Healing, Growth & Spiritual Depth
Where the heart breaks, opens, and becomes whole again.
This is the spiritual core of At The Podium.
These episodes hold the stories of addiction and recovery, illness and resilience, surrender and faith, pain and transformation. Guests wrestle with what it means to suffer, to rise, to learn, to forgive, to let go, and to rebuild life from the inside out.
This category also includes episodes where healing becomes activism, service, advocacy, or a new path forward.
Calvin Anderson’s story is not just about football — it’s about survival.
In 2023, what should have been a defining season in the NFL nearly became the end of Calvin’s life. While traveling in Africa, he contracted a deadly strain of malaria that sent his body into crisis. After surviving the illness and fighting his way through a grueling recovery, Calvin returned to the field only to suffer a rare heart contusion — an injury that once again forced him onto the sidelines.
What followed was not just physical rehabilitation, but a deeper reckoning with faith, identity, and mental health. Stripped of control and certainty, Calvin was forced to confront who he was beyond the game.
This is the story of what saved him when everything broke — and how breaking down became the beginning of rebuilding a life rooted not just in performance, but in purpose.
Justin Wren is a big man—and not just in stature. When you meet him in person, he takes up space. With his professional athlete’s frame and long blond hair, you can’t miss him. He has presence.
In his book Fight for the Forgotten, Justin writes unflinchingly about the intense bullying that shaped his childhood—a pain that sparked the fire that carried him into the world of professional MMA, where he found money, recognition, and a sense of belonging. But along his climb to becoming a champion, he fell into addiction, spiraled into despair, and attempted suicide.
Somehow, in the haze of that turmoil, a vision—a single Bible verse from Isaiah—became the thread that pulled him toward Africa, toward purpose, and toward the people he felt called to serve: the forgotten ones. People living in modern-day slavery. People forced to drink water that, as Justin says, we would hesitate to give our dogs.
What happened next became a symbiotic story of restoration. Justin, who never had a champion fighting for him as a child, has become a dragon slayer for communities who need protection, dignity, and a friend in their midst. And as he brings them life-sustaining clean water, they give him something just as powerful: acceptance, belonging, and a reshaped sense of family.
In many ways, they are fighting for each other.
Willie Mae Sharpe’s rich contralto voice has been the heartbeat of worship at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, for years.
But behind that powerful voice is a woman who’s lived a big life — not just marked by darkness and despair, but shaped by success, divine purpose, and unshakable faith. From her grandmother’s shotgun house in Texas to the grand stages of gospel music and Christian television — and through the grace it took to mother alone, trusting that the same God who held her would also hold her children when she couldn’t be there — Willie Mae has lived both the valley’s depths and the victory’s heights.
And through it all, she’s been held by a God who would not let go.
In this episode of At The Podium, she reminds us that the Christian walk isn’t perfect — it’s a practiced, prayerful journey. And at some point, you have to stop talking about it… and walk it out for real.
In his book and forthcoming documentary Trespass: Portraits of Unhoused Life, Love and Understanding, artist, photographer and author Kim Watson gives us an up close and intimate view of what life is like for the homeless people living on the streets of Los Angeles. The stories are sometimes brutal. People are not always rescued from their bleak circumstances. But with his stunning photography and precise storytelling, Kim helps us see the full humanity of people we often want to turn away from on the streets of our cities. As Kim says “Art is beautiful, even when it depicts ugliness and strife. And one of the things about doing the book, I wanted it to be beautiful because I wanted you to see the beauty in the art. Because that leads you to the beauty in the person and that’s really what I was striving for.”
Nick Prefontaine survived the unthinkable. A snowboarding accident at the age of 14 where he landed on his head, with only a pair of thick goggles protecting his skull as a he was flung down the mountain. In a coma for almost a month, even the doctors said the prognosis was grim. When he finally awoke, he had to learn to walk, talk, and even swallow again. How he survived and rebuilt his life one small step at a time, is miraculous. What he did with his life after that, is a testament to the power of the human spirit, and what a person can do with the support of his family, and the inner spirit and strength to overcome all the obstacles life puts on his path.
Kate Miller has had a prolific career as an actress – from starring on Broadway with Carol Burnett in “Moon Over Buffalo,” to working opposite Tom Selleck in CBS’s “Blue Bloods,” to her latest role as Amanda Shaw in “Hightown,” Kate has done it all. In an industry that is known for discarding women after a certain age, Kate did the impossible and reinvented herself and her career in her 40s – in Los Angeles! Despite the doors being closed to her. But beyond the successes Kate has experienced in her acting career, she’s used the hard times and the down times that she’s faced both professionally and in her real life, as a catalyst for huge growth and personal changes that she says were necessary. Her take on her life is astonishingly clear. It’s time to put down your pain and focus on what is good in your life. And she says, “Just because you don’t get something you want, desire, are seeking for, it has nothing to do with your merit.”
With the founding of Sanctum, Luuk Melisse has started a sound, dance and movement phenomenon that is being called a Nomadic Movement. At the core of the Sanctum experience is Luuk’s mission to help his followers (and himself) face head on those things that hinder our fullest expression of who we are: limiting self-doubt, the need for perfectionism, always having to look cool and be in control, and not wanting to face the parts of ourselves that may be unpretty. As Luuk says with potentially some controversy “the future of wellness is ugly.” It’s messy. It isn’t about getting it “right.”
In the Sanctum experience which Luuk conceived because of the profound loneliness that people were experiencing during the pandemic, there are tears, there is laughter, there are people maybe even looking silly. People are coming together. There is freedom! What isn’t there is competition. There is no electronic board posting how many calories you are burning or how you are performing against the other people in the class with you. Luuk creates a safe and nurturing atmosphere for people to break free by pushing their bodies to almost physical exhaustion through what Luuk describes as a “holistic movement sequence rooted in kundalini yoga, martial arts, animalistic flow, breath work and primal fitness.” They can no longer resist but give in to the letting go.
Enriching this journey for Luuk, is the fact that he is building this global movement alongside Gabriel, the man he calls his partner in life, crime, and business. With a dark, candlit space and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, Luuk, Gabriel and their vibing followers are bouncing to a beat underpinned by music from the electronic music scene in Amsterdam to give themselves the space to move through the physical discomfort of intense physical movement into what Luuk describes as more peace and more headspace.
John Adams was at the top of the modeling world when he was diagnosed with cancer. In an instant, his life changed from fashion shoots and working directly with designers like Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani to survival. The world he knew (beautiful clothes, nice apartments, travel, even his looks) quickly evaporated and left him with a new focus - living. He wanted to live to experience the gift of life with someone that he genuinely loved. With his wife Toby and their two daughters, he did find that love and that new meaning that would take him again on incredible journeys around the world with their family-owned production company called Wonder Wheel Productions. As a family they have produced award winning horror films like Hellbender and the Deeper You Dig. But all this good in his life has come through overcoming a serious drug addiction that almost cost him everything he dreamed of.
Dr. Darian Parker, the IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year 2023 recipient, is a multihyphenate entrepreneur, athlete, and a man of faith. And he is breaking open myths. On what it takes to be a Division-1 Student Athlete competing at elite levels. On the interior work he has to do to be a good father. On the reality that life is lived at its best and realest without guarantees or known outcomes but is founded on authentic love for our fellow humans. And so many more. All we can rely on is our ability to build true relationships with one another and to make a commitment to show up every day even when the outcomes are unknown or don’t go our way. Darian believes that one’s life doesn’t bloom under the bright lights of fame, accolades, or ego. Instead, it is a relentless dance performed in the powerful spaces of the phrase “I don’t know.” For Dr. Parker, the real champions show up daily and do the monotonous grunt work that is a major and essential part of what we call living.
Zak Sandler and I have a deeply personal and contemplative conversation about the struggles he has faced with his mental health and how he has managed to organize his life with a brain that functions in a different way. From his original diagnosis as bipolar while an undergraduate student at Yale University, to becoming a highly creative Broadway pianist for such shows as Wicked and The Color Purple, Zak has traveled the road from despair to acceptance and now to allowing his creativity to guide his response to his diagnosis. Zak will tell you that he does not have a mental illness or a disorder. For him that language implies there’s something about him that needs to be fixed. He chooses the phrase mental condition, because it indicates that his bipolar diagnosis is simply part of who he is. At core he is not broken. This distinction is how we move from shame to understanding and hopefully acceptance. That our differences, no matter how acute, are simply that - differences not deficiencies.
Jimmy T. Martin lost his first wife, Linmarie to cancer. She was only 29 when she died, leaving him heartbroken and lost, but with the dream of a business called Brrrn. She said it was the proudest thing that he created that she wouldn’t live to see. With the help of his family, his friends, therapy and his wry sense of humor, Jimmy was slowly able to rebuild a life for himself, and with his business partner Johnny Adammic find a way to bring Brrrn to life, not once, but twice. This story does have a happy ending. He finds new love with Rachel who eventually becomes his wife, he builds a transforming business, and there is even a son. But there is also the wisdom of experience and loss that filters through his life that you cannot help but see, hear, and feel. More than giving up and feeling sorry for himself, Jimmy leaves us with compelling questions in our conversation. Questions that he had to answer for himself when he had to choose to live or to give up. He asks: What are the prompts in your life that are calling you to take action. To do something different? To make a different choice? To choose life? What actions are the prompts in your life calling you to take?
Hugh Huffaker is serial entrepreneur who follows the passions within him to guide his choices in business, and as you will hear, in his life. He is the Founder of Cause+Medic a consciously crafted CBD luxury wellness product line that he created to help relieve his mother’s legs spasms that she was experiencing from Multiple Sclerosis. And he co-founded Clean Republic, an EPA certified disinfectant that harnesses the power of nature and technology into cleaning products. That’s in addition to owning his own spa in Bueno Vista, CO, his pursuits as a jazz guitarist, and at one point – working as an accountant. His life and career journey have been a series of taking risks, listening to his unique internal voice as an entrepreneur, and not being afraid to fail. His success, according to Hugh, is based upon his ability to keep an open heart and say yes to the unplanned and unexpected events that always appear in our lives. As for that failure, Hugh believes we shouldn’t fear it because it is inevitable in business (and in life). And more than a source of embarrassment or regret, he views failure as a tool for learning. He says, “Everybody questions everything when you start a business. You’re going to get questioned and you’re going to fail. But the failure’s good because you’re going to keep learning.”
Nigel Franklyn is one of the founders of Moss Wellness Consulting. He is the self-described Spa Whisperer who was recently featured on "The Tamron Hall Show," but more accurately, he is a person who lives a life of artistry and takes leaps of faith into the unknown. As he says, “I jump off cliffs now and I don’t worry because I really believe fully from my direct experiences that either I will find something soft to land on, or someone will teach me how to fly.” His global career as a spa and wellness aficionado began when his life was changed by a spa therapist in Atlanta who in one service gave him such an overwhelming feeling of nurture, it changed the trajectory of his career and life. He knew from that moment, his life would be devoted to bringing that sense of nurture and wellbeing to people all over the world. His paintings too, like his work in the spa and wellness worlds, are bold and brash, yet they tell a very personal story. A story of a man who lost his parents as a teenager. A man who stepped into the essence of his identity at six years old when he declared he wanted to marry Superman. A man who believes that in order to receive the benefits from something or learn something, you have to learn to surrender to the process. You can’t fight it or be overcome by fear of it. Because in the spaces of surrender we find faith and belief.
Ask Chris Hetherington what learned from his 11 years in the NFL playing fullback for teams like the Cincinnati Bengals, the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers and he will tell you he learned to be a pro, be accountable, to keep his word, and the importance of getting a good education. After smashing wedges on the gridiron, he took those lessons learned and then went on to have a career as a CEO in financial services and now today he is the Founder & CEO of Peels CBD, which is on the road to becoming a disruptive force in the CBD product market. The line is formulated from orange peels and has no traces of hemp, cannabis, or THC and can attract consumers who may have negative associations with traditional CBD products and marijuana. (How it all works he will explain in our conversation.) Along his unpredictable path, he discovered the Stoics, yoga and meditation. And now this elite athlete who once crushed it on the football field is now meditating twice a day and learning to breathe through life as opposed to making things happen through brute force. The through line in Chris’ remarkable life is his devotion to family - he calls his mom his hero, he loves his two sons unabashedly, and looks up to his big brother. He also lives life with physical and mental discipline, a commitment to team, and being a man of his word. If you say you’re going to do, then do it. That is what makes you a good person.
Travis Suit did the impossible. He swam from Bimini to South Florida. He crossed a Blue Desert to raise money for his daughter. As he says with tears lovingly filling his eyes, “I can’t help but see how beautiful adversity can be for transforming the perception of life into just a moment-by-moment miracle. I never knew the greatest gift in my life was going to be my daughter and this disease.” His daughter’s name is Piper. Her disease is Cystic Fibrosis. Which has transformed her life and his. Travis started a nonprofit called Pipers Angel’s Foundation that is helping Piper and the thousands of other people like her, fight this disease that leaves those who suffer with it, fighting to simply breathe. How does he view this adversity that walked unwanted into his family’s life? Travis says,
“Adversity is the starting line for courage.”
“Courage becomes the fuel for inspiration in our life.”
“And from there, Inspiration can really open the door to devotion.” Devotion to Piper. The reason he swam across the Blue Desert.
“The ineffable gift that is gold” is how a colleague and critic once described Marnye Young’s voice and talent behind the microphone. Known as the Audio Sorceress, she has leant her voice to narrating over 200 audiobooks and become the owner of a well-established and respected audio publishing company. But her real wizardry isn’t only her work in the recording studio. It comes from what she has learned from becoming a businesswoman, wife, and a mother of beautiful twin girls: owning her greatness, living with compassion and kindness for those who are different from her, and pushing open the doors so people can see and hear her.
Kevin Chadwin Davis has lived a life that many people cannot imagine. He witnessed the killings of his mother, sister, and brother at the age of three. The person who took their lives was his own father. And with an almost startling recall of detail, that life changing day for him in 1998 has seared itself into his memories. His life journey has been one of a man fighting for survival, facing the dark corners of a life he did not choose and yet must reckon with every day. His choices for survival have been complex, searching for his father’s love and understanding in the world of escorting. As he himself says, “What I was looking for in these men was parts of my dad that I didn’t have.” But his story doesn’t end there. He is now advocating for HIV and PrEP education and opening a candid conversation on the plight of sex workers. At the end of it all, Kevin still believes in the importance of forgiving people. He practices it daily.
Leon Logothetis has lived the life of an adventurer, traveling the globe in search of people willing to demonstrate acts of kindness to one another. He has chronicled his experiences in four books and a TV series called The Kindness Diaries. At the core of his work is his quest to live a life of vulnerability, love, and magnificence. His is a life not driven by the consumption of material items, but passing along kindnesses, some big and some simple, quiet gestures to his fellow human beings. What have his years of traveling and giving taught him? As Leon says, “It has taught me that we are all the same at base. We simply just want to be seen. We simply just want to be heard. And we simply just want to be loved.”
From arts organizations in Nebraska to the glittering lights of Broadway, Gennean Scott has spent a lifetime advocating for representation for people who are underrepresented in the arts. Her work as the Chief Diversity Officer for the Broadway League comes from a personal place. Growing up as a young dancer in America’s heartland, she had to find her way in the ballet world where there were no role models for her to look up to and overcome her own complex feelings about being one of one in many of the spaces she occupied. From being a single teen mom, to becoming an educator struggling to provide for her children, to her life today as the voice of change on the world’s biggest stages, her story is that of a person who pressed forward because as Gennean says, God put her here for a reason and he isn’t about to let her fail.
David Ambroz describes his life growing up as navigating on live wire with his mother’s mental illness. His new memoir A Place Called Home chronicles his journey through profound poverty and homelessness, the assaults of the foster care system, and the battles he fought to find his way home to himself. The memoir and his life are a manifesto of survival and a call for us to move from empathy to action.
Shahin Safai is the Founder and CEO of Royal Personal Training (RPT), a premier private training facility in Beverly Hills, CA. In a town like Beverly Hills where people are obsessed with looking good, being seen and crafting a perfect physical image, making it to the top of the fitness and wellness world is no small feat to achieve. You have to have a tenacity of spirit to beat the odds. His story of overcoming multiple failures, getting knocked down and almost losing his business is the American Dream writ large.
McCord’s unvarnished story is one of a young man filled with much promise looking for his place in the world as he comes to grips with his sexuality and wrestles with the demons of alcoholism. His story is also one of hope. Where a person once passed out drunk on the floor of his job, can now hold his head high with a fierce humility and say, “I am recovered. I am living.”
With her work today, as the Founder and CEO of Violets Are Blue, Cynthia herself has become a flashlight for thousands of women battling for their lives. She eloquently and passionately calls for more education, more technology, more treatments and a cure so that Stage 4 women can stay alive for more than five to 10 years. As she reminds us with almost startling candor, “There is no Stage 5. Stage 4 is it.” The time for action is now.
We speak to Ryland during a time in his life when he is the process of rebuilding, reflection and reexamination. This is his season of life where there is no production, but silence, stillness and tarrying as springtime glimmers on the horizon. It’s a lesson for us all, really. As he describes it, there is a “divine timing for the inhale and the exhale.” And as with each breath, there is always a pause.
Josh’s journey reminds us of what happens when you stop running and start facing the pain of your life. When you find the capacity within your heart to forgive yourself and those who have caused you great disappointments. In a time when religion and commitment to following any religious doctrine can be used as a tool to divide us, Josh uses his pulpit to call upon us, the Church and the world to start a love revival. To love all people. To love all people abundantly.
Enter Cassandra Worthy. She is a global keynote speaker, author and consultant who is the CEO and optimistic mind behind Change Enthusiasm. Her three-step method of “Signal. Opportunity. Choice.” provides a blueprint for organizations in transition as they help their employees accept inevitable changes by embracing what she calls the growth mindset. What distinguishes Cassandra’s approach is that a significant part of her pedagogy is based upon the acknowledgement and leveraging of the employees’ emotions in this change process.
Jane Cho is a powerhouse. In this riveting and unafraid conversation, she calls us all to the task of stepping into the unknown spaces, the complex spaces and claiming who we are. She reminds us that the barometer for success is tied to how emotionally, spiritually, attuned and aligned we are. Thank you, Jane!
In my wide-ranging conversation with the brilliant Rachana Garg, I was reminded that the antidote to chaos is not a staid peace, but rather a radical dose of empathy, detachment, and curiosity. Empathy is the vehicle to build community with the people in our world. All people. Not just our cohorts or political comrades. Not only those whom we go to church with on Sunday morning, or synagogue on Saturday night, or no church at all.