Episode
Bodies Don’t Lie: Dr. Bessel van der Kolk on Trauma Recovery and the Power of Homeboy Industries
- Podcast
- The Homeboy Way
- Published
- May 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2375
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
When world-renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of the nine-million-copy bestseller The Body Keeps the Score , walked into Homeboy Industries, he came skeptical. What he found stopped him cold: people leaning into each other like friends. No suspicion. No dominance games. Just open-hearted safety. For a population with histories of violence and gang life, that is "quite remarkable." Dr. van der Kolk visited Homeboy and San Quentin in the same week. At San Quentin, he saw the familiar scars of trauma, isolation, and rigid hierarchy. But at Homeboy, he witnessed something radically different: people leaning into each other with trust and warmth. The contrast stunned him. In this episode, Tom Vozzo sits down with Dr. van der Kolk to delve into trauma, community, and the science behind Homeboy's transformative model. Together, they unpack why belonging is a biological imperative, why trauma lives in the body, and why action, such as chopping vegetables, dancing, or working in a kitchen, can heal what talk therapy alone cannot. They explore EMDR, why gangs and college campuses satisfy the same deep human need, and what it means to discover, perhaps for the very first time, that you might be lovable. So moved by what he saw at Homeboy, Dr. van der Kolk plans to dedicate a chapter of his next book to the program. Key Takeaways Safety looks different at Homeboy. At San Quentin, people play dominance games. At Homeboy, men with histories of violence lean into each other, open-hearted. That contrast tells you everything about kinship. What you do becomes who you are. Psychiatry is top-down: pill, advice, sit still. Homeboy does the opposite: people work and build identity through action. For someone whose only identity was the gang, that job is the fo…