Radical Health Radio

Your body learned to expect danger long before you could talk, and that feeling might create attachment issues.

Dana Doswell is a nervous system educator focused on the female nervous system, somatic touch, and detoxing perfectionism. Her approach cuts against the therapy-speak that’s taken over the algorithm.

Her own history includes croup and antibiotics before she was one, chronic strep from early childhood, Accutane, a six-year toxic relationship, a bodybuilding phase, and a medication-induced faint onto a cement floor that pushed her into the work.

Anxiety, she argues, is extended overactivation your nervous system has learned to require. When the default mode network merges with the negativity bias, “being with what is” can keep reinforcing that something is wrong.

The attachment style section is sharp. Dana traces what gets imprinted from conception, umbilical cord cutting, breastfeeding, and the cry-it-out era, and how that shows up later as anxious, avoidant, or disorganized relating.

Dana’s relationship with Case, the soft-to-savage spectrum, warrior-poet masculinity, and the difference between safe spaces and brave spaces all get unpacked without the usual clichés.

The two foundational steps she gives at the end are worth the full listen.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:40] Why the mind-body split is a protective dissociation

[7:43] How culture worships the head at the body’s expense

[17:17] Chronic strep and constant antibiotics in Dana’s early childhood

[26:39] Dana discovering polyvagal theory and realizing she wasn’t broken

[28:48] Somatic touch and trauma that is developmental, not shock

[37:08] Yielding versus relaxing and what safety actually means

[41:47] Perfectionism at its core as not trusting life

[50:50] Attachment begins in the womb, and crying it out creates freeze, not independence

[1:04:24] Co-sleeping and parenting against the mainstream narrative

[1:10:48] Authenticity as the necessary map for a rapidly changing world

[1:17:23] Where to start first if you feel dysregulated

Resources Mentioned:

NeuroAffective Touch Institute | Website

The Sacred Village | Website

Polyvagal Theory | Wikipedia

Case Bradford | Website | Instagram

Find more from Dana:

Dana Doswell | Offerings

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

My secret for getting better at everything while stressing less? I stopped being so hard on myself.

That sounds backwards, especially coming from a working-class bloke who grew up on grit, rugby, and MMA. But every measure that actually matters to me improved once I loosened the grip: my work, my health, my relationships, my presence with the people I love.

If your whole life requires white-knuckling to hold it together, the problem isn't your discipline. It's your alignment.

Culture's answer to a hard life is always the same. Go harder. Get up earlier. Add a cold plunge. Stack another habit. You can go a long way on willpower and spite. Believe me, I've done it. But you can also discipline your way into a successful life you don't really want.

Alan Watts and the Taoist idea of wu wei sit at the heart of this. So does Tim Cook's take on loving your work, and a Jocko line I think needs an asterisk. There's also the concept of "discipline miles per gallon", and why running downhill is not laziness; it's alignment.

If you're tired of white-knuckling your entire life, always forcing and never flowing, this one's for you.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[2:50] Discipline as a gauge, not just a virtue

[3:56] The cult of seriousness convinces us to be hard on ourselves

[5:53] The highest form of discipline is not needing it

[7:26] Flow removes friction, not the hard part

[9:43] Why discipline goes further when you’re in alignment

[11:36] Freedom never comes from force; it comes from flow

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Cannabis today is stronger and more habit-forming than ever, but used with intention, it can still be powerful medicine.

Corinne Tobias came to cannabis as medicine in her mid-20s with herniated discs, opiate use, and a prognosis that said she probably wouldn't be walking well by 30. A stack of CDs, a few small joints, and a very different intention changed her life's trajectory. She now trains coaches, sits on the scientific advisory board of a cannabinoid company, and is working toward legal facilitation licensure in Colorado.

Three years after her husband died, Corinne did her first mushroom journey alone at home, convinced she'd already grieved his loss. The medicine disagreed almost immediately and put her in the bathtub for hours, talking to him.

Corinne is direct about what she's seen inside underground ceremonies, including sexual abuse rates in ayahuasca settings, and why "just take a heroic dose" isn't the right path for everyone. She's also honest about her own kambo experience in Tulum, where a practitioner kept pushing her to drink more and more water - a real danger with kambo - and she went along with it despite her gut telling her something was off.

If you've ever wondered whether your relationship with cannabis has drifted somewhere you didn't intend, or whether microdosing is actually as productivity-hacky as the internet makes it sound, listen through to the end.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[6:36] Corinne was told she might not walk by 30

[9:02] Off opiates within weeks of smoking medicinally

[16:11] Losing her husband at the peak of girl boss mode

[25:58] The Terence McKenna conviction that caused real harm

[35:39] THC in flower went from 1 percent to 30 percent

[39:24] She's never seen proof that vape pens are safe

[47:40] More pain is an invitation to go inside

[55:31] Sexual abuse reported in underground ceremonies

[1:04:41] Never betray the body speaking over the mind

[1:13:41] Preparation matters as much as integration

[1:19:49] Huxley's Island and raising children who never need it

Resources Mentioned:

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan | Book

The Secret Chief Revealed by Myron Stolaroff | Book

Island by Aldous Huxley | Book

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley | Book

FK+ | Website

Find more from Corinne:

Corinne Tobias - Wake + Bake | Website | Instagram

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

8 weeks of meditation is enough to produce measurable changes in the connectivity of your prefrontal cortex. But most people won’t do it because they don’t see immediate results.

My guest this week is Brandon Cowling, a neuroscience student at the University of Texas and the voice behind Brandon's Brainwave, where he’s making the science of self-change something anyone can use.

Predictive processing was the first idea that stopped me. Your brain is not showing you the world. It's showing you a filtered version based on beliefs you probably didn't choose. The lion is gone, but your amygdala still thinks the boss meeting is one, and your prefrontal cortex pays the price.

Brandon describes long-term potentiation, why meditation measurably shifts the default mode network, and the concept of limbic friction, which reframes willpower as a design problem instead of a character flaw.

If you've ever wondered why the phone wins every time, the answer is not that you're weak.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:45] Becoming your greatest self when your brain is wired to predict and protect

[14:26] Simple but not easy, how practice physically rewires the brain

[21:03] Deconstructing a 36-year habit and how quickly the brain can change

[28:22] Phones prey on unconscious processes by design

[35:21] Limbic friction and buying back mental real estate from decision fatigue

[42:54] Escaping the cult of seriousness to explore the mystery of consciousness

[53:32] Pornography's effect on the brain and refusing the defeatist mindset

[59:42] Bridging neuroscience and spiritual awakening through the brain's built-in blueprint

[1:04:54] Rejecting doom thinking and training your brain to spot opportunity 

Resources Mentioned:

Brick | Website

Brain Performance Institute at the Center for Brain Health | Website

Find more from Brandon:

Brandon Cowling | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Can you really channel creativity on command through your subconscious?

My guest, James McCrae, is a poet, author, and artist behind the WordsAreVibrations project. His take on creativity as channeling reshaped how I think about the creative process.

The opening question I ask him is what it actually feels like to have that many people experience something you posted without a strategy behind it. His answer sets up the rest of the conversation.

We get into the subconscious as a portal, why the conscious mind is like a hard drive and the subconscious is the internet, and how the collective unconscious explains why the same ideas surface around the world at once.

James talks about art as the soil where new mythology gets planted, memes as the smallest unit of a cultural idea, and why politics and culture are downstream of the artists willing to sit still long enough to receive something real.

The cult of seriousness comes up, along with why stillness terrifies most people, AI as a tool rather than the artist, the trap of vanity metrics, and how personal reinvention actually works when the old version of you stops fitting.

Press play if you have been avoiding the thing you know you should be creating.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:14] Creativity as widening access to the subconscious

[8:23] What blocks people from their own intuition

[13:06] Why life is not a problem to solve

[16:45] Terence McKenna and the acceleration of human novelty

[24:09] Memes as the smallest unit of a spreading idea

[31:29] The danger of justifying atrocities for your own team

[41:24] Creativity as a way to reinvent your whole life

[47:30] Why stillness is something people are desperate to avoid

[54:14] The surrender that let grace bring the poetry back

[1:07:29] Vanity metrics feel like cocaine

[1:16:05] Whether the best art really comes from heartbreak

Resources Mentioned:

Allen Ginsberg | Website

Find more from James:

James McCrae | Website | Instagram | Substack

Instructions Before Visiting Earth | Poem

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Most chefs teach urgency in the kitchen. Chef Aran Goldstein thinks that's exactly what's severing us from our own dinner tables.

Aran is a chef, writer, and founder of Unprocessed who's cooked from Tuscany to China and now feeds kids at private schools using nose-to-tail, farm-sourced ingredients most parents wouldn't dream of putting in a lunchbox.

He grew up as the overweight kid glued to Julia Child reruns while eating two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches on a Saturday. In Piedmont, he served blood sausage roasted over potatoes and tripe terrine on Fridays to schoolchildren, and they ran full-sprint to get it.

Aran hasn't bought grocery store pork or chicken in almost two years. He talks about drawing hard lines: never McDonald's, never Chick-fil-A, and the mantra he uses before crossing the threshold into his own house so he doesn't dump frantic energy on his wife and kids.

Paul Chek once said, “Your ‘yes’ has no value until you learn to say ‘no’”. Chef Aran has built a life around that sentence, and he doesn't sell an easy version of it.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[4:45] Food as a lifelong thread, from an overweight kid to a career

[10:56] Waking up before it's too late to change

[18:57] Whether anyone can be truly healthy inside a city

[24:42] The surrender experiment that led Chef Aran to Tennessee 

[35:03] Passing on stress instead of nourishment, without slipping into a purity spiral

[50:06] The stress of perfection harms more than the food itself

[57:50] Power follows the blame finger and self-governance

[1:05:12] Men have to move their water every day

[1:18:18] The travel, obsession, and unconventional school kitchens that shaped his career

Resources Mentioned:

The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson | Book

Lineage Provisions - Grass-Fed Air Dried Beef Snacks | Product

Heart and Soil - Beef Organ Supplements | Product

Find more from Chef Aran:

Chef Aran Goldstein | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | LinkedIn

Unprocessed Podcast | Spotify or YouTube

Unprocessed | Substack

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | InstagramRadical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

By every standard metric I was doing great, and I was also miserable, which is where this episode starts.

The cult of seriousness has convinced us that every walk needs a step count, every hobby needs a purpose, and every hour needs an output. My argument is that this obsession with self-optimisation is inefficient, inhumane, and the fastest way to drain the joy out of a life you're supposedly building.

The head is a scarcity factory that runs on prediction and protection, and it will keep you safe by keeping you small. The heart plays a completely different game, and most of us have lost access to it because feelings are inconvenient in a culture that only rewards output.

Andrew Wilkinson's line about successful people being "a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity" sits at the centre of this one for a reason.

There's a specific question I heard years ago that broke my brain and pushed me off the ladder I was climbing. If you've been performing your way through a life that doesn't feel like yours, this is the reframe I wish someone had handed me sooner.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[2:02] The head as a scarcity factory built for survival

[3:34] When everything in life needs a purpose

[5:45] A ladder leaning against the wrong wall

[7:30] Caring less does not mean caring about nothing

[9:16] Asking what your heart wants over your head

[11:29] Why a good question beats any answer given

[13:19] You are the cause of and solution to your problems

[15:01] Dropping the cult of seriousness as a frequency shift

Resources Mentioned:

Ste’s Post - Care Less | Instagram

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Skye sat on the idea of posting his workouts for three months because he knew that the second he hit publish, there was no going back.

Skye Mackintosh is the Daily Reps guy, and he's spent the past year proving you don't need a gym, a trainer, or hours a day to get in real shape. He started with pushups and jump squats. Nothing else.

What drew me in was his reason for posting. He didn't do it to build a brand. He did it because he knew that if strangers were watching, he'd finally have to follow through.

We get into the moment his ego took a hit strapping on a weighted vest, why he just told his job of nine years he's done, and how consistency actually works when you're sick, tired, or having a bad day.

There's a real conversation in here about people outsourcing their thinking to AI, why authenticity is becoming the rarest thing online, and how being bored around a campfire might be more valuable than any productivity hack. He also gets into fatherhood, marriage, and the standards he reads to himself every morning.

If you've ever felt intimidated by fitness content or told yourself you don't have time, this one will hit differently.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:16] How slogging for hours in the gym became unsustainable

[9:20] Why intensity is the real lever behind 20-minute workouts

[16:11] Reducing friction and designing your environment for consistency

[25:06] Learning to celebrate a milestone that feels like just who you are

[30:59] Finding yourself in silence and boredom

[36:46] What actually changed in Skye's mind and body after one year

[42:17] Imposter syndrome and standing in the fire of online criticism

[47:46] The books, perspectives, and simplicity principles that have shaped how he thinks

[63:13] Marriage, fatherhood, and what truly matters most

[67:57] What's next for Skye, from a possible book to speaking on big stages

Resources Mentioned:

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey | Book or Audiobook

Essentialism by Greg McKeown | Book or Audiobook

Effortless by Greg McKeown | Book or Audiobook

The Power of Bad by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister | Book or Audiobook

Find more from Skye:

Skye Macintosh | Instagram

Daily Reps | App

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

The sun is not as damaging as you've been told… Zaid Dahhaj shows us where the research breaks.

Zaid runs The Circadian Classroom and studies circadian biology from first principles, which is how he ended up pulling apart the mainstream narrative around melanin, melanoma, and sunscreen.

Once you understand that the research demonising UV is largely built on isolated UV exposure, nocturnal mice, albino mice, and keratinocyte-only petri dishes, the whole "sun causes cancer" story starts to look a lot less airtight.

Melanin gets reframed here as an active defence system rather than damage on a ledger. It's photoprotective, it dissipates UV as heat, and it even chelates certain heavy metals.

Night shift work is classified as a probable carcinogen, and most people are living a low-grade version of it: dark days indoors, and bright nights under LEDs. That's the inversion Zaid keeps coming back to.

We also take a serious look at sunscreen chemistry, vitamin D3, sunglasses and eye health, seed oils and burn risk, and how to build a solar callus without frying yourself on a beach in Costa Rica.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[8:05] Night shift work's carcinogen classification and what it reveals about us all

[11:21] Circadian repair restores UV-damaged cells so there's no accumulated damage

[20:41] The sun-cancer research is built on nocturnal mice and isolated UV

[30:34] The melanoma overdiagnosis problem and dermatology's stage zero caution

[34:26] A tan isn't damage, melanin works as nature's sunscreen

[47:16] The case for actively seeking the sun, and when to do it

[51:58] Sunglasses remove one leg of the circadian stool

[58:46] SPF 50 blocks the very anti-cancer vitamin D your skin needs

[1:09:26] The exact daily routine to build your solar callus without burning

Resources Mentioned:

My Circadian App | Website

Tap Zap App | Website

In Defense of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen | Book or Audiobook

Dr. Jack Kruse | Website

A. Bernard Ackerman, MD | Wikipedia

The Rapid Rise in Cutaneous Melanoma Diagnoses by Welch, H.G. et al. | Article

Teo Soleymani, MD | LinkedIn

Use code SUN to get 50% off Zaid’s 80/20 Circadian Course here.

Find more from Zaid:

Zaid K. Dahhaj | Instagram | X | Website

The Circadian Classroom | SubStack

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube

Miesha Tate spent her whole life chasing a UFC world title, and when she won it, it broke her.

Miesha is a former UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion, one of the fighters who cracked women's MMA open at the highest level, and someone who has now spent almost as much time deconstructing what that pursuit cost her as she did chasing it.

We sat down in Malibu and got into the parts of the story you don't usually hear. The moment she realised the gold belt didn't solve a single one of her problems. The years of eating disorders, distilled water weight cuts, and amenorrhea she was privately navigating while headlining pay-per-views. The pregnancy loss earlier this year that forced her to look at what her fighting career had done to her hormones. And the coach whose death became the reason she started her podcast.

Miesha is direct about what she got wrong: the war she waged with her own body, the intuition she overrode because she'd signed on the dotted line, and the mental health cost of being the "strong woman" everyone pointed to. She's also honest about what actually helped her rebuild, from cognitive behavioural therapy to prayer to learning, for the first time in her life, how to be present.

If you've ever confused discipline with self-punishment, this one will resonate.

You’ll learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[9:53] 99% of a cage fight happens inside your own head before the walk out

[15:20] How winning the belt became the biggest breaking point of Miesha’s life

[24:15] The eating disorder, the weight cuts, and drinking distilled water for 72 hours

[40:09] Women need 100 to 300 more calories in the luteal phase, and no diet accounts for it

[52:36] The pregnancy loss she believes was tied to years of under-fueling her body

[1:04:19] How prayer, reconnection, and a cognitive behavioral therapist pulled her out of the darkness

[1:14:40] The balloon exercise that taught her presence for the first time in her life

[1:25:57] Why Miesha believes public school was designed to divide the nuclear family

Resources Mentioned:

ROAR (Women Are Not Small Men) by Stacy T. Sims, PhD | Book

The Period Brain by Sarah E. Hill, PhD | Book

Hold On To Your Kids by Gabor Maté, MD and Gordon Neufeld, PhD | Book

When The Body Says No by Gabor Maté, MD | Book

Dr. Kayla Osterhoff | Website

Find more from Miesha:

Miesha Tate | Instagram | X | Website

Built for Growth | Podcast

Apogee Boise (Micro School) | Website

Find more from Ste:

Ste Lane | Instagram

Radical Health Radio | Instagram | YouTube

Heart and Soil Supplements | Website | Instagram | X | YouTube