The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: 143 - Brett Hurt - Love, Fear, Abundance, & AI

   What happens when someone who has spent nearly his entire life understanding code, data, and technological systems begins questioning the nature of reality itself? In this episode Dr. John Price is joined by Brett Hurt who began programming at seven years old and went on to become one of Austin’s most successful technology entrepreneurs. He founded Coremetrics, acquired by IBM for $300 million, and Bazaarvoice, which became a billion-dollar public company. Most recently, he co-founded and led data.world before its acquisition by ServiceNow in 2025. But after decades of building companies and achieving extraordinary financial success, Brett found himself moving toward a very different set of questions. A series of psychedelic experiences, including one he describes as an encounter with God, initiated what Brett calls his Soul Quest. He read more than 85 books in 18 months, exploring consciousness, post-materialist science, spirituality, ancient wisdom, and the nature of reality. That exploration eventually became his USA TODAY bestselling book, Love Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All. In this conversation, we begin with the seven-year-old who discovered coding and explore how computer science shaped Brett’s way of seeing the world. We talk about entrepreneurship, failure, self-doubt, wealth, and the “scarcity operating system” that helped drive his success. We then move into the psychedelic experiences that disrupted his understanding of reality and his subsequent investigation into consciousness, science, and spirituality. We also explore the hard problem of consciousness, whether intelligence and consciousness are actually the same thing, what AI may reveal about being human, and how education must change when information becomes nearly instantaneous. And we examine Brett’s central argument that love can conquer fear, including a deeper question: What if fear is not simply something to overcome, but something that can tell us what matters? This is a conversation about technology, but underneath it is a conversation about the human being creating the technology: what forms us, what drives us, what our systems cannot measure, and what happens when the worldview that helped us succeed can no longer contain our experience. Brett Hurt is a serial technology entrepreneur, investor, USA TODAY bestselling author, and CEO of Love Conquers Fear. Alongside his wife, Debra, he co-leads Hurt Family Investments, which has backed more than 150 startups and 50 venture funds. Topics include: computer science and coding, AI and consciousness, psychedelics and mystical experience, the nature of reality, entrepreneurship and self-doubt, wealth and success, fear and love, education in the age of AI, post-materialist science, and the limits of what data can tell us about being human. https://www.loveconquersfear.org

   September 13, 2026·1h 28min
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   Number 2: 142: Simon Yugler: Psychedelics and the Soul

   Simon Yugler has spent time inside traditions ranging from Aboriginal Australia to the Shipibo lineage in Peru. Most of us will only ever read about experiences like that. I admire the ground he's stood on, and what it has done to his worldview. Simon is a depth psychotherapist, psychedelic facilitator, educator, and the author of Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair — and his central conviction is that psychedelics are not primarily a mental health intervention. They are initiatory and speak to the soul. At twenty, he traveled to an Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land, Australia, and was changed by what he encountered there. He went on to apprentice within the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition in the Peruvian Amazon, spending six weeks inside a lineage that didn't reconstruct its transmission from texts. He completed his master's at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where his thesis explored the loss of male initiation rites in Western culture and what the medicine might restore. Today he trains facilitators, runs men's groups, and continues his healing work with individual. In this conversation, Simon walks inside what he calls mythopoetics — the practice of helping people find the mythic story inside their experience and carry it home. We get into what myth actually means, what archetypes are doing inside psychedelic experience, and why Jungian depth psychology sees what the neuroscience frameworks are blind to. We also talk about what the medicine gets right. Simon offers a moving case study: a man who, during a psilocybin retreat, rediscovered his own goodness and a genuine encounter with soul. And we hold the critique. A six-month facilitator training is not a substitute for years of depth work. The medicalization box is too small — and, as Simon puts it, the alien always gets out. In this conversation: Mythopoetics and what myth actually is What living Indigenous traditions carry that Western therapy lost and can't get back from books The male initiation crisis and the loneliness epidemic What the medicine reveals that slow depth work cannot reach A case study in rediscovering one's own goodness Why the initiatory can't be regulated and why it never will be Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Show Intro 00:47 Housekeeping and Links 02:57 Meet Simon 05:57 Mythopoetic Approach Explained 07:32 What Myth Really Means 10:20 Archetypes and Psyche 14:16 Simon's Origin Story 16:57 Australia and Indigenous Reality 23:23 Apprenticeship and Lineage 26:16 Western vs. Psychedelic Training 30:32 Why Psychedelics 36:44 Roots and Calling to Heal 38:41 Therapy Spark Moment 39:33 Choosing Pacifica 41:17 Lineage and Early Openings 43:14 Men's Work Thesis Roots 45:07 Why Men Need Gathering 48:40 Loneliness, Grief, and Soul 53:15 Psychedelic Healing Story 58:41 What Psychedelic Work Gets Right 1:04:32 Critique: The Medicalization Box 1:06:41 The Alien Always Gets Out 1:08:22 Closing: Book and Where to Find Simon Find Simon: simonyugler.com simonyugler.substack.com The Sacred Speaks: www.drjohnwprice.com youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg instagram.com/thesacredspeaks facebook.com/thesacredspeaks Theme music: Modern Nations — modernnationsmusic.com

   August 16, 2026·1h 11min
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   Number 3: 141: Robert Forte: Psychedelics, the Sacred, and the Profane

   Robert Forte has been at every major inflection point of the psychedelic movement for half a century, and he is skeptical of where it is going. That skepticism, coming from someone who knew Wasson, Hofmann, Grof, and Eliade personally. Forte brings a rare formation to this conversation: graduate training in religious studies at the University of Chicago under Mircea Eliade, decades of work with the foundational figures in psychedelic scholarship, phenomenological site work in Greece, and the republication of The Road to Eleusis — the thesis that seeded the most popular book in the current psychedelic renaissance. He is a historian of religion who has lived inside the territory he studies. This conversation opens with a Sufi tale about "changed waters" — a story about what happens when an entire culture shifts its baseline of perception and the one person who held onto the old water eventually drinks the new, because the loneliness of being different became unbearable. Forte has used this story to frame his entire body of work. From there we move through his formation: a childhood mystical experience by a stream, a turning point in a Columbia lecture hall when a professor wrote R. Gordon Wasson on the chalkboard, and the life that followed. We explore the mystery traditions and what secrecy actually protected, the difference between psychedelics as cultural healing and psychedelics as weapon, and the documented record — MKUltra, media promotion, Huxley's dark warnings, and an account linking JFK's alleged psilocybin experience to his 1963 peace speech. We close on what Forte considers the essential question for this moment: how do we cultivate virtue and discernment when the sacred is being commercialized faster than it can be integrated? In this conversation: The Sufi tale of the changed waters — and what it names about modern spiritual confusion The mystery traditions: what secrecy was protecting, and what its loss costs Forte's formation — Wasson, Hofmann, Eliade, Grof, and what it means to have received a living transmission The phenomenology of Eleusis: site work, The Road to Eleusis, and the Mysteries as lived encounter Psychedelics as both healing and weapon: MKUltra, media, and the politics of altered states JFK, psilocybin, and the 1963 peace speech Huxley's warning — and whether we are watching it come true What virtue and discernment look like when the sacred meets the market Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 05:54 Greek Mysteries and Lineage 09:41 Sufi Tale: When the Waters Change 12:00 Amnesia and the Extremes of Religion 16:23 Childhood: The Mystical Stream 22:15 LSD, Democracy, and TM 26:00 Soma, Wasson, and the Calling 30:31 Psychedelic History: Light and Shadow 34:34 Mystery Schools: Secrecy and Stages 43:50 Jung, the Road to Eleusis 50:10 Why Cultures Need Initiation 52:37 From Weapon to Sacrament 53:59 Kennedy's Psychedelic Turn 56:13 The Peace Speech and Its Fallout 1:00:58 MKUltra and the Acid Hype 1:08:18 Huxley's Dark Warning 1:16:26 Eleusis and Power 1:35:58 Virtue and Discernment 1:38:46 Where to Find Robert Find Robert: www.alteredstatesofamerica.net alteredstatesofamerica.substack.com The Sacred Speaks: www.drjohnwprice.com youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg instagram.com/thesacredspeaks facebook.com/thesacredspeaks Brought to you by The Center for Healing Arts and Sciences — thecenterforhas.com Theme music: Modern Nations — modernnationsmusic.com

   August 02, 2026·1h 42min
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   Number 4: 140: Susan Schwartz – The Absent Father and The Father Complex

   In this In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, Dr. John W. Price sits down with Dr. Susan Schwartz, Jungian analyst and author, for a searching conversation about one of the most underaddressed wounds in contemporary psychology: the absent father. Susan is the author of The Absent Father Effect on Daughters and the forthcoming Absent Fathers, Yearning Sons. Her clinical work draws on decades of practice and deep immersion in Jungian theory, and what she brings to this conversation is not just scholarly precision but the kind of knowledge that only comes from sitting with this material in the consulting room across a lifetime. Father absence, she argues, is routinely minimized in both psychoanalytic literature and popular culture. John and Susan move through the specific ways absence shapes identity, relatedness, sexuality, and the gaze. They explore what it means when a father's eyes are never there to confirm a daughter's body, her mind, her worth, and how fathers model partnering, love, and respect for soul. Susan brings two clinical dreams into the conversation: one involving Vladimir Putin as a figure for the negative father complex, and one about cleaning a closet that opens into something unexpected and alive. These are not illustrations. They are the unconscious at work, showing what the personal father could not provide and what the psyche has done with that absence in the meantime. The conversation moves into territory that will matter to men as much as women: the relationship between absent fathers and male brutality, the failure of initiation when the father is not present to initiate, the ancestral and communal dimensions of the wound, and whether fathers can actually change. Susan's answer to that last question is honest and worth hearing slowly. The episode closes with the questions she believes everyone should be asking, and almost no one does. Connect with Dr. Susan Schwartz Website: susanschwartzphd.com Instagram: instagram.com/susanschwartzphd LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/susanschwartzphd Academia: independent.academia.edu/susanschwartz1 Jung Studies: jungstudies.net/author/seschwartz/ Website for John drjohnwprice.com WATCH: YouTube for The Sacred Speaks youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg Instagram: instagram.com/thesacredspeaks @thesacredspeaks Facebook: facebook.com/thesacredspeaks Brought to you by: thecenterforhas.com Theme music provided by: modernnationsmusic.com

   June 02, 2026·1h 12min
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   Number 5: 136: John Bucher: Telling A Better Story

   In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, host Dr. John W Price sits down with mythologist and storyteller Dr. John Bucher, Executive Director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, to explore how story functions as a living force that shapes our lives, culture, and sense of meaning. They trace John's early "graduate degree in storytelling" in a small Texas video store, move through themes like the quest to come home, reconciliation with the father, and the "magical orphan," and show how our favorite films reveal the deep mythic patterns we're unconsciously living. The conversation dives into archetypes, subtext, AI as a new cultural story, the loss of shared myths in a hyper-individualized media landscape, and the possibility of a "collective heroic journey" where groups answer a shared call of desperation rather than a single hero saving the day. John also offers very practical tools for "telling a better story" in our own lives, from changing our information diet to small daily rituals that reorient us toward hope, connection, and agency. Key Takeaways: John Bucher: Telling A Better Story Stories and myths are the "operating system" of the human mind, shaping how we make sense of everything from traffic to transcendence. What truly draws us into stories is not plot but theme, like coming home or reconciling with the father. Our favorite movies quietly reveal our core genres, themes, and unresolved psychological material. We are losing shared cultural stories, which contributes to loneliness and fragmentation. Finding a "better story" starts locally: in our media diet, daily practices, and small collective actions. Timestamps (00:00) Meet Mythologist John Bucher (00:58) Housekeeping (03:45) The Storytelling Almanac & Why Story Matters (05:52) East Texas Video Store as a Storytelling School (09:36) Theme Over Plot (Homecoming & Other Motifs) (12:56) Genre as a Mirror (18:27) Cinderella, Hope, and "Telling a Better Story" (20:45) So What Is Story? (23:49) Myth vs History: When Religion Literalizes Story (29:13) Subtext, Symbol, and What's Unsaid (31:56) Stepping Outside Old Stories, Grief, and Trying on New Identities (37:48) Grace, identity & the 'fedora guy' (39:21) AI as a cultural story (41:06) Ritual and the last 'collective story' (42:37) Beyond the Hero's Journey (44:26) What we lose with curated, individualized media (46:09) Addicted to hope: choosing a better collective future (48:43) History & pop culture (51:56) Why stories repeat (54:19) What is an archetype? (58:15) Back to AI: tool vs. threat (01:06:55) Hearing the local call and joining the collective journey (01:10:22) Practical antidotes to despair (01:16:53) Closing gratitude & where to find John's work Connect with John Bucher Website: https://www.tellingabetterstory.com Link hub (books, podcast, etc.): https://linktr.ee/tellingabetterstory X (Twitter): https://x.com/johnkbucher Instagram (personal): https://www.instagram.com/johnkbucher Instagram (Telling a Better Story): https://www.instagram.com/tellingabetterstory Joseph Campbell Foundation profile / team page: https://www.jcf.org/about-joseph-campbell-foundation/team Pacifica Graduate Institute faculty page: https://www.pacifica.edu/faculty/john-bucher "Learning to Tell a Better Story" YouTube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLIOUw4dAB0 Connect with John Price Website: http://www.drjohnwprice.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/ Brought to you by: https://www.thecenterforhas.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com

   March 15, 2026·1h 18min
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