded into a state of unconditional joy and well-being.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2025 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
E117: The Real Work: Letting Go from Within
True spirituality isn’t about mystical experiences or lofty ideals—it’s about honestly facing and working with the reality of your inner world. The journey begins by realizing you’ve been reacting, resisting, and clinging to disturbing experiences, and then defining an ego that struggles to be relatively okay inside. Real growth begins when you start letting go of internal disturbances instead of learning to live with them. Through surrender, acceptance, and inner relaxation, you can rediscover your natural state of unconditional love and well-being. This is the real spiritual path—practical, grounded, and available to anyone willing to do the inner work.
© Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2025 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.
Clea Shearer: My Cancer Will Be Purposeful
Discover the wisdom and practical lessons Clea Shearer gained on her cancer journey. This episode offers hope, humor, and supportive insights for anyone facing a serious physical illness or any of life’s other monumental challenges.
Clea Shearer discusses her new book, Cancer Is Complicated. With host Tami Simon, the author, entrepreneur, and co-founder of The Home Edit shares her journey through a stage two breast cancer diagnosis, the emotional and physical complexities of treatment, and the surprising gifts that emerged along the way. Learn how Clea’s experience reshaped her perspectives on life purpose and helping others, and how to support yourself or someone you love in navigating physical illness or other serious challenges.
Note: This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
Customer Favorites
Melissa Brown: Nourishing Your Nervous System
When was the last time you felt truly relaxed, present, and at peace with everything going on in your life and in our world? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Melissa Brown about her new audio learning program, Nourishing Your Nervous System, and how we can begin to empower ourselves to choose the state of regulation over dysregulation. Give a listen to this practical and inspiring discussion of the ventral vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system—and how we can access it for calm, joy, and vitality; co-regulation with others as a means to move out of dorsal depression; productive thinking versus rumination and other forms of unhealthy thinking; the elongated breath as a tool for shifting out of sympathetic arousal (or the “fight, flight, freeze” response); improving your “vagal tone”; doom-scrolling, binge-watching, and other ways we distract ourselves from what we don’t want to feel—and how we can learn to hold a state of vitality and a state of tension at the same time; the psoas muscles and their connection to nervous system activation; the benefits of “constructive rest pose”; “fixed action patterns” and how the psoas muscles store trauma; attuning to your heart; and more.
Joanna Macy: We Belong: Hope, Choice, and Our Relation...
Dr. Joanna Macy is an ecophilosopher, activist, and Buddhist scholar who has been at the forefront of movements for social justice and environmentalism for more than five decades. She founded the Work That Reconnects Network and has written many books, including World as Lover, World as Self. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Joanna about hope in times of chaos and dissolution, as well as how hope is something we do rather than just feel. Joanna and Tami discuss apathy as a refusal to face the inevitability of suffering and why the state of the environment can be especially heartbreaking. Finally, Tami and Joanna talk about our relationship with the earth as a natural birthright—one that is actually the source of all our energy and joy.
Elizabeth Stanley: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
Elizabeth Stanley is a Georgetown University professor and the creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, an approach taught to thousands in civilian and military high stress environments. A U.S. Army veteran with service in Asia and Europe, she holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, and MIT. She is the author of the book, Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Elizabeth Stanley about her 8-session online course, Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training: A Trauma-Sensitive Online Course to Build Resilience and Thrive During Stress. They also discuss why MMFT is a practice we can all benefit from; the value of expanding our “window of tolerance”; the relationship between personal agency and trauma; the “thinking” brain versus the “survival” brain; when stress becomes trauma; the importance of recovery from stressful situations; 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)
