Here For The Truth

Joel & Yerasimos

In a world awash with propaganda, censorship, and spiritual confusion, Here For The Truth is a refuge for critical thinkers and seekers of authenticity. Hosted by Joel Rafidi and Yerasimos, this podcast cuts through the noise to explore psychology, philosophy, spirituality, health, freedom, and the human condition with honesty and depth. Through raw, unfiltered conversations with thought leaders, researchers, and free thinkers from around the world, Here For The Truth challenges collective narratives and invites you to reclaim your mind, body, and the essence of what makes you who you are. If you’re tired of surface-level conversations and ready to confront reality with depth and courage—this is your weekly listen. Subscribe, follow, and join the movement of those willing to see, think, and live differently. https://hereforthetruth.com

  1. 11 hrs ago

    Ep 299 - Kristen Nagle | Reclaiming Birth: A Former NICU Nurse's Reckoning

    In this episode, we sit down with Kristen Nagle: former NICU nurse turned whistleblower and founder of Reclaiming Birth. Her story is the arc of a system insider who couldn't unsee what she was a part of — a hospital culture that worships intervention, a profession that pathologizes the female body, and a machine that punishes the nurses who name it. We trace her hero's journey from the injections she administered that she now warns against, through public termination and media smears, to a betrayal letter from inside her own family. We explore the pivot from fighting freedom to creating it, the home birth that rewrote her relationship to her body, and a vulnerable, never-before-shared reckoning with her role in routine circumcision. The foundation of the world begins in the womb — and every act of self-trust flows from whether we claimed that moment or handed it away. (00:00) Slandered in the Media (00:32) Opening Conversation (01:42) Meet Kristen (02:42) Motherhood Sparks Awakening (06:44) Seeing Vaccine Harm in NICU (16:01) COVID Hospital Restrictions (20:39) Betrayal Becomes Calling (31:33) Reclaiming Birth at Home (37:31) How Hospitals Took Over (42:15) Peace Begins At Birth (45:34) Fathers In The Birth Space (52:47) Fear Culture Around Babies (56:11) Canada Vs US on Freedom (58:32) Reclaiming Birth Conference (Why In-Person Matters) (01:06:49) Circumcision (A Nurse’s Perspective) (01:20:27) Reclaiming Birth Evolution Guest Links Reclaiming Birth Conference [Discount code: HFTT15] Website Connect with Us Start the Free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Watch Our Episodes Join our free Telegram community Join our membership Friends of the Truth

    1hr 26min
  2. 24 May

    Ep 298 - Christopher August | Sometimes the Sign Is a Billboard

    In this episode, we sit down with Christopher August — breathwork facilitator, author, and co-founder of Beats and Breath — for a conversation that runs from a literal billboard to a near-death drowning on the Zambezi that seeded the mission he’s lived ever since. We trace his path from corporate tech and quiet despair into Peace Corps Tanzania, the medicine work that reopened his capacity to feel, and the slow alchemy of moving from victim to creator. We talk about soul sickness as a cultural diagnosis, the inner child as the keys to freedom, and the Gene Keys as a map from shadow into gift. Christopher names what he’s stepping into next: a healing community in the Pacific Northwest he’s been envisioning for fifteen years, and the abandonment wound that surfaces when you say yes to the call again. (00:00) Peace Corps Intro (00:34) Opening Conversation (06:47) Show Start (08:04) Corporate Life To Calling (11:29) Near Death Experience (17:14) Peace Corps Mission Work (19:35) Returning Home Culture Shock (21:31) Breathwork Awakening (26:38) Sonic Breathwork Modality (29:44) Plant Medicine Insights (33:34) Family Healing And Compassion (37:51) Constellations And Sovereignty (43:38) Gene Keys (49:48) Breath Meets DNA (01:03:06) Abandonment and Big Move (01:08:01) Vision for Community (01:17:37) Relationships as Dojo Guest Links Website: https://christopheraugust.co Book: Master Your Breath, Transform Your Life App: Beats in Breath Connect with Us Start the Free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Watch Our Episodes Join our free Telegram community Join our membership Friends of the Truth

    1hr 28min
  3. 17 May

    Ep 297 - Sophie Fletcher, PhD | Functional Freeze & the Hidden Cost of Keeping It Together

    Sophie Fletcher, PhD, somatic nervous system practitioner and co-facilitator inside Rise Above the Herd, returns to Here for the Truth with a diagnosis for what’s quietly running through most of us: functional freeze. It looks nothing like collapse. You’re still showing up, doing the work, holding the relationships, but something inside has gone numb, and the modern world is engineered to keep it that way. Sophie traces why the truth-seeker community is especially exposed, how chronic low-grade threat overwhelms the body until there’s nowhere left to discharge it, and why mistaking calm for regulated is itself a form of dysregulation. We move through healthy aggression and the safe expression of sympathetic charge, the entanglement of parts work with nervous system state, and what building capacity looks like inside a family carrying a collective nervous system pulse of its own. Slow is fast, Sophie says. The relationship with your own physiology gets built in moments most people are too impatient to honor. (00:00) Regulation Redefined (00:40) Opening Conversation (01:38) Show Start (04:36) Truth Seeker Freeze & Polyvagal Basics (09:12) Functional Freeze Explained (15:29) Modern Life Triggers (22:08) Healthy Nervous System (35:55) From Freeze to Freedom (38:12) Healthy Aggression Outlets (46:30) The Monk Study (51:28) Sympathetic vs Dorsal Types (58:22) Appropriate Response Defined (01:10:03) Repair Self Respect (01:17:21) Nervous System And Parts (01:20:36) Winnie The Pooh Psychology (01:24:39) Shadow And Projection (01:35:19) AI Movie Archetypes GUEST LINK Website — sophiefletcherphd.com CONNECT WITH US Start the Free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Watch Our Episodes Join our free Telegram community Join our membership Friends of the Truth

    1hr 44min
  4. 10 May

    Ep 296 - Taylor Perkins | Out of Mormonism & Into the Mirror

    Raised in a Mormon family where his mother prophesied at his birth that he’d one day lead the church, Taylor Perkins spent decades trying to live up to that identity — as a missionary, a husband at 20, and a tech founder by 28 — until it all began to unravel. We follow his path through years of religious shame and addiction, a five-cup ayahuasca ceremony that shook the foundation of what he believed, and a period of financial collapse where DoorDash shifts became part of his rebuilding. That stretch, along with a series of synchronicities, ultimately led him out of an 11-year marriage. Underneath all of it is what we go straight at: the tendency to outsource authority — to a church, a guru, a chart, a card…anything that claims to tell you who you are. Taylor speaks to what it actually takes to stand on your own when the structures you leaned on fall away, why the ego isn’t something to crush, and why most expansion isn’t something you force. Your life is already trying to come through you. The work is to stop getting in the way. (00:00) Reality as a Mirror (00:36) Opening Conversation (02:00) Show Start (03:31) Growing Up Mormon (13:51) Marriage and Addiction Cycle (18:38) Startup Success to Rock Bottom (22:21) Ayahuasca Awakening (32:07) Seeking Gurus and Pedestals (33:44) Portugal Surrender Experiment & Marriage Crossroads (38:25) Spirituality Without Performance (42:06) Astrology and Heart Darkness (46:43) Cloud Atlas Synchronicity / Divorce & Confession (52:46) Bali Decision and Self Doubt (56:36) Outsourcing Truth to Gurus (01:03:39) The Aftermath (01:11:08) Ego as Sacred Temple (01:17:14) Chosen One Paradox (01:24:26) Union of Opposites (01:35:27) Revealing Not Learning / Nonlocal Consciousness Void (01:41:02) Education Means ‘To Bring Forth’ (01:58:08) Light Footed Enlightenment GUEST LINKS Instagram — @iamtaylorperkins CONNECT WITH US Start the Free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Watch Our Episodes Join our free Telegram community Join our membership Friends of the Truth

    2h 3m
  5. 26 Apr

    Ep 294 - Nikhil Kale & Nathaniel Solace | The Conscious Creator in the Age of AI

    In this episode we bring together two returning guests who've never met — Nikhil Kale, founder of Asraya and creator of ACE, and Nathaniel Solace, filmmaker, transformational coach, and builder at the frontier of conscious AI — for a fierce conversation built to dismantle the technological black pill at the heart of the truth-and-freedom space. We go deep on agentic AI as amplifier rather than replacement, the collapse of distance between vision and creation, the spiritual function of this technology arriving at this exact evolutionary moment, and why your self-knowledge and coherence become more valuable — not less — as the tools get more powerful. If you've felt the weight of this moment but also sensed an invitation hidden inside it, this conversation is your permission to stop hiding and start wielding. (00:00) Through the Fire Intro (00:28) Opening Conversation (02:55) Meet Aubert Bastiat / Origins and Family Split (11:09) Early Crime and Atheism (15:10) Internet and Psychedelic Awakening (18:26) Drug Dealing & LA County Jail (25:28) Getting Clean & Relapse Into Psychosis (33:35) Family Burdens (38:07) Suicidal Breaking Point (45:01) Trying to Save His Younger Sister (01:00:24) Father Wound Healing (01:06:59) Sacred Sons Origin & The Fallout (01:18:04) Why They Pushed Me Out (01:30:58) Dark Night Spiral (01:41:08) Extortion And Smear GUEST LINKS Nikhil Kale Website: nikhilkale.com ACE / Asraya: asraya.io Instagram: @primal.alchemy Nathaniel Solace Website: nathanielsolace.com AI training & freebie: nathanielsolace.com/ai CONNECT WITH US Start the Free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Watch Our Episodes Join our free Telegram community Join our membership Friends of the Truth

    1hr 48min
  6. 19 Apr

    Ep 293 - Aubert Bastiat | The Truth Shall Set You Free

    In his first podcast appearance in years, Aubert Bastiat holds nothing back. A transformational coach, relationship mentor, and co-founder of Sacred Sons, Aubert sits down for one of the rawest, most unflinching conversations we’ve ever had, tracing the full arc of a life shaped by abandonment, addiction, spiritual awakening, and the very public dismantling of everything he built. We go deep into the father wound, the patterns it seeds across a lifetime, what it actually costs to tell the truth when the truth threatens everything you’ve constructed, and what becomes possible when a man stops performing and starts rebuilding from the ground up. This is a story of sacred ruin, of losing identity, reputation and relationship, and finding something indestructible on the other side. If you’ve ever wondered what it really looks like to let the truth set you free, this conversation will show you. (00:00) Through the Fire Intro (00:28) Opening Conversation (02:55) Meet Aubert Bastiat / Origins and Family Split (11:09) Early Crime and Atheism (15:10) Internet and Psychedelic Awakening (18:26) Drug Dealing & LA County Jail (25:28) Getting Clean & Relapse Into Psychosis (33:35) Family Burdens (38:07) Suicidal Breaking Point (45:01) Trying to Save His Younger Sister (01:00:24) Father Wound Healing (01:06:59) Sacred Sons Origin & The Fallout (01:18:04) Why They Pushed Me Out (01:30:58) Dark Night Spiral (01:41:08) Extortion And Smear Guest Links aubertbastiat.com instagram.com/aubertbastiat Connect with Us Start the free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Join our free Telegram community Join our membership Friends of the Truth Access all our links

    2hr 1min
  7. 12 Apr

    Ep 292 - Lishui Springford | The Root of All Conflicts?

    In this episode, we sit down with Lishui Springford — earth scientist turned ecology professor, GNM practitioner since 2002, and host of the Mind Over Symptom podcast. Lishui makes the case that identity conflict sits at the root of all biological conflict — that every symptom, every pattern, every fear traces back to a single fracture: existential isolation, the felt experience of being severed from the source of your own being. We explore how victim-based, deterministic thinking follows us into even the frameworks meant to free us, and why the only question that actually resolves anything is who do I want to be? If you’ve sensed there’s a deeper question beneath every pattern you keep repeating — this one’s for you. (00:00) Existential Isolation (00:34) Opening Conversation (03:06) Meet Lishui Springford (06:10) Learning From Her Son’s Down syndrome (09:40) Discovering Five Laws (12:13) Panic Disorder Breakthrough (17:56) 90s Identity Shift (27:14) Tough Love and Weakness (30:10) Constellations and Gender (37:13) Anti Life Programming (44:49) Self Esteem and ‘Home’ (50:26) Water Edema (56:53) Epicrisis Explained (59:57) Brain Cancer Reframed (01:03:58) Diagnostics Fear Loop (01:06:01) Cancer Screening History (01:18:45) Altruism And Devaluation (01:29:57) Identity Conflict Mind Tree (01:35:27) Raising a Child with Down Syndrome Guest Links https://mindtreehealth.co Mind Over Symptom podcast Core GNM Course Connect with Us Start the Free 7-Day Self-Esteem Reset Watch Our Episodes Join our membership Friends of the Truth Join our free Telegram community Follow us on Instagram

    1hr 51min
4.7
out of 5
38 Ratings

About

In a world awash with propaganda, censorship, and spiritual confusion, Here For The Truth is a refuge for critical thinkers and seekers of authenticity. Hosted by Joel Rafidi and Yerasimos, this podcast cuts through the noise to explore psychology, philosophy, spirituality, health, freedom, and the human condition with honesty and depth. Through raw, unfiltered conversations with thought leaders, researchers, and free thinkers from around the world, Here For The Truth challenges collective narratives and invites you to reclaim your mind, body, and the essence of what makes you who you are. If you’re tired of surface-level conversations and ready to confront reality with depth and courage—this is your weekly listen. Subscribe, follow, and join the movement of those willing to see, think, and live differently. https://hereforthetruth.com

You Might Also Like