Welcome to The Inner Frontier: Edition #1

Starting over fresh.

7 years ago, I hit publish on the first Curious Humans Newsletter, and today — hundreds of issues and 72 podcast episodes later — the project comes to a close.

The Curious Humans project was born from my obsession with the question of why, as kids, most of us were immensely curious, what was it that suppressed this as we grew older, and how might we go about reclaiming this as adults.

It's hard to overstate how much I learnt and grew from the decision to write and podcast in public, but recently, I've realised that I'm in a very different period of life and that it’s time to close this chapter.

There's a flavor of grateful heartbreak that's present — my life has shifted as a direct result of the conversations that it led to and the lens it gave me to view the world (fun fact: I met my now-pregnant wife, Kelly, because I asked her to be a guest on the podcast!)

It’s time to refresh the vibe. Here's what's on the horizon.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with National Geographic and spent my days spinning a globe and aching to go out on my own adventures in far-flung lands. I was fortunate to experience some of these — travelling to 70+ countries, a few multi-week expeditions, and once crossing the English Channel on a paddleboard!

This era of my life was abruptly ended by a personal loss that turned my life upside down. I realised that I’d been historically out of touch with my emotions, and the thought of becoming a bitter old man with unprocessed grief scared me. So I left the old life behind and went all in.

I have fond memories from the years that followed. I signed up for extended meditation retreats, spent 10 full days in total darkness, participated in psychedelic ceremonies, trained in a life-changing breathwork modality called Facilitated Breath Repatterning, and married the love of my life. I found myself drawn to interviewing world-famous poets, executive coaches, wise elders, pathless path friends, brave monastics, and renegade neuroscientists.

At this point, it seems clear to me that just as centuries ago, when our ancestors wrote ‘Terra Incognita’ or ‘Here be Dragons’ scribbled on their mappa mundi (world maps), in today’s world, the most exciting frontier is unquestionably the territory of our own consciousness.

So that’s what I intend to spend the next decade of my life exploring under the new banner of ‘The Inner Frontier’. I intend for it to be a hand-crafted, high signal newsletter and creative container for all kinds of experimental projects.

Here are some of the alive explorations that I intend to write about in the weeks and months to come:

1. Practical philosophy for exploring the nervous system: exploring the biological mechanism for how trauma is stored in the body, to the radical new role of bio-electricity in our physical wellbeing.

2. Exploring the first principles for inner work. How do we create the conditions for embodied safety and productive self-exploration?

3. Tools for safely engineering altered states of consciousness, moving away from anxiety towards experiences of foundational wellbeing.

4. Playful experiments with using AI as a thinking partner and intimate mirror to accelerate the journey of self-reflection.

5. Sharing novel theories at the edges of neuroscience: from vasocomputation (the biological mechanism for how trauma is stored in the body) to emerging research on bio-electricity from Dr Michael Levin.

6. And much, much more…

Okay, thanks for being a part of this journey so far. If you’re along for the ride, stay subscribed.

And if you have suggestions for topics you think would be interesting to write about or potential future podcast guests, please do let me know.

Onwards!

Jonny