Wonder Dome

Wonder Dome

By Andy CahillHealth & FitnessMental HealthEducationSelf-Improvement
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Wonder Dome episodes

  • #171 Those Who Carry Us (with Todd Marston, Francis Briers, and Jamie Hunt)

    “Even when we feel alone, there’s this ancestral truth that all of these people…have carried us here.”

    -Jamie Hunt

    What does it mean to be carried—by ancestors, by friends, by music, by silence?

    This week, Andy gathers with three fellow travelers on the path of inquiry, growth, service and commitment: Jamie Hunt, Todd Marston, and Francis Briers. Together they’ve spent the past five years tending a peer-led men’s circle, a space where vulnerability and creativity meet, where fatherhood is both question and verb, and where the wisdom of ancestry intertwines with the urgencies of our present moment. It’s a brotherhood where 30 or more men from across continents join in dialogues around what it means to be a man, a brother, a father, a partner; what it means to become a man if you’re born into a different body; what our culture recognizes as masculine; and what it means to walk a path of service in this moment in our collective history.

    You’ll hear Todd’s original composition Those Who Carried Us Here, Jamie’s moving poem Exhale, and Francis’ prayerful reflection If I Am to Learn. Their words and music trace pathways through grief, kinship, service, and the sacred ordinariness of male friendship.

    Whether you identify as a man, love men, or are simply a human in search of community, this episode offers a glimpse of how brotherhood can become a living practice—one that nourishes, challenges, and carries us forward together.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Exhale" by Jamie Hunt
    Overcome by gravity,
    raindrops on an oak branch relax their grasp and fall,
    unlike the tears I fear.
    Is that why I feel homesick while still at home,
    alternating between comfort and pain,
    hope and disappointment,
    in this almost frozen silence?
    I inhale charred white oak.
    The exhale comes like a December rain.
    Yesterday, I noticed a ring of moss-covered stones among the oaks.
    A pocket knife revealed them to be a tree stump felled centuries ago,
    yet kept green,
    kept alive by its great grandchildren.
    Life support along fungal lines for an elder,
    or perhaps an exchange, wisdom for nutrients.
    What about those steel blue eyes and his continuity of attention?
    What about joy over results long after I canceled a dinner reservation
    as he needed to fly to San Francisco for yet another surgery?
    Is he still with us?
    What about the child?
    A surgeon’s blade,
    a beloved belly,
    born still and now disintegrating,
    like a darkened ember in a brown bag removed from last night’s firelight.
    Yet this winter,
    before the nine months,
    the potential for a spirit grew within me
    as the leaves danced a movement meditation in the dwindling light.
    And now my exhale is her inhale, overcome by gravity.
    "If I Am to Learn" by Francis Briers
    If I am to learn, let me learn to answer my soul’s callings.
    Let me learn to listen to kindness and let it land when it is spoken.
    Let me learn to embrace love and eschew certainty.
    Let me learn to seek truth,
    but do so with an appreciation for the vast spaces beyond what is known.
    Let me learn to follow the twisting pathways of imagination.
    Let me learn to breathe deeply and savor each breath.
    Let me learn to make mischief with friends and play joyfully.
    Let me learn to meet others fiercely and tenderly.
    Let me learn to stand up for what I believe in,
    but not to fight fruitless battles.
    Let me learn to be a friend and ally to myself as well as to others.
    If I am to learn,
    let me learn to answer,
    listen,
    embrace,
    seek,
    follow,
    breathe,
    make,
    meet,
    stand and be.

    Show Notes:

    • #01 May the Creative Force Be With You (with Todd Marston)

    • #10 Coming Home to Ourselves (with Francis Briers)

    • #50 When Four Paths Converse (with Cyrus Shahrad, Lee Chambers, and Francis Briers)

    • #100 One Hundred Ways to Imagine (with Todd Marston)

    • https://toddmarston.bandcamp.com/

    • https://instagram.com/integermusic

    • https://francisbriers.com

    • The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries From a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben

    • On Dialogue by David Bohm

    • A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    0 min
  • #170 The Flow of Power (with Dr. Annice Fisher & O.B. Amaechi)

    “I know that I was brought on this world to create a multi-sector, multi-generational, intersectional global movement for healing, freedom, and justice.”

    — Dr. Annice Fisher

    What is power? Where does it come from? How does power flow through our lives, our communities, and our choices?

    This week, Dr. Annice Fisher, (leadership coach, founder of Developing Capacity Coaching and author of The Power Within Me) and O.B. Amaechi, (multimodal educator, fashion entrepreneur, and founder of Wake Up The Soul) return to the Wonder Dome to explore how power is misused, how it can be reclaimed, and how each of us can channel it toward healing and justice.

    Annice and O.B. draw from their work in leadership, education, and social innovation, sharing stories from classrooms, correctional facilities, and creative spaces where power is embraced not as a tool for domination or destruction, but connection. Through reflective meditations on influence as a flow of energy, the legacy we leave across generations, and the small choices we make that become catalysts for transformation, Annice and O.B. call on us to step into our individual power and wield it with collective care.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Sorrow Is Not My Name" by Ross Gay
    No matter the pull toward brink. No
    matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
    There is a time for everything. Look,
    just this morning a vulture
    nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
    and I looked at him, admiring
    the sickle of his beak.
    Then the wind kicked up, and,
    after arranging that good suit of feathers
    he up and took off.
    Just like that. And to boot,
    there are, on this planet alone, something like two
    million naturally occurring sweet things,
    some with names so generous as to kick
    the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
    stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
    at the market. Think of that. The long night,
    the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
    on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
    But look; my niece is running through a field
    calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
    and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
    I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

    Show Notes:

    • #04 Healing the World Through Conscious Leadership (with Dr. Annice Fisher)

    • #124 Purpose Soaked in Beauty (with O.B. Amaechi)

    • developcapacity.com

    • wakeupthesoul.com

    • socialchangemap.com

    • thepowerwithinmecollective.com

    • The Power Within Me: The Road Back to the Real You by Annice E Fisher

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    0 min
  • #169 Soul Journeys (with Owen & Mícheál Moley Ó Súilleabháin)

    “All of this art is a metaphor for yourself. You are the song. You are the poem. You are the painting.”

    -Mícheál Moley Ó Súilleabháin

    What are we for? This timeless question becomes the ground on which brothers Owen and Mícheál Moley Ó Súilleabháin walk in this conversation. As musicians, poets, and teachers, they inherit and carry forward a lineage of song and story that reveals how art is not separate from life but a mirror of it—a way of giving voice to the unspoken parts of ourselves.

    Along with their mother, Nóirín Ní Riain (also a previous guest of The Wonder Dome) they’re the leaders of Turas d’Anam, which provides both online and in person experiences offering unique and personal expressions of their rich musical and cultural heritage.

    This episode is a meditation on soul and purpose, on tradition and innovation, and on the way beauty sustains us in difficult times. Along the way, we travel from Irish monasteries and chants echoing across the globe, to the words of Seamus Heaney, Rumi, and James Joyce, to the everyday practice of committing poems and songs to memory, allowing them to take root in the body and shape the life of the spirit.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Turas d’Anam (Journey Of Your Soul)" by Mícheál Moley Ó Súilleabháin
    Often times
    the step backward
    lets the soul catch up.
    So that all our happy
    hindsight’s harmonise
    and wisdom builds.
    Share your luck.
    Be miserly only
    with misfortune.
    In each seismic
    shudder we learn
    to trust the ground
    again, humble again,
    knowingly broken,
    unrepentantly wounded,
    proud to bare pain.
    Laying claim to
    the joy factory
    of your body.
    No more tariffs, or sanctions.
    Wage cuts and glass ceilings.
    Conventions, expenses paid, nor
    lanyards or company position.
    Often times,
    this way you can live
    in ways others simply
    will not, develop sides
    of you others simply
    would not.
    So feel the rhythm
    beyond the beat.
    Begin with a break,
    and let your soul
    catch up.

    Show Notes:

    • YouTube: “Turas d'Anam (a poem by Mícheál Moley Ó Súilleabháin)”

    • Turas d’Anam | Celtic Wisdom, Creative Practice, and Tours of Ireland

    • "For Ireland I’ll Not Speak Her Name” Digital Album

    • Owen and Moley on AppleMusic

    • Invitas with David Whyte

    • #86 The Deep Heart's Core (with Owen Ó Súilleabháin)

    • #97 What the Heart Hears (with Rev. Dr. Nóirín Ní Riain)

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

      What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    1 hr 53 min
  • #168 Making the World Through Walking (with Rita Powell)

    “Walking together is one of the most ancient human practices. It’s how we’ve always learned to be in relationship—with each other, with the land, and with God.”

    -Reverend Rita Powell

    Reverend Rita Powell is the Episcopal chaplain at Harvard, formerly a priest at Trinity Church in Boston, and a longtime spiritual innovator whose journey has included living in the monastic community of Taizé in France and working closely with Native communities in South Dakota. A Yale Divinity School graduate and recipient of the William Muehle Preaching Prize, Rita is a gifted storyteller and deeply spiritual human being. Beyond her formal roles, she embodies the practice of walking as prayer, offering, sacrament, and pilgrimage—a living expression of how movement can open us to healing, connection, and the sacred.

    This conversation with Andy and Rita was recorded while walking. If you can, you’re invited to listen while walking too. And if walking is not available, you might feel called to listen in any way that helps you feel more connected to your body and the world around you.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Walking" by Rainer Maria Rilke
    My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
    going far ahead of the road I have begun.
    So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
    it has inner light, even from a distance—
    and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
    into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
    we already are; a gesture waves us on
    answering our own wave...
    but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

    Show Notes:

    • Watch: March 30, 2025 Sermon with The Rev. Rita Powell

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    2 hr 36 min
  • #167 Everyday Mysticism (with Robin Alfred)

    “Mysticism is about meeting life as it is. It’s about leaning into discomfort, leaning into obstacles, leaning into challenges and saying, there’s a reason why they’re here.”

    -Robin Alfred

    What does it mean to live a mystical life? Not on a mountaintop or in a monastery, but in the midst of work deadlines, childcare chaos, and the messiness of everyday life? Once again we welcome back Robin Alfred, a dear friend, coach and mentor who shares how we might apply the wisdom and presence of the mystics in to our families, communities, and ourselves.

    Robin Alfred is a leadership coach, facilitator, and teacher of contemporary embodied mysticism. Drawing on decades of work with leaders, teams, and communities worldwide, he helps people integrate deep spiritual insight with grounded, practical action.

    In this conversation, Robin offers practical, soul-centered guidance on what “applied mysticism” means and how to practice it in daily life; accepting friction, challenge and discomfort as invitations to deeper presence; and finding the courage to leap and trust that the bridge will appear.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"The Guest House" by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.
    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.
    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still, treat each guest honorably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.
    The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
    meet them at the door laughing,
    and invite them in.
    Be grateful for whoever comes,
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.

    Show Notes:

    • Emergent Leadership: A Training in Applied Mysticism — September 2, 2025 to April 9, 2026

    • Open Circle Consulting

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    1 hr 8 min
  • #166 The Power of Ritual (with Casper ter Kuile)

    “Ritual makes the invisible visible.”

    — Casper ter Kuile

    Share The Wonder Dome

    shares insight and inspiration on the future of community, ritual, and spirituality. His work explores how we’ll make meaning, deepen our relationships, and experience beauty in the 21st century. He’s the author of The Power of Ritual and co-founder of The Nearness, a digital community of people exploring life’s big questions through deep conversations.

    Casper joins Andy under the Dome to explore how modern life has left many of us with an "ambient absence" — a yearning for depth, connection, and meaning in our fast-paced, disjointed world. Together, they discuss how rituals — both ancient and newly created — can help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the living world around us.

    From seasonal gatherings like Solstice in the Park to grassroots singing groups, Casper shares how simple acts of gathering can build resilient communities and meaningful culture. The conversation dives into the crucial distinction between tradition and convention, the evolving nature of spiritual life, and the importance of co-creating culture through shared song, storytelling, and collective care.

    This episode is a powerful reminder that ritual is not just about the past — it’s about creating the future we long to inhabit.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Mindful" by Mary Oliver
    Every day
    I see or hear
    something
    that more or less
    kills me
    with delight,
    that leaves me
    like a needle
    in the haystack
    of light.
    It was what I was born for -
    to look, to listen,
    to lose myself
    inside this soft world -
    to instruct myself
    over and over
    in joy,
    and acclamation.
    Nor am I talking
    about the exceptional,
    the fearful, the dreadful,
    the very extravagant -
    but of the ordinary,
    the common, the very drab,
    the daily presentations.
    Oh, good scholar,
    I say to myself,
    how can you help
    but grow wise
    with such teachings
    as these -
    the untrimmable light
    of the world,
    the ocean's shine,
    the prayers that are made
    out of grass?

    Show Notes:

    • https://www.caspertk.com/

    • https://substack.com/@caspertk

    • The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile

    • Solstice in the Park: A Ritual of Mutual Belonging and Transformation by Casper ter Kuile

    • Joyful Belonging by Casper ter Kuile

    • Solstice in the Park

    • Nearness

    • Sacred Design Lab

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    1 hr 5 min
  • Including the Mythopoetic

    This week I had the distinct honor of joining my dear friend, mentor, and fellow journeyman Joel Monk on Coaches Rising.

    Joel founded Coaches Rising to create a platform for transformational coaching, and it's become one of the most powerful gathering places in the world for heart-led practitioners.

    It's for coaches and leaders who care not only about performance & outcomes, but also about the work of helping people become fully alive & awake. I've been listening for years (since I first became a coach!) and the podcast, online summits, and deep dive learning programs have helped me become the practitioner I am today.

    In conversation - given all the challenges we're facing along the recent arc of human history - we ask "what is a coach for?" Through that lens, we explore archetypal encounters, integrating wildness into coaching, tapping into embodied intelligence, and becoming a vessel for forces greater than our individual self.

    I invite you to listen to the episode here.

    If you'd like to learn more about Joel's own journey and wisdom, you're in luck. He’s been a guest on The Wonder Dome twice!

    Here's our first conversation "Waking Down and Spiraling Up", where we explore what it is to wake up to your calling, to come to terms with letting go of parts of your life when it's time to say goodbye, and how to move forward when it seems as if everything is falling apart.

    And here's our second conversation, which also includes the amazing : "The Difference that Makes a Difference". Our conversation centers around the question: What is presence, and why does it matter?

    In wonder & in service,

    Andy

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    0 min
  • #165 Queer Superpowers (with Dominic Longo)

    “We need our most weird parts to be our most wonderful selves. And as we become more wonderful, we become more weird! And that’s kind of what flourishing looks like in the universe.”

    — Dominic Longo

    Subscribe now

    This Pride Month we are thrilled to welcome back Dominic Longo, founder of Flourishing Gays and author of Queer Flourishing: A Guide to Personal Growth and Greater Aliveness for LGBTQ+ Adults. Dominic’s work is devoted to catalyzing and cultivating the transformational journeys of other LGBTQ+ leaders, helping them leverage their unique experiences as queer individuals into strengths that foster courageously authentic and highly-effective leadership. Queer Flourishing is a field guide for those who want to flourish in every aspect of their lives; a pioneering work that fills in the gaps in the self-help landscape where queer identities are often overlooked.

    Dominic sits down with Andy to discuss “queer superpowers,” 10 adaptive patterns and capabilities developed in response to the unique adversities queer individuals face, and shares how tending to the woundedness of the most powerful parts of ourselves with a trauma-informed approach can help us live our best lives as flourishing, queer adults.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Self-Portrait as So Much Potential" by Chen Chen
    Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.
    As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.
    Realizing I hate the word “sip.”
    But that’s all I do.
    I drink. So slowly.
    & say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.
    I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an arctic attic.
    Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.
    I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.
    I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers.
    She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.
    They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.
    Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.
    Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.

    Show Notes:

    • Queer Flourishing: A Guide to Personal Growth and Greater Aliveness for LGBTQ+ Adults by F. Dominic Longo, Ph.D.

    • Flourishing Gays

    • #94 Queer Flourishing (with Dominic Longo)

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    1 hr 25 min
  • #164 Your Body is Speaking (with Ketriellah Goldfeder)

    As a Certified Hakomi Practitioner and coach, much of Ketriellah Goldfeder’s ethos is rooted in transforming the self-help paradigm of “working on yourself” to “working with yourself.” While many of us feel that we are fundamentally broken and that one day, when we work hard enough, we will be fixed, Ketriellah helps her clients embrace the beautiful messiness that is synonymous with being human. Through embodied presence, loving acceptance, and connection with our own intrinsic wisdom, Ketriellah helps others uncover habitual patterns of thinking and metamorphose them into new, more realistic and rewarding mindsets.

    Andy and Ketriellah share their experiences as coaches finding unity and presence with their clients; the meaning of mastery; and the value of “doing a little less than your best.” If you’re a person who wants to live more fully in reality, this conversation is for you.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Enough" by David Whyte
    Enough. These few words are enough.
    If not these words, this breath.
    If not this breath, this sitting here.
    This opening to life
    we have refused
    again and again
    until now.
    Until now.

    Show Notes:

    • New Moon Coaching

    • Embodywise

    • Hakomi Institute

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    Share The Wonder Dome

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    1 hr 11 min
  • #163 Generative Cultural Renewal (with Sousan Abadian and Ariana Abadian-Heifetz)

    In this special, inter-generational episode we welcome Dr. Sousan Abadian and her daughter, Ariana Abadian-Heifetz. Ariana is an experiential educator with expertise in social-emotional learning and gender-based violence. Sousan has an independent practice, teaching, speaking, and consulting internationally on leadership, innovation, and culture change. Currently, she serves as the Executive Director of the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington. She’s the author of Generative Cultural Renewal, a pioneering work that examines the limits to cultural relativism, using female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) as a case study and providing a framework for positive cultural change.

    Generative Cultural Renewal serves as a cornerstone of this conversation, where mother and daughter share the miraculous ways that answers to important questions Ariana grew to have about women, culture, and identity could be found in some of the preliminary notes that would later become Sousan’s groundbreaking work; reducing our “trauma footprint”; and humanity’s need to refresh our culture and consciousness as we evolve towards a healthier collective wellbeing.

    Please note that this conversation touches on sensitive and potentially disturbing or upsetting cultural practices relating to physical & psychological harm to young women. It also explores the leadership work involved in addressing, reducing, and eliminating those harms while maintaining an understanding and respect for the overall histories & culture in which the practices emerged.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"First Fall" by Maggie Smith
    I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
    morning streets, I point and name.
    Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
    paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
    rusting and crisping at the edges.
    I walk through Schiller Park with you
    on my chest. Stars smolder well
    into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,
    the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.
    Fall is when the only things you know
    because I’ve named them
    begin to end. Soon I’ll have another
    season to offer you: frost soft
    on the window and a porthole
    sighed there, ice sleeving the bare
    gray branches. The first time you see
    something die, you won’t know it might
    come back. I’m desperate for you
    to love the world because I brought you here.

    Show Notes:

    • www.sousanabadian.com

    • Generative Cultural Renewal: An Effective Resource in Ending Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting & Other Harmful Practices by Sousan Abadian, PhD

    • A Special Interview with IFC’s New Executive Director, Dr. Sousan Abadian

    • www.konu.org/ariana-abadianheifetz

    • Spreading Your Wings: A Health Infocomic for Girls of All Ages by Ariana Abadian-Heifetz

    Connect with Andy:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

    • Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

    What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

    1 hr 20 min

About Wonder Dome

From the publisher's feed

Increasing awareness. Deepening presence. Activating wonder. To be able for the times ahead and the times already here.