In today’s episode, I speak with Eamon Armstrong. Eamon is a public speaker, writer, podcast host and former Creative Director for Fest300. His podcast, Life is a Festival, is one of my personal favorites. Eamon’s interview style is something I have been taking notes on for myself since the start of theEWpodcast and I highly recommend listening to Life is a Festival if you haven’t already heard of it. On his show, Eamon interviews festival leaders and deep thinkers from around the world including Jamie Wheal, Marian Goodell, Jordan Hall and many others. Eamon also hosts the Psychedelic Therapy podcast through Maya Health, where he interviews guests around the topic of, you guessed it, psychedelics and therapy. Initially, the intent of this conversation was to look at what aspects of festival culture might be amplified in society today to help us navigate this difficult moment that is 2020. It’s no secret that currently in America, we have lost our sense of community and it was my intention in this conversation to gain insight from Eamon’s depth of experience at festivals, places where community is key, to find out what could be done to get that sense of community back. This didn’t exactly happen. As you’ll hear, the majority of this conversation is spent talking about mental health. And it’s a great conversation that covers both Eamon’s and my own personal histories with mental health struggles, the role of psychedelics in recovery, the importance of actually doing the work and much more. About two thirds of the way into this discussion, we do manage to get the conversation back on its original tracks and all goes just fine, until it doesn’t. At one point towards the end of the conversation, I attempt to make a point that I had been excited to make as I prepped to speak with Eamon. In fact, during my prep I had imagined the flow of how our discussion might go and this particular point that I attempt to bring up was supposed to be a big deal. But, it falls flat with Eamon. At this point, we were creeping up on the 90-minute mark which we had initially scheduled as our time limit. If you make it this far into the episode, you’ll hear as I try to end the interview because we’ve reached 90 minutes in a not-so-subtle attempt to get out of what I perceived to be an awkward situation. What happens next was totally unexpected and i think actually made the podcast better, if not slightly more uncomfortable for yours truly. This podcast as a project, started as a growing experience for myself and since that has not changed, I have decided to leave the ending of this conversation mostly untouched, where you’ll get to hear some of this growth happen live. I think I will just leave it at that and let you discover what happens if you decide to stick around till the end. Many thanks to Eamon for being an awesome human and bringing his A-game. As you’ll hear, I have looked up to Eamon’s work for a while now and he did not disappoint.
https://www.eamonarmstrong.com
Life is a Festival: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-is-a-festival/id1443178401
The Psychedelic Therapy Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-is-a-festival/id1443178401
The Body Keeps the Score: https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748
Steppenwolf: https://www.amazon.com/Steppenwolf-Novel-Hermann-Hesse/dp/0312278675/
Finite and Infinite Games: https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1476731713/
Donate to Burning Man: https://donate.burningman.org
