Terrain Theory

Children aren't born broken. The medical system tells us otherwise.

Several years ago, Dawn Lester and David Parker joined us on Terrain Theory to discuss their groundbreaking book, What Really Makes You Ill?, a nearly 800-page examination of the assumptions underlying modern medicine, germ theory, and the true nature of health and illness.

Now Dawn returns with a new book, A Fresh Look at Childhood Illness, turning her attention to perhaps the most consequential place to begin rethinking health: the very beginning of life.

From pregnancy and birth to childhood vaccinations, fevers, rashes, and routine visits to the pediatrician, parents are confronted with an enormous number of decisions, often within a medical framework that encourages them to see their children as vulnerable and in constant need of protection.

What if we've been looking at childhood illness through the wrong lens?

In this conversation, we explore Dawn's terrain-forward understanding of childhood symptoms, the medicalization of childhood, and her critique of the scientific foundations of virology. We discuss the labels attached to conditions like measles and chickenpox, the tendency to suppress symptoms rather than investigate their underlying causes, and the importance of questioning medical interventions rather than simply accepting them as inevitable.

We also revisit a theme from our first conversation: the language we use shapes the way we understand our bodies. What happens when children grow up hearing that they've "caught" something, that germs are everywhere, and that their bodies need constant protection from the world around them?

Dawn also explores the relationship between a child's terrain and the physical and emotional environment in which they're raised, from nutrition and environmental exposures to parental stress, beliefs, and behavior. We discuss the body's capacity for self-regulation, the importance of listening to children, and why tending to our own terrain may be one of the most important things we can do as parents.

And we arrive at an idea that reframes parenting itself: children aren't just sponges, absorbing everything around them. They're mirrors, reflecting something back to us about ourselves.

Most importantly, Dawn challenges the fear-based messaging that has become increasingly common even within alternative health circles. Her message and her book promote curiosity, critical thinking, parental responsibility, and learning to make decisions from a place of understanding rather than fear.

Learn more about Dawn Lester and her work at https://dawnlester.com/ and https://dawnlester.substack.com/.

Get Dawn's new book, A Fresh Look at Childhood Illness, at Amazon.

Support Terrain Theory and get bonus episode content at https://patreon.com/terraintheory.

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

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Music by Chris Merenda

Afterparty Music by Brendan Daniel

It's been nearly a year since Ben and Mike sat down for a Wellness Check on the Terrain Theory Podcast, and a lot has happened in that time. A new marriage, a growing family, a milestone birthday, plenty of music, and a few unexpected challenges have given them plenty to reflect on.

Ben shares what life has looked like since welcoming Hazel into the world, blending a family, and marrying Kelly in an intimate ceremony that carried more spiritual significance than he anticipated. He reflects on the difficulties they've navigated together, the strength they've found in one another, and why some of life's most challenging experiences can also be the most transformative, especially if you see life happening for you and not to you.

Mike checks in on life at 50, from touring and playing hockey to recognizing that the habits and expectations that served him at 30 or 40 don't necessarily serve him today. He also recounts a meaningful return to a music festival that had excluded him during COVID, and how choosing connection over confrontation opened the door to something he hadn't expected: forgiveness.

Then Ben and Mike turn their attention to the terrain between our ears.

What stories do we tell ourselves about who we are, what we're capable of, and what success is supposed to look like? How often do our expectations become the source of our own frustration? And what might change if we stopped trying to control other people's journeys and allowed them to hike their own hike?

Along the way, they touch on sleep, movement, sunlight, aging, eyesight, raising children, and the daily practice of taking responsibility for their own well-being. But the conversation keeps returning to a common thread: the beliefs we carry, the relationships we nurture, and the things we're willing to let go of may be just as worthy of our attention as the physical aspects of our terrain.

As always, this conversation is for educational purposes only and reflects personal experience. It is not medical advice.

Remember:
You are light.
You are love.
You are your Primary Healthcare Provider.

Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our member platform gives you access to a ton of free & exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheory

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:
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Music by Chris Merenda

What really makes us ill?

Once you begin questioning germ theory, another question quickly follows: if germs aren’t the cause of disease, then what is?

For past Terrain Theory guests like Dawn Lester, David Parker, Tom Cowan, et al, The answer comes down to some familiar forces: malnutrition, stress, and toxins.

In this conversation, we focus on one of the most pervasive of those toxins: glyphosate.

Michelle Perro, MD is a conventionally trained pediatric emergency physician whose work gradually moved toward environmental medicine, nutrition, homeopathy, GMOs, pesticides, and the growing toxic burden she was seeing in chronically ill children. That journey eventually led her to GMOScience.org, where she now works to educate families about the relationship between food, environmental exposure, and health.

We start with glyphosate and Roundup, but expand into the bigger picture: pesticide exposure, the gut and microbiome, intestinal permeability, mineral depletion, ultra-processed foods, children’s developing physiology, organic and regenerative agriculture, household exposures, water, personal-care products, and the cumulative load created by modern life.

But this is not an episode about becoming afraid of everything around you.

It’s about what you can actually do about it.

Michelle makes the case that the first step is reducing the toxic load: changing what comes into the home, becoming more conscious about food and water, paying attention to what is being sprayed around us, and supporting the body’s ability to recover. She talks about her work with children and families and how some simple shifts in lifestyle and food choice led to vastly improved health outcomes.

Then onto the activation piece: rebuilding community around food, supporting local farmers, growing some of our own food again, and refusing to outsource responsibility for our health entirely to institutions.

Because awareness is only the first step.

Agency comes next.

And if we want healthier people, healthier children, and healthier communities, tending our own terrain may also require tending the terrain of the communities immediately around us...and the terrains of those with whom we share that community.

Learn more about Michelle Perro, MD and her work at https://gmoscience.org/ and https://makingourchildrenwell.com/.

Support Terrain Theory and get bonus episode content at https://patreon.com/terraintheory.

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

When Lisa Strbac first joined us in 2023 to talk homeopathy, tissue salts came up almost in passing. Since then, she’s written an entire book about them. So we invited Lisa back, along with her colleague Natasha Andreo, to give the subject the attention it most certainly deserves..

We begin with the twelve tissue salts identified by 19th-century physician Wilhelm Schuessler, how they differ from classical homeopathic remedies, and the notion that all dis-ease can be traced back to mineral salt imbalance in the body. 

Lisa also raises a question that sits right at the heart of homeopathy: are these remedies supplying the body with a substance, or could they be providing information? She shares the story that first convinced her to take tissue salts seriously, and she and Natasha explain how they choose individual salts, what they look for in the face and body, and why taking all twelve isn't necessarily the same as finding the one(s) you need.

There is, however, another piece to this system that Mike and Ben were very keen to explore: each of the twelve tissue salts has also been associated with a sign of the Zodiac.

Natasha, whose work combines homeopathy with medical astrology, explains how she uses birth charts, the Sun, the Moon, and planetary cycles to think about constitutional tendencies and timing. That leads to a fascinating discussion about surgery and lunar cycles, inherited patterns, generational trauma, and a reframe of that notion of "generational" that we hope gets used more.

Somehow Human Design enters the picture too, at which point we learn that Mike is apparently a type reserved for only one percent of people...which immediately made sense.

Join the conversation as we make connections between our cellular health and the cosmos above.

To learn more about Lisa and her work, visit lisastrbac.com, follow her on Instagram at @lisastrbac, and explore her homeopathy courses and practitioner training at the Academy of Integrative Homeopathy.

To learn more about Natasha and her work, visit natashaandreo.com.au and follow her on Instagram at @natasha.andreo, where she is most active.

Support Terrain Theory and get weekly bonus content at patreon.com/terraintheory.

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

Four years after her first appearance on Terrain Theory, Dr. Suzy Harris returns for a conversation that starts with COVID, adverse events, jab detoxification, and quickly moves into much deeper territory.

Suzy shares what she has been seeing in her chiropractic and natural health practice, how she approaches lymphatic movement, circulation, detoxification, and recovery, and why she remains open to questions that challenge even the frameworks she currently uses. We also talk about the importance of being able to disagree without immediately dismissing one another, especially in a space where skepticism is supposed to be a feature, not a liability.

From there, the conversation turns toward mindset, consciousness, attention, and what Suzy calls "quantum mindset coaching". We ask what “the field” actually means, whether thoughts can influence physical reality, where science ends and interpretation begins, and whether any of this requires a belief in God, spirit, or something beyond the material world.

At the center of the conversation is a simpler question: where are you putting your attention?

Fear, anger, resentment, grief, and uncertainty are all real. The point isn’t to deny them or spiritually bypass them. It’s to notice them, feel them, learn from them...and, as Suzy puts it, not park there.

We also revisit health freedom in Vermont, the lessons of COVID, personal agency, scarcity, manifestation, skepticism, and the possibility that changing our relationship to the world may begin with changing what we continually feed within ourselves.

Learn more about Suzy and her work at https://cedarwoodnaturalhealthcenter.com/ and also follow the work of Vermont Stands Up at https://vermontstandsup.org/

Support Terrain Theory and get weekly bonus content at patreon.com/terraintheory.

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

Beana Bern is the founder of Rootstock Retreat, a ten-acre retreat and community in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where she works with psilocybin through immersive medicine retreats and seasonal microdosing programs.

In this conversation, we rethink what we mean when we use the word “medicine.” Beana shares her own decades-long relationship with psychedelics and explains why mushrooms can be remarkably efficient at showing us where our pain, patterns, and stories come from...while challenging the idea that the psychedelic experience itself does the work of healing.

We talk about our own early experiences with microdosing, the problems with turning psychedelics into another magic pill, and why Beana structures her microdosing work around the rhythms of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. From there, the conversation widens considerably: the medicine of place, reconnecting with nature, developing internal authority without rejecting the need for guides, and learning to recognize wisdom in the world immediately around us.

We also venture into animism, the sentience of mushrooms, energetic and spiritual hygiene, unseen forces, and whether “hallucinogen” is even the right word for experiences that can sometimes feel more real than ordinary reality.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about much more than psychedelics. It’s about awareness, relationship, and expanding our understanding of medicine beyond something we consume to include the places we inhabit, the seasons we move through, the experiences that challenge us, and the living world (terrain) of which we are a part.

Learn more about Beana and her work at Rootstock Retreat: https://rootstockretreat.com/

Use code TERRAIN333 to take $333 of their next Microdosing Immersion: https://rootstock.mykajabi.com/medicine-of-the-west

Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our member platform gives you access to exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheory

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

Sharon Daphna is a writer, researcher, and creator of The Chembow, where she documents more than a decade of work with orgone energy, orgonite, atmospheric conditions, electromagnetic frequencies, and the ideas of Wilhelm Reich. Since 2014, Sharon has made and distributed orgonite throughout nine western states, experimenting with what happens when these devices are introduced into environments saturated with artificial frequencies.

In this conversation, we explore what might be called the invisible terrain: the energetic environment that surrounds us but rarely enters into conventional conversations about health. Sharon introduces us to Reich’s concept of orgone, his distinction between life-supporting orgone energy and what he called Deadly Orgone Radiation, or DOR, and why she believes orgonite can help transform the energetic conditions around us.

That brings us back to something we’ve explored previously with guests like Mitch the Orgone Donor and Rob Williams: the “frequency fence.” Sharon describes it as much more than electromagnetic pollution. In her view, artificial frequencies can interfere with our ability to sense our environment clearly, think clearly, and ultimately recognize our own power. As she puts it during our conversation, “The frequency fence really is a mind control signal.”

From there, we get into cell towers, Wi-Fi and other sources of electromagnetic radiation, weather modification, geoengineering, artificial intelligence, Reich’s cloudbuster experiments, atmospheric conditions, and Sharon’s experiences “gifting” orgonite throughout the western United States. We also talk about the practical side of her work: how she makes orgonite, where she places it, what she observes afterward, and some simple experiments people can conduct for themselves.

And yes, this conversation goes well outside the boundaries of conventional science. Sharon makes claims about orgone, weather, technology, health, and the forces shaping our environment that remain highly controversial and, in many cases, are not established by mainstream scientific evidence. You don’t have to accept those claims to engage with the larger question they raise.

Because if the organism cannot be separated from its environment, where exactly does our terrain end? At our skin? At the walls of our home? Or should our understanding of terrain also account for the signals, frequencies, technologies, and other invisible influences we're immersed in every day?

Perhaps the most important theme of our conversation, though, is not fear of those influences but agency. Sharon’s work is ultimately rooted in the belief that human beings are far more powerful than we’ve been taught to believe...and that changing our relationship with the environment begins with recognizing that power.

Learn more about Sharon and her work at https://www.thechembow.com/.

Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our member platform gives you access to exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheory

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

After Party Music by Great Balancing Act

Mike Cardamone is a comedian, writer, filmmaker, and creator of Don't Slap Snooze. Before turning his attention to health, medicine, money, and some of the stranger corners of our shared reality, Mike spent years in advertising writing and producing for major brands. Then COVID happened, he started pulling on threads, and his creative work took a very different turn.

In this conversation, we talk about comedy as a way of communicating ideas that facts and arguments often can’t, and Mike makes the case that laughter can do something particularly powerful: break the spell. Once you can see the absurdity in something, and laugh at it, it becomes much harder to see it the same way again.

We also explore the historical role of the comedian as court jester: someone permitted to mock the king, but only as long as he doesn’t start questioning why there’s a king in the first place. That takes us into censorship, gatekeepers, independent media, George Carlin, the limits of mainstream comedy, and why building outside established systems may matter more than trying to reform them from within.

And yes, things get weird. We talk urine therapy, enemas, fruit fasting, cleansing, Mike’s personal experiments with his body, our strange relationship with food, and even satanic salamanders.

But we also turn the joke back on ourselves. If we’re going to criticize rigidity and dogma in mainstream medicine and science, we should probably notice when those same tendencies show up in the terrain and alternative-health worlds. Mike doesn’t claim to have everything figured out. He experiments, observes, changes his mind, and keeps his sense of humor.

Because as he puts it near the end of our conversation, maybe “seriousness is the disease.”

Learn more about Mike and his work at https://dontslapsnooze.net/.

Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our member platform gives you access to exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheory

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

After Party Music by Great Balancing Act

We have been open about our experiences with psychedelics and microdosing and the meaningful role they played in our own journeys into Terrain. But as psychedelics move from the counterculture into clinics, retreats and the mainstream, are we at risk of turning them into another version of the very thing they're supposed to replace: the magic pill?

John O'Connor, author of A Short, Strange Trip, joins us for a nuanced look at the psychedelic renaissance through the story of one of its most influential figures, Terence McKenna. John retraced McKenna's journey into the Colombian Amazon, separating some of the history from the mythology and discovering that indigenous relationships with psychoactive plants look very different from the Western stories we've built around them.

The conversation becomes deeply personal when John shares his father's unsuccessful attempts to treat decades of alcohol addiction with ketamine and psilocybin-assisted therapy—an experience that forced John to confront his own expectations about these medicines. We explore the danger of placing responsibility for healing onto a substance, why psychedelics may help us rewrite the stories we tell about ourselves without necessarily making those stories true, and the strange contradiction of rejecting the pharmaceutical model only to replace "take this pill" with "take this mushroom."

We also get into McKenna's complicated legacy, psychedelic shamanism, ego dissolution and spiritual grandiosity, the therapeutic versus recreational use of psychedelics, indigenous plant traditions, the importance of intention and integration, and why it's possible to recognize the profound potential of these substances without turning them into something they aren't.

This isn't a rejection of psychedelics. It's a challenge to hold the promise and the problems at the same time, and to remember that no medicine can do the work of tending our terrain for us.

Learn more about John and his work at https://www.johnmoconnor.com/

Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our member platform gives you access to exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheory

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

After Party Music by Great Balancing Act

We spend a lot of time on this show talking about creating healthy terrain through food, light, movement, and the environments we choose. But what if our very first terrain wasn't physical at all? What if our terrain was the emotional climate we grew up in, the words spoken over us, and the stories we learned to tell ourselves before we were even old enough to question them?

In this conversation, we welcome pediatric physical therapist, Enlifted coach, and parenting educator Jenna Cain for a discussion about how a child's environment extends far beyond nutrition and toxins. We explore why parents often have to heal before their children do, how seemingly innocent labels can become lifelong identities, the power of asking questions instead of giving answers, and why children's behavior is often a reflection of the nervous systems around them rather than something that needs to be fixed.

Jenna also shares practical tools for raising resilient children and a perspective that feels deeply aligned with Terrain Theory: that the conditions we create—physically, emotionally, and linguistically—shape how life expresses itself.

If you're raising young children, healing from your own childhood, or interested in how our inner landscape influences our health and relationships, this conversation offers a crucial reminder that the first terrain any of us ever experience is home.

Learn more about Jenna and her work at https://www.rootedwellnessstudio.com/.

Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our member platform gives you access to exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheory

Book a FREE 1:1 call with co-host Ben Hardy to discuss terrain, health, life, anything! Find a day & time here: https://www.terraintheory.net/pages/free-1-1-call

Terrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.

If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at [email protected].

Learn more at www.terraintheory.net

Follow Terrain Theory:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrain_theory/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terrain-Theory

X: https://twitter.com/terraintheory1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@terraintheory

Music by Chris Merenda

After Party Music by Great Balancing Act