What if the most important thing science can't measure is the very thing that makes us human?

In this episode, we sit down with Matthew Segall— philosopher and associate professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies — to explore one of the most urgent questions of our time: how do we bring science and soul back together?

Matt bridges the gap between the objective, measurable world of modern science and the deeply subjective inner world of the soul — and makes the case that we need both to truly understand what it means to be human, to be in relationship, and to live well on this planet.

We explore:

• Why mapping the brain will never be the same as mapping consciousness — and what Carl Jung learned the hard way
• The "magical third thing" created in the relational space between people, and why meaning making is always a collective act
• How fragmentation and collective trauma are breaking down our ability to connect — and why compassion (which literally means suffering together) may be the only way through
• Why the default human relationship with nature has always been animism — and how modernity got it exactly backwards
• What it means to think of humans as the nervous system of Gaia
• Why embodiment is divine want — and what the elves in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings can teach us about mortality
• How to make language feel less like a cage and more like a musical instrument
• Simple practices — walking, writing, and Rudolf Steiner's nightly review — to help you live and reflect more intentionally

This is a conversation for anyone who has ever felt the tension between what can be proven and what can be felt — and suspected that the truth lives somewhere in between.

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What Happens When We Remove Art from Healing?

In this episode, Shannon and Jen sit down with Nishi Joshi —Global Arts in Medicine Fellow, movement psychotherapist, social emotional learning educator, and president of the Indian Association of Dance Movement Therapy — to explore what’s lost when healthcare systems strip away the arts in favor of outcomes, productivity, and certainty.

Nishi makes a compelling case that the arts aren’t a supplement to care — they’re foundational to it. Long before modern medicine, communities processed grief, built belonging, and made meaning through movement, music, ritual, and symbol. When we remove that, she argues, we don’t just lose creativity — we lose dignity, connection, and the relational space where real healing happens.

The conversation digs into why the arts can feel threatening to systems built on standardization, how creative expression shifts the power dynamic between practitioner and patient, and why making something — anything — is one of the most radical acts available to us in chaotic times.

Nishi also shares her experience with the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship, where she and Jen first connected, and the collaborative project that grew out of it: the Global Arts for Peace initiative, now uniting more than 20 professionals across the world in using the arts to engage communities around themes of peace.

Whether you’re a healthcare practitioner, a creative, or someone who has forgotten they are one — this episode is an invitation to remember.

In a world facing rising loneliness, burnout, and disconnection, what if healing requires more than medicine alone?

In this episode of Connected with Jen & Shannon, we sit down with interdisciplinary researcher and artist Alex Rodriguez to explore the emerging world of social prescribing — a growing movement where doctors and healthcare systems are beginning to prescribe art, creativity, nature, and human connection as part of wellbeing.

Together, we explore:

• why loneliness has become a public health crisis
• how creativity impacts mental health and the nervous system
• why art may be more essential to healing than we realize
• the role of social cohesion, meaning-making, and connection in wellbeing
• how “peace,” healing, and community may actually be practices we learn together

This conversation lives at the intersection of science and soul, logic and intuition, individual healing and collective wellbeing.

Because maybe art isn’t “extra.”
Maybe it’s part of what makes us human.