Redefining the Masculine (Without Losing the Man)

Redefining the Masculine (Without Losing the Man)

In this episode of Integral Edge, Keith Martin-Smith explores the modern crisis of masculinity and offers a powerful framework for reclaiming the healthy strengths of traditional, modern, and postmodern masculine expressions. Rather than choosing between power and empathy, discipline and vulnerability, Keith shows how wholeness means learning to embody all of them—at the right time, in the right way.
Mapping an Ecology of Integrative Approaches to Addressing the Metacrisis

Mapping an Ecology of Integrative Approaches to Addressing the Metacrisis

IAM scholars Brandon Norgaard, Nicholas Hedlund, PhD, and Claudia Meglin provide a sweeping (albeit provisional) cartography of emergent frameworks rooted in an “Integrative Worldview“—ranging from metamodernism and integral theory to systems science, process philosophy, and critical realism—that are converging around a shared impulse to address the root causes of our civilizational predicament.
The End of America? How the Founders’ Genius Is Breaking Down (And What We Can Do About It)

The End of America? How the Founders’ Genius Is Breaking Down (And What We Can Do About It)

Can America still save itself — or is collapse inevitable? Drawing lessons from history, developmental psychology, and the meta-crisis, Keith explores why systems built on “enlightened self-interest” are faltering… and what kind of leadership could restore the balance.
IAM Spotlight: Faith Development Pathway

IAM Spotlight: Faith Development Pathway

Brendan Dempsey offers a powerful re-engagement with James Fowler’s Faith Development Theory, applying cutting-edge tools from developmental psychology to illuminate how our structures of meaning evolve. This presentation reveals not just how faith matures, but why this maturation is critical for meeting the challenges of a world in search of deeper coherence.
Becoming Whole in a Divided World

Becoming Whole in a Divided World

In this thought-provoking episode of Integral Edge, Keith Martin-Smith sits down with executive coach and consciousness explorer David Arrell to explore what it truly means to become whole, both personally and collectively, amid ongoing division and conflict.
The Cycles of Time: Mapping Evolution at the Edge of History

The Cycles of Time: Mapping Evolution at the Edge of History

In this wide-ranging conversation, Terri O’Fallon and Keith Martin-Smith explore how human development unfolds through increasingly complex relationships with time, from infancy’s timelessness to the transpersonal awareness of timelessness beyond time. They examine how cultural evolution is accelerating, why recurring societal crises reflect developmental recursions, and how future leadership must integrate ethical maturity, shadow work, and a multi-generational vision.
Why Philanthropy Is the Most Powerful Lever for Systemic Change

Why Philanthropy Is the Most Powerful Lever for Systemic Change

This episode introduces a groundbreaking developmental map of philanthropy, revealing how the field is evolving from strategic rigor to empowerment-driven justice — and now toward a new paradigm of integrative systems change. Josh Leonard and Robb Smith explore how philanthropic institutions hold the unique freedom and leverage to become civilization’s steering mechanism, capable of addressing root causes rather than symptoms in the age of the metacrisis.
How Can DEI Survive? (And Should It?)

How Can DEI Survive? (And Should It?)

Keith Martin-Smith offers a bold, developmental critique of modern DEI, tracing its evolution from fairness-based policy to postmodern orthodoxy. He explores how inclusion can become exclusion when empathy gives way to ideology—and outlines how DEI might survive by embracing complexity, dissent, and shared humanity.
Terminal Crisis: The Economic World War Has Begun

Terminal Crisis: The Economic World War Has Begun

The global system isn’t collapsing — it’s transforming. In this urgent episode, Robb Smith reveals why the U.S. is facing a historic terminal crisis, what comes next in the 700-year cycle of capital accumulation, and how a new world order — or global anarchy — is already taking shape.
Caught in the Algorithmic Undertow

Caught in the Algorithmic Undertow

Bruce Alderman and Josh Leonard explore the slow, invisible pull of digital systems — algorithms, platforms, attention economies — that subtly yet profoundly shape our beliefs, behaviors, and social worlds.
A Sociology of Big Pictures: Network Strategy for a 21st Century Worldview

A Sociology of Big Pictures: Network Strategy for a 21st Century Worldview

The Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM) presents A Sociology of Big Pictures: Network Strategy for a 21st Century Worldview by Robb Smith, an in-depth exploration of how grand integrative frameworks emerge, compete, and evolve within the modern attentional landscape. As we enter the Transformation Age — marked by rapid geopolitical, technological, ecological, and epistemic shifts — Smith argues that the need for a coherent, integrative worldview has never been greater.
IAM Spotlight: The Cultural Complexity Index

IAM Spotlight: The Cultural Complexity Index

Brendan Graham Dempsey introduces the Cultural Complexity Index (CCI), a groundbreaking initiative that empirically measures cognitive complexity in historical texts, revealing patterns in human meaning-making across time. By analyzing symbolic representation rather than collective belief systems, the CCI provides fresh insights into cultural evolution while distinguishing individual cognitive development from broader social dynamics.
The Big Picture Mind: What Every Elite is Missing

The Big Picture Mind: What Every Elite is Missing

In this first episode of The Big Picture Mind, Robb Smith explores the rapid, self-reinforcing change that is driving a global metacrisis across governance, technology, culture, and meaning. To navigate this, he calls for the rise of Big Picture Minds—people who can think integratively, restore coherence, and actively shape the future rather than be overwhelmed by it.
Polarization and the Algorithmic Undertow: Integral and Critical Realist Perspectives

Polarization and the Algorithmic Undertow: Integral and Critical Realist Perspectives

Bruce Alderman explores how our rapid transition into a globally networked information environment has created unprecedented challenges for human cognition, social cohesion, and collective meaning-making and sensemaking.
What We’ve Learned: 2024 Reflections and Looking Ahead to 2025

What We’ve Learned: 2024 Reflections and Looking Ahead to 2025

The Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM) is revolutionizing how we tackle global challenges by applying integrative metatheories—holistic frameworks that unify knowledge across disciplines. In this episode, Robb Smith and Josh Leonard reflect on IAM’s 2024 accomplishments and share an inspiring vision for 2025, highlighting leadership, collaboration, and storytelling as keys to driving transformational change.
Overflowing Purpose: An Inside Look

Overflowing Purpose: An Inside Look

In this short 14-minute video, we give you an exclusive inside look at Overflowing Purpose, a transformative new course that brings together renowned thinkers like Ken Wilber, John Vervaeke, Robb Smith, Cindy Wigglesworth, Gail Hochachka, Peter Merry, Greg Thomas, and others to address the complex challenges of our time — and your unique role in meeting those challenges.
Spiritual Intelligence: 21 Skills for Wisdom, Compassion, and Love in Action

Spiritual Intelligence: 21 Skills for Wisdom, Compassion, and Love in Action

Cindy Wigglesworth, trailblazer in the field of spiritual intelligence, has created an assessment tool that identifies our spiritual strengths and weaknesses — qualities that fall outside the traditional IQ or emotional intelligence (EQ) parameters — in order to provide a guide for determining which skills we as individuals need to develop in order to show up in the world as love in action.
The Wonderful (But Flawed) Ideals of DEI

The Wonderful (But Flawed) Ideals of DEI

Keith Martin-Smith takes a careful look at the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement when he began to notice the damage it was causing people he knew under the guise of progress, or equity. Putting his keen mind to the task, Keith identified seven key areas where the DEI movement goes markedly astray from the values it aspires to.
Introducing the Cultural Complexity Index

Introducing the Cultural Complexity Index

The Institute of Applied Metatheory recently chose to organize, fund and incubate a significant new Applied Metatheory Initiative called the Cultural Complexity Index, which we see as holding the potential to act as a high-leverage project for long-term social emancipation.
The Mysterious World of Shamanism

The Mysterious World of Shamanism

Roger Walsh provides us with a brilliant, big picture perspective, pointing out that at the heart of shamanism (and every great world tradition) are psychospiritual technologies—actual practices—that lead us to the doorway of the Great Mystery, and that service is the culmination of each tradition, both as a means to and an expression of one’s realization.
How America Got Here: A 50 Year Journey to Polarization

How America Got Here: A 50 Year Journey to Polarization

Robb Smith and Josh Leonard look at the deep structures — in the form of actual events, policies and decisions between 1970 and 2024 — that radically shifted America from one form of system “regime” and associated equilibrium, that of relative national coherence in the early 1970s, into a new, radically- and qualitatively-different regime and equilibrium of extreme polarized decoherence of 2024.
Radical Wholeness and the Five Paths of Transformation

Radical Wholeness and the Five Paths of Transformation

Ken Wilber and Andrew Holecek explore the frontiers of integral theory and human consciousness. Ken shares some of the key insights from his latest book, "Finding Radical Wholeness," offering a novel and deeply insightful perspective on the nature of reality and human development.
Democracy in Decline? The Supreme Court and the Threat to Public Morality

Democracy in Decline? The Supreme Court and the Threat to Public Morality

How did the democratic process and the values it represents — equality and liberty for all — come to be teetering on the brink? Mark illuminates the fact that the Constitution is not a set-in-stone document, but eminently open to interpretation, and explains that its interpretation is a direct reflection of the worldviews of the Supreme Court justices. In fact, the whole process of democracy needs to be aligned with a certain level of development in order to deliver...
Transforming Law Enforcement: Integral Policing Roundtable

Transforming Law Enforcement: Integral Policing Roundtable

Josh Leonard hosts three leading experts in the field of integral policing to explore how applying big-picture, integrative frameworks could help address the complex challenges facing modern law enforcement.
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