Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston’s graduate college of social work who has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Brené is the author of the number-one New York Times bestseller Daring Greatly, and with Sounds True she has created the audio learning course The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage. In this episode, Tami Simon speaks with Brené about the cultural myth that equates vulnerability with weakness instead of recognizing it as the greatest measure of our courage. They also examine Brené’s research into the qualities that allow someone to live in a wholehearted way. (66 minutes)
Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW is a research professor at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work who has spent the past 10 years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She is a nationally renowned speaker and has won numerous teaching awards, including the college's Outstanding Faculty Award. Her groundbreaking work has been featured on PBS, NPR, and CNN. Her 2010 TEDxHouston talk on the power of vulnerability is one of most watched talks on TED.com. Her most recent TED talk, "Listening to Shame," was released in March 2012.
Brené is the author of The Gifts of Imperfection and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't). She is also the author of Connections, a psychoeducational shame resilience curriculum that is being facilitated across the nation by mental health and addiction professionals.
Brené's current research focuses on wholeheartedness in families, schools, and organizations. She lives in Houston with her husband and their two young children.
Subscribe to Insights at the Edge to hear all of Tami’s interviews (transcripts available too!), featuring Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Adyashanti, and many more.
Each week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon interviews leading voices in the Mind/Body/Spirit space about a vast spectrum of fascinating ideas. Since 2009, Tami and her guests have been exploring the edge of understanding, nearly 1,000 episodes on the honest work of change, including spiritual discovery, awakening, intuition, purpose, trauma, and grief.
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston’s graduate college of social work who has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Brené is the author of the number-one New York Times bestseller Daring Greatly, and with Sounds True she has created the audio learning course The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage. In this episode, Tami Simon speaks with Brené about the cultural myth that equates vulnerability with weakness instead of recognizing it as the greatest measure of our courage. They also examine Brené’s research into the qualities that allow someone to live in a wholehearted way. (66 minutes)
Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston’s graduate college of social work who has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Brené is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Daring Greatly, and with Sounds True she has created the audio learning course The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Courage, and Connection. In this episode, Tami speaks with Brené about the cultural myth that equates vulnerability as weakness instead of recognizing it as the greatest measure of our courage. They also examine Brené’s research about the qualities that allow someone to live in a wholehearted way. (66 minutes)
What if the anxiety, grief, or fear you’ve struggled with for years is a burden you inherited—not one you earned?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Richard Schwartz—founder of Internal Family Systems and author of the bestselling No Bad Parts—and Tamala Floyd, psychotherapist, IFS lead trainer, and author of Listening: When Parts Speak: A Practical Guide to Healing with IFS Therapy and Ancestor Wisdom. Together, they explore how IFS and ancestral healing converge to help us release intergenerational trauma at its root.
Join Tami, Dick, and Tamala to explore:
What “legacy burdens” are in IFS—and how to recognize when what you’re carrying came from someone else
How personal, ethnic, and cultural legacy burdens operate differently—and why racism, historical trauma, and collective suffering require their own healing
The concept of the “well ancestor”: why every lineage has one, and how to invite them into your healing
Heirlooms vs. burdens: how our ancestral lines carry gifts as well as wounds—and how to receive them
Why legacy burdens are often easier to release than personal ones—and what fear most commonly gets in the way
Tamala’s guided ancestral meditation, offered live: a practice for releasing what no longer serves you
What we offer future generations simply by doing our own inner work
The episode includes a full guided meditation led by Tamala Floyd—drawn directly from her ancestors—that listeners can return to again and again.
Listen now and begin your own healing across generations. →
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. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
Trauma doesn’t show up in what we remember. It shows up in how we react.
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Tian Dayton—award-winning scholar, senior fellow at The Meadows, and author of Growing Up with Addiction: How Adult Children of Addicts Can Heal Family Trauma, Complex PTSD and Codependency—about what it means to grow up inside a family shaped by addiction, and what it actually takes to heal.
Drawing on decades of clinical work, her own lived experience, and her innovative Relational Trauma Repair (RTR) method, Dr. Dayton explores the neuroscience of relational trauma and the embodied, experiential path through it.
Join Tami and Tian to explore:
Why addiction is a family disease—and how process addictions like workaholism and overeating leave the same marks as substance use
How childhood trauma gets stored in the body, not the story—and why you can’t think your way out of complex PTSD
The neuroscience of overreaction: why triggers feel present-tense even when they’re decades old
Cognitive and somatic distortions—and how to recognize when the past is hijacking the present
Psychodrama and Relational Trauma Repair: the power of talking to instead of about
Timelines, social atoms, and letter writing as tools for putting fragmented memories back in order
Why healing is a discipline—and what it means to take ownership of your own darkness as a path to freedom
Whether you grew up in a home shaped by addiction or simply recognize the patterns Dr. Dayton describes, this interview offers both a map and the courage to begin the journey.
Listen now and start where you are.
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. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
Aviv Shahar explores why we’re living through an Epochal Moment—a rare transition between ages where one epoch dies as another emerges. He maps the five-thousand-year journey that brought us here, reveals the “bugs” in our collective evolution that require remedying, and describes the emerging capacities of the universal human we’re becoming as we navigate this bewildering, transformative threshold.
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 https://www.join.soundstrue.com
