“I guess for me the real tragedy is this idea of a life where you're getting further and further away from something meaningful or what you want and then just watching the time, like having to sell your time in which you do something meaningless. That's deeply horrifying to me. I mean, I know that is describing a lot of jobs and work, but I think a lot of this book is me kind of poking someone and being like, hey, don't you hate that? Like we shouldn't be okay with this. You know, because I think to some degree if you're in a situation like that, there are coping strategies, or you know, you're just kind of like, well, I can't really think about that because I just need to get through another day.” So says the brilliant Jenny Odell, the now two-time New York Times Bestselling author. In 2019, she came out with HOW TO DO NOTHING, a treatise on the attention economy. Her book landed right before COVID, offering wise and trenchant insight into what happened to all. This book captured my heart. And her follow-up—SAVING TIME: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock continues the conversation, exploring the way we use our hours, whose hours count more, and what this looks like in the context of our ancient universe where time has a different measure.  MORE FROM JENNY ODELL: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Inhabiting the Negative Space The Bureau of Suspended Objects Jenny Odell’s Website Follow her On Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“We are in a time where everything that we think we have taken for granted in terms of human achievement, human conscience, human goodness are being turned upside down. To reclaim them, you know, to reclaim them is an act of courage, personally, but also depends to an extent on having a roadmap broad enough and receptive enough to receive the help that's coming to us from a wider world that we're not even aware of anymore, for which this planet is, in its own funky way, the eye of the needle. There's something really precious and really painful, really difficult about our walk here, and everybody knows it, but we can reach for hope.” So says Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopalian priest and modern day mystic, who is one of the most fascinating thinkers on the planet today. She has written many, many books—books that have re-ordered my understanding of the world and what we’re all doing here. Her book on Mary Magdalene—The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity—reconceived the way I understood early Christianity, and then The Wisdom Jesus, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, and the Eye of the Heart have each brought me deeper into an understanding of consciousness. Ultimately, Cynthia is a map-maker—a map-maker who can put context around experience and point us toward where we all need to go. While she leads retreats and lectures, in her earlier life, Cynthia was a student and then a colleague of Father Thomas Keating, the founder of the Centering Prayer movement—Cynthia worked intently with this pioneering tradition, which seeks to unite wisdom traditions and teachers from across the globe. Cynthia is an emeritus faculty member at Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. Her mind is complex, so listen closely—she is incredible. MORE FROM CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT: Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity Cynthia’s Website The Center for Action and Contemplation To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“People have always fought against anyone trying to impose power on them or trying to assert their status on them. That is true right throughout history, from written records onwards, certainly, you know, we have evidence of it, even in some of the most misogynistic societies on the planet, like ancient Greece, for instance. You can still see in legal records, for instance, or in written records, this tension, male anxiety, and women pushing back, you know, that is a kind of constant all the way through. And, not least, we have societies in which women do have more power and that is not seen as remarkable or weird in anyway by those societies themselves.” So says Angela Saini, an award-winning science journalist who is one of my favorite guides through topics that are sticky—and sometimes icky—and also defining, like the origins of highly problematic race science, and the way the scientific field has come to understand and codify what it is to be a woman. In her first appearance on Pulling the Thread, she talked about science as fact—and then “science” that becomes ripe with human bias and interpretation. As humans, we can really mess things up.  Angela has written two books interrogating the divisive politics embedded in the science of human difference, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story and Superior: The Return of Race Science. I’m most excited about her latest book, though: It’s called The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality and it’s about the origins of inequality. As she explains, patriarchy was not our predetermined fate. It’s not biological, or natural, or inevitable. And women have been resisting our oppression ever since. Her book is loaded with fascinating insights, many of which we explore.  MORE FROM ANGELA SAINI: The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story Superior: The Return of Race Science Watch her 2019 BBC Documentary: Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal Angela's Website Follow Angela on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“When I'd gone off and got lost in the woods and I walked for hours and I just couldn't find my way back out of the woods, there was this moment when I stopped and just had this sense of the forest as like this complete system of life. Like I could suddenly hear this, this crackle that felt to me like I could hear the water being drawn up from the soil and I could hear the leaves dropping down, and I could just feel this like I was part of this body and it was a remarkable moment, and I've never let go of that. And I I think once you've heard it once, like you can hear it again, this sense of like the being part of this huge system that's way bigger and way more ancient than you are and, and the humility of that, like the lovely, the lovely humbling that, that, that entails, because, you know, humility, it means literally to be part of the soil, to be of the soil. And that is a grand feeling to chase, I think to integrate with that.” Katherine joins me today to discuss her newest book, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. A much needed follow-up to her first book, Wintering, which provided so many with language that articulated the pain of the long, communal loneliness and dislocation resulting from the pandemic—even though it was written well in advance—Enchantment presses forward to provide readers with a guide to rediscovering the beauty in being alive. The adult world, Katherine notes, is a profoundly play-less place—as we age, we turn away from our innate sense of wonder and awe in favor of grounded materialism that leaves us tired, anxious, and lonely. In our conversation, she encourages listeners to lean into our natural curiosity, engaging with what feels interesting and luminous in our immediate environment in order to re-sensitize ourselves to the subtle magic of living. We talk about sitting with our fascination instead of rushing to process it and the unique value of small moments in a world that prizes big experiences. For those of us searching for a different way of relating to the world, Enchantment is the balm we have been looking for.    EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: The death of playfulness… Longing and loneliness… Everything and nothing, all at once… MORE FROM KATHERINE MAY: Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman's Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home Explore KATHERINE'S WEBSITE Listen to her podcast, How We Live Now, on APPLE PODCASTS or SPOTIFY Follow her on INSTAGRAM To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“And we are made of stars, you know. It's not some fun little thing I'm trying to make everyone feel happy with. It's the carbon in your muscles, the calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, born in stars. And so I just sat there on the road and the question was, okay, if I've got that in me, if those stars can shine despite everything they've been through, can, can I have some glow? Can, can I have something that lights the way even when things are really grim? Because at that moment I felt so lost. I felt like, how is it possible that I wrote this whole book about self-care? I had this whole career. I've done all this work. How is it possible that I'm still reeling from things that happened to me when I was a kid? Sort of the journey you go on with me on this book is, you know, kind of recognizing we all suffer. I mean, you know, I feel like trauma is almost like a taboo word. People think that it's being used too much. It's like, no, it's, it's suffering. Right? Like every major religion refers to this as suffering.There's pain and rather than ignore it, what I have found is my life is much easier when I deal with it. It's just a better way to live.”  So says Tara Schuster, author of the breakout hit, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies. Tara joins us today to discuss her ongoing work to unravel the mystery of the self—tales and tribulations captured in her latest book, Glow in the F*cking Dark: Simple Practices to Heal Your Soul, from Someone Who Learned the Hard Way.  By all external accounts, Tara is someone who had it all figured out—by the time she was in her late twenties she had worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and was a rising star at Comedy Central where she was in charge of critically acclaimed shows like Key & Peele. Beneath it all, she was on the road to rock bottom—anxious, depressed and haunted by her chaotic upbringing. She wrote her first book, in many ways, for herself—a candid and practical guide to healing on the inside through the implementation of simple, daily rituals to transform mind, body, and soul.  But just as Tara thought she had gotten through the hardest work, and even wrote a book to bring others along with her, she suddenly lost her job—in the middle of the pandemic. One terrifying, dissociative experience while driving down a highway late at night later, she had to come to terms with the fact that her hardest internal work was just beginning. Tara shares with us the things that helped her the most along the way—from journaling to build internal safety and wisdom, to rejecting helplessness and restoring faith in our own agency—Tara makes the sometimes lofty lessons of complex theories such as internal family systems and deep trauma therapy accessible. Self-awareness comes from perpetual curiosity, she reminds us, and we must learn about ourselves before we can extend those learnings for the good of the world.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Self-retrieval… Trusting internal authority… Perpetual curiosity… MORE FROM TARA SCHUSTER: Glow in the F*cking Dark: Simple Practices to Heal Your Soul, from Someone Who Learned the Hard Way Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There Explore TARA'S WEBSITE Follow Tara on INSTAGRAM To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think the biggest challenge with codependency is, when a family member is catered to when their unhealthy or toxic behavior is catered to, it makes the other people in the situation neglected. You know, if you have a sibling who's getting more care than you, or you know, more financial support, that feels a certain way to you. And often we take that out on not just the person doing it, but the other person involved too. So the codependency just, it doesn't impact one relationship, it impacts many. And it really doesn't set anyone up for success. The best way to help a person is sometimes not helping. You know, I think about, um, all of the help I didn't receive, but figured it out. Those were the biggest lessons versus someone rescuing me or doing the work for me, or me never having to figure out this thing because there is someone I can call.” So says Nedra Glover Tawwab, sought-after relationship expert, licensed therapist and New York Times best-selling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself. Her new book, Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships is sure to hit the list as well. In this latest book, Nedra puts her 15 years of experience to work to demystify the ways that our earliest relationships—those with our family of origin—can lead us astray, causing us to abandon ourselves to maintain connection. Like her first bestseller, Drama-Free is packed with insights that are broken up in such a way as to be instantly actionable. Ultimately, it tackles what dysfunctional families look and feel like—and how to break free. Nedra is responsible for mainstreaming a cultural understanding of “boundaries,” and she now tackles other ideas that we all need to address, like co-dependency and enmeshment. In today’s conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including parenting, re-parenting, and what it means to offer support without overstepping. MORE FROM NEDRA TAWWAB: Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself The Set Boundaries Workbook: Practical Exercises for Understanding Your Needs and Setting Healthy Limits Follow Nedra on Instagram and Twitter Sign up for Nedra’s Newsletter  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“A conversation that I hope this book sparks, because it's such a fun conversation, is the conversation about like, gay men being friends with straight men. But also straight women being friends with straight men. Like, you know, being friends, like a lot of times writings on friendship talk about women and their best friends or straight men and they're like bro friends, or even gay men and their gay friends. But I would love to see more writing about friendships across these artificial gender lines.” So says Will Schwalbe, someone I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for a long time. In fact, our lives have overlapped in strange and magical ways—a testament, really, to the way that we are all interconnected. Sometimes improbably. Besides being a long-time, venerated book editor, Will has written four books, including one of my long-time favorites—it’s called The End of Your Life Bookclub, and it’s a memoir about his mother, who died of pancreatic cancer. In her final years, Will and his mom read together, and discussed their lives through the prism of books. It’s beautiful. And his latest book, which we discuss today, is also incredibly, and quietly, moving: It’s called We Should Not Be Friends. It’s about Will and a guy named Chris Maxey, or Maxey, who Will met his senior year of college in the ‘80s—Maxey was a world-class wrestler, who ultimately became a Navy Seal, while the bookish Will worked the Gay Men’s Health Crisis phone lines at night. Point is: They could not have been more different.  The book is a powerful treatise on what friendship is—and what’s required for intimacy, particularly in a culture where there aren’t many examples of friendships between gay and straight men, or between straight men and women either. We explore all of this. MORE FROM WILL SCHWALBE: We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life The End of Your Life Bookclub Send: Why People Email So Badly and How To Do It Better Will Schwalbe’s Website Follow Will on Twitter and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“And the moment when she admitted that she had been wrong, that was the greatest healing moment for me of all. And that would never have happened had I not written the memoir, had I not been sort seeking her out asking her lots of questions, details of fights that they had why they fell in love, how they fell in love, what her doubts were. And then there was that moment where she sent me that brief email where she affirmed his essential goodness, his essential integrity and his worth as a father, which was so important to me. And essentially saying she married him in large part because she so desperately wanted to have children. And at that, in that era, she was 27, I think, or 28 when she married him, which for a girl who came from the Midwest was very late especially. And she had gone through and then went through all this trauma. She had three miscarriages. She had something wrong with her uterus, she had to have surgery. So I was the fourth pregnancy that my parents had, and that's why they went ahead and had another baby so quickly with my sister 14 months later. And I think she just saw immediately that not only would my father be an incredible parent, but also he would be the kind of parent that a working woman, the dream parent for a working woman, because he wanted to do all that stuff that not only did she not have time to do, but she really didn't have any inclination to do playing with us, the imaginative play, taking us out on the weekends. I mean, my father, I don't think I ever, in my entire life, had a moment where I looked at my father and thought He's tired of us, or he's exhausted, he's bored with us. He wants to get back to his adult things every instant that he was with us, I felt him completely engaged. And to use your word from earlier, completely enthusiastic.” So says Priscilla Gilman, author, critic, and former professor of English literature at Vassar College and Yale University. In her first book, The Anti-Romantic Child: A Memoir of Unexpected Joy, Priscilla writes of the challenges and delights of raising her son Benjamin, who is autistic. Her newest work,The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir, is another family story—this time a searching reflection of her relationship with her esteemed, brilliant, and complicated father, the late theater critic and professor at Yale Drama School, Richard Gilman.  Though the world knew him as an exacting and confrontational critic, Priscilla and her sister knew their father as the adoring, playful parent who regularly entered their childish worlds, delighting in their company and imaginative pastimes. This father-daughter connection was forever changed, however, by her parent’s separation. At the age of 10, she witnessed her father fall—into shame and depression—which forced her to reckon with the lasting wounds marital dissolution could leave on a person, and a family. The book, filled with honest and painful stories of learning to see her father for who he truly was, expertly captures the universal experience of coming to terms with one’s parents as flawed, complicated people and then choosing to admire and respect them anyway. Our conversation explores what it was like to be raised surrounded by creatives and critics, the difficulties of being thrust into the role of parenting your own parents, and the gifts and complications that come from endeavoring to truly know those we love the most.  MORE FROM PRISCILLA GILMAN: Read The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir and The Anti-Romantic Child: A Memoir of Unexpected Joy Explore Priscilla's Website Follow her on Twitter and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode—my first ever solo attempt—I explain how my spirituality emerged out of a largely secular, nature-based childhood, how I learned to work with the forces of the universe, and what I think we’re after. (Hint: Wholeness.) MORE FROM ME: On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good (coming 5/23) My Substack My Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“This is the time where it's kind of like the things that we didn't get right. We need to start fixing. Not fixing, I would say, but opening up to new paths of exploration because we clearly, we've learned at this point that we can't keep doing things the way that we have in the past for our environment, for social rights, workers rights, children's rights, reproductive rights, the whole thing. We need to make some shifts in order to sustain our evolution with the progress that we want to make. So we kind of all need to take a bit of a reset and a pause. I have said for some time, and this is why I'm excited about 2023 and these next couple of years, I have said that there is absolutely nothing that would get resolved while Pluto is still in Capricorn.”  So says Carissa Schumacher. This is Carissa’s third visit to Pulling the Thread. I highly recommend listening to our introductory conversation—called “My Spiritual Teacher”—if you’re new to Carissa’s work. In it, we talk about how we came into each other’s orbits—through a miracle, I would—and how her presence has deeply affected the last few years of my life. In today’s conversation, we dive right into Yeshua’s recent transmissions—and yes, when Carissa says Yeshua, she’s talking about Jesus, or more specifically Christ Consciousness—or what she calls the energy of peace. I know this sounds odd, but Yeshua—who we’ll refer to as a “he” to keep things simple—says throughout the transmissions: “Know me not as I was, but as I am.” Carissa is not the only Yeshua channel, she asserts, and one of the points of these transmissions is for each of us to cultivate that voice we have inside. The content Yeshua delivers is universal, deeply applicable to our lives today, and certainly not attached to any formal religious culture or system of faith. I find it full of revelations and profound wisdom, insights that I can immediately apply to the way I conceive and understand the world around me. Today, we cover a lot of ground—Carissa dives into the difference between creativity and productivity, and between wisdom and knowledge, and we talk about the seven ways Yeshua says we can recognize power that comes from shadow—and how, like a switchboard, those old era energies are being switched off—and will no longer work in the coming era. Speaking of that coming era, Carissa also talks about what it means that Pluto is leaving Capricorn, and the changes we will begin to see. If you want a grounding in these teachings, I highly recommend Carissa and Yeshua’s book, The Freedom Transmissions, which is eight Yeshua transmissions Carissa channeled over the course of a week, several years ago. And if you want to experience this work in community, I highly recommend attending one of Carissa’s journeys. They are life-changing events. Her website is TheSpiritTransmissions.com. And for more on Carissa, I’ve written about a lot of these transmissions in my newsletter and on my website: eliseloehnen.substack.com. MORE FROM CARISSA SCHUMACHER The Freedom Transmissions: A Pathway to Peace, Yeshua as channeled by Carissa Schumacher Carissa’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Look at how we've convoluted and complicated. The most simple things. Look at nutrition now. How many supplements are we supposed to take? How many grams of fat am I supposed to eat? And then grams of carbs, and then how many grams of sugar is taller? It's insane that we've managed because I think a lot of people don't believe stuff unless it sounds scientific or it's extremely complicated. But nature isn't that complicated. Like why do all of these cultures, the few that are around now, indigenous cultures, they don't have high blood pressure, they don't have heart disease, they don't have diabetes, they don't have anxiety, they don't have panic, they have all have straight teeth. They don't also have any big pharma. Uh, they don't have dentists. They don't need any of this stuff because they are living in an environment in which humans naturally evolved.You and I are not, we're living in an environment that is so different and it's no coincidence that the more we integrate back into nature, the better we get.” So says the brilliant—and endlessly entertaining—James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. While Breath is a mega-bestseller—across the globe, it’s also an award-winning work of science reporting, stringing together seemingly disparate streams of thought and science into a treatise on one of the most significant impacts on our health: The way we learned to breathe. Yep, breathe. James makes the case that our tendency toward mouth-breathing works against our very nature, distorting our faces and jaws, ramping our anxiety, and weakening our immune response…simply because our noses are designed to filter the world on our behalf. I loved our long-ranging conversation, and it was wonderful to be in James’s company again. Let’s get to our chat. MORE FROM JAMES NESTOR: Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves James’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There are many places I'd love to see and I know I would learn from. But if I never see them, I won't be sorry. I mean I feel I'm so happy just being here in my little rented two room apartment in the middle of nowhere, Japan where we've been for 29 years. And I would be so grateful if I could spend almost every day here. And again another thing that the pandemic reminded us, I couldn't travel as much as usual. I don't think I really missed it. What I did find was I'd take a walk along the road behind my mother's house and it's in the hills of Santa Barbara and my parents had lived there more than 50 years. I'd never walked to the end of the road just 20 minutes away before. And I did. And I'd look around and there was a golden light of early morning and there's a Pacific ocean in the distance with the sun sentient above it. And I said, this is as beautiful as anywhere. Somebody would go to Capri or Rio de Janeiro to see us right in my backyard. And I'd never thought to look at it before. And so too, with this little apartment, my wife and I just start taking walks in every direction. And we came upon bamboo forests and cherry blossoms, all kinds of wonders. And we'd never in 29 years in this apartment looked around us. And so a reminder that all the beauty of the wonder of the world is right here. If only I have the eyes and motivation to see.” So says the wonderful Pico Iyer, who began his career teaching writing and literature at Havard, before he joined Time as a writer on world affairs. Since then, he has published 15 books, many of which are bestsellers. His books have been translated into over 23 languages, on subjects ranging from the Dalai Lama to globalism to the Cuban Revolution to Islamic mysticism. Perhaps known best for his travel writing, his most recent book, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, is the culmination of a lifetime of experiences in the outer world, intertwined with a deep and beautiful look at his inner world, as he asks himself, and the reader, how we might come upon paradise in the midst of the reality of our lives.  Most of us are steeped in a culture which views paradise as eternally elusive—we live our lives with a deep longing to return to the Eden from which we have been evicted, to a place where the struggles of the human experience melt away. But it is in our struggle that we find paradise, Iyer tells us, if only we have the eyes to see it.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Recalling what we have forgotten… Utopian longings and viable dreams… Creating a life that matters… MORE FROM PICO IYER: The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise and other books by Pico Iyer Pico’s website  Watch Pico Iyer’s TED Talks: Where is home? (2013) The art of stillness (2014) The beauty of what we'll never know (2016) What ping-pong taught me about life (2019) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“We're aware that we're in an ecological crisis. We are destroying our own ecosystem. We're aware there's loss of biodiversity, these beautiful species going extinct and who is the prime partner for us is the earth. But you go to an ecological conference like they are having now in Egypt and who listens to the earth whereas the voice of the earth herself, she's not heard, she's not asked, nobody asks the earth. And she is this ancient being. And so wise, she has been through mass extinctions before. Indigenous people knew how to ask and how to listen and how to talk to the earth. And that's why a lot of my writings recently are about trying to find a way to reconnect, to regain this way of being present with the earth, of listening to the earth of just being with her. And so her voice can be heard. Because if we don't make that connection, I don't see how we can go forward into a living future.” So says my guest today, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - Sufi mystic, PhD, lecturer and prolific author. I have been reading through his books in a type of fever—they are some of the most powerful, and clarifying, treatises on spirituality—and what this whole experience is about—that I’ve ever read.  Vaughan-Lee began following the Naqshbandi Sufi path at the age of 19, guided by Irina Tweedie, who brought this particular Indian branch of Sufism to the West. He eventually became her successor, and moved to Point Reyes, California where he founded the Golden Sufi Center—continuing to expand the reach of his Sufi lineage, making its teachings ever more available to the Western seeker. While he is in retreat as a teacher, he recently launched a podcast, called Stories for a Living Future that is beautiful. His many books provide a detailed exploration of the stages of spiritual and psychological transformation experienced on the Sufi path. More recently, his writing has focused on our spiritual responsibility to the earth, in the present time of transition; awakening our awareness of oneness with the world and all that is in it; and the presence of the amina mundi, or the world soul. Today, Vaughan-Lee joins the podcast to discuss one of his latest books, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, which is a collection of essays from some of our most esteemed leaders across faiths and dimensions, including Joanna Macy, Thich Nhat Hanh, Wendell Berry, Richard Rohr, and Vandava Shiva. As he explains today, we have lost awareness of the sacredness of creation, a loss that has allowed us to abuse an Earth regarded as unfeeling, unknowing matter. This is the spiritual root of our ecological crisis.     He implores us to follow the thread that allows us to once again live in direct connection with creation, noting that real change can only happen when we regain our magical consciousness; grow closer to the lumen natura—nature’s light—and allow ourselves to fall in love with the Earth once more. Llewellyn does a remarkable job of placing our human story within the story of the Earth—in turn, he leaves us yearning to rediscover our place within the whole and thereby reaffirm our primal connection with our sacred home.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: A tree is not just timber, it is a spirit… Regaining our magical consciousness.. The great unraveling of present civilization.. Healthy society needs cultural eldering… MORE FROM LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN LEE: Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth Seasons of the Sacred: Reconnecting to the Wisdom Within Nature and the Soul and other books by Vaughan-Lee (I love the six-part series on Spiritual Power & Oneness). Stories for a Living Future Podcast Check out The Golden Sufi Center and Working with Oneness To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“How do we actually with due speed, cuz this is a timely issue, start to live in modern culture, which is taken over the planet. Basically live in a way that is really about the truth of who we are. That we are a me and we are a we, and that if we live that way, we wouldn't treat each other as enemies, we would treat each other as relatives. You know, you don't get along with every relative the same way, but if they're in your family, they're your family. And if we then saw all of nature as the family of nature, you know, we would treat earth not like a trash can, but a sanctuary. And, and we would do this together. And we are incredibly collaborative, we're incredibly creative and yes, we can use competition, but what we can do in our competition is make it so we're competing to really deal with, you know, diseases and famine and all the problems we face. So when you win the competition, everybody benefits.” So says Dr. Daniel Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. As an interpersonal neurobiologist Dan is focused on the creation of self—and his latest book, IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging takes his lifelong pursuit to understand the Venn diagram between personal reality and collective identity even farther: In it, he explores questions of consciousness, the importance of connection, and the world of quantum physics as it relates to our relationship with the external world. For Dan, the science of energy, which animates us all, is the study of the continuum of possibility to probability.  MORE FROM DAN SIEGEL, M.D.: IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind Follow Dan on Instagram Dan’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I mean, nourishing is truly, honestly, it is, it is, uh, an activism. It is it, the, the minute you are nourished the decisions you make versus when you weren't nourished, they're gonna be really different the way you react to your kids. How we parent, how we are in our, our partnerships or our work. It's like when we're nourished, it's like another, another part of us is being like our truest part, like who we truly are. And so if we can all be a little closer to that, like that, that's the activism I'm tending. You know, it's like that's, that, that really is, that's an advocacy for a culture that's really hungry. A world that really needs us to care for ourselves. It's not just an i it really is a, we, it's a we movement.” So says Jules Blaine Davis, otherwise known as The Kitchen Healer. I met Jules nearly a decade ago, after hearing rumors about this miraculously woman who lived on the other side of Los Angeles: I was told that she could restore a desire to cook, for one. But that her work was actually much deeper than that: That she probed long-held stories we hold about ourselves when it comes to our appetites and their validity, as well as whether we believe we deserve to be nourished. I spent an afternoon with her—walking around her backyard barefoot and telling her about my relationship with food—and left her house deepened, newly dedicated to turning on the fire in my own house, and reclaiming the kitchen as a place where I could be—not as a zone where there was more for me to do. MORE FROM JULES BLAINE DAVIS: The Kitchen Healer: The Journey to Becoming You Follow Jules on Instagram Jules’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“If you don't change things that we already feel we should change or we feel called to change, if you're holding onto our job alone or to a relationship that is toxic or to whatever, because we are afraid to change, then it becomes stronger and stronger. And when the, the tension is too big, then we call it crisis. Because then the system needs to rebalance itself through a painful process. But there's a conscious version of it too, < which means we support each other in the change process and we create societies and environments that are actually supportive of change and create safety for change. And we can do that together. If we invest in it.” So Says Thomas Hübl, one of the most incredible, spiritually oriented teachers working in the trauma space today. Thomas primarily works with large groups, where his process focuses on transmuting dark, collective energy—typically old, dense energy that’s held by cultures and places. He has worked all over the world in zones where there is much dense despair, using a collective holding space to transmute and metabolize this energy, arguing that it’s essential fuel for our evolution and growth. When we deny this energy’s presence, or refuse to acknowledge what’s happened in humanity’s past, we are stuck reliving these stories and patterns, not understanding where they even come from. The beauty of Thomas’s work is that you don’t need to be directly affected by these stories in order to help move and release them. He explains how this works in his book, Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds, and we dive into the journey here. This conversation was very powerful and moving to me—it’s one of my favorite on this podcast so far. MORE FROM THOMAS HÜBL: Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds Thomas’s Website Follow Thomas on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Now I'm making something that I didn't imagine. It's not going like I imagined, but it's going. And then when you finish the Object Thing book, then it has the power to take you on a journey that you never would have dreamt had you kept the idea in your interior museum. And then that shifts your imagination. You have more, more artwork that's collected in the Interior Museum and but, and then as you grow older, as a maker, You see that distinction, right? The distinction between the beautiful interior museum and the museum in reality of things that you've actually made and done and the stories attached to the making and doing that have changed your life.” I am joined today by my dear friend, Alexandra Grant. Alexandra is a fascinating person and talented visual artist whose work examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media and has been exhibited at institutions across the country: at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), the Pasadena Museum of California Art, among others. In 2008, she created the grantLOVE Project, which has raised awareness and funds for various arts nonprofits through the gift and sale of her iconic LOVE artwork. In 2017, she and her life partner, Keanu Reeves, co-founded X Artists’ Books, an artist-centric publishing house, helping artists and readers alike explore the creation of artwork and ideas outside the traditional model of book publishing. If that wasn’t enough, Alexandra is currently leading the first NFT project of the Hollywood Sign for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and is an Advisor to the Future Verse Foundation. She joins me today to meditate on art and love—as we celebrate the release of her book Love: A Visual History of the grantLOVE Project. A comprehensive history of the foundation she started fifteen years ago, the book is a visual collection of paintings, prints, sculptures, textiles, jewelry, and architecture gathered by Grant and her collaborators to explore the timeless question, what is love? Our conversation is a peek into our regular walk and talks—a beloved routine through which we have been able to explore, reflect, and build an incredibly meaningful friendship. Today we discuss what it means to be looked at and perceived by the public, especially as the partner of one of the most famous actors of our generation; the inevitable disappointment that results from taking the beautiful ideas in our heads and attempting to turn them into something physical; and owning our native talents in the pursuit of a creative live, whether or not we fit into the conventions of being an artist. You have to create opportunities between the cracks, she tells us. Okay, let’s get to our conversation. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Being in the messy middle… Owning your native talents… Conversing with the past self… Creating opportunities between the cracks… MORE FROM ALEXANDRA GRANT: Love: A Visual History of the grantLOVE Project Explore X Artists' Books Check out her website and the grantLOVE Project Follow Alexandra on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“But a life devoted to something larger than yourself is a life worth living. It's a life that is in recognition of life is given to us, it's given to us so that we can give it, we're blessed so that we can bless. We're born, I think, I can't prove this, but I've experienced it to make the contribution that's uniquely ours to make. And when you find that dharma, that discovers who you are, this is a match for what's wanted in the world. Oh my God. It's so thrilling that I wanted to do everything I could to make that available to people, because it's not only wonderful for you, the world needs us now. The world always did. But now the crises are so deep, so profound, so intense, so everywhere. So in every part of society, in every economic class, in every country, in every language, in every culture, that it's all hands on deck. And what a thrilling time to be alive when it's an all hands on deck moment.” so says my guest today, Lynne Twist. Lynne is a world-renowned visionary committed to alleviating poverty, ending world hunger, and supporting social justice and sustainability. Her 40-year career has taken her from working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, to the refugee camps in Ethiopia and the threatened rainforests of the Amazon, to guiding the philanthropic efforts of some of the world’s wealthiest families. Her breadth of experience led her to found the Soul of Money Institute, where she has worked with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world on topics such as fundraising with integrity, practicing conscious philanthropy, and creating a healthy relationship with money. Lynne first translated her compelling stories and life experiences into the bestselling book, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life and joins us today to discuss her newest book, Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself. In the book, and our conversation, Lynne reveals the guiding principles that have enabled her to live as a thought leader and activist, teaching us that a committed life is one worth living: That sometimes the commitment to it alone is enough to ensure it happens. The universe is telling us repeatedly that we are in this together, she says, and in a world that sometimes feels chaotic and devoid of meaning, it’s incumbent that we draw together around what it means to be human. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Taking a stand vs. taking a position… Pain pushes until vision pulls… We won’t think our way out of this… Replacing charity with solidarity… MORE FROM LYNNE TWIST: Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life Check out Lynne’s Soul of Money Institute and The Pachamama Alliance Follow Lynne on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Boundaries don't tell other people what to do. They tell other people what you are willing to do to take responsibility for your own needs and your own feelings and keep yourself safe and healthy. And they actually are, as we've discussed, a gift to your relationship, they make relationships better. And when you turn it around on its head like that, I think number one, that helps people understand all of the benefits to your relationship when each party does take responsibility for how they feel and for their needs. And it also gives you a sense of empowerment. I think people feel like, Oh, I can't set boundaries because what if the other person won't do it or doesn't say yes? And when I tell them, Oh no, no, no, your boundary cannot depend on somebody else. It is only dependent on what you are willing and able to do.” So says Melissa Urban, a woman who can do everything. Not only is the founder of Whole30, she’s a six-time New York Times best-selling author. Her latest is the subject of our conversation today: It’s called "The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free,” which is the result of helping her community navigate through their relationships to…pretty much everything as they begin to fix and adjust their relationship to their own bodies and food. She is a fierce proponent of self-efficacy and a commitment to showing up for yourself in all aspects of life. In our conversation, we discuss what a boundary even means—and how difficult it is for us to address what’s at the root of establishing them, which is our NEEDS. Melissa guides us through relatable scenarios, like with the in-laws or a boss, where boundaries might be missing. And we talk about the qualities of niceness and how they can get in the way of caring for ourselves: Melissa, who is fierce in her directness, distinguishes between the quality of niceness and the quality of kindness in a very profound way. And it all comes to this: We must first be kind to ourselves before we can show up with kindness in the world. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Direct not rude… Boundaries don’t tell other people what to do… Set limits, set expectations… Make the goal showing up for yourself… MORE FROM MELISSA URBAN: The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free Check out Melissa's Website Follow Melissa on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“My childhood was a childhood in the closet. I had some good things. I had some bad things, like living in the closet is, you know, not always terrible. It's simply not the greatest expression of, of who we have the capacity to become, I think. Um, but for my parents, you know, as my father went along in my childhood, he became more and more withdrawn and kept trying to do the right thing, was closeted even to himself. This was a secret he was keeping even from himself for most of my childhood. But it made him kind of a lousy partner. Right. My mother's experience was just a very, very lonely experience. Her life looked on the outside exactly like it was supposed to look, we lived in a nice community. She was married to a lawyer, or, you know, we looked great on a Christmas card, but it felt cavernous, just vacant and left with so much time on her own. Um, she really struggled not to let her memory present her with things to work on. And that led her to be very depressed throughout my childhood.” So says Jessi Hempel, a long-time media and technology journalist, an award-winning host of the podcast, Hello Monday, and author of the new memoir, The Family Outing. Her book is a profound telling of family dynamics, offering lessons on accepting one's truest self. Specifically, it’s the story of a family who comes out of the closet to embrace their queer identities. Even Jessi’s mother, who is straight, lives in a type of closet, Jessi explains, as she nearly became the victim of a serial killer as a teenager—this unconfronted trauma affects her entire family’s life. In our conversation, Jessi shares her journey to emphasize the detrimental side-effects of shame and the non-linear path to liberation. Our conversation explores the value of authenticity and navigating parts of ourselves we have not yet learned to face. She believes that when we“step into ourselves,” culture has the capacity to shift, allowing us all to live more gracefully. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.  MORE FROM JESSI HEMPEL: The Family Outing Jessi’s podcast, Hello Monday Follow Jessi on LinkedIn and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I’m trying to map the territory in the center world, just the way I did with families and the distinction that immediately leaped out was between parts that other systems would call inner children, which, you know, they're very, before they're hurt, they're delightful. They give us all kinds of joy and, and imagination and creativity and playfulness and so on. But once they feel, once you have an experience that leaves you feeling worthless or terrified or hurt, they're the ones that take that in the most, because they're the most sensitive parts of you. And then they get stuck with these, what I call burdens of worthlessness or pain or terror. And now we don't wanna be around them because they have the power to overwhelm us and make us feel all that again and bring us back into those scenes that they literally are living in still. And so we try to lock them away in inner basements, thinking we're just moving on from the memories, sensations and, and emotions of the trauma. Not realizing that we're actually leaving in the dust, the parts of us we love the most when they're not hurt, just cuz they got hurt.” So says Dr. Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems, a transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy that de-pathologizes the multipart personality. Dr. Schwartz began his career as a systemic family therapist and academic in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago and later at Northwestern University. It was there that he worked with a number of clients who claimed to recognize that they had several components, or parts, to themselves. This discovery led him to develop Internal Family Systems, also known as IFS. Within his model, Dr. Schwartz argues that our consciousness, or personality, can be broken down into multiple parts, each with distinct characteristics that fall under three categories: exiles, managers, and firefighters. Exiles are the parts of us that experience anxiety, fear, or trauma—often when we’re very young. Our other parts begin to protect those exiles from being triggered by events and experiences. Managers do this by dictating how we interact with the external world and firefighters seek to protect us by pushing us toward distraction to numb our pain.  All of our inner parts contain valuable qualities, Dr. Schwartz tells us, but when they are left unattended, they may lead to damaging impulses, causing us to write them off as damaging in and of themselves. On the other hand, when our parts are acknowledged and their needs are addressed, a confidence and openness emerges—what Dr. Schwartz has come to call the Self. It is in this state of Self, that we can begin to heal all of our parts and become integrated and whole. In our conversation today, Dr. Schwartz walks us through the basics of his model and then guides me through an IFS work session. This was very powerful for me. Because the concept sounds heady, I’m glad you can experience the model in action: I hope our work together inspires you to explore the profound awareness made accessible by IFS.    EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: It is the nature of the mind to have multiple parts… Reconciling with your exiles… My IFS session… MORE FROM DR. RICHARD SCHWARTZ: Books by Dr. Richard Schwartz:  No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model Introduction to Internal Family Systems You Are the One You've Been Waiting for: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships Explore the IFS Institute  WATCH: Dr. Richard Schwartz Explains Internal Family Systems (IFS) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"We have offered a model, the seven circles, that helps people to understand that it's not just food and fitness, which so many wellness practitioners purport. It's not just diet and exercise. It's not just the way that you look on the outside or the $90 yoga pants that you can afford, or the fancy studio class or the 25 ingredient smoothie that costs $25. You know, those are unfortunately the images that we have now when it comes to wellness. And that's why so many people continue to feel excluded and uninterested in wellness. It seems so superficial. And so what I hope is that we have incorporated all these other elements to show people that not only can they be a wellness person who participates or who practices wellness, but they are already. We are all on this journey to some degree already." So says Chelsey Luger. Luger and her husband Thosh Collins are wellness teachers, authors, and the founders of the indigenous wellness initiative, Well for Culture. Launched in 2013, Well For Culture was established to reclaim ancient Native wellness philosophies and practices to promote the wellbeing of the physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional self. From their exploration and practice, the two have developed a holistic model for modern living which they share with us in their first book, The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well.  According to Luger and Collins, these seven circles—food, movement, sleep, community, sacred space, ceremony, and connection to land—are interconnected, working together to keep our lives in balance. In our conversation, we begin to explore these many aspects of health, as Luger and Collins explain how their teachings can be adapted to every life, and how to do so while maintaining respect and reverence for the Indigenous origins of the wisdom and practices they share. We discuss their work to reframe wellness, how to integrate spirituality into movement through intention, and the power of the hollow bone mentality. Healing and wellness is not just a journey of one, they tell us, but rather a journey of family and community: When we take the important steps to heal ourselves, we contribute to the health of all. I was very moved by this conversation, which we’ll turn to now. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Creating a true connection to movement… Misappropriation… Fools Crow and the Hollow Bone Theory… Creating agreements with ourselves around technology… MORE FROM CHELSEY & THOSH: The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well Check out their initiative: Well for Culture Native Wellness Institute Follow Thosh on Instagram  Follow Chelsey on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The thing is the type of thinking where you can figure out how mechanical things work. It’s a different kind of intelligence. And I think it's hard for verbal thinkers to understand. And they kind of will look at the shop kids as a dumb kids. Now, fortunately, some states are starting to put it back in. We're having more and more infrastructure things falling apart, like this latest disaster with the water works breaking—you see, a visual thinker can see how it works and how to fix it. And you keep deferring maintenance. I mean, we got wires falling off of electric towers in California and starting fires because they deferred maintenance, but we need all of the different kinds of thinkers. And the first step is realizing that they exist and they need to work together as teams.” So says Dr. Temple Grandin, a New York Times bestselling author, celebrated animal welfare advocate, and one of the world’s most prominent speakers on autism. Temple first came into the public consciousness with her memoir, Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism, which provided her unique inside narrative and revolutionized how the world understood autistic individuals. Her latest book, Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions, works to expand our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired even further as she draws upon cutting edge research to demystify the brains of visual thinkers.  Our world is geared for verbal thinkers, she tells us, with rigid academic and social expectations sidelining visual thinkers at school and in the workplace—to the detriment of productivity and innovation everywhere. In our conversation, Temple takes us through the three different types of thinkers, and argues that changing our approach to educating, parenting, and employing visual thinkers has great potential to encourage, rather than stifle, their singular gifts and unique contributions. As the number of children diagnosed with autism continues to rise nationally, her call to foster “differently-abled” brains is more important than ever—as she so eloquently says, we need all kinds of minds to solve today’s most difficult problems. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Three kinds of thinkers… Neurodiversity is essential for our survival… Avoiding label lock… MORE FROM TEMPLE GRANDIN: Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions Emergence: Labeled Autistic The Autistic Brain: Helping Different Kinds of Minds Succeed Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism (Expanded Edition) Visit Temple's Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“What I'm positing is, is an ability to grapple with contradiction. So that's the paradox mindset that Wendy Smith, Maryanne Lewis and other scholars have shown that when we're able to sit with two conflicting things in our minds, for example that if we stick with the example in South Africa, it may be true that if I'm a student that my parents and my grandparents participated in actively supported apartheid and that they were also wonderful parents and grandparents, right? Like those two things can be true, and being able to sit with that contradiction gives me. Like emotional limberness to kind of, you know, push my way through the, the emotional slog of this is awful. This is awful. And to sit with terrible things happened, that's the only way you can do it.” So says Dolly Chugh, award-winning social psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she is an expert researcher in the psychology of people and goodness. Her first book is the wonderful, The Person You Mean to Be and she just released a second, called, A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with Our Past and Driving Social Change. Both books serve as inspiring, yet practical guides for those of us who seek to be better. A More Just Future builds on Chugh’s first book, which equipped readers with the tools to be “good-ish” people who stand up for their values. In her latest, she offers a guide to reckoning with the whitewashed history of our country in order to build a better future.  The seeds of today’s inequalities were sown in the past, she tells us, and it will take an extra dose of resilience and grit to grapple with the truth of our history and to make the systemic changes needed to mend the fabric of our country. Moving from willful ignorance to willful awareness isn’t easy, leading to uncomfortable feelings of shame, guilt, disbelief, and resistance when we encounter revelations that run against what we have long been told. But it is possible to love your country with a broken heart, she says, imploring us to grapple with contradiction, employing the paradox mindset as we shift from the rigidness of “either/or” to the nuance of “both/and.”  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Wired for consistency… Light vs. heat-based change… Sitting in paradox… Belief grief… MORE FROM DOLLY CHUGH: A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with Our Past and Driving Social Change The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias “How to let go of being a "good" person—and become a better person,” TED Talk Check out Dolly's Website Follow her on Twitter and Instagram “The Truth About Rosa Parks And Why It Matters To Your Diversity Initiative,” Forbes To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“But my other favorite thing about the confidence piece, as someone who can be very anxious and nervous myself, is that sometimes it's valuable not to be confident. And there is this piece in the book about how everyone would benefit if, when you're making decisions, you start off in an information gathering stage. And instead of being super confident when you're trying to gather data, you turn down your confidence, be not confident at all, be confused, be concerned, be anxious. Gather all the data, as many differing viewpoints as possible. Once you've figured out the right answer with all the humility that you could possibly have, jack up your confidence and then you execute. And this idea that confidence can be on a dial and there's value in not being confident sometimes is something that I was never taught. And that feels very reassuring to learn,” so says Julia Boorstin, who has spent over two decades as a reporter, working for CNBC, CNN, and Fortune. She’s also the creator of the “Disruptor 50” franchise, a list which highlights private companies transforming the economy and challenging companies in established industries. Her first book, When Women Lead, draws on her work studying and interviewing hundreds of executives throughout her impressive career to tell the stories of more than 60 female CEOs and leaders who have fought massive social and institutional headwinds to run some of the world’s most innovative and successful companies.  Combining years of academic research and interviews, Julia reveals these women’s powerful commonalities—they are highly adaptive to change, deeply empathetic in their management style, and much more likely to integrate diverse points of view into their business strategies. This makes these women uniquely equipped to lead, grow businesses, and navigate crises in ways where their male counterparts don’t seem as gifted.  Today’s episode digs into Boorstin’s meticulously researched book as we cover a few of the female tendencies that correlate with great leadership: how women embrace the role of fire-prevention as opposed to fire fighting; their ability to avoid ethical quandaries and group think; and the value of gaining confidence through experience. The monoculture tends to focus on iconic female leaders, she tells us, but there is so much more to gain from focusing on the stories that are not being told, expanding the diversity of images of success for women and men alike.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Female qualities correlate with great leadership… Women as fire preventers… The myth of the confidence gap… Feedback bias… MORE FROM JULIA BOORSTIN: When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them CNBC Disruptor 50 Follow Julia on Instagram and Twitter DIVE DEEPER:  “Better Decisions Through Diversity: Heterogeneity Can Boost Group Performance,” Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Study  “How the VC Pitch Process Is Failing Female Entrepreneurs,” Harvard Business Review “Investors Prefer Entrepreneurial Ventures Pitched by Attractive Men,” Harvard Kennedy School Gender Action Portal “The Remarkable Power of Hope,” Psychology Today “Language Bias in Performance Feedback,” Textio 2022 Study To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Well, I think of it like the metaphor of the ensemble in a great musical, like everybody has to know their part. Everybody has to give 2000% and everybody has to really cheer on the other people, doing their part or it just doesn't work. And the way I see the map to our soul, this astrological map is we have free will. So we get to play it at whatever level we choose and certainly cultural influences and patriarch and all kinds of stuff messes us up. But I firmly believe, and I've seen it over and over that if we get the help, we need to uncover our fullest expression, people are humming at their fullest best part, which then allows everyone else around them to rise up.” So says Jennifer Freed, a psychologist, astrologer, and the author of many books, including the just-released A Map to Your Soul: Using the Astrology of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water to Live Deeply and Fully. I met Jennifer almost a decade ago—she was, in many ways, the gateway to discovering my own spirituality, because when she did my natal chart, I felt deeply seen and held. It seemed like a small miracle. Jennifer is also a psychologist and so her perceptions are grounded in life: They are insightful, practical, and actionable while also being profound and deep.This is a hard path to walk. Jennifer brings this same quality to her books—you need only have the most rudimentary understanding of astrology to get a lot out of their pages. They are, in many ways, a workout for your soul, and an opportunity to get to know yourself better. And if you do it with or for people you love, you’ll also get insight into why they do what they do. As she explains, astrology is often confined to our star signs and newspaper tidbits, when it’s so much vaster. In today’s conversation we discuss our moon, our rising, and the elements in our chart, which signify how we respond to our life. If you want, head to astro.com and get a free natal chart so you can understand the presence of air, water, fire, and earth in your own chart—though it’s not necessary.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: We are all known by the planets… Talking about the elements… Don’t spare the necessary pain… The corporatization of spirituality… Sign round-up… MORE FROM JENNIFER FREED: A Map to Your Soul: Using the Astrology of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water to Live Deeply and Fully Use Your Planets Wisely: Master Your Ultimate Cosmic Potential with Psychological Astrology Check out Jennifer Freed's Website Follow her on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I’ve never really figured out how come we stop asking each other questions. You know, we always do that in the beginning of a relationship just to get to know somebody, but then once we get committed, once we get busy, we're busy, busy, then we think, okay, everything is cool over here. I don't need to put energy into it. I'll go to work. And our partners, meanwhile, and we are changing over time. We are changing with history, with politics. We are changing with our whole world as our kids get older. If we have kids as our career changes and we stop asking each other questions, you know, our days become this endless to-do list period. And the only question we ask is, did you call the plumber? Well, yes. Anything else you wanna know?,” says Dr. Julie Gottman. Julie and her husband, John, have dedicated over four decades to the research and practice of fostering healthy and long lasting relationships. The Gottmans are the world’s leading relationship scientists, having gathered data on over three thousands couples to identify the building blocks of love and employing those findings through the training of clinicians and creation of principles and products for couples around the world.  Their latest book,The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy, distills their findings to the simple question, what makes love last? Providing readers with a simple, seven-day action plan, the book makes the Gottman’s work accessible to every relationship - no grand gestures, difficult conversations, or multi-day seminars required.  I am delighted to be joined by the couple today as we discuss how to build a fruitful dialogue around the perpetual problems that crop up in relationships; filling your relationship piggy bank with small, but daily, positive actions; and committing to an ongoing curiosity about your partner as they grow and evolve. If both people want to do the work, they tell us, many more relationships can be saved than we may think. Lasting love requires good partnership hygiene, tiny interventions over the course of a lifetime, in order to establish a culture of respect, awareness, and rediscovery that keeps things on the rails.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Accepting perpetual problems… Cultivating curiosity… Dawning of awareness… Respecting anger… MORE FROM JOHN & JULIE GOTTMAN: The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy The Gottman Institute - A Research-Based Approach to Relationships Gottman Relationship Quiz - How Well Do You Know Your Partner? Find a Gottman Trained Therapist Follow the Gottman Institute on Twitter and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Sometimes you can't see the full path. And so you don't even venture into the unknown, you know, you're unhappy, you know, you need to change, but you're afraid to take the next step because you can't see the whole path. And so what I learned that night in the dark on the trail in Jerusalem when I had left my, first marriage and I was terrified of the unknown is that it's okay. I could see the next step. There was just enough light on the path to take one step at a time. And after I would take a step, I could see the next step. And that became a metaphor for me, for venturing, you know, breaking out of a stuck place and trusting uncertainty.” So says Estelle Frankel, a psychotherapist and author of Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness and The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty. In today’s conversation we explore the dimensions of an ironically, more certain state: That of uncertainty, of not knowing, or being able to control what happens next. Estelle is a deep thinker about questions like this, as well as the intersection between spirituality and psychology, and what feel like essential truths to all of us, regardless of the denomination of our faith. I particularly love the way that she thinks about the polarity of good and evil, and the essential components of each. MORE FROM ESTELLE FRANKEL: Read Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness and The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty Estelle’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Where in your life where you're not saying yes, but there's a, yes. That wants to be said where there's some desire for self expression or creativity or way of being that you're stifling because you're trying to stay in an attachment relationship rather than being yourself. So where are you still choosing attachment over authenticity? If the two are in conflict now, ideally we will form relationships with partners and spouses and, and families and friends where we can have both authenticity and attachment. But if that's not possible, this is the challenge for all of us. What are we gonna choose? Are we still gonna choose the attachment or we're gonna go for authenticity. And I'll tell you, health wise, we pay a huge price. If we go for the attachment by stranding authenticity. And so, as we say in the book, the loss of authenticity inauthenticity, it may not have been a choice to the child. It's not like they had a choice in a matter, but authenticity can be a choice to the adult,” so says Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned physician and four-time bestselling author, who joins me today to discuss his newest book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. With over four decades of clinical experience, Gabor is a sought after expert on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and unraveling the relationship between stress and illness. In his new book, he brilliantly dissects our understanding of “normal,” exploring the role of trauma, stress, and societal pressures play in our mental and physical well-being.  Chronic diseases are not interruptions to our lives, but rather manifestations of how we live, Dr. Maté tells us. Very few diseases are genetically predetermined, he says, emphasizing that it is our environment that brings any genetic predispositions we may have to fruition. Starting in childhood, when we begin to disconnect from our authentic selves in order to maintain attachment relationships, most of us live a life where some combination of trauma, emotional pain, and separation from self play a major, yet unexplored, role in our health. Without a grounding in trauma-informed study, western medicine often fails to treat the core wounds that make us sick, leaving us vulnerable to mental illness, auto-immune disease, and addiction. When we recognize our maladies not as independent identities but as bodily expressions of mental suppressions, we can become empowered adults who choose to rediscover an authentic self we lost somewhere along the way. It is only through self-retrieval, Dr. Maté shares, that we can truly begin healing.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Chronic illnesses are representations of our lives…10:00 Childhood wounds…21:00 Addiction as a coping mechanism is response to trauma…42:00 Soul retrieval…48:00 MORE FROM DR. GABOR MATÈ: Read The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture as well as other books by Gabor Maté Explore Dr. Maté's Website Follow him on Twitter and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think we all have these stories, you know, whether they come through bereavements or betrayals or, or whatever, we, we all have these losses…There's something about having been immersed in this bittersweet tradition and understanding the pain of separation and understanding the desire for a union and understanding that the loves that we lose, that we might lose particular loves, but that we never lose love itself. I think that's like the real thing that's really made me come to a place of peace,” so says Susan Cain, former lawyer and bestselling author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. In her first book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent eight years on the New York Times Best Seller List, Cain urged us to hold space for the introverts among us. In Bittersweet, she implores us to hold space for our sorrow and longing. Through research, storytelling, and memoir, her book explores the value of a melancholic outlook on life and what it stands to teach us about creativity, connection, and love.  Our conversation moves through many facets of what Cain calls “the bittersweet tradition,” exploring all the ways in which allowing ourselves to experience the cosmic sadness simultaneously opens us up to transcendant ecstasy. We are creatures who simultaneously lose and love, who separate and long for home, who experience the bitter along with the sweet, she tells us, and it is in these extremes that our sorrow and joy have the opportunity to meet, unexpectedly bringing us closer to the sublime beauty of life. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: The ecstasy of engaging with sorrow…14:15 The most fundamental part of our emotional DNA…25:00 Writing your experience…43:00 Opening to a different frequency…54:43 MORE FROM SUSAN CAIN: Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Listen to the Bittersweet playlist on Spotify or Apple Music Watch Susan’s TEDTalk: The hidden power of sad songs and rainy days Follow Susan on Twitter and Instagram  Check out The Next Big Idea Book Club—a nonfiction subscription book club curated by Susan Cain, Macolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There seems to be this basic idea that if you make a system including a human life, more efficient, capable of processing, more inputs to put it in like abstract general terms. Well, if that supply of inputs is infinite, all that's gonna happen is that you attract more of them into the system and you end up busier, right? This is Parkinson's law.. It's induced demand with the way when they widen freeways to ease the congestion, it makes the route more appealing to more drivers. So more cars come and fill the lane and then the congestion gets back to what it was before. There's all these different ways in which trying to get on top of something that you can't actually get on top of is futile. And technology seems to offer us that promise, and of course it does help us do lots and lots of really useful things, but it doesn't help us get to the state of peace of mind with respect to our limited natures. It's never going to break through that, that barrier,” so says Oliver Burkeman, feature writer for The Guardian and the New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, a book which delivers practical self-help through the lens of philosophical reflection as Burkeman questions the modern fixation on “getting everything done.”  We are finite, material creatures who only live so long—about four thousand weeks—Burkeman tells us, yet we are obsessed with cramming more and more “stuff” into our days, aided by time saving technologies that give us the illusion of transcending the ultimate limitation: Our own mortality. Our culture has led us to believe that if we just became more efficient, we could optimize our lives enough to bring about greater happiness. But in an era where busyness has become a virtue, our attempts to drive efficiency ultimately don’t yield more time for the meaningful stuff, but rather heighten our sense of anxious hurry as we face, and are expected to process, an incessant stream of inputs. We can only begin to build toward a meaningful life when we embrace our finitude, he advises us. Rather than searching out shortcuts to arrive at our cosmically significant life purpose faster, Burkeman tells us to ride the metaphorical bus—allowing ourselves to learn and develop at all the stops along the way. The universe is not depending on us to maximize our time, he says, and when we fall victim to the siren’s call of efficiency culture to avoid the annoying parts of life, we miss out on a whole bunch of the meaningful stuff, too.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Why we shouldn’t maximize efficiency…5:18 Instrumentalizing time…15:42 Originality lies on the far side of unoriginality…31:41 Our universal insignificance…40:11 MORE FROM OLIVER BURKEMAN: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking Explore Oliver's Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“What I know is that no one is alone. There's no sense of isolation or sadness or disconnection that I think at times we mistakenly feel here because we get very stuck in the fact that we're in these physical bodies, right? And sometimes we're physically isolated or sometimes I think some of us are so distanced from our own truths and our own inner voice, our own inner wisdom that we get very confused on our life path. And then we feel spiritually distanced from being connected to this great fabric and grid of light that's here. Right? So I think the answer is for all of us here on earth to go deep within, to access our highest path, our true purpose, the connection that's always there. And we can really call upon those on the other side to help us do that because they're still working with us and for us and so forth,” so says Laura Lynne Jackson, psychic medium and best selling author of The Light Between Us: Stories from Heaven. Lessons for the Living and Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe. Laura has dedicated her life and career to using her incredible gift, the ability to connect and communicate with the Other Side, to teach all of us how to tap into our intuition, access our higher self, and ultimately embrace the powerful light that burns inside of each of us.  Our conversation is both inspiring and practical as Laura guides us through exploring the connection within us. She discusses how to ask for and recognize signs from our Team of Light—her term for the rockstar assembly of our departed loved ones, guardian angels, and the divine, all of whom have congregated on the Other Side to provide us with guidance, love and connection—as well as why we should trust our pull toward connecting with others here on earth. For Laura, we exist to help our souls grow, collectively, whether here on earth or on the Other Side, and when we open ourselves up to be part of the great, eternal chain of light, we move the whole forward. Connection is a gift available for all of us to access, we must simply create the opening for it to flourish. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Signs & communicating with your Team of Light…5:40 Joining the chain of light…20:23 Reframing…42:24 Finding the right medium…51:36 MORE FROM LAURA LYNNE JACKSON: Laura's Website The Light Between Us: Stories from Heaven. Lessons for the Living. Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe Follow Laura on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I tear up at the drop of a hand and got another facilitator who tears up quicker than I do. Uh, but like we tell the youth, the soul would have no rainbow had the eyes, no tears. And so whenever any of the youth tear up or any of the adults, we take the tears and we rub it on the drum so that the tears don't go to waste that reverberate, you know, when we, when we hit the drum. Yeah. So, yeah. So a lot of it's about getting it, you know, dealing with your feelings, you know, like, like me says, and others, if you don't, you know, if you don't deal with your wound, you will continue to wound others. You know? So it's about them identifying how they've been wounded, you know, but, but then, but then also it's that wound that drives. Okay. So you find out what it is your wound is and that what, you know, drive that's one of the reasons why I do what I do.” Kwame Scruggs, born and Raised in Akron, Ohio, spent the first 15 years after high school working for the Goodyear tire company. And then, he took a leap, or decided, in the words of mythologist Joseph Campbell to follow his bliss. He went deep into the works of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Michael Meade, where he came to understand that myth can transform lives—that seeing yourself in the context of a much larger human story can change anything. Ultimately, he received a PhD in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. Kwame began working with high school dropouts and other at-risk kids across Ohio in 1998, where he led them through myths to the beat of the djembe drum, reconnecting them to a much higher purpose. He ultimately founded Alchemy, where they work with thousands of youth. In 2012, Alchemy won the President’s Committee National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, the nation’s highest honor for after-school and out-of-school programs, an award Kwame accepted from the First Lady, Michelle Obama, at the White House. In 2020, the Association of Teaching Artists (with Lincoln Center Education) presented Kwame with their Innovation in Teaching Artistry award. His work is stunning, particularly in its ability to inspire life-changing moments for kids who come to realize the power inherent within each of them, to see themselves as the hero of their own story, and why that story matters. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I mean, the idea that we're colorblind or, or gender blind or age blind or something, is ridiculous. I mean, we categorize those things within milliseconds, right? When we see one another, it's part of our our development of our visual processing and our social, our social development. But it's a deep and challenging problem. Like how we create space between the categorization of one another and the evaluation of one another. I think creating that space is what allows us to open the door to a new way of interacting in a more humane way.”  So says Jessica Nordell, the award-winning science writer behind THE END OF BIAS: A BEGINNING, which was the culmination of fifteen years of reporting on implicit bias and discrimination in all facets of life. As a frequent contributor to The New York Times, the Atlantic, and the New Republic, Jessica goes beyond delineating all the ways in which our minds unconsciously and automatically filter the world—in ways that are harmful to ourselves and others—to uncover successful interventions. She details, in a stunning way, people, companies, and cultures that have managed to undo unconscious bias, and build something more true and beautiful in its place, whether it’s the way schools assess gifted students, how policing is done, or undoing the long-term and insidious effects of gender discrimination in the workplace. Jessica has a degree in physics from Harvard and a degree in poetry from the University of Wisconsin, which underlines the rarity of her mind and her ability to perceive nuance and complexity: Her book is one that promises healing, and I recommend it to everyone. Meanwhile, this is a fun fact: Jessica is a direct descendant of the last woman to be tried for witchcraft in the state of Massachusetts. I’d be happy to be in her coven, any day.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: We are beholden to our unexamined patterns… Bias, a habit to be interrupted… Ending our notion of out-group homogeneity…  The space between categorization and evaluation… MORE FROM JESSICA NORDELL: Jessica's Website The End of Bias: A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias Explore more of Jessica's writing on unconscious and implicit bias Subscribe to Jessica's newsletter: Who We Are To Each Other To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“And I just feel that people, I now I have so much more perspective, but at the time, even I felt people who have already had so much adversity in their life. That's a big precursor to how people get behind bars. And then when they're there, I feel like that's the time to heal, but we have such a different mindset in our country and other countries do the same and such a punitive one. And that didn't, that's not how I am organized inside. That's not what feels right in me. And so I think right away, I saw how things could be different, but I also saw just the power of this tool in people's hands who were really starving to understand what was wrong in their lives and thinking there was something wrong with them. And, I just think my approach to the enneagram is that there's nothing wrong with any of us. Enneagram is a map to show us what's so right about us. And it felt like the, the most profound place to be figuring out how to teach it, which is what I was doing,” says Susan Olesek, founder of the Enneagram Prison Project, a non-profit dedicated to sharing the power of self-awareness education using the Enneagram system with those who have been imprisoned around the globe. An unapologetic idealist, and an enneagram Type One for those who are familiar with the system, Susan joins us today to share her compassionate approach to the Enneagram, honed over 15 years of engaging with Fortune 500 executives, corporate teams, schools and those experiencing incarceration. She recently founded  The Human Potentialists (THP) a Benefit Corporation with a vision to democratize the Enneagram, and whose mission is guiding people to their highest potential while connecting them to the core of our shared humanity. She views the Enneagram as an insightful tool meant to guide all of us to our highest potential, convinced that people are inherently good and encouraging us to see the possibilities that lie beyond our “personality.” Susan takes us through the potential and pitfalls of each Enneagram type, reminding us that it is vulnerable work to look deeply at ourselves in order to see and break free from the prison of our design. Their public program 9PrisonsONEKey is EPP’s compassionate introduction to the Enneagram will be accepting applications beginning July 29th, 2022.     EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Leaning in when we feel resistance… The nine personality types… Seeing the possibilities beyond our personality prison… MORE FROM SUSAN OLESEK: Enneagram Prison Project The Human Potentialists Both Sides of the Bars | Susan Olesek | TEDxWashingtonSquare DIG DEEPER: The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types RHETI: The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The focus of adulthood has been on stability, just, you know, find a job and don't leave it, find a partner and don't get divorced, have babies, you know, white picket fence, the vision of adulthood has been so wedded to stability that it was hard for me, even in writing the book and sorting this out, to pull them apart, you know, that the understanding full stop is that the goal of adulthood is to gain stability and then midlife, we now understand people have to search for meaning because there wasn't time for that prior. I'm trying to revise that and name what I think all of us have known for a long time, which is that it just doesn't work that way. It's not that easy. And actually, if we aren't finding our own personal sense of meaning in this world, while also working to gain some sense of physical, emotional, relational stability, then there's gonna just continue to be a lot of angst and confusion and pain and, and, you know, all sorts of symptoms resulting from that,” so says Satya Doyle Byock, psychotherapist and author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood. Satya has dedicated her career to influencing the way developmental psychology views and attends to “Quarterlifers”, or individuals between the ages of sixteen and thirty-six. Her incredible new book draws upon Jungian psychology, social justice advocacy, trauma-informed care, and historical research to provide readers with guideposts for this period of life, which has too long been ignored by popular culture and psychology, she argues.  Some quarterlifers, “stability types” as Satya calls them, have done everything “right” by society’s standards, yet remain unfulfilled and unclear on what to do next. “Meaning types”, at the other end of the spectrum, are not interested in the prescribed path, but feel as though they are drifting through life directionless. Some don’t want to participate in life at all. Our conversation explores this spectrum of being, setting to untangle the messy, uncharted path to wholeness as we engage with Satya’s four pillars of Quarterlife development, a powerful toolkit for young adults looking for a way through their psychological and existential crises. We talk about the cultural hazing cycle, young adults’ devotion to parental expectations, and the importance of developing our discernment muscle. So whether you are a young adult, or are simply seeking to understand the struggles of a generation, I hope our conversation leaves you eager to explore the ever-evolving balance between stability and meaning.    EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Meaning types vs. stability types…  Stuck in ambivalence.. Developing discernment… MORE FROM SATYA BYOCK: Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood Are You a Meaning Type or Stability Type? — Take the Quiz Satya's Website The Salomé Institute of Jungian Studies Follow Satya on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“So natural intelligence has this ability to bring order when we allow it to. The reason that we don't see it so often in operation in human systems is because we are constantly interrupting those patterns. So that human intervention is constantly getting in the way of and disrupting the natural order. Therefore, every time it tries to express itself or reveal itself, we come in again and we see that most clearly, you know, during the pandemic, here, I think many places around the world, it happened here in the UK that how nature was able to establish itself very, very quickly within a week of the first lockdown. You know, we were seeing dolphins in the Thames.” So says Jeddah Mali, the founder and director of Intelligent Life, which is a model and mapping system for understanding our own lives as well as the larger universe. If it sounds heady that’s because it is—but it’s also a stunning articulation of collective human values and the ways that we each show up, as well as the gap between how we live, and how we profess to want to live. What Jeddah’s map reveals, is the way we can be more conscious in all of our actions, as we move from survival to unity.  MORE FROM JEDDAH MALI: Intelligent Life To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“If you don't know how to say no, your body will eventually say no for you. I think there is so much depth to that. Mm-hmm and that's why it's so important that we help people begin asking. Is there a message that my body is trying to give me about this illness many times, uh, there's different ways to language this for different situations, but, um, is there a way in which a person is spending so much time, taking care of others or responding to the perceived needs of others instead of taking up space in the world, doing the things that put a light in your own eyes, the things that create authentic wellbeing, it took me years to begin understanding the deeper, sense of what's true here. But I think the truth is, sometimes the illness is really a message that this inauthentic self that we have become that needs to die. And if we can let that death occur, which can be messy and painful and scary, but if we can let that occur and let a more authentic version of who we really are be born well, I'll tell you sometimes that's astonishing, sometimes what then becomes possible”, says Dr. Jeff Rediger, physician, psychiatrist, author and speaker who joins us today to discuss his best-selling book, Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing. Dr. Rediger, the medical director of McLean and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has spent over 15 years studying spontaneous healing, exploring and analyzing unexplained, ‘miraculous’ recoveries in cases conventional medicine dismissed as hopeless. A leading voice challenging current healthcare systems and treatment models, in Cured, Dr. Rediger explains the science behind these miracles—digging into the root causes of illness and revealing how to create an environment that sets the stage for healing that beats the odds.   There is a part of us that knows how to heal, Dr. Rediger tells us, pushing us to explore how we can tap into the curative, regenerative potential of our own bodies rather than engaging in the endless search for external healing solutions. Our minds exert deep control over our physical reality, his research shows, making mental healing as important as, and a tool for, physical healing. Dr. Rediger’s work creates a new paradigm of healing from physical illness - for those with life-altering diagnoses, and for those of us who simply want to live healthier lives.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: The miracle of homeostasis… Mining spontaneous recovery for commonalities… Is there a message my body is sending me?... Setting yourself up for long term health… MORE FROM DR. JEFFREY REDIGER: Cured: Strengthen Your Immune System and Heal Your Life A Medicine of Hope and Possibility | Dr. Jeffrey Rediger | TEDxNewBedford Follow Dr. Rediger on Instagram and Twitter DIG DEEPER:  How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health: Perceived Positive Social Connections Account for the Upward Spiral Between Positive Emotions and Vagal Tone - Barbara L. Fredrickson, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Written and narrated by award-winning author and Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, “History is US” is a 6-part audio documentary produced and developed by C13Originals that asks questions about who we are as a nation, and what race might reveal about our current crisis. Through the voices of distinguished historians and scholars, this limited series gives listeners the background and education to understand how we got here and how we can all use history to clarify the choices before us. There will always be something distinct about our present day, yet history haunts. “History is US” is a presentation of Shining City Audio, a C13Originals and Jon Meacham Studio. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think I find great comfort in this idea that when you form that bond, when you fall in love, your neurons are actually changed the way that the electrical firing patterns happen in your brain, the way that proteins are folded are changed because of this one and only person that you have spent time with. And from that perspective, when my dad died, he is still here literally right in my physical brain. He's physically in my brain. Now. That's not, I mean, that's data on the one hand, but I also find it comforting on the other hand that he is still with me. And because it's with the brain that I perceive the whole world, he's also in a sense with me as I experience everything.” So says neuroscientist and professor Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of THE GRIEVING BRAIN. In her work, O’Connor studies the ways in which grief, loss, and bereavement imprint on the way we process the world—unable to physically map and locate the person who is now missing from our interpersonal landscapes, we must find new ways to navigate our lives, working around holes that feel, quite frankly, unbridgeable. I loved our conversation, because we explored both science and faith, as well as the enduring reality of grief: Those who have experienced loss understand that grief never goes away, even when you move past the stage of unrelenting grieving. We also talked about the new DSM-5 diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder, the pitfalls of rumination, and the essential nature of patience—both for ourselves and each other. At a time in our culture where we’re coping with massive loss—from the personal, to the cultural, to the environmental, O’Connor’s framework and language feels critical for understanding where we’re at. Particularly, as she points out, because the oscillations of grief work—moving from pain and anguish to moments of laughter and joy—is actually the framework for true mental health. Mental health is not maintaining happiness as status quo, she notes, it’s the flexibility to move through all emotions, including the most difficult ones. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“As a therapist, I started to discover that when people need boundaries, they start to have issues around anxiety in their relationships, some depression, because they're not able to really stand up. Or they feel hopeless about improving certain scenarios. Burn out—when people start to say, ‘Oh my gosh, I hate work. I have to work on weekends. Oh, this person keeps talking to me about this thing.’ So burn out frustration. Sometimes moodiness, when we get really mad at other people for asking us stuff, that could be a sign that we need some boundaries around. You know, maybe saying no and not giving them the freedom to constantly use us as a resource. Our feelings are really huge indicators on where we need boundaries. When we're feeling upset, frustrated, anxious, confused, angry, those are all huge indicators that boundaries are very likely needed.” So says Nedra Glover Tawwab, sought-after relationship expert, licensed therapist and New York Times best-selling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself.  In the book, Nedra puts her 15 years of experience demystifying the concept of boundaries to work, teaching us to get assertive in order to create healthy relationships with ourselves and our loved ones. She brings her no nonsense boundary-setting tips to the podcast today as our conversation explores signs we may need boundaries in our relationships, why people may not respect our boundaries and how to express our needs clearly, avoiding the all too common passive-aggressive spiral. She reminds us that it is ok to be less than perfect, to admit when we don’t have it all together, and to accept the help of others. Because when we establish healthy boundaries, give others grace, and accept grace ourselves we are bound to enjoy more successful, more rewarding relationships in all areas of our lives.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Boundaries - your owner’s manual… Signs that you may need boundaries… Our favorite form of communication… Leaving room for error… MORE FROM NEDRA TAWWAB: Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself The Set Boundaries Workbook: Practical Exercises for Understanding Your Needs and Setting Healthy Limits Follow Nedra on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“As scientists, we often look at one thing and we say, oh, that's the one thing it's competing for light. And then, and that's true. That's what people did. You know, the science, the experiments were simple, um, looking at one resource and not at the whole ecosystem. And so you miss all, you miss all these other ways that they're interacting. And if you, if we could look at the whole thing all at once, we would make completely different decisions about how to manage that ecosystem. But because people were so focused that Birch is competing for light and not just Birch, but Aspen and all kinds of like red Alder, all kinds of other species. And that led to the wholesale herbicide of these native plant communities to get rid of these so-called competitors. And if we'd just known ahead that they were also collaborating at the same time, any thinking person would never have gone in and poisoned these other plants. Because they create balance in the ecosystem,” so says Suzanne Simard, professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, pioneering researcher into plant communication and intelligence, and best selling author of, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Born and raised in logging country, Suzanne and her holistic views of forest ecosystems were not welcomed into the male-dominated forestry industry. Pushed into academia, she has dedicated her career to investigating the complex relationships between trees. She is best known for her work on the communal lives of trees, exploring the ways in which trees use below-ground fungal networks to communicate, compete, and cooperate—exhibiting sophisticated social traits characteristic of a civil society not too different from our own. At the center of it all, she tells us, are the Mother Trees—immense, highly connected beings that play a vital role in intertwining and sustaining those around them.  Our conversation dives into these enthralling, mysterious relationships, and the practical application of Professor Simard’s work on forest resiliency and adaptability, including how to manage and heal forests from human impact. We must value our ecosystems for more than what we exploit them for, she tells us, and by restoring biodiversity and respecting nature’s brilliance, we can reconnect to the intelligence of the natural world, and hopefully uncover a better way forward in the process. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Communities seeking balance… The development of a forest… Exploring the right relationship with nature… MORE FROM SUZANNE SIMARD: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest Suzanne's Website How Trees Talk to One Another: Suzanne Simard's TEDTalk  Follow Suzanne on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There are 12 questions that enable every person who's willing to, to answer them, to reevaluate their life and their legacy. Because what I have found, um, with my father's death is I miss not a single material thing about my father. I mean, I have his hat on the shelf behind me and I have a couple of his old tools, but that's it, what I really cherish the inheritance, I really cherish are the values, the laughter, the music, the food, my love of nature. That's his legacy, his powerful bullshit meter, his powerful, moral compass, his love of peoplehood. And that's what we wanna be sure we bequeath to our loved ones when we're gone. But it's more than just a bequest because when you ask yourself questions, like what is love? What makes me happy? What has been my greatest failure? What do I regret? What do I want my epitaph to be? What would I say at my own funeral as a final blessing to my loved ones? These are the kinds of questions that enable us to ask whether or not we are living the life we say, we believe in and the life we say matters,” so says Steve Leder, senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and best-selling author of five books. In our conversation today, we talk about death and the creation of ethical wills, the subject of Rabbi Leder’s most recent book, For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story. The book, born of his experience helping thousands of people navigate loss, is a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life - a so-called ethical will. Things are not our legacy, the rabbi tells us; and our estate plan will not nourish our loved ones, but our words and our stories have the power to provide something lasting and meaningful for generations to come. Rabbi Leder pushes us to examine our lives - our joys, our regrets, our successes and our failures - and to present those stories, brokenness and all, to those we love. Doing so, he says, will not only hold our loved ones when we are gone, but can serve to redirect us now as it forces us to examine the alignment between our professed values and the way in which we are actually living. His major takeaway? Don’t wait. Our bodies may disintegrate, but our lives are defined by our stories and we have the ability to create, and leave behind, worlds of meaning with our words.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Death, the most natural thing in the world… More than corporeal beings… Creating an ethical will… Through brokenness, wholeness… MORE FROM STEVE LEDER: For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story Additional Books by Rabbi Leder  Follow Steve on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I didn't wanna be still, I had to be still, but I, I, I wanted more than anything to continue being a human doing. And the universe was insisting that I became a human being and it's profound. I mean, it's the greatest transformation of my life. You know, I went from being extremely supported on a business perspective to having to go buy stamps. And it takes me all day to mail a letter. You know, I'm really, I'm only able to do what I can do in a day and I love it. I really love it because as I often said, like, I can do bad all by myself. I don't need somebody else confirming a reservation and rubbing somebody the wrong way so that when I get there, the energy is weird. It's like now off I get somewhere and the energy's weird it's cuz of me.” So says Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, a dear friend and mentor, who in her prior life, was the global head of literature, lectures, and events at WME, the agency. During her long and storied career she shepherded many of culture’s biggest luminaries, including Oprah, Brené Brown, and Sue Monk Kidd. And yes, Jennifer is an amazing dealmaker, who can look for synergies across industries so that everyone wins, but I believe her particular genius point is finding the story—I have watched her work with people where their story, which they perceived as messy, random, unimportant, comes together in her eyes as a cogent, powerful narrative. It is incredible to witness, and truly transforms that person’s perspective on their entire life. She is one of my friends and mentors—on any given day, she might be my mother, my sister, or as she would joke, my daughter—and I have learned so much from watching her navigate the world with fierceness and power. In today’s conversation, she talks about her transition into a sacred pause as she contemplates how she wants to serve in this next phase of her career—and we explore story as both a tool for personal healing and an opportunity for societal change. Let’s get to our conversation. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I talk about dysfunctional relational stances that would repeat over and over again. For example, angry pursuit is an oxymoron. Angry pursuit will never get complaining about how the person isn't close to. You will never get then closer to you. It is dysfunctional. That's what dysfunctional means. It doesn't work. It'll never get you what you want. And the first phase of the therapy that we do, relational life therapy. And in some ways, the first phase of this book is identifying what your repetitive, adaptive child. Relational stance is the thing you do over and over and over again, automatically knee jerk. I talk about whoosh comes up like a wave. I just gotta do this. I've gotta fix this person. I've gotta stand enough for myself. I gotta get outta here. And that is the hallmark of your adoptive child that is automatic and, and compulsive. And this whole book is about moving beyond that part of you into the wise adult part of you, that can take a breath and do something, not automatic, but chosen deliberate, more skillful,” says bestselling author and renowned marriage counselor Terry Real. His new book, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, combines new findings in neuroscience and his vast experience working with couples on the brink of disaster to give readers the skills necessary to move their relationship from a dysfunctional you vs. me into a more collaborative “us”.  There is no such thing as working on a relationship, Terry tells us, in order to work on healing the system, we must heal the individual parts. So many of us, he says, grew up without adequate emotional support, and the techniques we developed to survive in those environments as children, can go on to poison our intimate relationships. Though we may not remember the trauma, our knee-jerk reactions to distressing situations and relational conflict push our learned adaptive strategies into overdrive.   Terry’s science-backed toolkit helps individuals move beyond their involuntary response, which tends to be rigid, harsh, and unforgiving; and come into their potential as a wise adult - one who stops, thinks, and reflects; able to tap into a more collaborative self for the betterment of the relationship. Through deep individual work, nurturing our inner child, and choosing to go against our impulses rather than indulging them; we can transform ourselves and save our relationships.     EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Fight, flight, or fix?... Healing the individual to heal the relationship… Coming down from false empowerment… A contempt-free life… MORE FROM TERRY REAL: Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship Terry's Website Read Terry’s Other Work:  I Don't Want To Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression How Can I Get Through To You?: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women The New Rules Of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work DIG DEEPER: Find an RLT Certified Therapist Near You  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm sharing a special preview of A Slight Change of Plans, a podcast all about who we are and who we become in the face of change. Dr. Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who is an expert on human behavior, and she’s here to help us navigate the changes we all experience in our lives. She sits in intimate conversations with celebrity guests like Tiffany Haddish and Kacey Musgraves as well as everyday inspirations, like journalist Euna Lee, who was held captive in North Korea for 140 days, and Kate Bowler, a religious scholar whose own belief system was thrown into question after she was diagnosed with cancer. You'll also meet change experts — including leading grief therapist Julia Samuel, psychologist Adam Grant, and psychologist Ethan Kross – whose scientific insights will help us make better decisions and live happier, more fulfilling lives In this preview, you’ll hear Maya in conversation with Jodie Patterson, a mother whose son came out as transgender when he was just shy of three years old. Jodie knew her son would face many changes ahead, but what she didn’t anticipate was how much she would change, too. You can listen to A Slight Change of Plans, from Pushkin Industries, at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/scpthread. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think the key is to really believe it when you see something that you're doing every day in your diet that is making your hormones off or your skin off it, a lot of women know what's happening to their bodies. We're more intuitive in that way than men are. So I think it sounds really cheesy and we've heard it over and over again, but please listen to your body because it's telling you something. And so I think that, I think that it's just important to listen and make a note of things that make us feel terrible and things that make us feel good.” So says Dr. Nigma Talib, a Los Angeles based Naturopathic Doctor and the author of the best selling book, Younger Skin Starts in the Gut. A pioneer in the Naturopathic medical profession, Dr. Nigma has been asked to speak all over the world, bringing light to the root causes of illness and how the application of cutting edge dietary, supplemental and functional laboratory testing guidance can correct health issues and enable optimal well-being. Dr. Nigma joins me today to talk about all things wellness, from Vitamin D deficiency and sleep hygiene, to stool tests and hormones. We discuss the nutritional supplements to take to ensure you look like a grape, not a raisin; the importance of the 80/20 rule; and how to establish your personal hormonal baseline through testing. Our hormones are messengers, she tells us, but when they are out of whack wires can get crossed, leading to fatigue, joint pain, premature aging and depression - making it all the more important that we listen to our bodies and get curious, putting together the pieces of our health in a way that allows us to live optimally and feel our best.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Grapes, not raisins… Exploring the 80/20 rule… The essential supplement checklist… Exercise, done right… MORE FROM DR. NIGMA TALIB: Younger Skin Starts in the Gut: 4-Week Program to Identify and Eliminate Your Skin-Aging Triggers - Gluten, Wine, Dairy, and Sugar Reverse the Signs of Ageing: The Revolutionary Inside-Out Plan to Glowing, Youthful Skin Visit Dr. Nigma Talib’s Website Follow Dr. Nigma on Twitter and Instagram DIG DEEPER: Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding Hate Working Out? Blame Evolution - NYT, January 2021 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"If you are in a Western life and, and are designed as an empath or a spiritual being that feels things very deeply, it is important for you to hold and maintain your peace and to send, to usher that energy to others that may be experiencing pain and suffering at any given time. If you were in a period in your life in which you are in pain or suffering, would you want everyone else in the world to be suffering along with you? Probably not. If you were sick, you wouldn't want all of your family members to be miserable and sad, just because you're feeling sick. You would want people to be in their peace. You would want people to hold that energy of joy, because that is what creates healing, energy and meaning and purpose." So says Carissa Schumacher. This is Carissa’s second visit to Pulling the Thread, and I highly recommend listening to that introductory conversation if you’re new to Carissa’s work. Otherwise, buckle your seat belt! In this conversation, Carissa and I dive into many of Yeshua’s recent transmissions including the necessity of moving empathy into compassion, the essential nature of suffering, the difference between purpose and vehicle, and the universal nature of intuition. We cover a lot of ground. I also wanted to tell you that due to popular demand, Carissa is going to lead a study group for her and Yeshua’s book, THE FREEDOM TRANSMISSIONS, an essential read if you haven’t yet picked up a book. This is going to be an online, four-day journey in June, with some visits from special friends, including Yeshua. I will be in the group to help facilitate the conversation, and hope to see you there. Carissa just put up a website, finally, where you can find all the information you need about her, Yeshua, The Freedom Transmissions book, journeys, and sessions. It is at THE SPIRIT TRANSMISSIONS DOT COM. Information about the online journey in June is also there! MORE FROM CARISSA SCHUMACHER: THE FREEDOM TRANSMISSIONS CARISSA SCHUMACHER’S WEBSITE To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"This to me is basic, but it feels like we've drifted really far from it in our culture. That to be a human, the basic condition of being a human is being needful. You know, like we need air, we need housing, we need food, we need companionship. We need all of these things. And somehow in our culture, it feels like you're asking for too much, if you need things, right, you're supposed to be super self-sufficient. You're supposed to be able to like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You're supposed to be able to like handle everything and it's just it's work. And it is it's too much for one person to do." So says author and journalist Angela Garbes, who in the first pages of her new book, ESSENTIAL LABOR, expands the concept of “mothering,” creating a tent for everyone, of any gender, who is engaged in the process of creation and care. This pretty much includes everyone. A first-generation Philipino-American, Angela makes the argument that the United States must re-orient the way we think about everything—the economy, in particular—to venerate the vital act of care, of tending to each other’s needs, and of prioritizing the collective…otherwise we are lost. In our conversation, we touch on what this means for all of our lives, including the ways that women like me must come out of our shame pockets to talk about all the people who care for us—labor that has become largely invisible behind the veneer of our projections of what it looks like to be a functioning family in America. As I explain to Angela, our family would cease to work without Vicky, who is effectively our third parent. I believe Angela is right, that we need to be having these collective conversations first, in order to push culture to reprioritize against a new axiom of what really matters in our lives. MORE FROM ANGELA GARBES: ESSENTIAL LABOR: MOTHERING AS SOCIAL CHANGE LIKE A MOTHER: A FEMINIST JOURNEY THROUGH THE SCIENCE AND CULTURE OF PREGNANCY FOLLOW ANGELA ON TWITTER ANGELA’S WEBSITE To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"When we talk about the ghost of the unsaid, we're talking about the inherited feelings of our parents, unprocessed trauma, where the Phantoms that lived inside them, We're talking about traumas that our parents and grandparents would not process, and they are transmitted to us in some raw way. And I quote in the book, Holocaust survivors Maria Toric, Nicholas Abraham, who said, 'What haunts us are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.' So says psychotherapist Galit Atlas, who has spent her life and career both witnessing and unraveling the ways that the lived—and unlived—experiences of our ancestors can show up in our own lives. Galit—who is Syrian/Iranian by way of Israel—grew up in the midst of trauma, violence that continued to unfold around her against a generational tapestry of pain. We talk about the direct transmission of trauma in our conversation, as well as these “Gaps” or secrets, that show up in her practice again and again. We also talk about this idea of what Freud called “Afterwardness,” which is the way that we reprocess traumatic memories again and again from our new lived perspective. We explore what healing looks like for clients who suddenly become aware of how these hidden forces and patterns are informing their lives—and what it looks like to clip those threads and set yourself free. And perhaps most poignantly, we discuss the idea of victims and aggressors, and how so many of us, in the grips of our victimhood feel justified in lashing out—this is a phenomenon we can trace from our personal lives to the global stage, and it deserves our awareness. MORE FROM GALIT ATLAS: EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE: A THERAPIST, HER PATIENTS, AND THE LEGACY OF TRAUMA To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"I talk to so many women who, you know, we talk about huddle and we talk about, I referenced, you know, back catalog friends, people who I've known for years and years, you are never too late to add to your huddle. You are never, it is, you are never too old to, to add to your circle of friends. And what Elise is alluding to is certainly something that I feel as well, which is, you know, we live in these various chapters in our, in our lifetimes, you know, things change. We go through different. We have these various aha moments, I think for you. And I, we've both really deepened our spiritual practices and our intentionality around life and what we wanna do and how we wanna share ourselves. And I think as we've been in these more vulnerable spaces on the other side of giant things, we've been a part of, we've gotten to know ourselves better." -Brooke Baldwin Many years ago, journalist Brooke Baldwin sat in her mother’s bedroom and cried about the state of her career and her relationship—and while she was grateful for her mom’s attention and support, she had a simultaneous thought: Where were her friends? Thus became her quest—ancillary to her daytime job as an anchor on CNN—to find her huddle. In her mind, she wanted to reclaim the idea of huddle—a macho sports term—and apply it to groups of women working together for mutual goals, like joy, success, and intimacy. She wrote a book about this adventure—understandably called HUDDLE—where she explores the power of female friendship and camaraderie all over the country. And the way that when women come together, they achieve improbably awesome things. As her book went to press, she announced her time at CNN was coming to an end, and we met each other shortly after, when we were both feeling stripped down and open to new adventures. Brooke is now part of MY Huddle, and her enthusiasm for the power of friendship is palpable and contagious. MORE FROM BROOKE BALDWIN: HUDDLE FOLLOW BROOKE ON TWITTER FOLLOW BROOKE ON INSTAGRAM To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“One reason I wrote the book is that the lack of recognition is such a powerful harm done to patients. And I think until you've gone through an experience like this, it's really hard to convey why that is. But basically it comes down to having the dignity of your suffering possessing. Some kind of meaning, I think, right. And we're all social creatures, right. We don't actually get sick totally alone. It feels lonely. But one reason that my illness was doubly hard was that I had the loneliness of physical symptoms. And then I had the additional of never having them recognized or validated, which made it so much harder.”  Writer, journalist, and poet Meghan O’Rourke—a former editor at The New Yorker, and the current editor of The Yale Review—has written stunningly, about many topics in our culture. But her latest book—THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM: REIMAGINING CHRONIC ILLNESS—is a memoir of her own suffering as she navigated the medical world in search of a diagnosis. Her journey to understand what is wrong with her—to even be seen as a sick person—was particularly complex because she has a web of autoimmune diseases, which…is not that uncommon, actually, particularly for younger women. In her book, she explores the complexity of illness and what it means to look fine—vital, even—and yet feel like you’re failing inside, and how quick we are to dismiss suffering we cannot see. Particularly when it’s the suffering of women.  MORE FROM MEGHAN O’ROURKE: THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM SUN IN DAYS MEAGHAN’S WRITING FOR THE NEW YORKER FOLLOW MEGHAN ON TWITTER FOLLOW MEGHAN ON INSTAGRAM To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Usually in high conflict, the conflict becomes the whole point. So you make a lot of mistakes and you can miss opportunities that would actually be in the interest you are fighting for. The reason you got into the fight to begin with, whereas good conflict is the kind of conflict where again, you can be angry, you can be yell, you can have radical visions for the future. You can and must, you know, organize and protest and hold people accountable. But you do it much more skillfully. You make fewer mistakes because you're not essentially being controlled by the conflict. You're not in the trance of high conflict. And it's, you know, it's not easy to stay in good conflict. Everybody is gonna visit high conflict, even if it's for, you know, a few minutes, but you don't wanna live there because you, you and your cause will suffer.”  So says Amanda Ripley, investigative journalist, podcast host, New York Times bestselling author and the queen of conflict - good conflict, that is. Amanda’s most recent book - High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out - draws on her years of experience trying to make sense of conflict on a personal and political level—particularly in this heightened time of OUTRAGE.  Not all conflict is bad, Amanda tells us. In bad conflict, what she calls high conflict, the conflict becomes the whole point, an us vs. them mentality that takes on a life of its own and leads participants down a path of perpetual anger without resolution. Good conflict, on the other hand, goes somewhere interesting as genuine curiosity and deep listening leads to better mutual understanding. So how do we make the shift? In our discussion, Amanda arms us with a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world. We talk about what it means to get curious about what lies beneath the surface of a conflict; how our own unresolved internal conflicts often inform our external conflicts; as well as the importance of engaging in deep listening in order to make others feel truly heard. In a world engineered for misunderstanding, Amanda gives us faith that individuals, and even entire communities, can end the doom loop of outrage and blame if they can learn to really hear each other.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: What would it be like if you got what you wanted?… Conflict entrepreneurs… High conflict and the death of curiosity… Deep listening and making others feel heard… MORE FROM AMANDA RIPLEY: High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why Listen to Amanda’s Podcast, How To! on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Amanda's Website Follow Amanda on Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I’ve won arm wrestles with big muscular men, right out of prison because you align the energy. Everything wants to harmonize with it and things start to flow with you and it's silent and it's, it's quiet, it's gentle, but it's incredibly powerful. The strength you can access when you're in a state of integrity. So as that starts to grow, we're seeing the Putins and we're seeing the Trumps because they are so freaking loud. And we don't even know that in the silence all over the world, there's another power rising and rising and rising and looking at what's happening in Ukraine and looking at the atrocities and saying, okay, we're not going, we're not gonna do this anymore.”  So says Martha Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist and life coach who is the author of many incredible books, including the just-released, WAY OF INTEGRITY, an Oprah bookclub pick that just might change your life. Martha describes integrity as that sense of wholeness that we can all tap into when we are aligned and attuned to our true selves on the deepest level. It is from that place that we feel unrestricted and safe—like we are at one with the world and each other, and that we no longer feel compelled to control our own behavior in order to earn acceptance and belonging. It is a place of strength, freedom, and radical honesty. The book, which is a mixture of memoir, anecdotes from her own, fascinating practice, research, and worksheets, uses Dante’s Inferno as a guide to healing. As with any heroic quest, you must go down before you can go up, and Martha walks you there, hand-in-hand until you reach the place of Satori, or enlightenment, which is really another word for the state of integrity. If you can’t tell, I really loved this book–and I loved our conversation. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: The same proof from different angles… White lies, gray lies, black lies… Being torn apart to become awake… Breaking free from the golden chains… MORE FROM MARTHA BECK: The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self Read Martha's Other Work Martha's Website Martha Beck - Think Like a Wayfinder Masterclass Martha's TedTalk - The Four Technologies of Magic Follow Martha on Twitter and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You have to have something new to hope for sure. You might still keep hoping that somebody with a terminal illness might get better and indeed they do sometimes. Or you might hope as after 9/11, that somebody will be found who was in the trade towers when they fell down. And in fact, a few people were found in another country or in a psychiatric ward and not being able to remember who they were, but for the most part, you keep hoping and you move forward with life in a new way. Without that missing person, you must do both. You cannot just hope because that means you're immobilized, you're frozen in place and the children will suffer, the family will suffer, you will suffer from that. It has to be both/and.” So says, Dr. Pauline Boss, emeritus professor at University of Minnesota and world-renowned as a pioneer in the interdisciplinary study of family stress management as well as for her groundbreaking research on what is now known as the theory of ambiguous loss. Dr. Boss coined the term ambiguous loss in the 1970s to describe a very particular type of loss that defies resolution, blocks coping and meaning-making and freezes the process of grieving. With death, she says, there is official certification of loss, proof of the transformation from life to death, and support for mourners through community rituals and gatherings. In ambiguous loss, none of these markers exist, the lingering murkiness leaving individuals unnerved and stressed out.  In her forty years of clinical experience as a family therapist, Dr. Boss has worked with individuals, couples and families dealing with some kind of ambiguous loss - from families in New York who lost family members during 9/11 and are experiencing the physical kind of ambiguous loss, to those dealing with the psychological ambiguous losses of a parent with Alzheimer’s disease, a loved one with an addiction, or someone who is changing as a result of aging or transitioning. Drawing on research and her immense cache of clinical experience, Dr. Boss has developed six guiding principles for building the resilience to both bear the trauma of ambiguous loss and to move forward and live well, despite experiencing a loss with no certainty or resolution.  She joins me today to discuss this often unrecognized, but ubiquitous type of loss, particularly as it relates to closure - the subject of her most recent book, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. Our conversation touches on our collective grieving following the pandemic and our country’s awakening to the concept of systemic racism; how we can begin to increase our tolerance for ambiguity, and the importance of discovering new hope in the face of grief that has no end. Our search, she tells us, must not be for the elusive concept of closure, but rather for a sense of meaning and a new way to move forward.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Unnerving ambiguity… Using both/and language around loss… Pillars of processing… Moving forward, not moving on… MORE FROM PAULINE BOSS: The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Coping with Stress and Grief What if There’s No Such Thing as Closure? - NYT Magazine, December 2021 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"So if we take that off the table, if we take off this, this goal of changing somebody's mind, then what are you left with? What's what's your purpose in the conversation? And I feel like not only is that more attainable to have a conversation in which you are exchanging ideas, just exchanging ideas, changing information, that's attainable every time. But also it relieves some pressure, right? I mean, sometimes I feel like people see conversations as frustrating because they keep trying to do something that's impossible. Maybe it would be more enjoyable for you if you weren't trying to beat your head against the wall. I feel like that that paragraph from Carl Rogers is not just something that is useful to tell the other person. I think it's mostly for you. Like for you to tell yourself, I'm not here to change you. I'm just here to listen and understand." So says Celeste Headlee, award-winning radio journalist and author of many incredible books, including Do Nothing, We Need to Talk, and Speaking of Race. Celeste, a self-described “light-skinned Black Jew,” has been having hard conversations about race since she was a little kid. Already an astute observer of culture, she has notated throughout her life how unproductive these conversations tend to be, how we shut down and get defensive, or try to reinforce our own sense of righteousness. In today’s conversation, we explore the reasons we’ve become culturally calcified as well as antidotes for taking on tough and essential topics. In Celeste’s experience, the more reserved we become about leaning into potential conflict the more fear enters the equation: And right now, one of the worst labels you can hear is that you are racist. I loved DO NOTHING and I also loved Speaking of Race, because at its heart it is also just about the art of conversation--and active listening. And Celeste has a lot of experience: She is a regular guest host on NPR and American Public Media, and her Tedx Talk on having better conversations has been viewed over 23 million times. While I’ve got your attention on Celeste, you need to listen to her season with John Biewen on Scene on Radio: They did an incredible series of episodes about misogyny, and his season on race, called Seeing White, which he co-hosted with Chenjerai Kumanyika is incredible.  MORE FROM CELESTE HEADLEE: Speaking of Race Do Nothing We Need to Talk Celeste’s Website Follow Celeste on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I increasingly feel that modern life is becoming intolerable for everyone, whether they're neurodivergent or not. I think we've noticed it earlier. I think, you know, we've reached our point of unbearable discomfort earlier along the line. But I just begin to think that the way we are living is generally hostile to our brains and our neurology. We are, all of us, completely overwhelmed all the time. And you know, like the idea that some people had a good pandemic, well that's because the world called a truce on some of us, and we didn't realize we needed it until that moment. I mean, I don't know what it's gonna take for us to all pull the break on this because it's not good. It's not good for us.” So says Katherine May, the New York Times bestselling author of Wintering, the book that spoke to so many of our souls when it came out a month before the pandemic: Katherine anticipated what all of us felt, which is that our way of living was not supportable, and that we needed retreat and rest. Katherine is a prophet for a number of reasons: Not only because she’s a stunningly beautiful writer and astute observer of the world, but also because she’s wired a little bit differently. Before she wrote WINTERING, Katherine wrote another book, a memoir called THE ELECTRICITY OF EVERY LIVING THING, about attempting to walk the 630 mile South West Coast Path in Britain before turning 40. But it’s not a book about a heroic feat, it’s actually about grappling with her late-in-life diagnosis as being on the autism spectrum disorder. Katherine always knew she was different, but she never knew exactly how or why, only that she found many parts of life overwhelming and chaotic. The book, which is stunning, explores the ways so many of us feel like we’re passing—picking up behaviors from other people in order to be accepted, or to fit in.  MORE FROM KATHERINE MAY: The Electricity of Every Living Thing Wintering The Best Most Awful Job Katherine May’s Website Follow Katherine on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think we're due for a cultural rebranding around crying. I think that crying, you know, if we start to cry, we inevitably apologize or invariably apologize. We sort of suck it back in and make it as small as it can be. Like the way someone would pinch back a sneeze, we’re like holding the tears back, making it smaller, collecting ourselves. And you know, if you know, somebody who's crying frequently or you're like, they're in a bad place. And I think that we really need to see crying as this deep wisdom from our body saying, you need a release right now, let's have of one. And when you get an opportunity to cry, dive into it and let it be big, let it be complete rather than smaller. Like let it be bigger.” So says Dr. Ellen Vora, a Columbia University-trained psychiatrist who takes a functional and holistic approach to mental health—namely, she treats the whole system, looking for where states like anxiety and depression might be rooted in the body, whether it’s less-than-ideal nutrition and an out-of-whack gut, or poor sleep and breathing. In her just-launched book—THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY—she tackles this state that is ever-present for many of us. In fact, it’s easy to argue that if you aren’t feeling anxious, you aren’t really alive in this complex, difficult rollercoaster of time. But in Ellen’s model, she differentiates between true and false anxiety—both are very real and valid concerns. For false anxiety, typically there’s an imminently treatable physical root that can be addressed until the body comes back into balance and the mind calms. True anxiety, on the other hand, is an alarm clock that something is not right—that you’re out of alignment, or integrity, in some way. In today’s episode we talk about both, including the overwhelming load that we’re all carrying and how important it is to cry. We also explore psychedelics and what it means to really heal. OK, let’s get to our conversation. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: It’s not ‘all in your head’, it’s in your body… Building your sleep toolkit… Honoring real food cravings… The importance of finding release… MORE FROM ELLEN VORA: The Anatomy Of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response Ellen's Website Follow Ellen on Instagram and check out her videos on YouTube and TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"When I would witness somebody that I identify with in whatever capacity of what I'm calling in, have, what I want or are successful in what I would like to be successful in. Um, or, you know, they are on that path to what I'm shooting for. I really realize that that would actually be tremendously more effective for my subconscious to go, oh, if they could do that or if they are doing that, I can as well. So beyond all, all of the visualizing I did back in the day until I was blue in the face, this would speed things up and make it really rapid," says Lacy Phillips, my guest today - a global manifestation expert and speaker and founder of To Be Magnetic. Lacy presents a unique manifestation formula, rooted in basic psychology, neuroscience, and her energetic gifts. Lacy’s manifestation formula is not your typical "think positive" and "visualize" method, but rather, she is known for a much deeper and more therapeutic response that requires clearing subconscious blocks first—only then, can you begin to call in and work toward what you most desire. Lacy offers a comprehensive digital workshop program called The Pathway, along with an excellent podcast, EXPANDED. I highly recommend tuning in.  Today, she shares with us the secrets of her manifestation success, as we discuss everything from identifying our sticky subconscious beliefs to reading our nervous system and its readiness for change to how to respond to tests on the way to rediscovering our authentic, worthy self. Lacy tells us that seeing is believing when it comes to manifestation, and encourages us to search for ‘expanders’ - individuals, real or fictitious, who broaden our concept of reality. She challenges us to turn our envy towards those who have what we want, using them as proof positive, that what we want is not only possible, but achievable. Everyone is being offered a ticket on the manifestation train, she assures us, it is just a matter of whether we choose to get on.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: The three pieces of manifestation… Resolving our sticky subconscious beliefs… Finding your expanders… Aligned action and being tested… MORE FROM LACY PHILLIPS: To Be Magnetic - curated by Lacy Phillips Listen to Lacy’s podcast, EXPANDED, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow To Be Magnetic on Instagram and Twitter Follow Lacy on Instagram  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I think what makes it much more difficult to, to have the courage, to continue to experiment, you know, look at somebody like Joni Mitchell or Rickie Lee Jones, people that at their moment of peak success, commercially said, you know, I'm going to do jazz now, or I'm going to do instrumental now, or I'm going to do something else now. And you know, the word once again, you know, that changed the world. Even Dylan, when he went electric, you know, the world hates that, you know, we're supposed to be able to deliver an expectation that people are used to and feel comfortable with. And I think any type of huge success like that really sets you up to feel like you can't veer from that without either disrupting your level of success or disappointing people or outraging people, you know, the very things that thrill and delight and excite. Some people are the very things that outrage others. And once you start to have to gauge where you're going to sit in that continuum, you know, I think the original work is then pretty much obliterated,” so says Debbie Millman, author, educator, curator and host of one of the first, and longest running podcasts, Design Matters. Debbie is a creator to her core - she started her career at Sterling Brands, one of the world’s leading branding consultancies, and for twenty years led the company as President, working on the logo and brand identity for some of the world’s most prominent brands, from Burger King, Hershey’s, Haagen Dazs and Tropicana, to Star Wars and Gillette. Her writing and illustrations have been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Print Magazine, and Fast Company. She is the author of seven books, the co-owner and editorial director of PrintMag.com, and co-founded the world’s first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her podcast, which has been nominated for six Webby awards, has been highlighted on over 100 “Best Podcasts” lists and was designated by Apple as one of their “All Time Favorite Podcasts”, has spent the past 17 years interviewing nearly 500 of the most creative people in the world.  Today she joins me to discuss her most recent book, Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People. This book, Debbie tells us, was born of her desire to stoke her own creative fire in a time when she was working as a creative but feeling artistically dead. Debbie regales us with tales of the creative processes of the greats, including the inevitable failures, rejections, and obstacles that are part of any creative journey, showing us how they persevere to create beauty in the face of adversity. In our conversation, we discuss the danger of expectations, the courage it takes to create and questions around who gets to call themselves an artist. We talk about the stereotype of the pained artist, finding inspiration, and how she teaches her students to refine and create their original voice.  She leaves us with her thoughts about personal brands and the way in which they limit our identity and our ability to continually pursue the new or experimental.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Fear around the new…(10:15) Who gets to call themselves an artist?...(17:50) The courage in experimentation…(22:52) On personal brands…(43:00) MORE FROM DEBBIE MILLMAN: Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People More Books by Debbie Millman Visit Debbie's Website Listen to Debbie’s Podcast, Design Matters on Apple Podcasts Follow Debbie on Twitter and Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That's what I think is so funny about this is like a hundred years on these things that he's talking about remain as live as ever as sort of as complex and as urgent as they were back in Vienna and literally a hundred years ago. So that it feels to me like he was really onto something. And I don't think that's true of every thinker of the 1920s or every psychoanalyst of the 1920s. He really, he really he's like heat-seeking missile. He has this ability to sort of put himself in the most contested zones, our emotional lives. Today we are joined by author Olivia Laing to discuss her new book, Everybody: A Book About Freedom, which explores the body as a mechanism for understanding the world around us through the story of radical psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. A contemporary and friend of the famous Sigmund Freud, Reich believed that the body communicated things that his patients could not articulate. In many ways, he’s the often-overlooked father of trauma and somatic therapy. In Reich’s view, unexpressed reservoirs of emotion, if left unprocessed, led to the build up of a sort of muscular armor that patients carried with them for life. Though Reich’s later work, which featured increasingly eccentric ideas, has led to his erasure within the common psychoanalytic discourse, Laing reminds us that Reich’s belief in freedom from oppression and dominion over our bodies, and our lives, is just as prescient today as it was 100 years ago—and she challenges us to think about the stories of our own bodies within this larger cultural context. MORE FROM OLIVIA: Everybody: A Book About Freedom Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency Crudo The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“But what I do do is whenever I read an academic paper is I read around it. I don't just take that as given or assume that that's, you know, now cast in stone and science has nowhere else to go after this paper has been written, but that it sits in a context of other research, um, and evolving. It's always evolving. It's moving towards the truth. It's sometimes very faltering, really the history of sex difference research and race difference research, I think is a really good example of how faltering it can be and how orthodoxies can get created and take a really long time to be corrected. Um, but if you understand it in that historical context, then I think it's easier to accept science for what it is, which is a journey towards truth, rather than assuming that it's already there,” so says Angela Saini, an independent British science journalist, author, and the founder of the ‘Challenging Pseudoscience’ group at the Royal Institution. Angela joins me today to talk about science as fact, and the nuance that comes when we introduce human bias to the equation through interpretation. While Angela originally found a home in the objective and rational field of engineering, she tells us it was her experience as a journalist that opened her eyes to the vested interests and motivations within the scientific community that influenced the research and answers being published and touted as fact.  Angela has since written two books interrogating the divisive politics embedded in the science of human difference, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-And the New Research That's Rewriting the Story and Superior: The Return of Race Science. Whether it is sex research or race research, certain long-tentacled orthodoxies get created, she tells us, permeating our culture and eliminating any nuance from the conversation. Angela’s work encourages us to dismantle these orthodoxies, which have for so long sat uncomfortably with our lived experiences, and instead, to think more critically about what we assume to be “the norm”. We get into the way our cultural training has impacted our natural genetic destiny, how easy it is to slip into essentialist ideas of what it means to be a woman, and how important it is to embrace intersectional arguments when we talk about equality. When we reflect on who we really are, not just who we have been told to be, she tells us, we open up all the possibilities there are for being human. OK, let's get to our conversation. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Interrogating the politics behind the science of human difference… Extricating culture from nature… There is no one way to be a woman… MORE FROM ANGELA SAINI: Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-And the New Research That's Rewriting the Story Superior: The Return of Race Science Watch her 2019 BBC Documentary - Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal Angela's Website Follow Angela on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“We sort of get into this, you know, relational model. And look, when it's working, when sex is a form of intimacy and merging and lovemaking and a really dissolution of self boundaries, I mean, it's fantastic. It's such a relationship boost and expression of love that only sex can provide. But very often, you know, relational sex can become really rote. It can become really predictable. It can stop serving our need for kind of sexual expansiveness, which is what recreational sex can do, right? Embracing the aspects of sex, embracing variety, embracing that psychological stimuli. Right? I think that's where, especially for heterosexual couples, we don't know how to integrate the relational with the recreational…,” so says Dr. Ian Kerner, my guest today and a licensed psychotherapist and nationally recognized sexuality counselor who specializes in sex therapy, couples therapy and relational issues. Ian is a New York Times best selling author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman and the co-founder and co-director of the Sex Therapy program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychology. Today we discuss his newest book, So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex: Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives as Ian shares the unique methodology he has used in his sex therapy practice to help countless couples rewrite their sex script in order to actualize their sexual potential. We don’t know how to talk about sex, Ian tells us, we have erotic minds but encounter shame around communicating what is in them, leaving us open to impersonal, predictable sex that stops serving our need for sexual expansiveness.  To avoid falling victim to the plague of rote sex, we must rediscover touch, desire, and fantasy, he tells us. By reimagining and rewriting our sex scripts to include both the physical and psychological components of arousal, the promised land of mutual pleasure is within reach. Ian gives us the tools to get comfortable with the discourse around intercourse, and leaves us with the stepping stones to bridge the gap between the sex we are having and the sex we want to be having.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Putting language around sex…(8:15) Integrating the importance of touch…(13:34) Fantasy, psychological arousal and the key to good sex…(25:07) The plague of ill-cliteracy...(40:57) MORE FROM IAN KERNER: So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex: Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman Passionista: The Empowered Woman's Guide to Pleasuring a Man Love in the Time of Colic: The New Parents' Guide to Getting It on Again Follow Ian on Twitter DIG DEEPER: Come as You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life - Emily Nagoski  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I've spent many years, like med school residency, as a mom, eight books, which is a lot of deadlines. Just a lot of things that have put me behind eight ball in my relationship to time, like never feeling like I have enough time, never getting through my full checklist, always feeling like I should be doing something more, even when I'm relaxing. So for me, it's taking on too many things at once saying yes, when I really need to say no, or maybe say yes, but not all at once. And just really checking in with, am I feeling spacious? Am I feeling unpressured? Am I feeling like I have the capacity to handle what's on my plate right now?” So says, Aviva Romm, who has the rare distinguishment of being both a midwife and a Yale-trained M.D. She mediates between the world of allopathic and alternative medicine, using the best of both approaches. From where she stands, balance is critical, particularly for women and our complex and sometimes confounding hormonal systems. Though Aviva Romm has written many books about women’s health, her latest—HORMONE INTELLIGENCE—is somewhat of a bible for many women I know, offering insight into the natural process of shifting hormones during different phases of our lives, as well as advice for treating all-too-common maladies like PCOS. While we dive into some of these details in today’s conversation, Aviva and I primarily talk about what it is to be a woman today, along with our collective ambivalence about aging, and the necessity of honoring older women—particularly ourselves. We also get into stress and the way we’ve been trained to use hyper-vigilance and anxiety as prods for perfection and what it feels like to let that go, and drop into our own bodies, to hear from them directly on what they need. OK, let’s to get to our conversation. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Bridging the gap between how we feel and how we want to feel…(10:49) Hormone intelligence and our innate knowing…(23:33) Embracing the maiden, the mother, (the queen), and the crone…(42:58) MORE FROM AVIVA ROMM, M.D.: Hormone Intelligence: The Complete Guide to Calming Hormone Chaos and Restoring Your Body's Natural Blueprint for Well-Being The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution: A Proven 4-Week Program to Rescue Your Metabolism, Hormones, Mind & Mood Aviva's Website Listen to Aviva’s Podcast, Natural MD Radio on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Follow Dr. Romm on Instagram and Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s guest is Elizabeth Lesser, bestselling author of classics like Broken Open, and co-founder of the Omega Institute, an internationally recognized retreat center, renowned for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. Throughout her life, Elizabeth has been somewhat of a doula for people in transition, for those who are looking for answers to some of life’s biggest questions—she helps them cross chasms, simply by pointing out the path “The obviousness of something that has been with us forever and must change, is often the most painful part”, she says. Lesser joins me today to talk about her newest book, Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes, which interrogates the way in which our origin tales and hero myths, where men are the prototype human, continue to influence our culture. She reminds us that these old stories are only half natural, and challenges us to activate, fund, and educate the emotional and caring nature we all possess, to face our shadows in order to recreate an Eden in which there is room for everyone.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Women, storytelling, and paying attention to the world within us Elevating the importance of the caretaker Changing systems, changing self MORE FROM ELIZABETH LESSER: Omega Institute Cassandra Speaks Broken Open Marrow The Seeker’s Guide Follow Elizabeth on Instagram  and Twitter DIG DEEPER: Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight - Shelley Taylor, UCLA In the Bonobo World, Female Camaraderie Prevails - NYT, Natalie Angier To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 “Are you doing something that brings you joy? Are you doing something that brings you fulfillment? Do you take yourself seriously when you have a dream or do you say, “Oh you are being too big for your britches?” What happens with morning pages is we are led into expansion —we are trained by the pages to take risks. The first risk is putting it on the page, the second risk is saying to yourself, “Oh I couldn’t try that.” The pages keep nudging you, and finally you say, “Oh alright I’ll try,” and the “oh alright I’ll try” is what brings you to an expanded sense of self because the risk you are afraid to take soon becomes the risk you have taken…” so says Julia Cameron, best-selling author of more than forty books, poet, songwriter, filmmaker and playwright. Hailed by many as “The Godmother” of creativity, Julia is credited with starting a movement in 1992 that has brought creativity into the mainstream. Her book, The Artist’s Way, has been translated into forty languages and sold over five million copies to date, inspiring millions of readers with its egalitarian view of creativity: We’ve all got it, and Julia is on a mission to help us unlock it. The book bestows the reader with a practical toolkit, including the famous Morning Pages and Artist Dates, in service of the broader creative journey and personal rejuvenation. Her newest book, Seeking Wisdom, explores connecting to the artistic process through prayer. In this episode of Pulling the Thread, Julia and I talk creativity, process, and purpose. We are so worried about being selfish, Julia says, that we end up investing disproportionately in the lives and dreams of others—sacrificing our own passions in the process. Her approach guides readers, one step at a time, out of a stymied life and into a more expansive, more joyful existence, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. I hope our conversation resonates with the creator in all of you.  MORE FROM JULIA CAMERON: SEEKING WISDOM THE ARTIST’S WAY To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“But the true guru, you know, the Buddha came and turned all that inside out. You know the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths and the word he used, “the Noble,” that came out of that, like the Brahmans were the Nobles. But the Buddha was like, no, the Nobles aren't, it's not that priest over there, lighting the fire, the sacred fire, the noble thing is like your own ethic, your own internal ethic, your own loving heart is the noble thing. The Buddha was all about that. He was a good, you know, cognitive therapist in that way, turning, turning people's concepts inside out.” So says Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist and Buddhist who has written several brilliant and beautiful books about the Venn diagram of meditation and therapy. In his latest: THE ZEN OF THERAPY, he reveals more of his own backstory, how as a young med school student trying to bridge the gap between his role as a doctor and his love of Eastern spirituality he came to help Dr. Benson study meditation and its benefits for the body. He opens the books though, by explaining that meditation is not a panacea, it is instead a rare opportunity to get quiet with yourself, to observe your own mind, and to process your emotions. In the ZEN OF THERAPY, Mark recounts a year of therapy sessions where he was able to provide psychotherapy paired WITH Buddhist insights—it’s a wonderful and fascinating book—I personally LOVE reading about peoples’ therapy sessions—and it offers many takeaways for anyone, including the ways in which we fixate on our childhoods rather than focusing on the evolution of our own identities, and where our own resistance to change can point the way to healing. OK, let’s get to our conversation. MORE FROM MARK EPSTEIN, M.D. THE ZEN OF THERAPY by Mark Epstein, M.D. ADVICE NOT GIVEN by Mark Epstein, M.D. THE TRAUMA OF EVERYDAY LIFE by Mark Epstein, M.D. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“My goal isn't to not be afraid, my goal is to have a relationship with fear. So I presume fear is going to be part of the picture. So my goal is more to have a relationship to that fear so I can move with it so I can push back on it so I can learn from it. Um, and so it doesn't have so much power over me, but I, I've not, I've not met any truly fearless people. It's more that I've met people who understand their fear and have made peace with it.” So says BJ Miller, a remarkable doctor who specializes in palliative medicine and end-of-life care, which ironically means that he spends most of his time teaching people how to really live. When BJ was an undergrad at Princeton, he climbed an electrified train car and ended up as a triple-amputee and long-term patient. Understanding the healthcare system from the inside out inspired him to go to medical school—and it also put him into a deep and reflective dance with mortality, fear, and what it means to lean into life. He has become a cultural sherpa, showing us all what this looks like. These days, he is the founder of Mettle Health, which makes palliative care more accessible: He offers virtual consultations and guidance for individuals and families dealing with practical, emotional, and existential issues.  He joins me today as we discuss his work on life, death, and how we go about handling the in between. Our conversation covers the cultural numbness to death in the abstract and the concrete fear that arises when death becomes personal. We forget, BJ says, that suffering and dying are fundamental and intrinsic parts of life. When we allow ourselves to acknowledge the many small deaths that occur throughout our lives—whether it be the death of a relationship, of a career, or of a way of life - we can use these moments to practice losing and letting go, gaining clarity around what truly matters in the process. The goal, BJ tells us, is not to be unafraid of the end, but rather to cultivate a love of life so big, that it encompasses death as well. I am thrilled to call BJ a dear friend, and am even MORE thrilled to bring this conversation to you as we contemplate the year that just was, and the year to come.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Contemplating death and a fascination with life… Big deaths, small deaths… The illusive sweet spot of perspective… Stripping down… MORE FROM BJ MILLER A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO THE END by BJ Miller Mettle Health BJ Miller - What Really Matters at the End of Life - Ted Talk, 2015 One Man's Quest to Change the Way We Die - The New York Times Magazine After a Freak Accident, a Doctor Finds Insight into Living Life and Facing Death - BJ on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross Follow BJ on Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Like family relationship has obligations that go both ways. Hopefully there's unconditional love there, but it's also the, like your re your family and, and, and the other people in your family see you as family too. But in a job, if you, the, the whole family thing goes one way, you're supposed to give and give and give and give and, and, and, and feel this like guilt and obligation to your company and your coworkers, your company at any moment can sever those ties, you know, your is at will employment in, in this country. And, and, and so, like, that's not part of a, a family thing. That's not unconditional. Your job is totally conditional.” So says Charlie Warzel, who together with Anne Helen Petersen, wrote OUT OF OFFICE: THE BIG PROBLEM AND BIGGER PROMISE OF WORKING FROM HOME. Petersen and Warzel, ditched New York City for the promise of a better life/work balance out west a few years ago, which gave them a headstart on understanding the reality of working from home—before it became a reality for the rest of the world through the pandemic. Both culture, media, and technology journalists for Buzzfeed at the time, they found that the promise of work from home was not a panacea for more time to spend in nature: Like the rest of us—just earlier—they discovered that they were spending even more time PERFORMING their work, showing their managers back in New York City that they deserved the privilege of being untethered from a traditional office. Being out of the office only added to their anxiety and overwhelm. So when COVID hit, they were already aware of both the the pitfalls and potential of work from home—their fantastic book, which just came out, offers a survey of how we find ourselves in this intractable bind today, where for too many of us, our jobs have taken over the center of our lives, and how we can use this opportunity to reshape workplaces for a more sustainable future. In our conversation we talk about how we don’t prioritize the art of managers, how the idea of time and output is problematic for so many people who are not, actually machines, and what a more inclusive and human HR structure might look like, if it weren’t engineered to avoid abuse and instead could focus solely on providing support. Let’s get to our conversation. MORE FROM ANNE HELEN PETERSEN & CHARLIE WARZEL OUT OF OFFICE by Anne Helen Petersen & Charlie Warzel CAN’T EVEN by Anne Helen Petersen THE BURNOUT GENERATION by Anne Helen Petersen “Galaxy Brain” newsletter from Charlie Warzel “Culture Study” newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Outside the legal context, I'm urging readers and listeners in this case to think very deliberately about whether that high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is really necessary before a person will believe so to speak, will feel confident enough to offer, let's say, support to a roommate or to a coworker. And I want to suggest that we should actually require much less by way of certainty and confidence in order to offer that kind of support to someone who is in an informal setting coming to us as a kind of first responder, because this is how most allegations surface. People rarely go to the police. First more often, they turn to a trusted confidant, someone within their inner circle. And it's the response of that individual that's likely to affect the trajectory to come” so says Deborah Tuerkheimer, a Harvard and Yale-educated lawyer, former New York District Attorney specializng in domestic violence and child abuse protection and current professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law where she teaches and writes about criminal law, evidence, and feminist legal theory. To say she is impressive is a massive understatement. Today she joins me to discuss her book, CREDIBLE: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers. We dive into a conversation about credibility and sexual assault: What makes a credible victim? How do culture, law, and psychology shape our judgement? And how can our systems be more responsive to the needs of survivors? In the court of cultural opinion, Deb says, we disservice so many victims by dismissing and discounting their pain that sometimes, the aftermath is almost worse than the event itself. We talk about the myth of the false accuser, underreporting as a reflection of our cultural credibility context, and the dangerous archetypes of the perfect victim and the monster abuser.  Finally, we discuss the push for restorative justice processes, which must begin with an acknowledgement of responsibility from the offender, and then go on to ask: “What will it take to repair the harm?”, ultimately turning to the victim and their community to answer that question.  Please note that today’s episode contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors - I encourage you to care for your safety and well-being. MORE FROM DEB TUERKHEIMER CREDIBLE: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers More Books, Articles and Op-Eds by Deb Tuerkheimer Deb's Website DIG DEEPER: RAINN: the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800.656.HOPE To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think what COVID did was it really made people realize that the state of their emotions, the state of their relationships, all of those things that felt very optional, meaning they were important to people, but in the rushing around of daily life, you, you could kind of ignore them a little bit. Um, you know, you didn't have to really think about them or face them. They weren't, a mirror was not being held up to you in the way that it was during COVID. And so I think that the, the good thing that came out of all of this is that people really said, oh, I want to understand this better.” So says Lori Gottlieb, one of my favorite conversation partners. Lori is a psychotherapist and the author of the bestselling MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE, which is a brilliant exploration of what it means to be in therapy and be a therapist—in her storytelling, she manages to touch on everything from existential anxiety to inconceivable loss. She’s also the co-host of the DEAR THERAPIST podcast, a brilliant show that tackles peoples’ real problems, like narcissistic partners and parental alienation. In today’s episode of this podcast, Lori and I get into the impact of COVID on our partnerships, the often uncredited grief of single people, and how we can come to deepen the intimacy of our most important relationships, whether they’re with lovers, friends, family, or even co-workers. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: We’re all unreliable narrators…(6:05) Emotional egalitarianism…(16:00) COVID and the great reprioritization…(22:53) When is it time to let a relationship go...(36:44) MORE FROM LORI: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: The Workbook Dear Therapists Podcast Lori's Website Lori's Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The NRA and gun owners then signified, you know, the sort of comradery, responsibility, safety, sort of a bygone, I don't know, sort of an Americana, right? The Campbell soup can sort of Americana. I don't remember ever seeing or hearing about the impending demise of the Republic, or how evil every Democrat was, or how we should hate our neighbors, or how we should arm ourselves for an eventual civil war or an insurrection. That was never, that was never a part of my upbringing.”  So says Ryan Busse, author of GUNFIGHT: MY BATTLE AGAINST THE INDUSTRY THAT RADICALIZED AMERICA. Busse, who spent decades running gun sales for Kimber in Whitefish, Montana, which focused, until recently, on crafting hunting rifles and other firearms for sportsmen, quit his job last year after he realized that his dreams of transforming the gun industry from inside—or at least being a consistent voice of reason and morality—were fantasy. He watched as the industry he used to love became increasingly toxic, distorted, and militant. In his book, which is a fascinating look at the forces within the NRA and the way they’ve radicalized America, he deftly explains all the reasons we are where we are today: Where our children are forced to practice active shooter drills at school, and where other kids—like 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse—can buy a semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle and kill two people while wounding another. And then be acquitted for self-defense. As he argues, we are on the brink of a Civil War with gun-owning, far Right militants. I know we’re scared, and he believes we have every reason to be. Like Busse, I’m also from Montana, and know many people who hunt—growing up, guns were present but never abundant. Now, responsible gun owners are being pushed aside by militant couch commandos, who are desperate, to quote Busse, “to shoot a democrat.”  While Busse is no longer in the industry, he is firmly in the movement for common sense gun laws, arguing that our best chance for reform is to bring hunters and sportsmen on-side. As he explains, it can be done—and we can bring the NRA to its knees.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Exploring the cultural connection to guns…(12:12) Hate, conspiracy, national tragedies and gun sales…(16:56) Profiting off of fear…(32:06) What do we do?...(40:04) MORE FROM RYAN BUSSE Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America Ryan Busse's Website Follow Ryan on Twitter and on Instagram DIG DEEPER: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan FBI background checks, a proxy for gun sales, surged in 2020 - The Economist, January 2021 GET INVOLVED: Mom’s Demand Action Everytown for Gun Safety To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since she was a little girl, Carissa Schumacher has always seen and spoken to dead people. She pushed all of that aside, went to Brown and got her Neuroscience Degree, tried to have a normal life and career, and then Spirit made the call and she put that down and started working as an empathic intuitive and forensic psychic medium. She led retreats in Sedona, and worked with clients around the world, including doing a lot of pro bono work on crimes. This was all well and good until October 2019, around the time when I first met her. When Carissa was little an angelic presence told her she would be a channel for Yeshua of Nazareth, which she didn't think about much at the time. She wasn't raised in a religious household, she didn't even know what it meant. But then Yeshau “birthed” in her channel. This means that while she was leading a retreat in Sedona, Yeshua took over her body, and voice, and gave a transmission, or a teaching. Yeshua, as you might've guessed, is Jesus. If it sounds wild, it is. I have been in the presence of Carissa while she's channeling Yeshua many times now. And it is unlike anything I've ever experienced before. I would say that it's incredible, but they've also been some of the most grounded moments of my life. Yeshua is funny, brilliant, kind—an ascended master like Buddha or Lao Tzu. And as he talks, you can feel the codex is of energy behind his words. The transmissions also are not particularly religious. If that makes sense, as he has remarked, he never wanted a church in his name. And the Bible is a series of stories. Some that are instructive, some that are parables, many told by people who never knew him. Last year. He asked Carissa to turn on her recorder for several days and he brought forth The Freedom Transmissions, a series of teachings about the year that we just experienced, plus how to move forward. It is a beautiful book you can open and flip to almost any page and find something of resonance and need. In today's conversation, we talk about The Freedom Transmissions, as well as other moments from Yeshua transmissions I've heard over the years, including about the one thing that humans actually own, which is time. We talk about co-creation. We talk about the true definition of atonement, and we talk about the idea of freedom and how hard it is to make the leap from the cage. As she says, she is not Yeshua, just one of his channels and a student alongside the rest of us, but she still has a brilliant mind.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Connecting to consciousness to change the world…(17:10) Repentance, humility, and perfection…(38:01) Out of servitude through suffering, into servitude through joy…(47:56)  Planting seeds of faith, forgiveness, and freedom…(1:07:49) MORE FROM CARISSA: The Book’s Website The Freedom Transmissions To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Heather McGhee is a designer of, and advocate for, solutions to inequality in America. We discuss her New York Times bestselling book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, in which she seeks to push us all past zero-sum thinking, or the idea that if you get something you want or need, it must mean that I get less. In fact, she points to numerous examples throughout history that show how this framework has made our society more cruel and poorer than it otherwise might be. Heather pushes us to recognize the fingerprints of racism in all of our core dysfunctions, from climate change, to the roots of the financial crisis, to the ongoing fight for universal healthcare.  “We must stop the siloed thinking that racism is great for white people and bad for people of color,” Heather says, “if you pull that thread, that’s exactly the same zero sum logic racists hold, that progress for people of color has to come at the expense of white people, that we are at odds, fighting over crumbs…there has to be a better paradigm of mutual benefit.” The Sum of Us is a story of why “drained pool politics”—an idea named after the fact that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, many towns chose to fill in their public pools and lose access to this social good rather than integrate them and share them with Black people—is costing everyone, in ongoing ways. She offers that with multiracial coalitions we can subvert fear mongering about an equitable society and fight for a more prosperous nation for all.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Chronicling the disappearance of public goods and the retreat from public life following the New Deal (Approx. 8:26) Investigating the roots of zero sum thinking, finding fingerprints of racism in all of our core disfunction (Approx. 35:22) Fighting for solidarity dividends (Approx. 36:35) MORE FROM HEATHER MCGHEE The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together  Heather McGhee's Website Follow Heather on Twitter and on Instagram HEATHER’S PICKS: Floodlines - The Story of an Unnatural Disaster Hosted by Vann R. Newkirk II Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 The City We Became - N. K. Jemisin DIG DEEPER: Support for Government Guaranteed Job and Standard of Living by Demographic Group - the ANES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior Which racial/ethnic groups care most about climate change? - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication 2021 Voting Laws Round Up - the Brennan Center for Justice GET INVOLVED: Check Your Voter Registration Status, Register to Vote, Find Your Polling Place, and more To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“We are living in a world that primes us all for the problem of addiction. So even though some people come into this world more vulnerable than others, simply being alive in the world today has made us all vulnerable to the problem of addiction,” so says our guest today, Dr. Anna Lembke. Dr. Lembke is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. An expert in all things addiction, Dr. Lembke has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries; she sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various Congressional Committees, and does so all while maintaining a thriving clinical practice.  On today’s episode, we discuss her instant New York Times Bestseller, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, which explores the many faces of addiction. Dr. Lembke notes that addiction is a spectrum disorder, and though we often attempt to otherize “addicts”, the exact same mental machinery engaged in so-called severe addiction is engaged in the compulsive over-consumption that afflicts many of us. We discuss the way in which our brain is wired to balance pleasure and pain and how to know when our consumption has crossed from healthy, recreational use to addictive, maladaptive use. Finally, Dr. Lembke leaves us with some strategies for recalibrating our neural-balance, including the perhaps counterintuitive remedy of exposing ourselves to pain in order to treat our pain.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Identifying the risk factors for addiction…(5:53) The balance between pleasure and pain…(11:45) The Dopamine Guideposts…(18:49)  Finding healing stories and re-calibrating the neuro-plasticity of the brain…(28:21) MORE FROM ANNA LEMBKE: Anna Lembke's Website Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think it's very important to mention also, Elise, that even if a woman feels permission to be angry, that anger is such a tricky mischievous emotion that it's so difficult to know what our anger means or what to do with it. So we may know that we’re angry and anger activates us to, to act, to take a position, to do something, but our anger does not tell us what the real issue is, who is responsible for what, what is the best way to proceed with our anger…” So says psychotherapist Dr. Harriet Lerner. Lerner is known and beloved for her many best-selling books about women, family systems, and relationships, including the classic Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships, which we explore in today's episode.  Lerner believes that anger is an essential, but oftentimes misunderstood and mismanaged emotion. She set out to write Dance of Anger to tackle female anger specifically, of which nothing had been written at that time. When women are discouraged from discussing their anger, she tells us, they lose a sense of self, as the pain of our anger preserves our dignity. We discuss the stereotype of the unloving, unlovable, and destructive angry woman, and the way in which female anger is only deemed acceptable when it is on the behalf of others. Lerner leaves us with tips for beginning to work through our anger productively, starting with moving toward assertive self-definition without asking for permission, and ultimately becoming careful observers of our own role in the patterns that keep us stuck in anger so that we may make positive, lasting change on our own behalf.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: The importance of anger…(5:25) Are you a nice lady or a bitch…(9:00) Working through anger productively…(21:40)  Moving towards self definition…(36:36) MORE FROM HARRIET LERNER: Harriet Lerner's Website The Dance Of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Pattern of Intimate Relationships The Dance Of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You're Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate The Dance Of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships The Dance Of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self The Dance Of Deception: A Guide to Authenticity and Truth-Telling in Women's Relationships To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest today is Dr. Riane Eisler, social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, attorney and internationally bestselling author of many notable classics, including Sacred Pleasure and The Chalice and the Blade, which I read recently and LOVED—while it came out in the ‘80s, it is incredibly prescient—prophetic really—and more relevant than ever. In it, and all of her books, Riane explores the ways in which hierarchies of dominance—which are NOT our natural state—inform how we live now. “What we’ve been told is simply a false story of our past, of our present, and most importantly today, the possibilities for our future,” she explains. Dr. Eisler joins me today to discuss her newest work, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future. In the book, Eisler implores us to awaken to the notion that injustice, inequality, violence, and domination do not tell the full story of human possibility. “We humans were really wired more for partnership than for domination,” she says. Guided by the ethos of partnership, Dr. Eisler’s work challenges each of us to play a role in the construction of a more equitable, more sustainable, and less violent world through investment in human infrastructure and a dedication to raising future generations by different scripts and constructs than those given to us. People’s minds can be changed, she reminds us, but a change in consciousness starts with the knowledge that there are different, better, possibilities.   EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Exploring caring economics, human infrastructure, and the alienation of caring labor (Approx. 5:09) The partnership model and the fight against sticky myths of domination (Approx. 11:00) Replumbing our dysfunctional operating system (Approx. 29:35) MORE FROM RIANE EISLER: Riane's Website Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future The Chalice & The Blade: Our History, Our Future The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics The Power of Partnership: Sevens Relationships That Will Change Your Life Breaking Out of the Domination Trance: Building Foundations for a Safe, Equitable, Caring World RIANE’S PICKS: My Octopus Teacher - Netflix, 2020 Grandfather's Garden: Some Bedtime Stories for Little and Big Folk - David Loye DIG DEEPER More on Partnership Systems and the Partnerism Movement Courses in Partnership - Changing Our Story, Changing Our Lives Sexual Dimorphism in European Upper Paleolithic Cave Art - Dean Snow, Society for American Archaeology, 2013  A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science - David Noble, 2013 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Before our boys have learned to read, they have already read the stoic code of masculinity and are conforming to it.” says Terry Real, world-renowned family therapist, speaker, best-selling author and founder of the Relational Life Institute, where he offers workshops for couples, individuals, parents and therapists. He is also a dear friend. While he’s best known for his couples work, decades ago, he wrote the landmark book on male depression, which I cannot recommend enough. It’s called, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, and with it, Real established himself as one of the most respected voices in the treatment of men and the healing of their relationships with the world. In this episode, we talk about why depression is “illegal” for men, the cultural programming of boys, and forced detachment in the name of autonomy. Our culture of individualism, Real says, has done as much damage as our culture of patriarchy—leaving men little room for the type of connection and relationality that we humans live for. He leaves us with the steps for deprogramming ourselves from patriarchal thinking and parenting as well as the ways in which we can support the men in our lives in service of deeper connection and the pursuit of greater relational joy.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Exploring Terry’s theory of male depression…(2:30) The cultural programming of boys…(12:50) Active trauma, passive trauma, and the severing of connection in the name of autonomy …(19:50)  Icarus syndrome and learning to find relational joy…(37:08) MORE FROM TERRY REAL: Terry's Website I Don't Want To Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression How Can I Get Through To You?: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women The New Rules Of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work Take Terry's Online Course - Staying in Love: The Art of Fierce Intimacy DIG DEEPER: Find an RLT Certified Therapist Near You  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest today is Dr. Sara Gottfried - a Harvard educated doctor, scientist, researcher, mother, and seeker with 25 years of experience practicing precision, functional, and integrative medicine. Gottfried specializes in root cause analysis, as she firmly believes that the greatest health transformations unfold when you address the root cause of illness, not simply the signs. She is the author of three New York Times best selling books focused on healing our cells, and our souls.  Today we discuss her most recent book Women, Food, and Hormones. Yes, we talked about all of those things, but we also explored the culture of weight and wellness, and why the scale is not always a predictor of our health. She took us through the intricacies of our metabolic function, and we together questioned whether the “perfect” body we have in our head even matches the body that allows us to function at our best. As she explains: “I feel like women are stuck. They're stuck between diet culture, which I think many of us reject this idea that we're supposed to be thinner, obedient, smaller, take up less space and have these unrealistic standards for how we're supposed to look. And then we also have the fat acceptance movement. And what I like to do is to position myself in the middle where the focus is on metabolic health.” She walks us through her protocol for hormone balance, opening up detoxification pathways, and even gives us a script for talking to our doctors and regaining agency when it comes to our health. Gottfried implores us to remember that we are deserving of support at any age, and that righteous indignation when it comes to our health can move mountains.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Discussion of Diet Culture & Body Positivity: Approx. 5:24 Metabolic Health: Approx. 9:40 Importance of Testosterone for Women: Approx. 19:31 Wearables: Approx. 23:48 The Ketogenic Diet for Women: Approx. 28:34 Detox: Approx. 38:42 Discussion of Courageous Conversations with Doctors: Approx. 49:54 MORE FROM SARA GOTTFRIED, M.D.: Women, Food, and Hormones Dr. Sara Gottfried’s Website Dutch Hormone Test To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There's a fantasy in argument, in Lean In, or Girlboss style corporate feminism that says, once you have women in charge of your company, then your company is feminist, right. Your capitalist reforms can start and end with who has the corner offices. Right. Who's populating the executive suite. And so that's not even reforming capitalism, that's just trying to save it.” So says Kyla Schuller, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Faculty Director of the Women’s Global Health Leadership Certificate Program at Rutgers University. Today we dive into her heady new book, The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism, which takes on the numerous ways in which feminism, so narrowly framed around the issues of white women, has in turn marginalized the experiences of women of color for hundreds of years. And the title has double-meaning: Because even though white feminism has been problematic, it’s also painted white women into a corner, left wondering how we got here. There have always been multiple kinds of feminism, Schuller says, a self-serving version dominated by white women, and an intersectional version dominated by women of color. White feminism, the mainstream feminist ideology, positions women as a redeemers, a salvific force whose mere presence in positions of power is enough to redeem that same power entirely. In sharp contrast, Schuller notes, intersectional feminism is an account of power, a place to interrogate the ways in which gender, sexuality, race, ability, and climate precarity coalesce to shape our lives. Only when we acknowledge these multiple, simultaneous identities, and come together across identity and power positions, will we form a strong enough political bloc to make enduring structural change.  Episode Highlights Against the white woman as a civilizing force…(7:14) Harriet Beecher Stowe/Harriet Jacobs…(12:44) Alice Fletcher/Zitkala-sa…(27:07) Margaret Sanger, a eugenic feminist…(40:02) Betty Friedan/Pauli Murray…(49:28) Mainstream feminism and the optimization of women…(52:28) More from Kyla Schuller   Kyla Schuller’s Website Buy her new book, The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism Read her first book, The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century Follow Kyla on Twitter   Dig Deeper Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs American Indian Stories - Zitkala-sa Writing by Pauli Murray Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower - Brittney Cooper Intersectionality - Brittney Cooper, The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory The Nap Ministry - Rest is Resistance   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jamie Wheal is the founder of the Flow Genome Project, a organization dedicated to the research and training of human performance, and most notably, he’s the author of Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death in a World That’s Lost its Mind. In his fascinating book, Wheal explores the perplexing intersection at which we find ourselves, each of us torn between the desire to save the world or to savor the world. “We as a generational cohort are coming of age where we simultaneously have more awareness of life...and at the same time understand our existential precariousness,” he says, “How on earth do we hold all this at the same time?” Our wide ranging discussion takes on the heady topics of healing, believing, and belonging  and ends with Wheal sharing with us his ‘ten suggestions', a list of countermeasures to the fundamentalism, nihilism, and despair that threaten to swallow us whole.  Episode Highlights To save the world or to savor the world…3:09 Nihilism, suspicion and our meaning crisis…6:48 Reclaiming our authority, healthy tribalism, and the ten suggestions…30:40 More from Jamie Wheal Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work Jamie's Flow Genome Project - The Official Source for Peak Performance and Culture Follow Jamie on Instagram Dig Deeper The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes - Moss, O'Connor - Queensland University of Technology To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Do you want to continue to live out the patterns of your childhood? Or do you want to make different choices? Are you programmed or are you self-determining?” So says Loretta Ross, Professor at Smith College in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender, a founder of reproductive justice theory, and an expert on feminism, racism, and human rights. Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice and is the author of the forthcoming book, Calling In the Calling Out Culture. Loretta has been a leader in the human rights movement for decades—she worked with Reverend C.T. Vivian, one of Martin Luther King’s right hands, to rehabilitate former members of hate groups. As a rape and incest survivor herself, she taught Black feminism to incarcerated rapists. She has learned, throughout her career, to lift the hood on peoples’ lived experiences—the identity they project to the world—and determine, through courageous conversation, where their humanity lies, and where their values overlap. She believes with a certain fierceness that we have far more in common with each other—across the entire political spectrum—than not. In recent years, she has become a vocal opponent of cancel culture—ironically, people have attempted to cancel her for this—because, as she explains, she’s interested in being part of a movement and not a cult. She believes that political purity and the policing of other allies is...the opposite of helpful. And that in the process of building coalitions for sweeping social change and evolution, we alienate and lose people who would otherwise want the very same things as us. Today, she gives us a crash course in the practice of calling in - an alternative to calling out, or publicly shaming those whose behavior or beliefs we deem unacceptable. In a culture devoid of empathy and grace, Ross implores us to offer people a chance to change, to give them the opportunity to be as good on the outside as they think they are on the inside. For Ross, recognizing that how we do the work is just as important as the work we do, gives us the incredible opportunity to bring more people in, building the power base of the social justice movement. When we choose to use calling in practices, she says, we choose them because of who we are, not because of who the other person is, and when we affirm the humanity of others, we affirm our own humanity in turn.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS Identifying your circles of influence…(8:31) The Uncle Frank strategy…(21:14)  Programming vs. self-determining…(27:29) Guidelines for the creation of a calling-in environment…(42:15) MORE FROM LORETTA ROSS Loretta Ross’ Website Preorder her book, Calling in the Calling Out Culture, by joining her mailing list Take the online course: Calling In the Calling Out Culture in the Age of Trump Follow Loretta on Twitter  READ HER WORK Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice Reproductive Justice: an Introduction Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique Reproductive Justice as Intersectional Feminist Activism   DIG DEEPER I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic. - Loretta Ross, NYT Op-Ed, August 2019 Speaking Up Without Tearing Down - Loretta Ross, Spring 2019 What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In? - Jessica Bennett, NY Times, November 2020 Up From Hatred - Michael D'Antonio, LA Times, August 1997 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Humanity is messy, each of us starts with ourselves, it's horribly messy and then multiply that times millions. And that's an incredible, lovely mess.” So says Joy Harjo, the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, and the first Native American to hold that post. She is the author of nine books of poetry, several plays, and childrens books, and two memoirs—and is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee nation, with an innumerable number of prizes and fellowships at her back. Today, we sit down to discuss her second memoir, POET WARRIOR, which just came out. It is beautiful—not only the story of her life, but a vehicle for deep wisdom about language, metaphor, and ritual. We—as individuals, as communities, as nations, and as humankind—exist in a collective story field, Harjo tells us. Everyone’s story must have a place, a thread within the larger tapestry—and our story field must constantly shift to include even the most difficult stories, the ones we want to forget and repress. But, as she remarks, the hard stories provide the building blocks for our house of knowledge—we cannot evolve without them. To move forward, we must find ourselves in the messy story of humanity, assume our place as part of the earth in this time and in these challenges. For Harjo, it is when we turn to song, poetry, and the arts that we are able to re-root ourselves in the voice of inner truth, a knowing that has access to stories past, present, and future. And it is this wisdom of eternal knowledge that will help guide us forward—if we only stop to listen.  Joy is also the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award for Nonfiction, the Jackson Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Harjo is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Rasmuson United States Artist Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and holds a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. In 2014 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame.  EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS Finding ourselves in the messy story of humanity…(6:33) Returning to rituals of becoming…(36:14)  The story of mothers…(42:59) MORE FROM JOY HARJO Joy Harjo's Website Poet Warrior: A Memoir More Books by Joy Harjo Upcoming Live Events Follow Joy on Twitter and on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

45-minute conversations and investigations with today's leading thinkers, authors, experts, doctors, healers, scientists about life's biggest questions: Why do we do what we do? How can we come to know and love ourselves better? How can we come together to heal and build a better world? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices