What's the Big Idea with Andrew Horn

Biet Simkin - Why pain, sadness and suffering are your friends.

Biet is this completely unique Spiritual Teacher with a rare Rock & Roll sensibility who was raised by an awakened Shaman who cured himself from near death in the woods of Russia. With that said, I think what makes her story even more special is the amount of adversity she has overcome. Losing most of her family to death as a young child growing up in NYC, tragedy turned into music and she got signed to Sony Records at 18, after that she had a near death experience, lost her 4 month old daughter Ula to S.I.D.S, had her house burn down, lived in the burned down house doing heroin for 4 months, her best friends hung himself and then her awakened teacher father died. After 5 years of heroin and cocaine addiction Biet got sober nearly 11 years ago and founded a meditation experience that she guides globally and scores with her own music. Her work is just as warm and intimate with a group of 12 people in a living room as it is with thousands of people on a stage.

She has been called the "David Bowie of Meditation" by Television Host and Activist, Stacy London.

She has been written up in FORBES, ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, TIME & The New York Times.. just to name a few.

She has partnered with Lululemon, Adidas and Sony to name just a couple.

She has just released her first book with Simon & Schuster based on the 44 laws that prevent someone from enlightenment and is speaking all over the globe to spread the message of awakening and doing it in a down to earth way!

Max Stossel: There’s Another Way To Look At It - The Power Of Perspective

Max Stossel is an award-winning poet + filmmaker named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His performances across five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney, have been described as mind expanding, profound, emotive, and hilarious all at once. His work has been translated to fourteen languages, won multiple film festivals, and has been viewed over 20 million times online.

Max Stossel is also the Head of Education for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders and CEOs dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests. Before joining CHT, Max was a media strategist with an extensive background in social, spending more time learning the ins and outs of the facebook algorithm than any human should. He ran social for multinational brands, and later worked for a social media company where he designed some of the same notification structures to distract students that he now criticizes. He provides a unique and much needed critical perspective on the role of technology in the classroom. 

The merging of these fields allows Max to provide a fascinating perspective on modern content and culture. He is currently performing Words That Move in theatres, speaking or performing at schools, corporations & events, and helping select brands tell their stories in his style via video.

Lauren Zander - You're a Liar. How to Tell the Truth and Redesign Your Life

LAUREN HANDEL ZANDER is a life coach, university lecturer, public speaker, and the Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Handel Group®, an international corporate consulting and private coaching company based in New York City. Lauren is also the author of Maybe It’s You: Cut the Crap, Face Your Fears, Love Your Life (Published by Hachette Book Group, April 2017), a no-nonsense, practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but how to actually get there. She has spent over 20 years coaching thousands of private clients: entrepreneurs, couples, families, professors, politicians, Emmy, Peabody and Academy Award-winning artists, Grammy-winning musicians and Fortune 500 CEOs. Her corporate clients have included executives from Sony BMG, The New York Times, News Corp, J. Walter Thompson Agency, Citibank, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Uniworld, The Gap Inc., BASF, NYU Langone Medical Center, and Vogue. She has fixed corporate business relationships, mediated contract negotiations, reconciled marriages, and helped resolve complex family issues.

In the early 2000s, Lauren created a groundbreaking methodology, The Handel Method®, which is supported by top educators and psychologists, and has been taught in over 35 major universities and institutes of learning across the country.

Jesse Israel - The Art of Keeping it Real To Build Community and Lead People

Jesse is a social entrepreneur, community builder and meditation teacher on a mission to light up the leader in everyone. As a sophomore at NYU Jesse co-founded Cantora Records, where he signed multi-platinum bands like MGMT, advised The Wu Tang Clan’s GZA and spearheaded the label’s tech investment fund. After experiencing debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, Jesse discovered meditation. The practice was so transformative for him that he went on to found The Big Quiet - a movement that gathers thousands of people for mass meditations at legendary locations like Madison Square Garden and the top of the World Trade Center, and features performances from some of today’s most iconic musicians. Jesse speaks about community building and mindful leadership at organizations like Adidas, Ford, Google and Parson’s School of Design, and teaches meditation to next-generation leaders from around the world. Jesse’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Vice, Vogue, Fast Company, WIRED and the Wall Street Journal.

Connor Beaton - Facing Our Darkness as a Path to Purpose, Freedom, and Peace

Connor Beaton is the founder of ManTalks, an international organization focused on mens health, wellness, success and fulfillment.

Connor is also an international speaker, podcast host and works 1-1 with men who are looking to deepen their purpose, radically improve their intimate relationships, and regain confidence. Since founding ManTalks, Connor has spoken on stage at TEDx, with Lewis Howes, Gary Vaynerchuk, Danielle LaPorte, taken ManTalks to over a dozen cities internationally and has been featured on platforms like Forbes, Huffington Post, HeForShe, The Good Men Project, UN Women, CBC and the National Post.

In this episode we discuss how facing our darkness is a path to purpose, freedom, and peace. 

Daniel Schmactenberger - Understanding evolution and the crucial next step for humanity

Daniel’s central interest is civilization design: developing new capacities for sense-making and choice-making, individually and collectively, to support conscious sustainable evolution...to bring about a world commensurate with our highest potentials. He blogs on these topics at https://civilizationemerging.com. He’s also the director of Research and Development at Neurohacker Collective https://neurohacker.com/ethos

Tom Gilovich - The Power of Investing in Experiences vs. Material Possessions

Thomas Gilovich is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research. He specializes in the study of everyday judgment and reasoning, psychological well-being, and self-assessment. In addition to his articles in scientific journals, Dr. Gilovich is the author of How We Know What Isn’t So (Free Press), Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes (Simon and Schuster, with Gary Belsky), Social Psychology (W.W. Norton, with Dacher Keltner, Serena Chen, and Richard Nisbett), and The Wisest One in the Room (The Free Press, with Lee Ross).

Dr. Gilovich is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his PhD in Psychology from Stanford University.

In this episode we dive into the psychology behind why people are happier when they invest in experiences over material possessions. Being one of 4 principles to live by to advance personal happiness, we focus on things people can simply DECIDE to do today, to make themselves happier.

John Gray - The Real Difference Between Men and Women

There are relationship experts...and then there is John Gray. The author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus – and sixteen other books on relationships and personal growth, John’s wisdom about the inherent differences between men and women as well as what it takes to build lasting, loving relationships have now influenced two generations of men and women. With his books now translated into approximately 45 languages in more than 100 countries, Dr. Gray has appeared many times on Oprah, as well as on The Dr. Oz Show, TODAY, CBS This Morning, and Good Morning America. Profiled in Time, Forbes, USA Today, TV Guide, and People, he was also the subject of a three-hour special hosted by Barbara Walters. With his new book, Beyond Mars and Venus, John explains why being a man or woman in today’s society is more nuanced and complex than ever. Yet, despite the changes, men and women remain fundamentally different on a hormonal level. In this episode, we dive into what these differences mean in today's ever-evolving relationships.

Alex Ebert - The Reverse-Rebellion of "Cool"

Alex Ebert is a musician, filmmaker, and activist. He founded the band Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros in 2008 and won a Golden Globe for best original score in 2014. He founded Big Sun Foundation, which specializes in facilitating Community Land Trusts. He currently CEO’s the crowd-sourced social radio app Tuners, is writing a book called 'Kingdom Cool', and resides in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

To find out more about Alex and his work, visit https://www.5amedude.com/

Miki Agrawal - The Importance of Disruptive Thinking (for business success and personal growth)

Miki Agrawal (www.mikiagrawal.com) is a serial social entrepreneur. She was the recipient of The Tribeca Film Festival’s “Disruptive Innovation Award”, she was named “2017 Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum”, “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” by the World Technology Summit, she was one of INC Magazine’s “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs of 2016”, Forbes’ “Top 20 Millennials on a Mission”, and made the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine in 2016. Most recently, she was named Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2018.

She is the founder of the acclaimed farm-to-table, alternative pizza concept called WILD (www.eatdrinkwild.com) with 3 locations in New York City, one in Guatemala and more on the way.

She co-founded THINX (www.shethinx.com), a high-tech, period-proof underwear brand and led the company as CEO to a valuation of over $150 Million and to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2017, all while helping tens of millions of women period better. She also co-founded Icon, a high-tech pee-proof underwear brand that helps women manage light bladder leakage.

She most recently founded TUSHY (www.hellotushy.com), a company that is revolutionizing the American toilet category with a modern, affordable, designer bidet attachment that both upgrades human health & hygiene as well as the environment from wasteful toilet paper consumption. She and her team are also helping fight the global sanitation crisis by bringing clean latrines to underserved communities in India through their partnership with Samagra.

Harper Collins published her first book entitled "DO COOL SH*T" on entrepreneurship and lifestyle design and Hay House is publishing her second book “Disrupt-Her” which just came out this March! 

Miki is an identical twin, half-Japanese, half-Indian French Canadian, former
professional soccer player, graduate of Cornell University and proud new mama of Hiro Happy.