The Drop the Needle Podcast

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1. 84: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 84 | The Tiger of Beijing | Dr. Joy Kong

   5 november 2026 · 1 uur 29 min

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   Dr. Joy Kong left post-Tiananmen Beijing at 20 with a rejected visa and almost nothing in her pockets. What she did next is something most of us would never try. She opened the Beijing Yellow Pages, found the best hotels in the city, and started calling rooms at random until somebody, somewhere, opened a door. Lees meer

   She calls it poking at the universe. That poking turned into a job as a tour guide in Tibet, a way to America, and eventually a seat at UCLA medical school. Joy became a psychiatrist, spent years watching the psychiatric emergency room work like a revolving door, and went looking for a way to help people actually heal. Today she's a triple board certified physician who trains doctors around the world in regenerative medicine, and her memoir is The Tiger of Beijing.

   We talk about the day her visa was denied and the three days of grief that turned into fuel, and the grandmother who nicknamed her "rolling knife meat" because no knife could cut her. Joy opens up about the darkest stretch of her life, surrounded by brilliant classmates at UCLA and feeling so small she questioned why she was here, and about cutting anatomy class to go sit in temples. She explains why she heals on three fronts, mind, body and spirit, and which one most people skip. She shares her mother's story and the Chinese medicine she grew up with, and why she believes East and West need to borrow from each other. I share how meditation became the linchpin of my own weight loss, and for anyone who can't afford treatment right now, Joy gives three things you can start on this week.

   And stay for the Playlist Round: a Taiwanese pop song about a kid daydreaming in class, the first American song she ever heard, John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," discovering Carole King in San Francisco, and "Amazing Grace."

   Dr. Kong shares her own views and experience; nothing in this episode is medical advice. Talk with your own doctor before starting or stopping any treatment.

   KEY TOPICS
   Leaving pos…

2. 83: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 83 | His Doctor Said "Hope for the Best." So He Found Another Way | Brad Pitzele

   29 oktober 2026 · 53 min

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   Brad Pitzele beat Lyme disease, then autoimmunity, then melanoma. And somewhere in the middle of all that, he stopped just trying to survive and started asking a bigger question: what does the body actually need to heal? Lees meer

   In his thirties Brad developed autoimmune arthritis and ended up on a treadmill of drugs that helped a little less each time, until a known side effect showed up as melanoma. His doctor's answer was another drug in the same class, and to hope for the best. Those words kept ringing in his ears. Years of diets, supplements and treatments later, a test finally came back positive for Lyme disease and a co-infection called Bartonella, and the doctor who ordered it sent him out the door with one suggestion: look into oxygen.

   We talk about the dark, isolating side of chronic illness, faking it through the workday with a young family at home, and why Brad says you can't just have a seat at the table when it comes to your health. You need to be at the head of it. He walks us through the day his symptom journal showed him 13 symptoms had quietly disappeared, breaks down oxygen, inflammation and mitochondria in plain English, names the biggest mistakes people make while trying to heal, and explains why he believes hope may be the most powerful tool you have. I share a family story of my own about being told to trust the experts, and we get into how a homemade oxygen setup became 1000 Roads.

   And stay for the Playlist Round: Joan Jett, Led Zeppelin, Phish, the Grateful Dead and Widespread Panic, "Eye of the Tiger," Paolo Nutini, Neil Young, and the one song Brad's daughter has played more than 5,000 times.

   Brad shares his own experience; nothing in this episode is medical advice. Talk with your own doctor before starting any new therapy.

   KEY TOPICS
   Autoimmune arthritis and the medication treadmill · When a side effect becomes melanoma · A late Lyme disease and Bartonella diagnosis · The isolation of chronic illness · Owning your own health · Oxygen, inflam…

3. 82: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 82 | He Drowned and Woke Up at the Bottom of the Pool | Thayne Martin

   22 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 9 min

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   He drowned in his own pool, woke up on the bottom under a full moon, and came back with an equation for happiness. Lees meer

   For years, Thayne Martin looked like a man who had it all figured out: six-time President's Club, top 10% nationwide, a career built on breaking sales records. Underneath it he was carrying a secret from childhood, abuse that began when he was a boy in Phoenix, and a stack of diagnoses that included dissociative identity disorder, bipolar I and complex PTSD. He tells us how he hid it, how it surfaced in a board meeting, and the woman who never gave up on him.

   Then, on August 13, 2023, alone in the pool late at night, he had a seizure and drowned. It was his second near-death experience. He woke up at the bottom of the pool, calm, an atheist with no idea how to get out, until a voice said: move your head. What came back with him became ELAH, the Equation of Life and Abundant Happiness: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division applied to your emotional life, plus "net neutral," the "gratitude cocktail," and why he says fear is a direction, not a stop sign.

   And stay for the Playlist Round: ZZ Top, Propaganda, Above & Beyond, Donna Summer with the Phoenix Symphony, and the song that carried a little boy over the rainbow.

   This conversation includes Thayne's account of childhood sexual abuse, addiction and suicide attempts. If it brings something up for you, in the US you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Thayne shares his own experience; nothing here is medical advice.

   KEY TOPICS
   Hiding childhood trauma behind a high-performing career · Dissociative identity disorder, without the Hollywood myth · Two near-death experiences by drowning · Leaving the victim story behind · ELAH: the Equation of Life and Abundant Happiness · Net positive, net negative and net neutral · Experiential gratitude and the "gratitude cocktail" · The principle of abundance · Music as vibration

   SOUND BITES
   "I'm not a victim. I was never a victi…

4. 81: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 81 | Am I on the Wrong Mountain? | Matt Ludmer

   15 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 16 min

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   What if you reach the top of your mountain and it turns out to be the wrong one? Lees meer

   In 2000, Matt Ludmer and his partner were named the No. 1 producing team at DLJ. He walked up to collect the award, and his very next thought was, "Where do I go from here?" Earlier that year he had wandered into a matinee of a play called Wrong Mountain, and its question never left him.

   Matt grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, the son of a man who sold staples and nails up and down the Turnpike. He talked his way into the University of Chicago by sitting outside the dean's office, talked his way into Morgan Stanley by walking into a recruiting lunch uninvited, and spent decades building wealth for other people while quietly studying meditation, Tibetan Buddhism and Judaism on the side. For years, none of those worlds knew about the others. At his 50th birthday, none of his best friends knew each other.

   We talk about the thirteen years between knowing and leaving, why a risk manager decided the risk of staying was worse, the day he wrote ARTICULATION on his daughter's wall and saw her light dim, a week alone in a Vermont cabin where he started laughing on day three, and what his father knew about contentment that took Matt forty years on Wall Street to learn. His new book, The Right Mountain, comes out October 20.

   And stay for the Playlist Round: Led Zeppelin, Queen, Al Green, a tenor aria, and the Knicks.

   KEY TOPICS
   Reaching the top and asking "where do I go from here?" · Living two lives: Wall Street and the meditation cushion · The four dimensions of true wealth · Intelligent risk and the decision to leave · Money as achievement, not fulfillment · Being spiritual in business · Parenting and the achiever mindset · A solo retreat and laughing at your own story · Must do, fun to do, and what your heart wants · What a father's contentment teaches

   SOUND BITES
   "Did it ever occur to you that you may be on the wrong mountain?"
   "I'm a wealth manager and I didn't feel wealthy."
   "My job is n…

5. 80: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 80 | He Ran for Mayor on Love | Helix Wolfson

   8 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 20 min

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   What happens when a guy runs for mayor of Los Angeles on a platform of love? Lees meer

   Helix Wolfson did exactly that. He legally changed his name to Paul E. Amori, put on a three-piece red suit, and ran for mayor on one question: what would love do? He came in last. He also walked off a debate stage with a dozen people telling him he'd earned their vote, and he says it felt like winning.

   That's one chapter. Helix grew up in the theater, made films, built stages at Burning Man and Lightning in a Bottle, and when COVID cancelled Burning Man he helped build the Infinite Playa, a virtual version of it. That project grew into Infinite Reality, a metaverse company that reached a $12 billion valuation. Then he walked away.

   We talk about what survives when you move a sensory experience like Burning Man into a virtual world, the difference between the cutting edge and the bleeding edge, and why the people who start a company usually aren't the ones who end up running it. Then we get into AI, and his answer surprised me: he thinks we're not scared enough. We go back and forth about jobs, fulfillment, and what's happening in the workforce I see every day in my recruiting work, and we land on the one thing he believes technology can't replace: being in a room with other humans.

   And stay for the Playlist Round: Helix shares some big personal news for the first time, right here on the show.

   KEY TOPICS
   Running for mayor as Paul E. Amori · Leading with love instead of fear · Career politics and liquid democracy · Building a virtual Burning Man · Amori's Casino and Burlesque · From startup to $12 billion, and walking away · Cutting edge vs. bleeding edge · Founders vs. operators · AI fear, AGI and superintelligence · Jobs, fulfillment and the changing workforce · What technology can't give us

   SOUND BITES
   "What would love do was my mantra."
   "To become authentic while assuming a role is quite a feat."
   "The bleeding edge… is as painful as it sounds."
   "I'm not sure you'll like this answer…

6. 79: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 79 | You're Carrying Energy That Isn't Yours | Connie Smock

   1 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 22 min

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   How much of what you're carrying is actually yours? Lees meer

   Connie Smock, Connie Warrior of Light, is back for her third visit, and this time we get practical. Her book, Shift Your Energy, Change Your Life!, is built around one word: fear. After 35 years of readings and energy healings, she says fear is what blocks most people, and a lot of what feeds it is energy they picked up somewhere else and never put down.

   We talk about why the people who challenge us most are our biggest teachers, what sales school taught her about celebrating the no's, and why staying in a relationship that's over can hurt the other person more than leaving. Then we get into energy clearing in plain English: what it is, how to tell what's yours from what isn't, the quick clearing she says anyone can do today, and why sage and holy water never touched what was in her own house.

   Then I put myself in the chair, and Connie reads me live, on the air.

   KEY TOPICS
   Fear as the root of most blocks · The people who challenge us as teachers · Celebrating the no's · Why staying can hurt the other person more · Energy clearing in plain English · Body testing: what's yours and what isn't · Discarnate souls and "hitchhikers" · Interdimensionals and why sage wasn't enough · A quick daily clearing · The seven sacred flames · Developing clairsentience · A live tarot reading

   SOUND BITES
   "The people who challenge us the most… those are your biggest teachers."
   "Celebrate the no's… because you're that much closer to your yes."
   "You're hurting that other person more… that other person could be with someone who actually looks forward to seeing them every day."
   "If you never washed your physical body ever… how many layers of filth and dirt would you have? … It's the same thing with spiritual clearing."

   CHAPTERS
   00:00 Intro
   00:41 Connie Smock, back for a third visit
   01:52 The Listening Field retreat, and why she does qigong every day
   05:32 Why fear? The spine of her book
   10:01 Sales school: celebrate the no's
   11:47 35…

7. 78: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 78 | Joey's Song: He Couldn't Speak. The Music Did. | Mike Gomoll

   24 september 2026 · 1 uur 4 min

   Afspelen
   What does a child who never spoke a word leave behind? Lees meer

   Mike Gomoll's son Joey died at five. With Butch Vig, he built Joey's Song: $2 million raised for epilepsy research, zero paid staff. Dravet syndrome, Freezing Man, 35 artists playing free.

   Joey couldn't speak. When the music came on, he'd find whoever was in the room, grab a finger, and make sure they were dancing. Fifteen years later his dad runs Joey's Song and Freezing Man, two nights at a 2,500-seat room in Madison with members of Guns N' Roses, Cheap Trick, Tears for Fears, The Bangles and the Goo Goo Dolls, all of them playing for nothing.

   Mike on the misdiagnosis years, the brain's "blue screen of death," the night Butch Vig asked what he could do to help, and why one in 26 people have epilepsy and hardly anyone says so out loud.

   ✨ In this episode:
   ✅ Joey, Dravet syndrome, and two years of misdiagnosis
   ✅ Why music got through when words couldn't
   ✅ Epilepsy as the brain's blue screen of death
   ✅ Zone defense: protecting Julia and Sam
   ✅ Grace for the people who say the wrong thing
   ✅ How a CD release party became Joey's Song
   ✅ The night Butch Vig asked how he could help
   ✅ Freezing Man: 35 artists, two nights, nobody paid
   ✅ One in 26: why epilepsy stays in the shadows
   ✅ Making the ask for Joey's Song

   Sound bites
   "Then we lost Joe, and it was time to help the next family."
   "You saw the sun in his face."
   "My five-year-old son died. I need your help."

   Chapters
   00:00 The kid who made sure you were dancing
   01:46 Welcome, Mike
   02:10 Headliners, IBM, and the road back to Wisconsin
   04:50 Three kids from Guatemala, and Joey's first seizure
   05:20 "Then we lost Joe, and it was time to help the next family"
   06:42 Why music got through when words couldn't
   07:37 Epilepsy as the brain's blue screen of death
   10:00 What you saw in Joey's face
   11:35 Two years of misdiagnosis
   12:11 The small breakthroughs that carried them
   17:50 Zone defense: protecting Julia and Sam
   18:55 Grace for the people who say the wrong thing
   20:0…

8. 77: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 77 | God Told Me to Make This Record | Drew McManus of Satsang

   17 september 2026 · 1 uur 10 min

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   Drew McManus learned the word that would become his band's name on a mountain pass in Nepal. It means sitting in the company of truth. He's built ten years and six records on it. Lees meer

   The new one is called Elohim, and he didn't pick the title. He was told to.

   We talk about the revelatory experience that preceded it and the illness that followed, about a father who was a preacher and told a skateboarding punk rock kid he had a minister's heart, and about the question Drew asked for years growing up poor in a house he doesn't pretend was safe: why did all of this happen to me? The answer, when it arrived, had changed shape. Perhaps none of it happened to him. Perhaps it happened for him.

   We also get into why he won't play two of his early songs anymore, what the music industry looks like from the inside when you've refused to play along, the one sentence a Buddhist said to him at a merch table that became a mantra, and a hidden Nipsey Hussle track that he heard on the Pacific Coast Highway beside a friend who'd been in federal prison three hundred days earlier.

   Elohim is out now. Twenty seven minutes, built to be played start to finish. Satsang plays Garcia's Chicago on November 4th.

   Every song Drew named, in the order he named them, 21 tracks from Jackson Browne to Nipsey Hussle. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2lrJeDuNf7H8TIAMjd3lXY

   Elohim: https://satsang.ffm.to/elohim
   Satsang: https://satsangmovement.com
   Instagram: @satsang
   Chicago: Garcia's Chicago, 4 November 2026

   Drew McManus is the founder and frontman of Satsang. He named the band after a word he learned on a mountain pass in Nepal in 2013, meaning to sit in the company of truth. Six records later he remains independent and owns all of his music. His new album, Elohim, released 4 September 2026, and the Elohim Tour runs through the autumn. Press photo credit: Drew Korf.

   CHAPTERS

   00:00 Intro
   02:36 The word on a mountain pass in Nepal
   13:18 How Elohim was made backward
   28:27 Brian's vo…

9. 76: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 76 | Fire, Brimstone and Converse | Rev. Dr. Rob Zahn

   11 september 2026 · 1 uur 24 min

   Afspelen
   What if the sacred and the secular were never two different things to begin with? Lees meer

   Rev. Dr. Rob Zahn is a Lutheran pastor, a theologian, a semiotician, and a musician. He wears Converse under his liturgical robes. He also wrote a book about LSD, a drug smuggling ring, and the birth of contemporary Christian music.

   To him, none of that is a contradiction. That is the whole point.

   In this episode of The Drop the Needle Podcast, Jim Alstott sits down with Rob to trace a life that runs from a small town childhood with an absent father, through a doctorate in semiotics, to the hidden history behind his book, LSD to Galilee: Incarnation in the Psychedelic Subculture.

   Rob explains why he does not frame his father's absence as a forgiveness issue, even after a reunion that surfaced anger, grief, and questions nobody answered. He walks Jim through the line that runs from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love to the Jesus People movement to Maranatha Music, and why Lonnie Frisbee got quietly written out of the cleaner version of that story.

   Then there is the music. Mumford and Sons in a stadium full of strangers singing the same words. Dave Matthews Band. Meatloaf. Hamilton. Disney soundtracks he refuses to apologize for.

   Can a pastor tell the truth about where his faith came from and still keep his pulpit?

   ✨ In this episode:

   ✅ Growing up in small town America, raised by a single mother

   ✅ Why forgiveness may be the wrong frame for an absent father

   ✅ The father he found through one mailed letter, and the Las Vegas hotel room

   ✅ What semiotics reveals about culture, congregations, and blind spots

   ✅ Why the sacred and secular divide does not hold

   ✅ Converse under the robes, and other small acts of resistance

   ✅ The Brotherhood of Eternal Love to the Jesus People to Maranatha Music

   ✅ How Lonnie Frisbee was written out of the story

   ✅ Psychedelics, sacrament, and music as portals to the divine

   ✅ Why the church has to keep being put in check by people, not power

   Sound bite…

10. 75: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 75 | She Quit God. God Stayed. | Sunshine Witchski, The Sober Witch

    3 september 2026 · 1 uur 3 min

    Afspelen
    What if walking away from the religion you were raised in isn't losing your faith — it's the first honest thing you ever did with it? Lees meer

    Sunshine Witchski was eleven years old when she noticed the contradictions in what she was being taught in Catholic school. She asked. Nobody had an answer she could live with.

    What followed was decades of addiction, a rock bottom in Costa Rica, and a long walk back — not to the Church, but to something she could finally call her own.

    Today she is a psychic medium, soul healer, Reiki master, high priestess, and the founder of Sunshine Readings. She calls herself the Sober Witch.

    Can you lose your religion and keep your faith?

    In this candid episode of The Drop the Needle Podcast, Jim Alstott sits down with Sunshine Witchski to talk about growing up Catholic in Detroit, the question at age eleven that started everything, the years she spent numbing what she couldn't name, and how she built a spiritual life on her own terms — one with room for tarot, recovery, shadow work, and every part of herself she was once told to hide.

    Sunshine shares the moment she stopped performing belief, what rock bottom actually looked like, and the day she walked into a room full of strangers and heard the only thing that could have reached her: you are not alone, and there is hope.

    Together, Jim and Sunshine get into the difference between prescribed religion and personal faith, why shadow work isn't optional, why receiving help is harder than giving it, and what changes when you decide the universe might be conspiring in your favor.

    ✨ In this episode:

    ✔️ Growing up Catholic in Detroit

    ✔️ The question at age eleven that changed everything

    ✔️ Rock bottom in Costa Rica

    ✔️ The room where hope came back

    ✔️ Prescribed religion vs. personal faith

    ✔️ Shadow work and healing old wounds

    ✔️ Why receiving is more vulnerable than giving

    ✔️ Personal sovereignty and self-acceptance

    ✔️ Pronoia — the opposite of paranoia

    ✔️ Music as the soundtrack of a …

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