Episodes

Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
S4E8 Family and Generational Trauma
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear. This week we are talking families!
Despite our fierce commitment to individualism, trauma is far more likely to follow the way the mind has actually been made, rather than the way we have for the last several hundred years tried to pretend that it works. We would like to think that the trauma that we experience or perpetrate will only have effects on us or the ones upon whom we inflict it.
But that would not be true to the way the brain works. As we will discover, what happens in one generation doesn’t necessarily stay in that generation. Rather, it can have the tendency to travel down ancestral lines, leaving others to pay the price for events that occurred long before they were even born.
Join Pepper and Curt as we discover the steam that the train of trauma can gather over the course of generations—and what we can begin to do to stop it in its tracks.
Links and References
- It Didn't Start with You by Mark Wolynn
Scripture References
- Numbers 14:18
Sign up to access the Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercises that connect what you are learning to your life in a practical way. Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up (not the pop-up).
As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes AND the post show conversations.)
Please subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and we always welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
S4E7 Sexual Trauma
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear. This week we are looking at the sensitive, hard and beautiful topic of sexual trauma.
What is it about sex that seems to make everything – especially trauma – so much more difficult? Moreover, how is sexual trauma so much more debilitating than some other forms of our topic? No matter how much we would like to wish otherwise, there is just no getting around the fact that few things shatter lives more than the events of trauma that surround our sexuality.
This week we wade into this sensitive – and beautiful – topic.
It’s sensitive because it addresses the parts of what it means to be most fragile as human beings. And beautiful because it addresses those same parts from which our greatest vulnerability and generativity spring forth.
If your story is being told through the lens of sexual trauma, Jesus is at the ready to meet you to make sure you begin to tell your story very differently.
Links and References
- Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Trauma and the Hope of Transformation by Dan Allender
- The Chosen: Season 1 Episode 1
Scripture References
- Genesis 1:25
- Genesis 3
You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way. Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up (not the pop-up).
As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes AND the post show conversations.)
And of course, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
S4E6 Trauma and Shame: Self-Perpetuation
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.
This week we connect trauma and shame.
Of all the things trauma can do, its capacity for self-perpetuation is unmatched. And at the core of that experience is our neurophysiological encounter with shame. Be it the way we sense the world, or the story we tell about what we are sensing, evil will want to use shame to strengthen the experience of isolation that we feel in response to traumatic events.
But God has no intention of leaving us in shame’s wake, and with the coming of Jesus – not least his own experience of trauma and the shame it carried – we have a model for how shame can be addressed as our trauma is healed.
Listen as we discover how connection dispels shame, making it possible for us to imagine and live into life that is beyond our wounds.
Links and References
- Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson, MD
- The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson, MD
Scripture References
- Creation Story in Genesis
- Ezekiel 36:26
You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way. Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up (not the pop-up).
As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes AND the post show conversations.)
And of course, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
S4E5 Trauma and the Body: “Then the Lord God Formed the Man…”
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.
This week we connect trauma and the brain. To the great surprise of many, our bodies are how our minds most often and most powerfully let us in on reality. As we like to say in the business, first we sense, and only then do we make sense of what we sense.
But what if our “sensing” mechanism, the body, has been the very thing that has encountered so much physical, sexual, or emotional bludgeoning? Those who have experienced trauma often perceive that their bodies have been violated, and in some twisted ways have also betrayed them. Then their bodies go on to keep the bad work of continual betrayal.
In this way, trauma becomes something that our bodies themselves remember in ways that we are often unaware of. What are we to do?
Today, we pull back the curtain on how the body can be wounded, but also how we can begin to take the first steps toward inviting that same body to become the very source of our healing, long before we are able to imagine in our thinking minds.
Scripture References
- Genesis 2:7
- Genesis 2:21-23
- John 16:33
Links and References
You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way. Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up (not the pop-up).
As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes AND the post show conversation.)
And of course, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
S4E4 Trauma and the Brain: It’s Not What You Think
Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.
This week we continue looking at the mind.
If the mind goes first, it necessarily will involve the brain. Therefore, in this episode, we will explore how trauma affects the brain in particular – not least how it perceives our inner and outer worlds – and how being aware of this can give us clues to hour our healing can begin.
Join Curt and Pepper as we discover how the brain is for far more than thinking, and that paying attention to all the other things it does can usher us into the healing process in ways we might not easily guess. Along the way, we will be reminded that even when the brain has had a tough go of it, God is always able to go one better.
You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way. Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up (not the pop-up).
As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
- YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes AND the post show conversation.)
And of course, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
S4E3 Trauma and the Mind: Shattering Beauty
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.
This week we begin our exploration of how trauma affects us at the beginning—for it is with our minds that we perceive that trauma has occurred in the first place and what its nature is. Pepper and Curt review what the mind is and how trauma affects it.
Listen in as we catch the first glimpses of the effects of trauma and what we need to pay attention to as we seek its healing. We’ll see together how, if beauty is what God has intended for all of creation—ourselves included—to become, trauma is one way evil will attempt to devour that beauty before it is realized. But keep in mind that despite the ways that trauma can shatter our mind, God never runs out of options.
Links and References:
- The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD
- The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson, MD
- Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson, MD
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
- Suffering and the Heart of God by Diane Langberg
- Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
- It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn
- Try Softer by Audi Kolber
You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications (scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up), the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way.
As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
As always, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Wednesday Mar 09, 2022
S4E2 Definitions: Encountering Trauma
Wednesday Mar 09, 2022
Wednesday Mar 09, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.
This week, Curt and Pepper look at the questions:
- What then, is trauma, exactly?
- How do we understand trauma to be different from other wounds that we experience over the course of our lives?
This much we know: although many of us are able to avoid awareness of trauma, no one avoids it altogether. It touches us as individuals and as systems, including those places we seek and expect to find refuge from it, such as our families and churches. Eventually, it extends to entire cultures where with our violence we resort to systematic cultural brutality and the support of building an empire.
Fortunately for us, the Bible is no stranger to trauma, and neither is Jesus. In fact, it is his example to which we will turn over and over to discover what it means to turn our attention toward, rather than away from trauma, for it not only to be healed, but for us to be recommissioned to create beauty in its very midst.
This episode lays the groundwork for knowing not just what trauma is, but what it begins to look like when we move from being its victims to becoming its victors.
Links and References:
- The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD (chapter 4 specifically)
- Being Known Podcast, season 3 episode 4
- The Chosen network drama series
We invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
As always, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
S4E1 Trauma: Creating Beauty in the Bomb Craters of our Lives
Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.
Description:
There are few places you go these days without being made aware that there is a thing called trauma. It has begun to take up residence in the collective social consciousness—and it’s really of little surprise that it has. From the pandemic to racial injustice to political rancor to sexual abuse in what we have assumed to be trustworthy institutions to state-sponsored violence—we are more aware of it than ever. But awareness alone isn’t enough to stop it, as is patently obvious.
In this season, we want to offer hope to our listeners. Hope for those who know what trauma is up close and personal, as well as for those who may have little to no idea that they have encountered it, let alone that others have. And that hope is ultimately to be found in Jesus, who appears to have made it his mission to redeem trauma wherever he finds it.
Part of that redemptive process includes our telling the story of trauma as truly as we can—so that evil doesn’t get to have the last word.
Each episode in this season will relate to an area of trauma, including:
- Trauma and the mind
- Trauma and the brain
- Trauma and the body
- Trauma and shame
- Trauma and the church
- Sexual trauma
- Generational trauma
- Healing trauma
- And more
Links and References:
- The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. van den Kolk
- Suffering and the Heart of God by Diane Landenberg
- Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
- It Didn't Start with You by Mark Wolynn
We invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes)
As always, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Monday Dec 27, 2021
S3E11: Season 3 Wrap
Monday Dec 27, 2021
Monday Dec 27, 2021
Curt and Pepper spend time spotlighting each episode of Being Known Podcast season 3 which is based on Curt's book, The Soul of Desire.
Video version available on our YouTube channel!

Tuesday Dec 21, 2021
S3E10: Practicing For Heaven: A People of Beauty
Tuesday Dec 21, 2021
Tuesday Dec 21, 2021
What happens when we faithfully practice dwelling, gazing and inquiring within the confessional community—within the house of the Lord? As it turns out, nothing short of the emergence of beauty and goodness within the community itself, the very place where the hard work of hope is done.
Goodness and beauty that then spills out into every other domain of life that the members of the community occupy. Furthermore, the very hard work that happens in the community—unlike Las Vegas—does not stay in the community, but extends through the lives of the participants to become the artistry of new creation wherever their footfalls land, be be that in their family, their place and form of occupation, their friendships and their churches.
Join Pepper and Curt to find out what glimpsing into heaven might be like—God’s heaven that is already here and is surely coming.
This episode is further discussion on chapter 10 of The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD.