Obi is offering our podcast listeners a special discount! Find a trained peer supporter on peers.net who understands exactly what you're going through, then use code "BEVOYA" to book up to 4 FREE SESSIONS and share it with any teen or young adult in your life who could benefit from some extra support. A bit about this episode: I've been wanting to speak with Obi Felten on this podcast for years because of her unique blend of product incubation experience (she was the first non-engineering...

Megan Cornish is a former social worker and writer who's been tackling big questions about how mental health is discussed on Linkedin. That's where she caught my eye: I loved her authentic, honest voice and risk-taking in what tends to be a pretty stuffy and status-quo environment. I felt like Megan was wrestling with the same kinds of things I was about the "industry" of mental health. So when she wrote a list of the companies and people who intrigued her and included me on that list, I...

Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, illustrator, and the author of the new book, Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest. In this conversation, we dig into what rest really means and why it's not just napping, for example. We talk about her path to writing and her first book, Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection.  Ximena has worked at Pinterest, Linkedin, and Twitter. She's also a contributor at Fast Company and...

Kevin Kelly is best known for co-founding the award-winning Wired magazine  in 1993, but his work spans widely beyond that. He's the founder of the Cool Tools website and podcast (which I've appeared on in the past!), which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years. He also puts out the Recomendo newsletter with Claudia Dawson, who has also appeared on this podcast. He's the co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, a membership organization that champions long-term thinking. And he's written...

B Dukes is so many things. A queer, non-binary filmmaker, a photographer, an activist, a student, and a healer. They tell the incredible story of their journey from a child in the backwoods of South Carolina to the world of Silicon tech...with many stops in between. We talk about what ancestral healing means, the fascinating world of psychedelics being used to address trauma, and B's travel around the globe to understand new ways of connecting with our "shadow selves." This is the first...

Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Creativity and Emotions lab at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Born in Croatia, Zorana shares cultural perceptions of creativity. Her research centers on the role of emotions in creative work. Zorana and I were lucky enough to get to work together on the How We Feel app, out now and free to all. I've learned so much about the role of creativity in my own life from Zorana and think you will too!...

Jeffrey Sparr is a father, husband, mental health advocate, teacher, and nonprofit founder who used his early experiences with OCD to fuel his life as a self-taught artist. In this conversation, Jeffrey and I talk about what he's learned from helping people use creativity as a means of self-expression and what an unlikely candidate he was for this kind of work. Through PeaceLove Foundation  and in partnership with Hasbro and Amazon, Jeffrey's working on a new game to help people with their...

Claudia Dawson is a psychonaut -- and if you don't know what that is, you should listen to this podcast. She co-produces one of my favorite weekly newsletters, Recomendo, which features 6 tools for thought each week. She's the Founding Editor of a publication called Phantom Kangaroo, "an eerie place for poems." In this conversation, we cover everything from the Carlsbad Caverns as a metaphor for the self, how mental health can be helped by psychedelics, Claudia's fantastic advice for all...

Larz May is the founder of an incredible mental health nonprofit called #HalfTheStory. The nonprofit's mission is to empower the next generation’s relationship with social media through advocacy, education, and providing access to resources. What I love about Larz is her ability to cut through social media's rapidly evolving landscape and point to deeper truths, in a very timely manner. I look to Larz as a leader in digital wellbeing and think you should too. She founded the Global Day of...

Rosie Acosta has studied and taught yoga and mindfulness around the world. She is the  award-winning podcast host of Radically Love and the author of You Are Radically Loved: A Healing Journey to Self-Love. A first generation Mexican-American, Rosie grew up in East LA in the 1990's. We talk about how she taught herself to reframe her perspective as a kid, and how those lessons have played out in her life. Rosie's warm, presence, and depth are irresistible. You will want to spend time with...

Could there be a more natural and intuitive connection than mine with the Anxiety Sisters? I don't think so. Abbe Greenberg and Maggie Sarachek have built an online community of 200K people and host a popular podcast called The Spin Cycle. In their work, they blend their personal experience with their professional training as counselors, mental health advocates, researchers, and educators. They are about to release their book, The Anxiety Sisters’ Survival Guide: How You Can Become More...

Jessica Poundstone is an artist who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Named a Top 100 artist by Saatchi Art, Jessica has found creative process through intuition and exploration. She says, "I work on each image until I feel everything click into place: that feeling of 'rightness' tells me it’s done" -- I love that. Jessica's journey through the world of corporate jobs and into the life of an artist is fascinating, as is her own identity journey and the role emotional wellbeing plays in it....

Dr James Kaufman is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut and the author/editor of more than 50 books, including Creativity 101 and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity with Robert Sternberg. In this podcast, we talk about the connection between mental health and creativity, a topic that endlessly fascinates me. It was an honor to talk to one of the world experts on this topic!

Peter M. Krask, a New York-based writer and photographer, is the founder of an unusual consulting business called The Creativity Guide. Using his twenty years of experience in theater, television, visual art, and business, Krask acts as a personal "project whisperer" for creatives and entrepreneurs. His consulting work is informed by the practical know-how of a seasoned creative director, project manager, grant writer, community engagement speaker, and development partner. I loved getting to...

Michael Phillips Moskowitz is the founder of AeBeZe, a cutting-edge research product lab dedicated to establishing a new mental health standard called "Digital Nutrition™." Their app, Moodrise, brings together curated images, videos, and audio to positively affect brain chemistry. Michael has also served as a Middle East foreign policy research analyst at think tanks in the United States and overseas. He co-founded the award-winning menswear label, Gytha Mander, and TODO Monthly magazine; he...

Zach and Michael Zakar call themselves the "Middle Eastern Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen,"  which gives you a taste of how funny they are. Writers, models, and actors, the Zakar Twins most recent book, "How to Be F*****g Happy," is out now. I love this line from their book description, "Happiness takes practice, so grab a pen because you're writing this story too." As you'll tell by watching this interview, I have a ton of fun with these Iraqi brothers. Based in Detroit, their first book, "Pray...

Maurice Chiang is the CEO and Co-Founder of Prairie Health, a new startup bringing genetic testing to a patient-centered approach to mental health. This is incredibly promising and forward-looking! Genetic testing provides useful information to psychiatrists and prescribing physicians about  to how to treat people with varied cultural backgrounds. Did you know that American women are often prescribed SSRIs at inappropriate dosages, for example, because of a "one size meets all" mentality...

Kevin Dedner is the Founder & CEO of Hurdle, a startup dedicated to building a pipeline of mental health professionals who understand how to help people  with varied cultural backgrounds. On the Hurdle website are the thoughtful words: "Your culture will always be honored." Kevin's path to this work is fascinating. In this interview I describe him as a superhero who has fought some of the biggest enemies of our time including childhood obesity, HIV/AIDS, and tobacco control through the...

Pelumi, whose full given name is Oluwapelumi Ajibade, is a research coordinator at the University of Washington, where she is involved in fascinating work about interracial communication and anxiety. In this conversation, we cover all kinds of things...

Do you or someone you love have bipolar disorder? If so, this episode is for you. Dr Bill Selig is a clinical psychologist in the Bay Area and author of the new book "When Your Partner Has Bipolar Disorder." In this episode Bill and I talk about...

This episode, which will be simultaneously released here and on Vanessa Soto's new book coaching podcast, is a behind-the-scenes on book publishing.  In it we discuss how I approached writing GET OUT OF MY HEAD, the stops and starts of the process, and...

Suhail Rasheed is an Indian writer, editor, and curator currently living in Dubai. A longstanding member of the Beautiful Voyager community, Suhail has written about his mental health journey in the past, but in this very special and personal interview...

It was such a treat to have this conversation with superstar Product Manager Anamita Guha. Anamita is the Global Lead of Product Management at IBM, where she focuses on Quantum computing (yes, we talk about what that means) and she's dedicated to...

Joshua Kemble lives in Antelope Valley, California, where he is an Art Director and illustrator. A Xeric Award Winning Cartoonist, Josh's newest book is a labor of love: an autobiographical graphic novel about depression and panic attack called Two...