Welcome to Getting Under The Skin (GUTS)! Where the stories of our lives can be medicine for each other. Where reflection and curiosity opens up paths of conversation for us to explore together.
Join us for an exploration through conversation. This is an expedition, a journey in search of the stuff that makes us feel most human, the stuff that stirs your soul and reminds you of what really matters. These conversations are not performative interviews, book release tours or productivity hacks. They are an antidote to superficial small talk or marketing in disguise. We explore how people are formed by the lives they’ve lived, and celebrate the wisdom gained along the way.
Hosted by Topaz Adizes, Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and experience design architect exploring the transformative power of human connection. He is the founder and executive director of THE SKIN DEEP, creator of {THE AND} and author of 12QFL.
If you're ready to Get Under The Skin — we’ll meet you here.
Frequencies That Ripple Through the World | Thomas Droge
Thomas Droge is a physician of Classical Chinese Medicine, a Qigong master, an executive coach, Chief Mindfulness Officer at TIFIN and author of The Leader Within.
At 18, Thomas was hiding a kilo of coke under his parents' floorboards. At 12, he watched his father survive a near death experience, and he later saw 300 strangers fill a church to honor that same man's changed life. From there his path ran through martial arts, meditation, heartbreak, a breaking point in San Francisco and years of rebuilding. Today he's spent more than thirty years practicing Daoism, Tai Chi and Qigong, founded the Pathfinder Institute and coaches leaders through his practice, Pathfinding.
Thomas and Topaz talk about somatic healing, trusting your intuition, finding your purpose, compassion in action, and where we find our value as AI changes the world.
📖 The Leader Within: https://www.amazon.com.au/Leader-Within-foundational-practices-meaningful/dp/B0GV489M7D
🔗 Follow Thomas: https://www.instagram.com/thomasdroge/
Chapters
0:00 Introduction to Thomas Droge
1:23 Early Life and Father's Impact
6:05 Changing How We Live
16:47 A Wild Journey at Eighteen
25:23 Near Death Experiences and Spirituality
39:56 Martial Arts and Somatic Healing
54:55 The Breaking Point and Reconstruction
1:02:10 Cultivating the Gift of Healing
1:06:37 Compassion in Action and Community
1:17:38 Testing Beliefs and Perspectives
#guts #podcast #qigong #mindfulness #leadership
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28 Sept 2026
We Are Infinite | Gabe Orta
Gabe Orta is an award winning hospitality visionary who co-founded Bar Lab Hospitality in 2009 and helped create the award winning Broken Shaker, along with venues like 27 Restaurant, Mesiba, LilliStar, and Jolene Sound Room. Born in Colombia and raised in Miami, he was ten years old when his grandmother, father, and uncles were all killed within two weeks.This episode covers growing up around that violence, an unlikely start sweeping floors at a nightclub, and how he's turned inward in recent years, merging hospitality with ancestral practice and somatic ritual, inherited fear that isn't his own, and grief he never had time to feel.
Chapters
00:00 Intro2:02 Meet Gabe Orta2:18 Redefining what service means9:14 Losing his grandmother, father, and uncles within two weeks13:13 Finding refuge in a library15:14 Tasting cocaine at eight years old21:53 Fear that isn't even his own32:00 Sweeping floors at a nightclub, and the start of a career53:15 Grief he never had time to feel55:28 Ancestral wisdom without a medicine man in the house58:42 Feeling his father's presence1:14:51 The wounds we all carry, and pass down or heal1:17:50 Pure joy, and a physical form that's finite
Listen & Follow GUTS:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/
LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/
Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com
#gutspodcast #topazadizes #gabeorta #generationaltrauma #immigrantstory
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21 Sept 2026
The Soul of a Troublemaker | Mariquel Waingarten
Debriana Berlin is the founder and CEO of The Future Reference, a strategic communications firm for the environment, and was previously the first yoga instructor for the United States Senate and an EPA director under the Obama administration. Before any of that, she was a competitive figure skater who learned to fall, and get back up, roughly 18,000 times per jump.
This episode covers growing up in a chaotic home and finding safety in the ice rink, learning to charm and sell through watching her father, and how yoga slowly replaced transactional thinking with real presence. It also covers burning out at the EPA to the point of a thyroid diagnosis, the link between disconnection from the body and the climate crisis, and learning to live within the limits of an aging body.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
1:52 Meet Debriana Berlin
2:09 The tree question, and being born brave
4:16 Watching her father charm, sell, and reinvent himself
9:41 Finding yoga her first week of college
19:14 Falling 18,000 times per jump
22:20 Her superpower, teaching yoga inside the US Senate
28:42 Embodiment, human exceptionalism, and climate change
35:54 Burning out at the EPA
37:30 The diagnosis that forced her to slow down
41:59 Ice skating across the Swedish archipelago
46:56 Dance as her first language
53:49 What keeps her up at night
56:40 What life has designed her for
1:00:36 {THE AND} Self Edition question | Try the game: https://shop.theskindeep.com/products/the-and-self-deck?variant=43647547605170
Listen & Follow GUTS:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/
LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/
Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com
#gutspodcast #topazadizes #debrianaberlin #womeninbusiness
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Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
19,781
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 47 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
48
Social presence
91
YouTube
72
Engagement
0
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