Voices of Esalen

When Ellen Watson first arrived at Esalen in the summer of 1984, she expected to stay for a few months. Instead, she remained onsite for more than two decades, engaging in an immersion in the practices, teachers, and experiments that helped define Esalen during one of its most fertile eras. She has remained associated with Esalen, teaching programs and training bodyworkers and teachers of bodywork. In this episode, Ellen remembers studying Holotropic Breathwork with Stanislav Grof, Gestalt practice, Continuum with Emily Conrad, Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms, singing Gestalt, yoga, massage, hands-on healing, and a range of spiritual and psychological traditions. Ellen also recalls her friendships and encounters with figures including Terence McKenna and Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, and speaks candidly about her experiences with psychedelics during a period when these substances remained closely connected to a larger culture of inquiry into consciousness, healing, and transformation. Throughout the conversation, Ellen describes Esalen as a kind of “unaccredited graduate school”, a place where psychology, spirituality, movement, breath, touch, music, and altered or “non-ordinary” states of consciousness were allowed to inform one another.

Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky is a workplace belonging expert, internationally recognized keynote speaker, and bestselling author whose work explores friendship, loneliness, human connection, and the ways technology is reshaping our relationships with one another. In this conversation, Sam and Smiley trace a line from the early digital-detox movement and Camp Grounded to the present moment of AI, hybrid work, and widespread social disconnection. Smiley speaks about the loneliness crisis, the particular struggles facing young people and men, and why belonging and friendship have become increasingly important both inside and outside the workplace, arguing that organizations need to design intentionally for human connection, and that belonging cannot simply be handed off to an HR department - instead, it has to become part of the everyday culture of a workplace. The conversation also turns to artificial intelligence and the temptation to automate increasingly large parts of our creative and professional lives. Smiley makes the case for using AI thoughtfully while preserving the kinds of distinctly human practices—conversation, presence, intuition, personal storytelling, friendship, and simply spending time thinking—that technology can easily crowd out. Along the way, Sam and Smiley explore the value of “weak ties,” the difference between belonging and mattering, the difficulty of genuinely listening to another person, and why our most personal stories may become increasingly valuable in an age of machine-generated content. They close with Smiley’s practice of moving from comparison toward care: when ambition, social media, or creative anxiety starts to take over, turn toward friendship, community, and service. About Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, workplace belonging expert, and bestselling author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough, The Breakthrough Speaker, and Friendship in the Age of Loneliness. He has spoken for organizations including Apple, Google, Verizon, JPMorgan Chase, and the U.S. Navy, and his work has appeared in publications including Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Learn more about Smiley at smileyposwolsky.com, through his Substack newsletter Friends with Smiley, on LinkedIn as Adam Smiley Poswolsky, and on Instagram at @whatsupsmiley.

Artificial intelligence has become deeply embedded in everyday life, and way too nuanced to describe as a single phenomenon. In this third installment of How We’re Really Using AI, Sam attempts to create clarity through specificity, speaking with people whose work and lives reveal distinct corners of the emerging AI landscape. Nina and Shoshana, founders of the Aged Intelligence Society, introduce the communal and unexpectedly playful world of AI parties for women of "a certain age," where they gather in person to experiment with new tools. Eliza discusses her work developing an AI companion app for teenagers, including the difficult questions that arise when young people form relationships with artificial personalities. Seth, a longtime virtual-reality enthusiast, gives his story of what happened when he began frequenting immersive digital environments. Sam tries viewing AI through the lens of the human potential movement, asking what this turbulent technological moment may reveal about the continuing experiment of being human. Finally, AI ethicist Federico explains how he helps schools determine whether their use of AI reflects their educational goals and institutional values.

In this live conversation recorded at Esalen in the spring of 2026, author Robert Moor joins Andrew Castle, weaver of Esalen’s Treenet, to explore the ideas at the heart of Moor’s new book, In Trees. Moor describes trees as a way of being: branching outward into curiosity and experimentation, pruning what no longer works, adapting around difficulty, and remaining deeply rooted in place and relationship. Together, Moor and Castle consider what it means to “stay branchy” in a culture that increasingly pushes people toward specialization, simplification, productivity, and extraction. Moor proposes that the trunk of a meaningful life may be found in co-flourishing—the long, slow practice of flourishing with others over time. Robert Moor is the author of On Trails and In Trees. https://www.robertmoor.com/

Jet Eveleth, a clown teacher, performer, writer, and integrative medicine practitioner, blends play, presence, and healing. She explores clowning as a spiritual path, the power of embarrassment to create intimacy, and the difference between comedy and clown. Conversations cover ritual naming, embodied practice, Taoist and medical influences, and why live, risky performance can be profoundly transformative.

In this episode, Sam Stern speaks with Bill Drummond, a clinical consultant psychologist based in Wellington, New Zealand, where he serves as Clinical Leader for Youth Mental Health Services across the region. Bill has spent more than a decade working with young people and families in public mental health settings, supporting adolescents facing trauma, anxiety, depression, family instability, identity confusion, and complex mental health challenges. His work spans acute care, community-based mental health, schools, hospitals, state care systems, private practice, and clinical supervision. Together, Sam and Bill explore -what is happening in the inner lives of young people today — especially in a world where diagnoses, social media, algorithms, and AI can offer instant explanations for pain that may still need time, relationship, and embodied attention to fully understand. -the rise of diagnostic identity - the difference between “I have anxiety” and “I’m feeling anxious" - why he approaches young people with curiosity rather than correction - the appeal of AI and social media as sources of validation, particularly for adolescents who may already be biologically primed toward threat perception, self-consciousness, and emotional intensity. https://www.wholeself.health

Brita Ostrom, author and longtime Esalen affiliate, recalls 1967–68 life in Big Sur and Esalen. She describes sleeping outdoors, abundant local music, early Gestalt and encounter work, the role of psychedelics, the rise of Esalen massage, and evolving bonds among women. Short, vivid stories capture the wildness, tenderness, and complicated freedoms of that transformative time.

Darnell Lamont Walker, writer, filmmaker, children’s TV creator and death doula, reflects on a near-death turning point and a life spent supporting endings. He discusses what a death doula does, legacy storytelling, rituals and laughter at the bedside, cultural silence around Black men and grief, talking with children about dying, and the practice of writing your own obituary.

Mariavittoria Mangini, a nurse‑midwife, scholar, and psychedelic historian, reflects on early LSD culture, Esalen life, and her work with the Shulgins. She recounts intersections of birth, death, and psychedelic practice. Short takes cover midwifery’s link to psychedelic care, lessons from cannabis reform, the Women’s Visionary Council, and the urgency of preserving underground psychedelic histories.

Magnus Toren has been Executive Director of the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California, since 1993. A native of Sweden, he circumnavigated the globe delivering yachts across five oceans before settling in Big Sur. Under his leadership, the Library has evolved into a vibrant cultural hub for literature, music, and community, dedicated to preserving and celebrating Henry Miller’s legacy. In addition to hosting A Big Sur Podcast, Toren writes and speaks widely on Big Sur’s cultural history, Henry Miller, and the arts. He lives in Big Sur with his wife Mary Lu.