The Integral Edge

Emerging perspectives on politics, science, and culture.

Past Episodes

How Can DEI Survive (and should it)?

DEI didn’t begin as ideology — it began as a moral correction. Its roots were in fairness, not theory; in redressing injustice, not enforcing orthodoxy.

What started as a movement of empathy has hardened into a culture of compliance — one that punishes dissent and narrows diversity to demographics alone.

True inclusion means making space for ideological, cultural, and developmental difference — not just race, gender, or orientation. It must be large enough to include the rural, the religious, the neurodivergent, and the politically heterodox.

When DEI demands agreement over understanding, it becomes identity absolutism — an ideology unable to see its own frame. Inclusion that excludes is no longer inclusion.

The most powerful DEI is built on empathy, not ideology. Empathy doesn’t silence difference — it strengthens systems to hold it.

The Shadow of Trump

Trump isn’t just a political figure — he’s a psychic Rorschach test. Loved or loathed, he reflects back the disowned parts of our collective shadow: rage, bravado, grievance, defiance.

This isn’t about Trump the man — it’s about what he evokes. He brings to the surface the denied aspects of our own psyche: the parts that crave power, resent weakness, and rebel against elite moralism.

Integral theory invites us to meet the moment not by collapsing into tribal outrage, but by integrating what we’ve repressed. Trump shows us what modernity excludes, what postmodernism condemns, and what tradition refuses to let die.

If we can’t metabolize the shadow, we’ll be ruled by it. The task isn’t to destroy Trump — it’s to confront the parts of us that created him.

Why So Many Men Feel Left Behind

When men lose purpose, they don’t just drift — they descend. Into nihilism, into rage, into movements that promise structure, certainty, and identity. The New Right isn’t just political — it’s existential.

Progressive culture often offers empathy but not meaning. It asks men to deconstruct, apologize, soften — but rarely invites them into maturity, mastery, or sacred responsibility.

Into that void steps a darker archetype: rigid, angry, and seductive. The New Right speaks to male longing — for order, initiation, and something worth defending.

We don’t fight extremism with shame. We fight it with depth. Men don’t need to be fixed. They need to be called — into wholeness, into wisdom, into meaning that doesn’t require an enemy.

Upcoming Talks & Interviews

Live talks are every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month.
10 am PT, 1 pm ET.

May 14: Trump & DOGE from an Integral Perspective

This talk is still being developed. Please check back for an updated title and description.

April 23: The Living Recursions of History, with Terri O’Fallon

This talk will be available soon.

Terri is the founder of STAGES International, a developmental think tank.

This this talk, it’s like you sit above the long arc of time like a cartographer of civilizations, mapping the spiraling DNA of collective evolution. Watching how each age—say, the Medieval, Enlightenment, and Postmodern—ripples with similar fourfold transformations: first physical infrastructure, then new worldviews, followed by self-aware critique, and then fragile but powerful attempts at unification.

Even revolutions are recursive rites of passage, not endpoints. The idea of progress becomes more multidimensional. As the recursion reveals itself, you feel history as a living being, exhaling complexity and inhaling integration.

About The Integral Edge

Welcome to a world on the edge.

AI is rewriting the rules. Politics are more polarized than ever, with the far right and left in an endless clash. The metacrisis looms, late-stage capitalism is unraveling, DEI is evolving, and strongmen are rising once more.

But that’s just the beginning.

This podcast takes an integral look at the forces shaping our reality—from cutting-edge neuroscience and biohacking to cryptocurrency, global economics, and the ancient wisdom of awakening, mindfulness, and embodiment.

Keith Martin-Smith brings a deep, multi-perspective lens to the chaos, cutting through the noise to find what actually matters.

This isn’t just another commentary on the world. It’s a guide to seeing—and living—beyond the divide.

Keith Martin-Smith is an author, executive coach, and lifelong explorer of human potential.