Innerspace: Deep, Meaningful Conversations with Brett Kaufman

Nate Ebner grew up between two worlds. School weeks in Columbus, and weekends and summers in Springfield, Ohio, working the family junkyard with his father Jeff. Lifting off railroad-tie dumbbells they welded themselves. Chasing robbers through the yard on Sunday mornings.Jeff Ebner was the kind of man who kept a notebook of every workout his son ever did, so they could look back together at what the work had built. He was also the kind of man who made everything an experience worth having. Nate remembers that time more clearly than he remembers most of high school.The day before Nate decided to walk onto the Ohio State football team, he had the best conversation of his life with his dad. The next day, Jeff was murdered at the junkyard. Nate was 19. He dropped out of school and spent weeks in the dark, sitting near the weights they had built together, close to something he couldn't have come back from. Then his mom walked upstairs and said a few sentences that changed the entire direction of his life.What followed is one of the more remarkable athletic careers of the last two decades. A walk-on at Ohio State under Jim Tressel. A sixth-round draft pick of Bill Belichick's New England Patriots. Three Super Bowl championships. The 2016 Olympics in Rio with the US rugby team. An All-Pro season. Now an author and part of the team at Goodwin, Nate tells the full story here: the junkyard, the grief, the grind, and what it looks like to carry someone with you all the way to the Super Bowl.Connect with Nate:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ebs43/Book: Finish Strong: A Father's Code and a Son's Path:https://www.amazon.com/Finish-Strong-Fathers-Code-Sons/dp/0525560858Goodwin: https://www.teamgoodwin.com/Goodwin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goteamgoodwin/

Jenny Shuman didn't map any of this out.She became a mother at 16. She picked up her first loom at a summer powwow in 1992. She spent years selling beadwork from a booth while her daughter danced beside her in full regalia. She built a quiet, intentional life in Michigan and then left all of it behind for Oregon, her husband, and a new beginning she couldn't quite see yet.Today, her work is worn by Bob Weir, Oteil Burbridge, Duane Betts, Anders Osborne, Derek Trucks, and Michael Franti. She's crafted straps for some of the most sacred instruments in music, including Jerry Garcia's Wolf and Alligator Guitars. Each piece carries a story. A family. A soul.In this conversation, Brett and Jenny trace the full arc. The loving childhood in Rockford, Michigan. The grandmother who first put a needle in her hand. The teenage pregnancy, the alternative high school, the powwow trail with a toddler in tow. The sister she lost too young. The cross-country leap that cost her a pension and a paid-off house and opened something she never could have engineered.And always, the loom. The meditation of it. The intention woven into every bead.Jenny's story isn't a straight line. It's a perfectly imperfect tree, bent by wind and weather, shaped by love and loss, growing toward something most people spend a lifetime searching for: a life that is completely, unmistakably yours.Learn more about Jenny here: Beadworkbyjenny.net

Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator, bestselling author of Never Split the Difference, and one of the world’s leading experts on high-stakes communication. In this conversation, Brett and Chris explore what negotiation really is and why most of us misunderstand it entirely.Before he was teaching executives and founders how to navigate boardrooms, Chris was negotiating with terrorists, kidnappers, and people on the brink of taking their own lives. What he learned in those moments wasn’t about dominance or control. It was about understanding.They discuss the neuroscience of calm, why your nervous system is always negotiating before your words are, and how empathy, not agreement, not sympathy, becomes the most powerful tool in moments of conflict. Chris breaks down the internal “chatter” that sabotages us in difficult conversations and explains why curiosity is a competitive advantage in leadership, relationships, and business.This episode moves beyond tactics and into something deeper: how we regulate ourselves under pressure, how we create psychological safety, and why feeling understood can release potent forces for change.Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes negotiation, leading through tension, or simply trying to communicate more effectively in your personal life, this conversation reframes what influence truly means.

For years, The Gravity Podcast created space for meaningful conversations around business, creativity, and personal growth.But over the past year, something shifted.In this episode, Brett shares why he realized he was playing the external game — building, scaling, optimizing — and why he now wants to play a bigger game: the game of consciousness.After attending Abundance 360 and hearing Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson present their visions for space travel, Brett entered a deep therapeutic and spiritual process that led to a powerful realization: while we are investing extraordinary energy into exploring outer space, most of us have barely explored the vastness inside ourselves.INNERSPACE is born from that insight.This podcast will trace the psychological and emotional origin stories of builders, creators, leaders, and seekers — starting with childhood and following the invisible threads forward.Less performance.More presence.More honesty about the human experience.The first guest episode drops Thursday, 2/19.Welcome to INNERSPACE.

In this re-released episode in tribute to the great David Lynch, Brett Kaufman welcomes Bob Roth, one of the most experienced meditation teachers in the US and author of the New York Times bestseller “Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation.” With nearly 50 years of experience, Bob has introduced thousands to the practice of Transcendental Meditation. As the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, he has championed the cause of teaching meditation to over a million at-risk individuals across 35 countries. Bob shares his transformative journey, from witnessing Robert Kennedy's impactful speech and aspiring to be a Senator to his life-altering introduction to TM at the University of California, Berkeley. He delves into his early life, his father's wartime trauma, and the family's move to Marin County. Bob underscores the universality of trauma and the profound role of TM in calming the brain's amygdala, fostering resilience, and promoting overall well-being.Today on Gravity:Bob Roth's childhood, influences, and experiencing Berkeley in the '60sBob’s personal journey with Transcendental MeditationScience and benefits of TMAddressing trauma through TM and its societal impactDavid Lynch's influence and the expansion of TM in ColumbusLEARN MORE ABOUT THE PODCAST:The Gravity Podcast - Available on Apple and SpotifyLEARN MORE ABOUT GRAVITY:The Gravity ProjectGravity on InstagramLEARN MORE ABOUT THE HOST:Brett KaufmanBrett Kaufman on Instagram