The Passing Through Podcast

My guest this week is pioneering psychedelic researcher, Dr. Louise Hecker.

Under her guidance, a team of scientists made shocking clinical discoveries for the first time in history. Studying a group of elderly mice, the scientists observed that administering heroic doses of psychedelic mushrooms conferred geroprotective benefits to their cells and appear to slow down aging.

Her research is paving the way for a new understanding between the role of psilocybin in health and aging.

Repeatedly giving mice hallucinogenic doses of psilocybin over tenth months produced profound, observable changes in the mice. Other studies found that human lung fibroblasts saw a similar dose-dependent relationship between psilocin (the primary psychoactive chemical compound in psychedelic mushrooms) and aging.

Of course more research needs to be done, and as I type this, Dr. Hecker and her team are soon to release additional findings showing how psychedelics positively impact many of the cells and organs of our bodies — with promising outcomes concerning diseases associated with the lungs. Many more intriguing and trippy facts are shared during our conversation — like mice not only living longer, but regrowing bald spots and reversing grey hairs. So if like me you’re old, grizzled and balding, I hope you’ll find this topic as fascinating and far out as I did.

Fun fact: if you take the starting letter of each of the previous sentences and line them up, it spells out the word mushrooms.

Research Study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-025-00244-x

Louise on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-hecker-69ba1915/

This week I'm passing through the space between your ears!

Join me for a liminal stream-of-consciousness ramble into the unknown, as I hunger for your wax and comb the murky depths of what's bubbling up through my mind.

This week I had the chance to speak with Tristan Gooley — a man who’s been called The Sherlock Holmes of nature by the BBC. Tristan is the author of a series of books exploring the topic of natural navigation.

Now, you may not have heard this term before. What is natural navigation? Well, to answer that question we'd have to ask, what did people do before maps and compasses were invented? Curious question. I hadn’t thought of it before. What did our ancestors do to successfully navigate the world for pretty much all of human history? They learned to listen to nature and read its signs.

That’s exactly what Tristan has spent his life doing.

He’s studied with indigenous trackers such as the Dayak in Borneo or the Tuareg while walking across the unforgiving landscape of the Libyan Sahara — and he’s the only living person to have sailed alone and flown alone across the Atlantic. He’s developed an extensive knowledge of bushcraft and animal tracking and meteorology, geology, dendrology, hydrology and the list goes on.

I’m reading one of his books right now called The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs where he teaches you how to listen to tree roots tell you about prevailing winds, or how a patch of colorful lichen might tell you things not only about air quality and moisture, but also about which way south is. Tristan uses flowers as thermometers, and fungi both as indicators of soil pH and predictors of surrounding tree species. His work is a wonderful and enchanting bridge back to rebuilding fluency in the language our world is speaking to us all the time, if we’re willing to slow down and listen.

So if you want to learn more about natural navigating check out Tristan’s website at https://www.naturalnavigator.com or read one of his many books. Tristan also offers courses and in-person workshops. You can also follow him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thenaturalnavigator.

This week Francis Weller is Passing Through!

How do we work with grief? Why is it important to metabolize our sorrow in a group setting? How does grief work and grief ritual differ from group therapy or support groups? What is grief asking of us? To help us answer these questions, I’m honored to have passed through this space with someone who’s been a teacher and inspiration to me, Francis Weller. Francis is a retired psychotherapist, renowned author, and grief worker who has opened up his life to an apprenticeship with sorrow. He’s written extensively on the topic of grief in books like The Wild Edge of Sorrow and In The Absence Of The Ordinary and in this episode we go into the darkness armed with some tissues and a few moments of silence.

As this is a continuation into our exploration of challenging feelings like grief, we explore sorrow as an animate force, and darkness as friend, not foe. We discuss ritual, grief-work and space-holding. I’m sure some listeners of this show are involved directly with grief work, maybe they’re death doulas, or hospice workers, or they facilitate restorative circles, or other group processes. But it’s worth noting that space-holding isn’t only applicable to facilitators of group work — space-holding is something all of us do every day. We can hold space for ourselves to get into contact with our inner world and give ourselves space and permission to feel but, sadly, in the dominant western culture we’re often not doing that; we can hold space for others when we’re there for our friends and family members who may be grieving or going through a tough time. In these times of darkness, uncertainty, despair and pain, space-holding I think is a relevant skill for us to develop regardless of who we are.

During our conversation we’ll talk about what Francis calls The Long Dark. He’ll explain grief as a communal — not individual — experience, he’ll walk us through some of the gates of grief related to those places which haven’t known love, ecological grief, and how this connects us to not just our own grief, but to a shared field of sorrow.

Francis has decades of experience in this work so I was truly grateful to hear his perspectives. This was an important conversation for me and I hope you can find something valuable to take away from it.

If you want to learn more about Francis and his work, you can find him at https://www.francisweller.net.

Books

The Wild Edge of Sorrow

In The Absence Of The Ordinary

This week I’m passing through southern Poland with a little preamble about grief (stay tuned for a more thorough investigation to come).

This episode is a short, stream-of-consciousness exploration of the difficult emotions that we cast aside into liminal space in modern culture: inadequacy, anger, resentment, fear, uncertainty, humiliation, loss, sadness, grief. Inside any living thing there’s a hurting thing. Through attrition — a careful whittling away over time — we accumulate damage; seasoning. The longer we live, the more time polishes us; smooths the edges; fades the color. But in doing so we take on a different quality. Once we’re cracked open, hollowed, something can move through us that couldn’t before. Nature works this way. It slowly peels the paint off the south facing side of the house. It erodes the mountain. Crashing waves slowly carve cliffs into ancient rock. Our skin sags and wrinkles rake fine lines across our faces as time entrains us.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but on the old palace grounds where I recorded this episode from this morning, sits a memorial to the second world war. So after sitting in the van and thinking about pain, sorrow, and shame — our collective wounds, and brokenness — I wandered through a spiraling structure that documented the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers. It was a sobering walk that took probably an hour to complete. An odd thing to be doing on a sunny day perfumed with birdsong. Surely evidence of a synchronicity; an echo of the tender and mournful darkness of my pre-dawn hours.

Grief takes many forms, which can make healing hard. Sometimes we grieve for the loss of that which we never had. Other times we grieve for that which was had but was taken from us — knowing full well that all we have will one day be lost. But aren’t there are more mysterious forms of grief? The wailing of the world. How does a world ravaged by extraction cry out? Through what channels does it broadcast its lament, or sink into an odious melancholy?

Maybe all things embodied are fleshy receivers capable of picking up the signal. We are embedded through our relationships into a shared community of heartache. But where does the unresolved trauma of our ancestors go after they take their leave of this place? Does it leak back into our lineage? Seep directly into our DNA? You’ve got your father’s eyes and your great grandmother’s fear of intimacy. But perhaps more importantly than where it comes from or where it goes — what does it want? How do we listen to and enter into conversation with our wounded or vulnerable parts?

I don’t believe I have firm answers to any of these questions — and I don’t even ask all of them in this episode — but it’s something I’m sitting with today. So pop your headphones into your earholes, close your eyes and pretend you’re with me here in the van.

There’s a callback to Episode 32 in this episode. Check it out if you feel so inclined.

Be good to one another, and I’ll talk to you next time.

Did you ever get the feelin’ you was bein’ watched?

This week I’m passing through a network of Flock Safety cameras that are all watching my every move and making me wonder what my Fourth Amendment rights are for. This is the surveillance episode.

This episode is all about how the most powerful surveillance apparatus in human history was built — not by a government, or a dictator, but in plain sight, incrementally, by companies whose products you use every day, funded by investors whose names you might not know, operating inside a legal framework that doesn’t meaningfully safeguard your civil liberties. More importantly this episode is about what it means for you — not in abstract, terms, but materially — in your wallet, or for your body — as you pass through a world where your every move is being tracked, profiled, and sold.

Join me for a deep dive into how we went from Jeremy Bentham’s theoretical Panopticon, to a literal cacophony of cameras tracking and monitoring the American public without their consent. I’ll talk about COINTELPRO, FISA, Snowden, The Patriot Act, data brokers, Shoshana Zuboff’s concept of Surveillance Capitalism, and a bunch more.

References

• Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon
• Michel Foucault
• Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)
• Zuboff's Congressional Testimony, House Committee, February 16, 2022
• Chatrie v. United States — Supreme Court, argued April 27, 2026

• Bugs Bunny
• Malcolm X

Links

• https://abcnews.com/Politics/house-republicans-struggle-spy-powers-reauthorization/story?id=132073585
• https://observer.co.uk/news/science-technology/article/billionaire-backed-startup-convenes-ai-juries-to-take-aim-at-journalists-7465
• https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/clearview-ai-immigration-ice-fbi-surveillance-facial-recognition-hoan-ton-that-hal-lambert-trump/
• https://www.npr.org/2016/05/17/478266839/this-is-your-brain-on-uber
• https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup
• https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/nyregion/911-tapes.html
• https://www.rangemedia.co/flock-safety-cameras-spokane-county-abortion-texas/
• https://observer.co.uk/news/science-technology/article/billionaire-backed-startup-convenes-ai-juries-to-take-aim-at-journalists-7465
• https://www.brookings.edu/articles/supreme-court-weighs-constitutionality-of-geofence-warrants/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gXRYcnM5KKU
• https://theintercept.com/2026/04/24/palantir-irs-contract-data/
• https://www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-revolving-doors-peter-thiel-transparency-corruption-risk
• https://usercentrics.com/guides/data-privacy/data-privacy-statistics/
• https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2026/03/30/walmart-promises-digital-price-labels-in-every-store-by-end-of-year/
• https://gizmodo.com/walmart-wins-patents-for-ai-powered-price-changes-2000735833#:~:text=The%20other%20claim%20was%20that,Senate%2C%20and%20the%20White%20House.
• https://stateofsurveillance.org/articles/government/church-committee-cia-fbi-investigation-1975/
• https://docs.house.gov/meetings/HA/HA00/20220216/114403/HHRG-117-HA00-Wstate-ZuboffS-20220216.pdf
• https://epic.org/documents/epic-v-doj-prism/
• https://ij.org/press-release/as-abuses-mount-nationwide-federal-government-calls-on-court-to-reject-lawsuit-challenging-constitutionality-of-license-plate-readers/
• https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/192-3133-flo-health-inc
• https://www.axios.com/2025/08/05/palantir-army-software-contract
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/
• https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1117092169/nebraska-cops-used-facebook-messages-to-investigate-an-alleged-illegal-abortion
• https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/target-reaches-5m-settlement-with-california-district-attorneys-over-alleged-false-advertising/
• https://privacyinternational.org/legal-action/challenge-against-clearview-ai-europe
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/16/clearview-expansion-facial-recognition/
  

This week I’m passing through remembering the past couple of weeks.

Join me for a chat about time spent with my father in Portugal, reflections on child-parent relations, Community Building, and Asia and I's first time on our own as facilitators.

Jeremy Lent, visionary thinker, founder of The Deep Transformation Network, and author of books like The Patterning Instinct, The Web of Meaning, and most recently, Ecocivilizaiton: Making A World That Works For All, joins us this week on The Passing Through Podcast.

He takes a systems-thinking approach to assess our collective unraveling, which is, by definition a systemic crisis, and he emphasizes how an ecology of practice and action is required to shift our global paradigms.

Jeremy’s work helps us imagine the horizons of different shared futures as we transition from the horrors of the anthropocene into a possible era of fractal flourishing. And this sort of vision and imagination is exactly what I think we need because to quote social critic Fredric Jameson: “For most people, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

He invites us to ask “what if civilization were designed not for profit, but for life?”

But this book isn’t only about imagination — it’s rigorous and research and evidence-based and it’s as much about diagnosing systemic disease as it is about liberation and the dispelling of harmful myths and necrotizing narratives.

Let’s find out how we might make the most of this one and precious life we’ve got as we’re all just passing through.

You can find Jeremy at his website where you can pre-order his new book Ecocivilizaiton: Making A World That Works For All:

https://www.jeremylent.com

You can also check out Deep Transformation Network, Ecocivilization Coalition, his YouTube channel and Substack:

https://deeptransformation.network/feed

https://www.ecociv.org

https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyLent

https://jeremylent.substack.com

This week I'm passing through with some news!

We've got a website! Now you can stream episodes, search content, watch animated transcripts, comment, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts without having to use Spotify or pay for any apps. Check it out:

https://thepassingthroughpodcast.com

I'm also on Substack now. If you want to check out supplemental writing-based content, you can subscribe to The Passing Through Substack page that I'll occasionally post on:

https://substack.com/@thepassingthroughpodcast

This episode brought to you by Tenta-Call. Grab everyone!

Filmmaker, writer, and philosopher Werner Herzog is Passing Through (he's always passing through) for a conversation about the state of the world — oil, artificial intelligence, borders, and what lies underneath all of it.

He discusses H.P. Lovecraft, the moth that drinks from the tears of sleeping birds, a jar of crude oil he has kept sealed for many years, and a specific frog who he may or may not know.

One of the more surreal conversations I've had on this show.

(Music during past lives reading by SWER)