How Humans Work Podcast

Episode Summary

In Episode #60, the spirited Eugenia Bone joins Jef Szi and the How Humans Work Podcast for a high-energy dive into the astonishing world of bacteria and fungi.

Eugenia is an author of several books and cookbooks, including Microbia, Have a Good Trip, and Mycophilia. She brings her experience studying microbiology and longstanding affection for mycology to show, providing incredible portraits of the invisible world that pervades our lives.

With a great vibe and oodles of energy, Eugenia walks us through various fascinating and wild features of this unseen ecological world. Among the things we discover with her is how bacteria bridge the unliving world and the living world, how collaborations between archaea, bacteria, fungi, and plants are at work in and around us, and how to appreciate the mystery of nature.

There’s a magic and beauty in this conversation. As the final episode in the Social Cohesion season, this episode with Eugenia gives us a renewed sense of awe for the micro-world. It invites us to glimpse the ground floor of unseeable life, surrounding us in a shroud that we depend on but can never fully comprehend.

Thank you, Eugenia, for being a dynamic and fun conveyor of this special and essential facet of life.

Listeners: please enjoy the conversation and contact me to share your questions and feedback.

Bonus Episode #11: Show Summary:

In this bonus episode, Eliyahu Sills joins Jef Szi to discuss the inner-life of men. Together, they reflect on men's need to deal with fear, anger, grief, and conflict in well held spaces. They also talk about a variety of models for men to tend their inner life. Men's work, as it is often called, frequently centers around groups, circles, and other intentional spaces that assist men in their self understanding and growth through the phases of life.

This show is a great introduction into the personal journey’s that led each of them into a life that included attending to men’s inner-lives and to collaborate on the upcoming AF2026 Men’s Retreat.

We also get to know Eliyahu’s musical journey and hear about his ensembles latest album.

About Eliyahu Sills: Eliyahu is a therapist, musician, and men’s group leader. He works with men in groups and individually. You can learn more about Eliyahu’s therapeutic work on his website; www.eliyahusillspsychotherapy.com.

You can learn more about the Qadim Ensemble and hear their new album of Ladino songs, Entre Las Huertas, available on all platforms.

To Learn More About the Ancestral Futures Retreat: Check out the How Humans Work website.

Episode #59 Summary

The delightful and engaging Laura Spinney is a science journalist and author of the book Proto. Laura joins the podcast to help us unpack the extraordinary story of the ancient Bronze Age Yamnaya culture, whose linguistic legacy endures today in the family of Indo-European languages. Even though the Yamnaya’s Proto language went extinct without being recorded, its linguistic offspring have survived across millennia, evolving into a multitude of other languages that are alive and well in our time. Some of these many languages are English, Urdu, Russian, Farsi, Bengali, Spanish, Norwegian, and Irish. Proto is also the mother tongue of other languages that have since become extinct, such as Latin, Sanskrit, and Ancient Greek.

With admirable mental dexterity, Laura weaves the complex, multilayered facets of the Proto story. She helps us tackle the core mystery of it all: who were the ancient peoples who spoke Proto that was never written down and hasn’t been uttered in more than 4,000 years, and how is it that their Pontic Steppe culture ended up being the progenitor to a set of languages that are now spoken around the planet?

Armed with the most up-to-date insights from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics, Laura shows us how these disciplines have converged over the last two decades to provide an increasingly clearer, but still evolving portrait. By unearthing DNA, tracing word roots, and studying cultural remnants, science has modeled aspects of this prehistoric period and the Yamnaya peoples, providing a deeper glimpse into the linguistic origins of nearly half of the planet.

This episode concludes by considering the contemporary lessons Proto's themes offer. Migrations, evolving linguistic and genetic demographics, and the nativist and nationalistic reactions to change are familiar motifs. Citing the shifting language demographics in the United States, Spinney reminds us that migration and linguistic change are constant throughout human history rather than aberrations, arguing that only languages and cultures that adapt endure.

This big-picture conversation in our Social Cohesion season invites us to consider the large tides of human history in our quest for cohesion. Spinney’s Proto story shows us how intermixed the current state of affairs already is, asking us to widen our view and our hearts to see beyond apparent differences. The truth is there are vast scales of cultural and linguistic patterns moving through and around us. Proto asks us to open up, let go, and trust the wild and unrelenting change that has defined the human saga across thousands of years and will continue to do so in the coming centuries.

With exceptional kindness and clarity, Mada Siebert and Linet Dube from African Solutions to African Problems (ASAP) join Jef Szi to tell the ASAP story and its approach to supporting the rural communities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The eleven Xhosa and Sotho villages in the Matatiele region they work with are deeply challenged by cycles of poverty and trauma. These village are underserved, last-mile communities that have been profoundly impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

We come to understand how ASAP’s asset-based model of community support, which listens to the needs and waters the emergent responses within the villages, is foundational to everything ASAP does. We learn how ASAP partners with the gogos (grandmothers), tribal chiefs, the Imbizo social structure, and other proactive members to build up these forgotten communities. Mada and Linet show us that needs are holistic and that the best methods of sustainability require listening and becoming responsive allies to the needs—which almost always include food security, identification and documentation support, interrupting the cycles of gender-based violence, and resources for early childhood development.

We also learn about the ASAP’s founder, the late Priscilla “Scilla” Higham, who was Jef’s mother-in-law. We learn how, in 2003, after driving through the Eastern Cape countryside and finding villages devastated by HIV/AIDS with no help reaching them, Scilla used her incredible tenacity and strong-willed spirit to launch ASAP, leveraging her well-earned social capital to begin investing in these overlooked communities.

This episode is more than a discussion of poverty and trauma. It opens the window, revealing a refreshing ecosystem of quiet yet fierce resilience. Even within the heart-breaking struggles, replete with trauma and cultural limitations, there remains an illuminated spirit, rich with water taps, community gardens, workshops, and healing circles, and the songs of gogos calling the community toward a healthier future.

Reaching the Forgotten reminds us that Social Cohesion comes through resources, yes, but moreover it arrives not from dropping payloads of resources from a bird’s-eye distance, but from the steady, optimistic partnering that renews the fabric of human connection, community know-how, and a greater horizon of opportunities—one story, one person, one village at a time.

• Learn more about ASAP
• Follow ASAP on Facebook
• Donate to ASAP

In episode #57 of the How Humans Work Podcast, I sit down with social psychology and education policy expert Ryan Balch to explore the underlying evolutionary social forces that drive our behaviors and create challenges in our society. With tremendous ease and good-heartedness, Ryan walks us through core motivations, disconnects, and other hazards that our default "System 1" thinking brings to the table.

By understanding both System 1 thinking and the core needs for value and belonging, we can grasp the why and how our snap categorizations and defensive instincts seek to protect our identities in a highly segregated society, generating social and conversational friction. Balch explains how deep-seated human needs for belonging and security often masquerade as rigid political stances, leading to profound communication breakdowns.

Further in, we learn practical, "System 2" strategies to overcome these defensive reactions, primarily by shifting the goal of a conversation from "winning" to "understanding". By asking curious questions, navigating cognitive dissonance, and recognizing that challenged beliefs can literally feel like physical threats to the brain, this episode offers a compassionate roadmap for building genuine human connections in an age where difficult conversations lead to polarizations and social strife.

Thank you, Ryan, for being on the show and giving us simple, clear, and powerful insights to help us navigate differences in a constructive and caring way.

• The Default Mode: Our brains naturally rely on "System 1" thinking, which is quick, automatic, and instinctually focused on categorizing others.
• The Root of Disconnect: We frequently confuse our internal emotional needs for security and control with outward political policy statements.
• Defensive Reactions: When our ideas are challenged, it threatens our sense of security and creates cognitive dissonance.
• Moving the Goalposts: We often try to reduce this internal tension defensively by blaming others or shifting the parameters of the argument.
• The Media's Role: News outlets capitalize on our natural uncertainty by providing outrage-inducing narratives that give our brains rewarding hits of dopamine.
• Shifting Goals: To foster better interactions, we must consciously apply "System 2" effort to change our conversational goal from trying to convince to trying to understand.
• The Power of Empathy: Brain scans show that receiving a counteracting idea can register in the brain similarly to a physical knife attack.
• Grace in Dialogue: Recognizing this biological reality highlights the vital need for grace, curiosity, and compassion when engaging with differing perspectives.

Ryan is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology and LPO department at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches classes on social psychology, general psychology, and education policy. He completed his Ph.D. in Education Policy at Vanderbilt University as an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Fellow, during which his dissertation focused on the development and validation of student surveys of teacher practice. Following graduation, Ryan was the director of teacher and principal evaluation for Baltimore City Schools. During this time, he oversaw the creation and implementation of the district’s new evaluation systems. Previously, Ryan worked for 7 years as a psychology and science teacher and administrator at Riverwood High School in Atlanta, Georgia. He has a B.A. in Psychology from Duke University and an M.A. in Science Education from Georgia State University. Ryan plays ultimate frisbee and enjoys coaching and being involved in all the activities of his 13 and 11-year-old kids.

• Article on Vulnerability by Ryan’s Social Psych Students
• Productive Conversation Assignment
• Heineken Worlds Apart Commercial
• Terry Dobson’s Aikido Story
• An Interview link to the Brent MacKinnon Conversation

We Can Return Again is a powerful episode that explores the critical work of Survival International, an organization dedicated to protecting indigenous and uncontacted peoples worldwide. Hal Russell, Asia and Pacific Research and Advocacy Officer with Survival, joins host Jef Szi to guide us through the many threats indigenous and uncontacted communities face.

Along the way, we come to understand the extreme vulnerability and survival pressures these communities have. Whether it is illegal logging, deforestation, nickel mining, drug traffickers, governmental indifference, or self-centered influencers, each of these forces is putting our contemporaries, who have chosen a self-sufficient lifestyle to avoid the historical and ongoing traumas of colonialism, into real danger.

With great facility and immense dedication, Hal walks us through the serious challenges while also offering a powerful ethos and meaningful obligation, inviting us to recognize these communities' fundamental rights to continue to exist and what we can do individually and collectively to support them.

This conversation helps us wake up to an unpublicized tragedy, the irreplaceable loss of people, their cultures rich with long-held knowledge. At the heart of the show, we come to find the best guardians for the land and the people who depend on healthy ecosystems for their well-being. The episode concludes by looking at the work of Paul Rosolie, an increasingly popular advocate for the people of the Amazon.

About Survival International: Founded in 1969, Survival International is a global movement campaigning for the rights of indigenous and uncontacted peoples. They advocate for the fundamental right of these communities to be "different and free," prioritizing land rights as the most critical factor for their survival. The organization challenges destructive practices that displace indigenous peoples from their lands. Survival stands in solidarity with indigenous peoples, ensuring their voices are heard and their ancestral territories are protected for generations to come.

Resources and Links:

Survival International Website (Join and Donate!)

Read the PDF: Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples: At the Edge of Survival

Video Report documenting nickel mining on Hongana Manyawa lands.

More on Uncontacted Peoples

Chris Burris is a Senior Lead IFS Trainer and a clinical consultant with decades of experience in mental health and group work. Chris is based in North Carolina and leads training for the IFS Institute and his Creating Healing Circles work worldwide.

Last month, Chris joined Jef Szi for an in-depth conversation that illuminates the power, purpose, and benefits of healing with others. Along the way, we get to know the variety of influences and the backstory to Chris's group work, including a need to help his clients have real spaces to work on their social challenges, and Chris's interest in finding new models of authenticity that don't require being hijacked by reactive emotions.

With tremendous kindness and boatloads of reference points, Chris helps us understand why healing circles are an essential tool for healing from traumas and for offsetting the hyper-individualism found in most personal-growth work.

Chris teaches us that most traumas arise in relationships and are also healed through supportive, non-threatening contexts where participants can experience others as advocates and allies. He also shows us that well-run Healing Circles can allow participants to test new ways of being that are more cohesive and less isolating.

Throughout Healing with Others, Chris offers his grounded perspectives; whether it's on the Internal Family Systems model, the pros and cons of Men's work in the 1980's and 1990's, or how nature is another kind of healing force, we are well instructed by Chris and his extensive knowledge on group work and the healing process.

Perhaps the heart of Chris's teaching is the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model. In this conversation, he breaks down the model, showing how IFS is a constraint-and-release model whose core notion of an innate Self is characterized by calmness, curiosity, and compassion, and how the various "parts" play a role in protecting the Self. We also learn from Chris and kind way of thinking about our parts, and how these protective and often reactive voices within us frequently eclipse our core energy, leading us to relate to ourselves and others in harsh or critical ways.

With Chris, we take another step forward in imagining what it takes to be more cohesive as a society. In this case, the path forward is to challenge our assumptions about the do-it-alone approach. Instead, we are encouraged towards the chance to be with others, dropping in deeply, where trauma and social connections can be transformed as a community. Few are better positioned to show what this path looks like than the heart-centered and wise Chris Burris.

Thank you for being on the show, Chris!

About Chris Burris: Chris is a Clinical Consultant and Senior Lead Trainer for the Center for Self Leadership. Chris has been a psychotherapist since 1989, working with diverse populations in community agencies, intensive residential centers, institutions of higher learning, and in private practice.

He began training in the Internal Family Systems model in 1999 and is currently a Senior Lead Trainer for the Internal Family Systems Institute, where he teaches Level 1, Level II, and Level III trainings and serves as a trainer and mentor for new IFS training staff.

Resources:

1. Get On Chris's Mailing List
2. Order Chris's Book
3. Try the Exercise Spoken About in the Show

Episode Summary:

Recent events in America from Minneapolis to Washington D.C., show us that unapologetic postures and political strategies are attractive to some who are interested in power.

In this special bonus episode, Jef Szi shares his recent essay about this unapologetic trend on full display not just in the terrible shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but in the Trump administrations response to those events.

Jef show us how empathy and social care are essential tools as we aim to stay human in inhumane times. An important reminder that our feelings are not just difficult, but part of the solution.

Finally, Jef shares his most recent poem. It imagines Adam apologizing to Eve in The Garden of Eden.

East Forest joins the How Humans Work Podcast for a special Winter Solstice episode.

With a generous mind and grounded heart, East walks us through how his Music For Mushrooms Documentary was birthed, as well as the creative gifts and challenges that came along with that project.

Special Note: WATCH it FOR FREE ON YOUTUBE 12-21-2025 to 12-31-2025

Additionally, this conversation explores East's connection to ceremony, elders, influential indigenous traditions, and his subtle nuances and commitments it takes to honor the creative process.

Finally, this show weaves bits of East Forest's remarkable music as he reminds us to remember the power of intention, of community, of retreat, of simple presence, and that curating spaces to listen to our soul are gifts that allow us to find the smile inside our soul.

#eastforest #musicformushrooms #psychedelicmedicines #music #ambient #courtjohnson #ramdass #lorraineweiss #ceremony #ayahuasca #esalen #bigsur #healing #humannature #jefszi #howhumanswork

Episode Summary

Landscape Architect Nina Chase, sits down with Jef Szi for a terrific exploration of her work imagining and designing public spaces. Nina’s easy and honest expertise deepens our view on what fosters Social Cohesion. She helps surface the amazing, often understated, network of relationships connected to an everyday discipline shaping our lives.

With an abundance of talent and inspiration, Nina teaches us the important role architects of public spaces play in our history and our future. With her unique understanding of cities and communities across Middle-America, she exemplifies the powerful capacity landscape architecture has to subtly re-imagine and redefine the common spaces that anchor us.

What we ultimately find in Nina’s work are the seeds for better-connected communities, healthier and more well-adjusted humans, and a closer connection with the natural world—especially the crucial role of trees.

In It’s Not For You, we find a refreshing power in good-hearted folks like Nina, and her colleagues, who are endeavoring to shape what comes next, designing with clear-eyed care for the web of life and a sensible commitment to the needs of future generations.

We find a sober reminder, our role is to plan and plant for a future that will carry on beyond our us.

About Nina Chase:

Nina Chase is a landscape architect and Founding Principal of Merritt Chase. Her work focuses on creating meaningful, public spaces across Middle America. Born and raised in West Virginia, Nina graduated from West Virginia University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She spent her early career in Boston designing and planning notable public parks and open spaces. Today, Nina leads Merritt Chase’s urban work, planning and designing public parks, plazas, waterfronts, and cultural districts. Nina is dedicated to the design community through teaching, writing, and advocacy. She frequently lectures and serves as a design critic nationally and internationally. Nina is formerly an adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon's School of Architecture and an emeritus board member of the Landscape Architecture Foundation. Nina is currently the Co-Chair of the Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Council and a member of the Harvard Alumni Association Board.