Antonia joins us from Vancouver, Canada. Antonia brings us through her experience in an idyllic US Midwest setting as a little girl, as a curious PhD student at Harvard and as a mother of four moving to Northern British Columbia and living with her adoptive Indigenous family. In the 1980s, Antonia met Dr. Ian Stevenson, an American psychiatrist from the University of Virginia. She became interested in his pioneering work on reincarnation research and the afterlife and she took it on herself. Already having a deep connection to the Beaver, Gitxsan and Witsutit'en peoples in BC she began researching reincarnation within these tribes. This soon had her join Ian Stevenson in becoming a pioneer in her own right in North America on the subject. We discuss the last dreamer/prophet (Charlie Yahey) of the Dane-zaa peoples and her first-hand experience witnessing one of his travels. We chat about the role that the child has in their society as a bridge between the past and the future, the Catholic Church’s changed stance on reincarnation and how the Canadian government currently actively funds studies like hers (!). And we hear about a wonderful early life transcendental experience of her own as a little girl. A purely enchanting discussion. To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Antonia: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonia-mills-0b151222/ Website: https://www2.unbc.ca/first-nations-studies/faculty Upcoming Book: That’s My Chair: Rebirth Experience of the Gitxsan and Witsutit'en Other Books: Eagle Down Is Our Law: Witsuwit'en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims  

Suzanne joins us from Hilton Head, South Carolina. She grew up admiring her older brother’s career in the Air Force and dreamed of a military career as well. After becoming a Naval Commanding Officer and travelling around the world, she was invited to serve as the aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For several years she was privy to top secret files, she was meeting kings and presidents and she was sitting in meetings with the President of the United States. During the tragic day of 9/11 she flew over Manhattan on Air Force 2 - which was the last aircraft in US airspace. She tells us of her walk through the wreckage at the Pentagon (her home-base) that same day with her superiors. Soon thereafter, she retired and her life changed forever. And soon after, her young stepdaughter Susan was killed and her life changed forever - again. Suzanne awakened eventually to her abilities to see connection with the unseen. We discuss training yourself in untraining … in getting away from the philosophy of “sucking it up” and “stuffing it down”. Questioning belief systems was/is key to Suzanne for re-awakening to the reality of expansion and inter-connectedness. “Going from an emptiness that can’t be filled to a fullness that can’t be contained”. This is a must listen back to back with episode 67 with Federico Faggin.   To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Suzanne: Website: https://www.suzannegiesemann.com/ Books: https://www.suzannegiesemann.com/books/ Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGU9Lw6sITU4kvjqJ2gzaQw  

Carol joins us from the Toronto area. We spend some time together discussing what was important for her as she spent decades building a high profile corporate career and being a mother and wife. We learn about her upbringing and frequent moving across the country. She explains how sport and her coaches played a stabilizing role in her youth – and how she parlayed this experience into a foundational belief in building strong teams throughout her professional career. We discuss the stresses, the sacrifices and the compromises as she built her corporate career – and we discussed what wasn’t up for sale. We hear about core lessons she learned from her 5 year old daughter along the way – with driveway stand-offs and Mother’s Day tea.   Some simple and hard-hitting messages about the wisdom of children, the importance of keeping true to your humanity and staying honest with your vulnerabilities. And car-talk.   To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Carol: Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-stewart/  

Jonathan, a Toronto boy, joins us from his office in Connecticut where he plays out his days as an endovascular surgeon and a Yale professor. Jonathan lives and breathes his passion for surgery – and from that passion we discover a lot of what makes him really tick. We delve immediately into themes like seeking approval, the real definition of confidence and his view on the life of servitude that he’s chosen. We discuss leadership through humility and hard work and the desire to guide and mentor “Al Lawson-style”. We discuss the “filing cabinet of worry”, the intimacy of his work and the dangers of pedestalization. Being a former varsity baseball player, Jonathan also weaves his thoughts with us through the metaphor of sport and the lessons of some of its heroes.   But, more importantly we explore what Jonathan is realizing has become important to him. He explains what “legacy” really means for him. And we go deeper into discovery with him about the connection to the earth and being connected to his own human existence – through both the seen and the unseen.   A clean up batter of a conversation.   To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Dr. Cardella: Bio: https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/jonathan_cardella/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aP9Nai1cEg  

Marysia joins us from southern California. A “green witch”, she is a sought after herbalist and healer in the US. Her own roots lie with a rabble-rousing family in Poland who were active in the Nazi resistance during WW2. Growing up in a matriarchal family, she learned the importance of the plant world and the abundance of the earth from her grandmother. With the understanding that plants create the ecosystem that we are born into, Marysia’s philosophy is centered on our intimate connection we have with plants’ spiritual essence. We have an engaging chat on plants as elders, teachers, healers and guides. We discuss mountains, the (thin) veil present at both birth and death and wholeness being holiness. Oh, and that’s not the half of it …. We talk at length about modern humans’ linear view on production and consumption, the ancient wisdom of mountains and our connection with the “dreaming” earth. Throw in some musings about envy, the genius of the self and human creativity and we have an upbeat, expansive talk with a woman of the earth.   “Working with wild weeds, a part of us wakes up ….” Let’s go! To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Website: www.schoolofthesacredwild.com IG: @Marysia_Miernowska IG: @rituelbeauty BOOK: “The Witch’s Herbal Apothecary: Rituals & Recipes for a Year of Earth Magick and Sacred Medicine Making” - https://www.amazon.com/Witchs-Herbal-Apothecary-Rituals-Medicine/dp/1592339093/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=%E2%80%9CThe+Witch%E2%80%99s+Herbal+Apothecary%3A+Rituals+%26+Recipes+for+a+Year+of+Earth+Magick+and+Sacred+Medicine+Making%E2%80%9D&qid=1638930449&sr=8-1    

Nigel joins us from his abode in the UK. Growing up, he celebrated and channeled the  emotionally charged culture of his Scottish and Irish roots, which helped him make music his lifetime muse. A true citizen of the world, Nigel brings us through his journey in life from a wayward youth to internationally renowned composer to musically-focused healer and humanitarian. We walk through his experience as a head-strong youth who turned his back on a rock and roll career with a global music label and decided to live a high energy rock and roll life instead - in Eastern Europe in the early 1970s, no less. Nigel shares with us his run-ins with secret police in communist Poland and his unlikely collaboration with the KGB in the USSR, in the name of shining the light of art to others. Going on to compose for many of the world's greatest music halls and opera houses as an internationally renowned composer, Nigel always kept his eye on helping to heal the world with his creativity as a badass humanitarian - from Bosnia to Uganda to Syria to India and many other places in between. We talk about the winning nature of art, what the limelight really is to him (as a "refusenik"), the wisdom of music and acoustic ecology of indigenous culture. Nigel also warns us against sentimentalizing "great", imploring us instead to see ourselves as natural creators. Rock and roll, baby. To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Nigel: Website: https://skoogmusic.com/ Website: https://www.x-system.co.uk/

We are joined by Robert in Toronto. He is currently a partner in one of the country’s oldest and largest law firms. He has Jesus covid hair. And, he’s an Inspire alumn to boot. We immediately dive into the existential, where Rob also feels at home. He shares with us some of his personal experience in childhood where he spent much time in and out of hospitals, leading up to a long, excruciatingly painful battle with cancer in highschool. We have a conversation about Robert’s journey with his unique perspective on hope – and the recognition that bad things happen to good people. Healthy and profound perspective is what Rob helps us explore ... staring at a hospital ceiling ... humanity’s “de-prioritization” of intuition … inability of modern humans to access beyond the veil … and a certain primal truth through speed. A joy. To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-antenore/

Vera joins us from the sunny Yucatan. Her focus has been bioarcheology and archaeology of pre-Hispanic and pre-colonial Maya. As a child, she grew up in Germany under a very demanding upbringing. Being an artist at heart, she wanted to explore what was calling her. As a teen, she “fled” to the US to study Art History at Tulane. From there she decided to pursue her studies in Medicine in both Germany and Mexico. But that was merely the beginning. Enchanted by the warmth of Latin American culture, she dove head first in a life of exploration in archaeological and anthropological adventure graduating from Medical School. Now a leading bioarchaeologist in Latin America, she weaves her skills as a trained physician and her sense of wonder as a social scientist and artist to explore human remains and what they tell us about the ideas of our ancient ancestors. We discuss ancient Indigenous Mesoamerican cultures and how their idea of the cosmos was anchored in the divinity of the human body. We discuss some lessons that the ancient Maya teach us about the realities of both the anguish and the intensity of life, including how modern children should live that intensity, instead of being protected from it. Such an intriguing conversation with Vera about veritas.   To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Tiesler Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00517-y  

Russell joins us from his home in California. Born during the Great Depression, Russell spent his childhood in Chicago and then NYC. A gifted learner, Russell graduated highschool early and decided to study physics in College, setting the groundwork for his career as a scientist. But his real passion already laid elsewhere…. While becoming a pioneer in the 1950s and 1960s in laser development, Russell kept the fire of his passion burning. He was bent on understanding and studying Extrasensory perception (ESP) and built an actual machine for his research “on the side”. His work soon caught the interest of NASA and then of the CIA. In the early 1970s, he co-founded the Stanford Research Institute in San Francisco where the CIA fully funded him and his team to investigate the development of psychic abilities. Here he meticulously researched remote viewing and taught senior government officials and hand-picked US Army personnel how to develop their remote viewing skills. Since his research was finally declassified in the last 5 years, Russell has been free to discuss some of the extraordinary experiences as a Remote Viewer researcher and teacher. We talk non-local consciousness, timeless awareness, the “tugging” of the future, lucid dreaming - and untrammelled Milanese women. He has spent 50 years researching and teaching these abilities – abilities that he says are innate in each and every one of us.   To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north Website: http://espresearch.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-targ-03478327/ Documentary - Third Eye Spies (2019):  https://thirdeyespies.com/. Downloadable on Amazon Prime. Book – Reality of ESP - A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0835608840/miracleofmindremA/ Autobiography - Do You See What I See?: Lasers and Love, ESP and the CIA, and the Meaning of Life  https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1571746307/miracleofmindremA/

Joan Koenig has called Paris her home for the last several decades. She grew up playing the piano and falling in love with the flute. Originally from the US, Joan moved often and lived in many states. But one thing that didn’t change was her desire to play music. She eventually found herself studying at the prestigious Julliard School in NYC and after graduation embarked upon a journey that brought her to her lay roots in France, have a family and build a business structured on her passion: music. She has spent the last several decades at the forefront of educating children where she has built an school / laboratory for innovative learning and creative entrepreneurship - through the magic of music and dance. In our dicussion, she reminds how and why in the West we have largely “forgotten” that we are all musical. We hear her thoughts on the blurring of the self and in the feeling in communion with others during musical connectedness. As the teaser shows, she shares a transcendental experience where she found herself disappearing, while in the middle of her art. And what’s at the centre of it? Listen in….   To DONATE to the Behind Greatness podcast, please visit here: www.inspirenorth.com/podcast. Tax receipt issued to donors. Behind Greatness IG: @behindgreatnesspodcast & @inspire_north   Personal website: https://www.joankoenig.com/ L'Ecole Koenig Website: https://www.ecolekoenig.com/team/joan-koenig Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joan-koenig-7577b3153/ Book: The Musical Child Using the Power of Music to Raise Children Who Are Happy, Healthy, and Whole https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Child-Using-Children-Healthy/dp/1328612961