The Ronan Levy Podcast

In 1968 a young Canadian filmmaker named Paul Saltzman was seeking solace in transcendental meditation for a broken heart and was befriended by The Beatles in Rishikesh, India during their immersive study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. 

2020 saw the release of his documentary, Meeting The Beatles In India - a film that brings together others who were there for this pivotal moment in music history.

As amazing as his experience in India with The Beatles may have been, it is by no means the only incredible story from his fascinating life a...

Raghunath Cappo (@raghunathyogi) is the punk who became a monk.

A teen in search of meaning, Ray Cappo fled his suburban Connecticut enclave for New York City—and found community among the misfits of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He fell in love with punk rock, so he started a band and a record label. By the late 1980’s, Youth of Today had thousands of fans, cementing Ray as a leading voice and trendsetter at the bullseye of hardcore culture.

However, a growing existential itch led Ray to call it quits. At just 22, he walked away f...

Mike Brcic is an entrepreneur, adventurer, writer, and family man in Toronto with a penchant for world travel.

After selling his company Sacred Rides in 2019 (the AirBNB of adventure mountain biking) 

He went into a deep existential search for meaning and a journey to find new practices that would raise his consciousness and self awareness.

Today he runs Wayfinders, where he works with impact-driven entrepreneurs through courses, workshops, consulting, and of course, travel adventures.

In this podcast we talk all about connection. C...

Dr. Jack Feldman @jacklfeldman is a neuroscientist, the David Geffen School Chair in Neuroscience, and a Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at The University of California Los Angeles.

If you are a fan of Andrew Huberman and the “physiological sigh” you can thank Jack’s research for making that a thing.

We’ve never really explored breathing in depth on this podcast but if you do a little bit of digging you’ll see that our breath is one of the most powerful tools we have for changing our state of mind.<...

Ben “Doc” Askins, PhD (Hon.) has an eclectic background with degrees in Outdoor Education, Intercultural Studies, Physician Assistant Studies, and Divinity. 

I wanted to bring him back on the podcast after his last visit was an audience favorite so he could share his ideas on how to live a good, long life.

Doc has nearly two decades of experience practicing and teaching wilderness, tactical, and expeditionary medicine in the military.

In civilian life, he is a Psychiatric Physician Assistant with an evidence-focused and integrative appro...

Dr. Jordan Shallow aka The Muscle Doc (@the_muscle_doc) is a chiropractor, strength and conditioning coach, powerlifter, and founder of Pre-Script and RX’D RADIO.

Jordan works with teams, companies, and individuals on biomechanics, sports performances and injury risk management.

In this episode we discuss the role of intuition and feeling in fitness, the dangers in putting too much faith into scientism as a belief system, and what evidence-based living really means.

This podcast is brought to you by Cizzle Brands, a company th...

Laura Gassner Otting is an executive coach, speaker, and best-selling author who inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep great ideas in limbo by helping people think bigger and accept greater challenges.

She is the author of three books, including Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should… and What to Do About It, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life, and Mission-Drive: Moving from Profit to Purpose.

I brought her on the podcast to discuss how we d...

Sanjay Singhal is an entrepreneur who filed for personal bankruptcy at 31 and later sold Audiobooks.com for $56 million in 2016. This venture capitalist, author, and restaurateur has really done it all.

Today he focuses on philanthropy after creating the Nikean Foundation in 2019 to fund mental health research, focusing on novel psychedelic therapies.

Now at 58 years old he has started a popular blog SanjaySays.co where he passes on all of his life lessons and raw unfiltered thoughts.

Chris Van Loan II is a video marketer, content strategist, and he also just so happens to be the producer of this show.

In my life I have never met anyone so committed to the craft of podcasting or someone who believes so fervently in the power of podcasts to move a generation and raise consciousness.

We talk in this episode about relaunching the show as A Good Long Podcast, how the medium is changing, and how to grow your audience without sacrificing your ethics and remaining true to...

Dr. Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster, best-selling author and mental health advocate. Her company ZenFounder provides mental wellness resources for leaders as they navigate transition, loss, and conflict.

She is the co-author along with her husband Rob Walling of a book called The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Keeping Your Shit Together as well as her recent book Touching Two Worlds: A Guide For Finding Hope In The Landscape Of Loss.

This conversation is a wonderful reminder that whether it is business or life or loss stressing us...

What is this feeling of “awe” and what role does it play in our lives?

Dacher Keltner is the Founding Director of the Greater Good Science Center, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.



He is also the scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out & Inside Out 2!

I brought Dacher on the podcast because for much of my life I cut myself off from feeling...

This episode touches on something that honestly scares the living daylights out of me, and that is getting cancer at a ridiculously young age.

So why would I start the first official new episode of this podcast about longevity talking about early onset cancer?

When you hear Florence Shaffer’s story about the diagnosis giving her clarity and finding direction and meaning in the impermanence of life, you’ll understand.

Florence is a technology executive who has worked all over the world in beauty, luxu...

After a brief hiatus, Ronan is back with a new focus for the podcast.

While being non-ordinary is fun and insightful, there is more to life to explore.

So say hello to A Good, Long Podcast: Lessons for a Good, Long Life. A podcast in which we speak with people from all walks of life about the wisdom they've received on how to live a good and long life.

Produced by Chris Van Loan II, Van Loan Film Co.

Cover Art by...

Jon Hopkins, a highly acclaimed musician and electronic music producer, joins Ronan from across the pond to discuss the inspiration and creative process for his new record “Music for Psychedelic Therapy,” his own journey with psychedelic medicine, posthumously collaborating with Ram Dass, and more! Jon’s works have been Grammy and Mercury Prize nominated, he has done film scoring, and has collaborated with the likes of Brian Eno, Imogen Heap, Coldplay, Purity Ring, and previous Field Tripping guest East Forest. “Music for Psychedelic Therapy” (which is out now, available at https://smarturl.it/MFPT/) signifies a seeming departure from Jon’s traj...

As 2023 has been a year of profound changes, ups and downs and lots of confusion and uncertainty for me, I couldn't think of a better episode to send this year off with than this one with Ben "Doc" Askins.

Give a listen and you'll understand why.

Ben "Doc" Askins is a no-one. But he is also Banksy’s erudite elder brother, a Deadpool wannabe, and the Shadow of the world’s most interesting man.

When artificial intelligence has a fever dream, it dreams of bein...

Danny Morel is a life coach and spiritual leader guiding millions throughout the world to awaken, heal and transform their lives. But don't tell him that. Because he doesn't like those labels, and I can understand why. There's something weird about calling yourself a spiritual leader.

But sometimes doing this work, whatever you call it, is going to mean you're going to run into people who want to get it but sometimes just...don't.

And maybe I'm one of those people. How can I say this? Even though I...

I can't help but love it when some people f*ck with authority, especially when they are on the right side of history. Prof. David Nutt is one of those people.

David is currently the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences.  He is also the Chair of DrugScience (formally the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD)) and President of the European Brain Council.

But he's probably best known for up-ending everything we were taught about drugs in hig...

Hello everyone and welcome BACK to the Non-Ordinary Podcast, my sometimes serious sometimes not so serious podcast exploring the most interesting questions in life.

First non-ordinary episode landing tomorrow!

This is a reposting of a recent episode of the podcast Making Sense with Sam Harris called "The Bright Line Between Good and Evil", reshared with Sam's consent and with a brief commentary from me at off the top.

I am resharing this because it opened my eyes to things I hadn't considered, and I think it's important for these thoughts to be heard, considered and, if appropriate, responded to.

What happens when you’re building one of the most innovative companies and coolest brands in the world and a baby drops into your life at the same time? Two experiences that you can do all you want to prepare for consciously but can never really be prepared for? 

That’s what Robbie Bent, Co-founder and CEO of Othership, is going through right now. Robbie was kind enough to join me on the podcast for a second time to talk about how his life has evolved since our last recorded conversation, which happened just befor...

If the conversation with Scott Galloway was the one with the frat boy turned banker turned entrepreneur going vulnerable, this one is the conversation with the thoughtful, grass-fed farmer-turned-physician. And it's equally as insightful.

Drew Ramsey, MD is a board certified psychiatrist, author, and mental health advocate. His work focuses on clinical excellence, nutritional psychiatry, male mental health and creative media. He is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and founded the Brain Food Clinic, a digital mental health clinical practice.

...

There are few men in this world that I'd identify as being a role model for me. But after this conversation, I may just have one.

Scott Galloway is Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur. He was named one of the world’s best business professors by Poets & Quants. Scott has founded nine companies, including Prophet, RedEnvelope, L2, and Section School, where he also teaches. He is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona and Adrift: America in 100 Charts. Scott...

For decades, we had envisioned our future as a digital utopia in which technology would solve all of our problems and create a perfect world.

Yet, with the pandemic, we got a taste of what this promised future would be like - and it was awful. So, are we doomed to live in a digital dystopia?

David Sax is an award-winning writer and speaker whose journalistic writings have been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Bloomberg.

Today, David joins Ronan...

Robbie Bent, CEO and co-founder of breathwork and wellness center Othership, joins Ronan in this emotional episode of Field Tripping. The two discuss Robbie’s evolution from backyard breathing sessions to owning a brick and mortar studio and his personal evolution to becoming the best version of himself. Plus, they discuss how psychedelics are helping to prepare Robbie for fatherhood. Learn more about Othership at othership.us

Every once in a while, life provides a sliding door moment. One of those pivotal moments in life for which there was a before and there is an after.

This conversation with Alex Charfen is one of those moments for me, as it helped me find a level of self-acceptance that I've never found before.

Here is a little bit about Alex...

He was never meant to be the Co-founder & CEO of a multi-million dollar company. As a kid, Alex had a tough time...

In early 2019, Mira's life was entirely blown apart, when her partner Brian was diagnosed with an unbelievably aggressive cancer. He died seven weeks later, leaving her alone with their almost three-year-old daughter.

The experience forced Mira to explore the grieving process and she has turned that exploration into New Moon Mira, a grief coaching business that supports widows and grievers in more intimate group containers and provides grief literacy training for grief-support people and healthcare professionals.

In this conversation, we talk about the experience of having a life partner...

Derek Beres is a multi-faceted author and media expert based in Portland, Oregon. He has served in senior editorial positions at a number of tech companies and has years of experience in health, science, and music writing. He is the co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and co-author of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.

In this episode, Derek and I talk about his conspirituality, what it is, where it comes from and why it demands that all of us take the word of influencers and charismatics with a healthy sense o...

Susan Stephens is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and an Intuitive Counsellor, and the founder of Liberated Living in Hamilton, Ontario where she specializes in helping people to overcome addictions, trauma, negative recurrent patterns, depression and anxiety. Over the years, Susan has helped thousands of men and women to transform emotional pain, elevate health, cultivate conscious relationships and connect to the divinity within and without.

In this episode, Susan and I open up about some of the experiences in our lives that put us on the not-always-pleasant paths that we have found ourselves on. We...

Father's Day is a great day to celebrate and honour all of the fathers out there. But it's also a good day to reflect on what it is to be a father and a man in our society. As much as "it's a man's world," men suffer the effects of chauvinism too and if we want to break the cycle of it, it starts (in part) with dads.

Happy Father's Day everyone!

Jere Simpson is an entrepreneur with a beautiful rags-to-riches story. He's known for his prophetic vision in tech, having built landmark companies in SaaS, mobile and cybersecurity and worked with the CIA, FBI, NSA and Pentagon. He's been recognized by Forbes Magazine as "one of the top minds in tech" and by Entrepreneur as "one of the best entrepreneurs in the world". Now he's turning his sights on AI with his company AtlasUP.

In this conversation, we dive deep into AI, what we can expect from it, how we change our attitudes toward it...

Do you remember the first time you truly felt alive?

While we wait for some of the first interview episodes to be finalized I thought I'd start by sharing some short reflection pieces and the first one I'm sharing is on this very question.

The first time you feel truly, emphatically alive is usually a moment in your adolescence, sometimes called The Eternal Youth. It's one of 7 Faces of the Soul that all humans go through as part of the experience of being human.

...

Anyone who has undertaken any kind of construction project knows that surprises always await. This is true whether you're renovating a house or renovating a podcast. And that happened to this podcast following my attendance at The Intelligent Change Summit hosted by Alex and Mimi Ikonn in April, which led me to conclude that I wanted to take this podcast in a slightly different direction than I had before. Same general theme, but marginally different approach. Give a listen and let me know your thoughts.

Being the host of Field Tripping has been an epic trip in psychedelics. But as things at Field Trip have changed, so have I. So it's time to take this podcast in a new direction.

Don't worry, we're going to keep all the deep and meaningful conversations. But this time with a more expansive view of the world around us in a way that's far from ordinary.

So say hello to The Non-Ordinary Podcast. We're glad you're here.

New episodes coming soon.

Todd Herman, the author of the WSJ and International Best Selling Book, “The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life,” joins Ronan to discuss Todd’s experiences with MDMA assisted therapy to overcome sexual trauma, the power of alter egos, and whether there exists a one true authentic self. He is also a speaker and coach focused on mental toughness, leadership, and peak performance, and has been featured on NFL Films, Fox Sports, PBS, Entrepreneur, and the Today Show. His training programs have been delivered to over 2 million people and have won numerous awards and hi...

Bob Parsons, entrepreneur and psychedelic philanthropist best known for founding the domain registrar GoDaddy, joins Ronan to discuss his harrowing combat experience in Vietnam and the ensuing PTSD, his path to psychedelic therapy and healing, how to address the failed war on drugs, and more! After returning home from the Vietnam War, Bob realized he was not the same person as before, and eventually became aware of his PTSD after years of struggle. After reading Michael Pollan’s book “How To Change Your Mind,” he immediately began exploring psychedelic therapy as an option to heal his trauma. Parsons is curren...

Writer, meditation and metaphysics teacher, lifestyle design expert and fellow podcaster Luke Storey joins Ronan to chat about good and evil, addiction and sobriety, and self love. Luke shares transformative principles of health, addiction recovery and spirituality, detailing how he's spent the past two decades refining the ultimate wellness lifestyle, combining primal health and ancient spiritual practices with the most cutting-edge natural healing, and consciousness expanding technologies. Listening to this episode is an act of self care as Luke’s story is chock-full of tried and true strategies for feeling more confident, happy and connected.

...

World-renowned visual artists Alex and Allyson Grey join Ronan this week to talk about art and psychedelics, what deems something sacred, and making love stay. Known for creating their iconic spiritual paintings, Alex and Allyson are the co-founders of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, or COSM, a nonprofit organization and contemporary public chapel that is a sanctuary for spiritual renewal through contemplation of transformative art in New York. Their work has been praised since the 1970s for their other-worldly and signature styles that are instantly recognizable to those that know them - from Tool album covers to the MAPS...

To celebrate the release of Michael Pollan's new series 'How to Change Your Mind' on Netflix we wanted to rewind and revisit our episode with one of the most important voices in the psychedelic space. The episode first aired 6 months ago, and it touches on themes from his newest book, like our complicated relationship with caffeine, and how mindful gardening started him on this path to psychedelic curiosity and enlightenment. In this interview, Michael also highlights the new territory that psychedelics have opened for him and hints at the phenomenon that he may begin to examine next: the great m...

On this episode of Field Tripping, Ronan is joined by Dr. Carl Hart - neuroscientist, researcher, and best-selling author of "Drug Use for Grown Ups." The two discuss opioid death examinations, psychedelic media coverage and how the definition of a psychedelic is changing. Plus, we chat about drug policy & reform in America – and how Dr. Hart is sickened that drug test kits aren't more accessible.

Tucker Max, New York Times bestselling author known for the 'fratire' genre, takes on a more emotional side in this episode of Field Tripping. He and Ronan discuss childhood wounds, Tucker’s psychoanalysis journey, why he is grateful for failure, and how he sees the role of narcissism. Plus, they dive into his healing work with psychedelics and how the first time he actually felt love was during an MDMA journey.

Is there a way to discover and understand our true inner selves?

Dr. Dick Schwartz is a systemic family therapist and an academic. He is known for developing the therapeutic approach called Internal Family Systems. This approach to therapy recognizes all the multi-dimensional aspects of who we are and, most importantly, gives voice to them. 

Today, Dr.Schwartz joins Ronan to break down the 8 C's of self-leadership, how IFS therapy relates to psychedelics, and their potential when it comes to mental health and well-being. Tune in to find out m...

In a world of egos and icons that is much of the music industry, it's admirable to find some influential artists openly discussing mental health.

Mike Posner is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, poet, and record producer, famous for his breakout record 'Cooler Than Me' and his hit track 'I Took A Pill In Ibiza.'

Mike isn't shy about speaking out on the importance of mental health. He has incorporated many wellness practices into his everyday life, including the Wim Hof breathing method, of which he is a certified...

Is the NFL world ready for psychedelic therapy?

Kenny Stills is an NFL athlete, activist, and philanthropist. When not playing wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints, Kenny manages the Kenny Stills Foundation; an initiative focused on improving the quality of life of underserved communities through education and enriching experiences.

Kenny is also one of the first football players to come out of the psychedelic closet and is also a graduate of Field Trip's ketamine-assisted therapy program.

Today, Kenny joins Ronan to discuss his...

In a world plagued with environmental catastrophes, pandemics, societal collapse, and economic downturns, it's easy to see why so many people fall prey to despair and nihilism. But is it too late to change the course and reclaim our future? 

Jamie Wheal is the author of the global bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-nominated book 'Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, Navy SEALs And Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionising The Way We Live and Work.' He also recently published his acclaimed book 'Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death In A World That's Lost Its Mind...