Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“I think a lot of us embody this, what I call the paradox of the courageous coward, right? Like, we're capable of doing these things that are bonkers. Like they take a tremendous amount of courage or maybe experience, you could call it, but we'll call it courage, speaking in front of a panel, going live on television, you know, with me, swimming with sharks, going into the eyes of hurricanes, going to war many times, marooning myself in weird places. And yet we have this other side that is so fragile, so gossamer thin and on our level to tolerate anxiety that, you know, it can break and then snap at any moment.”So says Matt Gutman, ABC Chief National Correspondent and the author of No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks. Matt is a new friend, and I’ve loved getting to know him and his deeply feeling heart, as well as the way he so perfectly captures this idea of being a “courageous coward.” He’s not afraid to step into a war zone, and yet he’s felt incapacitated by anxiety—taken out at the knees by panic—which makes him the perfect encapsulation of the binary of modern masculinity. Quite simply, the world is too much for any of us to confidently swashbuckle our way through. I commend Matt for saying it. He wrote this book because he suffered a panic attack on air during a heightened moment of news—one of those moments where all of our eyes were turned toward our TVs—and he ended up being put on a temporary leave. It was in that moment that he recognized he needed help and healing, as this panic attack—though public—was not a solitary event. It was happening to him all the time. In No Time to Panic he explains how hard he went to work at healing, at uncovering what was at the heart of his anxiety, which is at the center of our conversation today.MORE FROM MATT GUTMAN:No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic AttacksMatt Gutman’s Stories at ABCFollow Matt on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“It’s, you know, all but hardwired to resist failure, to not want to be blamed. You know, it's an instinct that's very, very powerful because we don't want to be rejected. We don't want to be thought less well of, which is why, you know, the things that I write about and let's face it, organizations that are truly world class, whether it's a scientific laboratory or, you know, an innovation department, or you know, a perfectly running assembly line, they are not natural places, right? They're not just left to their own devices, humans will create places like that. No, they're really hard work, good design, good leadership, kind of daily willingness to kind of stretch and grow independently and together. And the short way to put that is it takes effort to create a learning environment. It really does, but it can be done.”So says Amy Edmonson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Early in her career, she worked as the Chief Engineer for architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller, which started her on the road to reimagining how we’re all impacted by the world around us. She then became the Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she designed change programs in large companies. Now she’s an academic, where she focuses on how teams function and evolve, along with the essential dynamics of collaboration required in environments that are informed by uncertainty and ambiguity. What sort of environments are those? Almost all work environments. A significant point of her research and focus is the necessity of psychological safety in teamwork and innovation—effectively, how do you create an environment where people feel like they can fail in the right direction, where they’re learning and taking risks toward evolution and growth even when they might not get it right the first few—or few hundred—times? This is the focus of her latest book, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. MORE FROM AMY EDMONSON:Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“I’m really hopeful that we're evolving past our very hyper individualistic understanding of like, my health, wealth and happiness is the great goal. And that we're trying to fold in a more collective, and I hope, generous sense that like our lives will require love. Our lives will require courage and interdependence, you know, and it's probably going to never fall along any of our demographic, political, religious, sociocultural dreams that advertising companies have for us, but instead it's gonna require a very collective sense of what can we become?”It is not without a dose of irony that professor Kate Bowler—a prolific historian and author about the Prosperity Gospel—was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at the age of 35. After all, her work had revolved around parsing a spiritual point-of-view that if you were a good person, a good Christian, good things would invariably happen…like wealth and health. From her diagnosis, she wrote a bestselling book: Everything Happens for a Reason—and Other Lies I’ve Loved and added an entirely new dimension to her scholarship at Duke. She’s now in remission and the host of the Everything Happens podcast, and has written several more bestsellers, including books of devotionals like The Lives We Actually Have and Good Enough. In today’s conversation, we covered a lot of ground—the inherent goodness of people, when we rise to the occasion, and whether evil as an absolute exists. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.MORE FROM KATE BOWLER:The Everything Happens PodcastThe Lives We Actually HaveNo Cure for Being HumanEverything Happens for a Reason—and Other Lies I’ve LovedGood EnoughKate Bowler’s WebsiteFollow Kate on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Sometimes it feels like empathy, sympathy, sorrow, grief are scarce resources, because we certainly treat them like that. And if someone is feeling too much for you, they are not feeling enough for me. If somebody is comforting this person at the funeral because they are weeping the loudest, not because they were closest to this person, but because funerals bring up all kinds of feelings about ourselves, our relationships to other people. I was unhinged at a funeral for my mom's friend's husband. I was supposed to be on my second date with Aaron. This man died of brain cancer and I was choking, crying, imagining my own dad dying, not knowing that this same disease is growing in the man I'm about to go on a second date with. Not knowing that in four years I will be at my dad's funeral. And then we're always checking up on each other. Just this is a human thing, right? To check up on each other, to see how other people are doing it, to take your eyes off your own paper to see how you are doing and what kind of attention you're getting or all these things, all these comparisons, they all come down to like, does mine count? Yeah. Does mine count? The thing is they all count and they're all completely different.” So says Nora McInerny, one of the brightest lights in my life, and a guide to many, many others, thanks to her hit podcast, “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” Nora is quick to point out one of the deep and painful ironies in her life, which is that she wouldn’t be our guide if she hadn’t really been through it—and lost so much. In the span of a few months, Nora miscarried, her father died from cancer, and her first husband, Aaron, died from glioblastoma when he was 35. Alone with their baby, Nora began the journey back to life, using this new, deeply unwanted reality, as the ground from which to plow a path for the rest of us—a path that’s often sad, sometimes hilarious, and always wise. In the early days of her loss, she founded a Facebook group called “The Hot Young Widows Club” and started a podcast called “Terrible, Thanks for Asking” as a meeting ground for other travelers who also found themselves improbably devastated and lost. She also gave an incredible TED Talk: “We don’t ‘move on’ from grief. We move forward with it.” In the intervening years, she remarried, birthed another child, and written a roster of hilarious and moving books—It’s Okay to Laugh: (Crying is Okay, Too), No Happy Endings, Bad Vibes Only, and more. She also started a company called Feelings & Co., where she attends to all of our messy emotions: Besides the main podcast, she now produces a short, daily show—”It’s Going To Be Okay,” and “The Terrible Reading Club.” Shameless plug, but she featured On Our Best Behavior and interviewed me on her show. Nora is one of my favorite conversation partners because she’s not afraid to go there—and make jokes while doing it. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.MORE FROM NORA MCINERNYTerrible, Thanks for AskingIt’s Going To Be OkayThe Terrible Reading ClubBad Vibes OnlyNo Happy EndingsIt’s Okay to Laugh: (Crying is Okay, Too)Feelings & Co.Nora’s WebsiteFollow Nora on Instagram and TikTokNora’s SubstackNora’s TED Talk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“It's okay to not be perfect. I don't wanna be judging myself for my imperfections. I actually wanna be accepting myself for my imperfections. And that was really liberating actually. You know, I think so many women, we grow up thinking we are supposed to be perfect. And we internalize, you know, excelling at everything and being good at everything curating our appearance and, you know, being the perfect mom and doing everything right and doing everything right and doing everything right. And just the realization that I was like so over that and feeling like it was actually getting in the way of me having a more authentic understanding of who I was. That’s when I think a corner really started to be turned.”So Says Florence Williams, the author of The Nature Fix and Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, which is a beautiful exploration of the end of her marriage—and its impact on her health and her soul. Florence met her husband in college and had never lived alone—much less alone as a middle-aged woman. Their divorce and her resulting heartbreak turned her upside-down, and filled her with an incapacitating amount of anxiety and fear. The resulting memoir offers a map as she returns to herself. Ever the science writer, this isn’t just a treatise on her feelings of rejection and loss—this is also a thoroughly researched guide to the implications of heartbreak on our hearts, full of learnings for all of us. MORE FROM FLORENCE WILLIAMS:Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific JourneyThe Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More CreativeFlorence’s WebsiteFollow Florence on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Energy doesn't dissipate. You know it moves, but it doesn't die. And the big bang that happened 15.7 billion years ago, all that energy is still here. We are it like we are a version of it. We are an instance of that near Infinite Force and every atom that existed then exists now. And some of those are us. Like we are riding this cosmic wave. We're like surfers on a cosmic wave, billions of years in the making. And so my atoms were at the Big Bang.They're also in the future, right? Their time doesn't, in this kind of math, you can almost take time out of it. It's just being, we just, we are, we are. And so if we can tap into maybe just symbolically, but maybe actually, I don't know, but certainly the value symbolically is enough for me to take the leap to say, The things we want to do, the things we aspire to, we are, we can, we have, and there's something really powerful in that. To me, that's not like spiritual bypassing, like, oh, just manifesting one, but it's just like a deeper level of truth. We can interact with trees in ways that we're just starting to.”My guest today is Baratunde Thurston, a true multi-hyphenate whose journey has taken him from stand-up comedy stages to the heart of political and social activism. He's the author of the critically acclaimed, New York Times Best Seller How to Be Black; an Emmy-nominated host and executive producer of the PBS television series America Outdoors; and the creator and host of the podcast How to Citizen. His mission? Tell a better story of us—challenging the status quo and fostering meaningful conversations about the intersections of race, technology, democracy, and climate. The stories we have inherited are too small for us, he tells us, urging us to nurture stories that are bigger, bolder, and better. Our conversation today touches on the concept of citizening—as a verb—as Baratunde suggests that we are capable of more than we have been asked to do and gives us the steps to better citizen. We discuss the great potential and great concerns surrounding AI and the fine line between enhancement and disconnection through mechanization. We can heal people, landscapes, even society as a whole, he tells us—but technology alone will not get us there—we must tap into something that we have known but chosen to forget—how to live. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: How to citizen… On AI… Undoing the harm we have done… MORE FROM BARATUNDE THURSTON:Read How to Be BlackBaratunde’s writings at PuckListen to his TED Talk: How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a TimeExplore Baratunde’s WebsiteListen to the How to Citizen podcast on APPLE and SPOTIFYFollow him on INSTAGRAM and MASTODON Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Acceptance is kind of a choice. We say, I accept this. That's the way they are. Surrender feels different. It feels like, we're not just distancing ourself from something, but we're expanding around the thing that was giving us trouble. So it doesn't have such a stranglehold on us, in a way. And with acceptance, comes a gateway to something appreciably deeper, which is the possibility of transformation, the possibility of using the situation that we find ourself in, as if it’s a step in our growth and our further discovery of who we are.”So says the enduringly wise Buddhist teacher Frank Ostaseski, a leading figure in the contemplative care for the dying, having co-founded the acclaimed Zen Hospice Center. In 2004, he established the Metta Institute, which offers innovative training and education for compassionate end-of-life care. His book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, explores the wisdom that emerges from embracing mortality, which guides our conversation today. Frank invites us to consider how we approach the small endings that occur in our everyday life—how do you say goodbye?—along with the practice of listening intently. Ultimately, though, our conversation circles what it means to surrender to circumstances we cannot control. MORE FROM FRANK OSTASESKI:The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living FullyFrank’s WebsiteThe Metta Institute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“A loving being isn't domineering and a loving being is not going to judge you and certainly isn't going to test you. A loving being, a loving energy, and you can call that energy God, or again, it doesn't matter to me what people call it, when you call in forces of love, it is forces of love. What does love want? Love wants for you, what you want for yourself. Love wants to support you in ways that are in grace and patience. And so when you call it, it's coming in and saying, how can I help you? What do you need? How can I support you in the light? It's not gonna say, oh, you know what? I know you really wanted this, but too bad. But oftentimes, you know, we think that we get tested by the divine universe. No, we don't. We get tested by the shadow. Are you gonna come and agree with me again, that you're less than? Are you gonna come and agree with me again that you should be afraid? And that's when the answer has to say no. I'm actually gonna agree with the fact that I can trust in my own capability because I'm a divine being of the light. And when I tune into those energies, there's a whole force field of energy that is coming and welcoming me, and also joining me in my intention.”So says Jakki Leonardini, a highly clairvoyant energy healer. I originally met Jakki through my friend Kasey Crown, a trauma therapist—the duo host WellSoul Workshops several times a year and while I’ve never been to one, friends tell me they are actually life-changing, because the combination of Kasey and Jakki’s wisdom and expertise addresses each person, on every level. When you work with Jakki, she explains that we all have intuitive gifts, and that they’re a skill and not a gift. And yes, we may live in very material bodies, with very complex minds, but we’re all animated by energy—energy that’s highly influenced by the world. Understanding this is the first step toward keeping ourselves well.Over the years, I’ve worked with Jakki a lot on the idea of “fear” and how this animating and very human idea gets its power—she has a lot to say about this, as you’ll hear in today’s conversation. Energy healing is very nebulous and confusing, but hopefully Jakki’s framework will give a context to make it all more palpable, and easy to access in our lives. She’s even designed an app called My Soul Vibe, which uses the quality of your voice to track your energy—it’s pretty fascinating. MORE FROM JAKKI LEONARDINI:Jakki’s WebsiteFollow Jakki on InstagramMy Soul Vibe AppWellSoul Workshops Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“There's a deep need for all of us to grow up, like we are now being handed tools of the gods, right? And so we have to grow up and we have to mature. And so those levels of deep heroic altruism that in the past may be reserved for the great saints and sages of the past, this will have to be democratized. It'll have to become something that is accessible to everybody. And so to do that, we're talking about a trait development, which means it has to become permanent. And so altered states is one thing, but an altered trait is a whole other process. And in order to have altered an altered trait developmentally, in order to really grow and then stay there, which is what you and I did, like you and I, we grew when we were five years old and we grew to 10, and then we grew to like 12 and 18. We went through completely different worlds. But the truth is, most adults, we plateau and most people haven't probably grown through any other worlds for a decade, two decades, three or four decades.”So says psychologist John Churchill, co-director of Karuna Mandala and co-founder of Samadhi Integral, which is focused on consciousness, human potential, and psychedelic integration. John does both initiatives with his wife, fellow therapist Nicole. In his early life, John became a Buddhist monk at Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland—his book, Becoming Buddha, explores paradigm shifts of the dharmic wheel and serves as a gateway to integrating Buddhist theory and teachings into western psychology.In today’s conversation, we talk about the dire need for our culture to evolve and grow up, the level of consciousness at which we’re creating technological advances like artificial intelligence, and the journey to self-realization. With vast expertise and experience, he invites us to explore our individual development and existence within the larger organism of our universe. This is a heady episode, as John has a fascinating brain—fair warning that you might need to listen more than once. And I highly recommend reading Ken Wilber if the topics we discuss stoke your mind—I’d start with A Brief History of Everything. John has studied and worked with Ken for decades.MORE FROM JOHN CHURCHILL:Becoming Buddha: Buddhist Contemplative Psychology in a Western ContextSamadhi IntegralKaruna Mandala Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"So trauma can get stuck in our tissues.You know, our emotions can actually be stuck in our tissues because in a way, our fascia is actually holding and remembering everything that we experience in our lives, because it's this living matrix. And so maybe people don't realize it and it might be in the subconscious mind, but when you're laying on the table and you drop into parasympathetic state of the nervous system and your, your subconscious mind is more available and your body is more available to actually be present and to let things come to the surface, it's incredible what people will let go of, and they didn't even realize it was there, and then all of a sudden the pain is released or they can start having an orgasm. Or they are just laughing and giggling. I mean, just like energy or like they're undulating. Or they're vibrating or they're, you know, like something like, just energy coming up and releasing. It's such a beautiful thing."So says Lauren Roxburgh, who has been working with fascia long before fascia even became a word we know. A life-long athlete, Lauren knew from a young age that she had a different type of intelligence—less verbal, more kinesthetic. She can feel things with her hands and sense how and where a body is out of alignment—it’s quite stunning to behold. Lauren applies her genius to the fascia, the web of tissue—or matrix, as she calls it—that wraps around our muscles and organs. She believes that the fascia is the energetic web of our bodies, the sense organ that connects our intuition to how we move. She argues that it holds movement patterns and emotional patterns, that our trauma can get stuck or blocked in these tissues. After working with Lauren for a decade, I think she might just be right.MORE FROM LAUREN ROXBURGH:Website: https://laurenroxburgh.com/Lauren's Studio:https://alignedlifestudio.comInstagram:https://instagram.com/loroxburgh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“So circling can be very personal, meaning you have your own awareness. It's not like, you know, you come to a circle and everybody sees you and they know everything about you and now you're outed. No, it's, you can have an experience where you see yourself in everybody in the circle. You have an inner awakening that leads you down a spiritual path of getting to know yourself in a way that you had no idea. I see it happen all the time where a woman will say, I've never shared this before. I don't know why I'm sharing, but it was something that so and so said, and I feel like I need to share it. And that share will be part of the whole circle that will then be a ripple effect that will then inspire somebody else to share. And then you have this whole circle of women having these epiphanies about themselves for themselves. Nobody's forcing them to do anything, but it's simply just from women sharing their stories.”So says Dre Bendewald, the founder of the Art of Circling. Dre is a dear friend—and powerful to behold, particularly when she’s in action, holding space for other women. She holds circles, where women—strangers and friends alike—gather to tell the truth about their lives. To be witnessed. To be heard. Admittedly, I was nervous before I joined my first circle, but Dre builds a safe and grounded container in which to alchemize your emotions, and bring your stories out of the shadows in a type of communal confessional. What’s most profound is when you hear your story—something you thought had only ever happened to you—come out of another’s woman’s mouth. Ultimately, Dre is also a teacher intent on spreading this sacred and ages-old activity across the globe: Women have always gathered to share wisdom and story—it’s only recently that we’ve been torn apart. In our conversation today, she explains how to do it, whether you choose to circle with your own friends, or join her. Meanwhile, I’m thrilled to announce that she’s holding circles for On Our Best Behavior, which anyone can join: You can go to her website, theartofcircling.com to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“And I am not thankful for how hard it was. I don't believe we have to suffer to be great people. I do believe great empathy and depth and love come from all these hard parts. Yes. But I don't think that their requirement for empathy, so when it comes to the narrative of the adage of, I'm so thankful for this painful thing, it's a great way for us to survive these painful things. But I resist the urge to be thankful for how hard things were sometimes, because what I think of is, man, if I'm this, despite all of that, who would I be had all of that not happened. Had I had proper guidance and education and a parent who nurtured my interests, what kind of instrument would I be playing right now? How many languages would I be speaking right now? What companies would I be running right now? You know, because when I tap into certain things in the world and my curiosities when I'm living, I think, God, I'm good at this a little bit. Wow. I wonder what I would be capable of, you know? So that makes me begrudge the hard things. It doesn't make me thankful for them. It makes me go, God, what if?”While Minka Kelly is most known for playing Lyla Garrity, the All American cheerleader on the hit, Emmy award winning TV show Friday Night Lights, that’s definitely not the most remarkable thing about her. And this role, where Minka played a spoiled, beautiful and rich cheerleader is almost diametrically opposed to Minka’s actual childhood, grounded in trauma and neglect. Minka’s mother was a stripper who struggled with addiction, and Minka couch-surfed her way through her life, unmoored and often untended. At one point, they even lived in a storage unit. Minka tells this story in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Tell Me Everything, which manages something rare: It is both an honest and unflinching revelation of a very challenging and abusive childhood and a love letter to her single mom. This is very difficult to do and a testament to Minka’s strength, resilience, and desire to heal—her willingness to hold her mother close while acknowledging everything she did not receive as a child. MORE FROM MINKA KELLY:Tell Me Everything: A MemoirFollow Minka on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“I think there are a number of ways that we move into action that's characterized by integrity and where, you know, healthy altruism and compassion are present. I'm very grateful that I'm an old Buddhist , you know, with years of practice behind me and the practice of cultivating intentional balance, cultivating emotional balance, really being able to self-reflect on what, what's going on in my body, what's happening in the stream of my emotions and thoughts. So, you know, all of this has been of benefit to me over the years of practice in terms of stabilizing myself and being more able to engage, less done in by the work that I do. I mean, I'm 80 years old and I feel, you know, mostly full of life, and, and, and humor and so forth. And I really attribute it to the mindset that has come out of these decades of practice.”My guest today is the brilliant Joan Halifax—a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author of many books, including Being with Dying and Standing at the Edge. The founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist Monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Joan has dedicated her life’s work to engaged and applied Buddhism, with a particular emphasis on end-of-life care. Today, she shares with us wisdom gleaned from Zen traditions, mindfulness practices, and the Buddhist approach to death; drawing from her groundbreaking research on compassion and decades of experience working with the dying and their caregivers all the while. As our current reality pushes us all to the existential exploration of suffering, altruism, and meaning, Joan’s words become an exceptionally valuable source of inspiration, guiding us to the edges of our human experience in order to discover wise hope, truth, and a fuller realization of what it is to be alive. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Pathological altruism… Serving with our self, not our strength… Compassion is adaptive… MORE FROM JOAN HALIFAX:Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage MeetBeing with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Face of DeathExplore JOAN'S WEBSITEFollow her on INSTAGRAM and TWITTER Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Sex is not a quick fix when there's these foundational challenges that you're having, you're like, I know how to give oral sex a million different ways, but I'm not in the mood and I'm not turned on. And I know that sex is important because I love my partner and I know sex is important, but we can't quite hack how to be turned on and ready to go and ready for sex at the right time. And a lot of that is because we don't understand our arousal desire process. We don't know that if the house is a mess and there's dishes in the sink, or I have resentments with my partner, or I haven't worked out in a week, that there's all these factors of why you're not turned on. And so I think getting people to actually think about their sex life in that way and trying to think about like, what do I know to date just from my sexual history, but like, what's happening with my hormones? What's happening with my psychology? Do I have unhealed trauma? And you'd think that that would be sort of obvious, but it's really not. Like if you've been on an antidepressant for years or even just recently, Or any other blood pressure medication and now you're like not as turned on. People often don't make that connection.”Emily Morse is not only a dear friend and a stellar human, but she’s also a doctor of human sexuality, revolutionizing discussions surrounding sex and the pursuit of pleasure. She is already a best-selling author, though her just released book, Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure, is the navigational guide we all need in our lives. She also leads a MasterClass on Sex and Communication and hosts the top-rated and chart-topping podcast, Sex With Emily. Through candid conversations, she challenges the inaccurate cultural programming surrounding sex and promotes the value of open conversation to foster connection. Today, we talk about how women often find themselves disconnected from sex and their bodies, often due to social conditioning and traumatic events that occur during our sexual development. Emily helps us consider ways to reconnect with ourselves in order to feel more embodied, more aligned, and more pleasure.MORE FROM EMILY MORSE:Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your PleasureSex With EmilyEmily’s WebsiteFollow Emily on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“A million Americans a week are quitting a job. This number is almost twice as high as it's ever been in history, not laid off. Not being fired. Quitting. That’s 50 million people a year. That's a third of the workforce. And another third of the workforce is saying, Hmm, I don't wanna come in five days a week. Okay? Like, what if I give you Tuesday and Thursday or Tuesday Wednesday? I mean, only 15% of Americans in white collar office jobs are even showing up to work anymore on a Friday. So there is this big renegotiation, can I do it remotely? Can I do it from anywhere? Like not even being in the same town? All of this is a rebalancing of the balance of power between workers and workforce. And so I think that if you are in HR and you are particularly in the wellness and health and safety and you know, mental health, you were three years ago in a small basement office with no windows and no one ever talked to you. It turns out there's a lot of people outside your door now, and we are beginning to realize if you want to recruit and retain talent, you have to change the way that you talk to your workers.”Bruce Feiler is an author and speaker known for his insight and perspective on how we can better show up in the world. With seven New York Times bestsellers like Life is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families, he blends wisdom and contemporary knowledge to inspire individuals to lead more intentional and joyful lives. He is also a writer and presenter of two prime-time series on PBS, Walking the Bible and Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler. Additionally, he writes a newsletter called The Nonlinear Life.In today's conversation, we chat about his latest book, The Search: Discovering Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World, based on real-life narratives for finding fulfillment in the workplace. He tells us that those who find the most meaning and success don't climb; they dig. They go looking inside of themselves. Bruce's first hand approach to his work, living the experiences he writes about, allows him to provide practical guidance on navigating life's transitions and finding reasons for why we’re all here.MORE FROM BRUCE FEILER:The Search: Discovering Meaningful Work in a Post-Career WorldLife is in the TransitionsThe Secrets of Happy FamiliesBruce’s NewsletterFollow Bruce on Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“I believe certainly, I know now, after have going through this years and years of feeling ashamed of who I am, you know, internalizing the shame, how America sees trans people, gender in general, and what I know now, is truly, this is the power. I mean, maybe many, many years as a fashion model, definitely there were days when I felt like, why did I even, just a thought of being born as trans and all that. Like, I love being a trans person right now, especially right after that Ted Talk in 2014 when I realized, oh wow, I've opened up. The world opened up to me. You know, this is just the beginning. It doesn't mean all my problems disappear, but certainly there’s a sense of freedom in that. So hopefully the freedom that, at least for me to start with, that I found within myself by speaking truth, by truly living authentically as myself, you know, it gives me power. I think people are afraid of that.”Geena Rocero is a model and advocate, known for her courageous journey of self-discovery and self-revelation: In 2014, she came out to the world as transgender on the stage at TED. Today, we discuss her debut memoir, Horse Barbie, where Geena bares her soul, relaying her journey as a pageant queen hailing from the Philippines. Courageously, she made the difficult decision to temporarily conceal her identity in order to pursue a career as a model in New York City, where not even her agent knew her truth. While she booked magazines and ad campaigns, deep within her, she recognized that embracing her authentic self was the key to unlocking her boundless potential. Geena's determination to live her truth serves as a testament to the transformative strength in self-acceptance and genuine empowerment. Besides telling her story, Geena also founded the advocacy and media production company Gender Proud. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.MORE FROM GEENA ROCERO:Horse BarbieHer TED Talk: “Why I Must Come Out”Gender ProudFollow Geena on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“When you are quite literally told that you are not human. What option do you have? What’s the other option other than to overthrow the system that is telling you you're not human, you know? And so this is work, this is generational work. And we have had to do that generational work largely alone, because when women got the opportunity to vote, we were purposefully left out. When the civil rights movement was happening, we were the backbone of that mission. But our names don't appear in the books, in our history books. That we know how to move through systems that weren't built for us because there are so few that are. The only systems that are built for us are the ones we build together. Otherwise, we spend our entire lifetime in this country moving through systems that were not made for us, and in fact that weren't, not just not made for us, but made to squash us, made to make sure that we do not succeed and so in order to live into our own human dignity, the only option is to change the world because this is unacceptable.”So says Austin Channing Brown. Her ability to distill essential truths always sends chills down my spine. Austin is a powerful and resonant public speaker, racial justice advocate and educator, and author, whose bestselling book, I'm Still Here, has catalyzed an indelible impact on how we perceive and discuss what it means to be a Black person, let alone a Black woman, in America. She just released a Young Adult version, which is required reading for all of our children as we work to build an equitable future. Austin is also the CEO of Herself Media, a platform creating content and narratives to provide a supportive space for those who find themselves on the outskirts of traditional power.Today, Austin joins me in unveiling the facade of what it means to be good and how culture detrimentally enforces this burdening standard of goodness on women. We discuss the importance of anger and how it can be a navigational tool. By examining her own anger, Austin learned to move that energy toward creating community and literature that relentlessly fights for the future that America needs. MORE FROM AUSTIN CHANNING BROWN:I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for WhitenessI’m Still Here: Adapted for Young ReadersHerself MediaAustin’s WebsiteAustin’s NewsletterFollow Austin on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“If I remember correctly, I think you ran as fast as you could to the thing that you're more comfortable with, which is other people's research, other people's ideas, showing the connection between historical ideas and current, you know, thought leaders and the way they were operating. And so, and what I felt was that you, Elise, were missing. And I think what I really wanted you to do, and this is what I meant by like, show us your journey through these things, is I needed you and, and you got there, to filter and to sort of act as guide for the reader showing us what you were realizing as you were bringing and making these connections and synthesizing all of these other thought leaders, and, you know, expert work because that's the journey we need to be on as reader.”That voice? That's my editor Whitney Frick, and she joins me today for a very special episode of Pulling the Thread, on the eve of On Our Best Behavior's publication—coming May 23. Many of you have been with me as I've written this book, and by osmosis, you probably have some sense of the process, but it felt important to me to celebrate OOBB (as we call it), by bringing you all the way inside. I wanted to do this with the person who knows the text almost as well as I do.Writing a book is really hard—and it's also incredibly co-creative. As someone who has co-written or ghostwritten 12 books, I'm usually the co-creator, holding the structure for the authors while they revisit their lives and mine it for story. In this case, though, it was Whit who helped me, holding the potential of the book as a guiding light for the process. She took me by the hand, bringing me ever closer to myself as I worked through drafts. We both worked really hard on this book—really hard. Distilling, refining, and interrogating the material until we knew the path was so well-trod, readers would be able to easily follow the book's unfolding, and understand exactly what I was trying to say. To say that I'm pleased with how On Our Best Behavior turned out is an understatement—I'm thrilled, which is not something that's easy for me to say. I believe the book is the best I could write, and I'm so grateful to Whit for getting me there. As we explore in today's conversation, I had a very powerful battle with resistance—and am so happy I pushed through. If you haven't yet ordered your copy, On Our Best Behavior is available wherever you get your books starting May 23—in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia, with more countries to come.MORE FROM THIS EPISODE:On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be GoodFollow Elise on InstagramElise’s Substack NewsletterThe Dial Press Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“One thing my work has taught me is how human interaction is a comedy of errors. People are making so many errors without knowing it. I think I'm making sense to you, but I'm not. I think I'm being clear, but I'm not. I think I understand you, but I don’t. I think I heard you, but I didn’t. I think when you raise your chin, you're looking at me defiantly or someone else, arrogantly or someone else, like you know, looking down at your nose. But maybe you don't think that, you're just lifting your chin because you naturally do it. Lifting of the chin, by the way, is a skeletal feature of when our heart rates go up and we start moving towards higher arousal, we'll elongate our neck and our back and we'll lift the chin sometimes. So often it means nothing but optically, to the other person, it doesn't look so good. Just like looking at scans doesn't look so good, or, you know, looking away for too long, or staring too much. All of these things are subjective and for one person, it doesn't bother them, for another person, it drives them crazy.”Stan Tatkin is an author, therapist, and researcher who guides couples toward more durable relationships. He developed the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), a non-linear approach that explores attachment theory to help couples adopt secure-functioning principles: In short, Stan and his wife, Tracey, train therapists to work through a psychobiological lens. Often, our brains get away from us in conflict—we lose ourselves to our instincts. He has trained thousands of therapists to integrate PACT into their clinical practice, offers intensive counseling sessions, and co-leads couples retreats with his wife.His latest book, In Each Other's Care, provides practical tools for couples struggling with recurring arguments. In our discussion, he explains how to identify and overcome triggers that lead to conflicts and improve communication to achieve better outcomes. Using the concept of secure functioning, Stan emphasizes the positive impact of healthier arguments. Though his solutions require effort and dedication, they have the power to benefit all aspects of your life. I should know—he has worked with me and Rob before, sessions that were honestly fascinating, for both of us. MORE FROM STAN TATKIN:In Each Other’s CareWe DoWired for LoveWired for DatingStan Tatkin’s WebsiteFollow Stan on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“But I now think about how wonderful it is that some of these radio stories that meant a lot to me that might have otherwise just disappeared, now do have a longer life. And you mentioned the fear of vampirism as a journalist. And the flip side of that is something that Audie Cornish, who was my co-host for many years on All Things Considered, said to me that I've really taken to heart, which is that in a crisis when people are on the worst day of their lives, whether it's a war or a natural disaster, or a mass shooting, of course there are people who don't want to talk and I respect that, but there are also people for whom being able to tell their story and being able to have somebody truly listen to them can be healing and can be a gift, and can be an act of love. And so when I go into those situations, I'm not going in as an emergency relief worker. I'm not going in as an aid worker. I'm going in as a listener. I'm going in to give people an opportunity to tell their stories and to be there to listen to them, and I've realized that that also has value and that that can be important.”Ari Shapiro is an award winning journalist with one of the most recognizable voices in the land: He’s the host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” In his tenure, he’s covered war zones, mass shootings, the White House—and also so much more, using his microphone to tell deeper stories about who we actually are. He recently published a debut memoir—The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—where he uses his own life as the scaffolding to tell many of these stories. I cried…maybe 10 times as I followed Ari across the globe.Like me, Ari is from small town America—he was born in Fargo, North Dakota before his parents moved to Portland. Like my brother, Ari is gay—and came of age at a time when that was a dangerous thing to be. Like me, Ari grew up listening to Nina Totenberg and Susan Stamberg make sense of the world. And like me, he went to Yale. The point of Ari’s book is exactly this: We all have so much in common, regardless of where we are born. Telling these stories brings us closer together.In our conversation, he shares his insights on what makes valuable journalism and we discuss the importance of exploring diverse perspectives to gain a broader understanding of the world around us. MORE FROM ARI SHAPIRO:The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent ListeningFollow Ari on Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Women spent so much time in the ancient world spinning, like they spent all their time, any spare moment. And spinsters were not bad, it wasn't bad to be a spinster the way we think of it, spinsters were, you know, respected members of households, single women who didn't have the responsibilities of husbands or children, who could spin more, and make money. And, you know, you think about things like marauding around when they sailed across the Atlantic and their little hats and everything, but you don't think about the sails. You don't think like, who made those sails? Who made the thread that made all those sails? Who do you think did that? How many years did it take those women to make one lousy sail, you know, I mean, it took two years of women's labor to make a sail. So the kind of invisible labor of women in all of that…”So says, Peggy Orenstein, a celebrated journalist who is acclaimed for her insightful analysis of gender, sexuality, and identity issues. She’s written several best-sellers about the topic, including Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. During COVID, Peggy took a right turn, and an entirely different type of book emerged, one that is actually just as radical. In Unraveling, she explores the depths of her grief and tackles societal issues through the process of making a sweater from scratch—including shearing a sheep and carding and dying the wool—ultimately discovering the power of creativity and connection.While sharing her journey of making the sweater, which is actually riveting, she also unravels the rich history and culture of spinning and weaving while exposing the sobering reality of fast fashion and its detrimental impact on our environment. This is a book about something that sounds simple, yet is actually about everything, offering the potential for a genuine shift in how we perceive the world. MORE FROM PEGGY ORENSTEIN:Unraveling: What I Learned about Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest SweaterBoys & Sex: Young Men on Hook-Ups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New MasculinityGirls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New LandscapeDon’t Call Me a Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex and LifeCinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of New Girlie-Girl CulturePeggy Orenstein’s WebsiteFollow Peggy on Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“So one of the things I explored in life in Life in Five Senses was the value of boredom. Because when you're bored and when your mind is just kind of running free and trying to amuse itself, you'll often have insight. And that's why people have ideas in the shower, when they're walking the dog or something. When there's nothing occupying them, that's when our brain can come up with these new insights. So I was walking through the Met, I was in a very familiar place, so I was a little bored. And that's when I realized, the way I thought of it was that the beautiful often requires a little bit of ugly. And being systematic, I’m like, you say that, but how do you back that up? And I could think of one for each sense because it does turn out that often the beautiful does require a little bit of what might be considered ugly. And that is part of, as you say, the complete picture. When I took a perfume class as part of my sense of smell study, our professor had said that often a beautiful perfume will have some bad, you'll smell it and you would be like, Ooh, that smells bad. And yet it makes the perfume more beautiful.”Gretchen Rubin is an author, podcast host, and self-improvement expert, who has written many New York Times bestellers, including one that hit #1: The Happiness Project, where Gretchen performed what she has now perfected—using herself as a lab through which to study how principles from throughout time act on us, and inform our understanding of the world. She extends this point-of-view into her podcast, The Happiness Project with Gretchen Rubin, where she offers actionable daily strategies for cultivating joy and well-being, along with her sister.Today, we discuss her newest book, Life in Five Senses, which explores the powerful impact of embracing the world through sensing the world, rather than thinking about the world. It’s a book about experiencing: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Through her extensive research and personal insights, Gretchen found that tuning into these senses provides relief from internal chaos while fostering our connection with the external world.MORE FROM GRETCHEN RUBIN:Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the WorldThe Happiness ProjectThe Four TendenciesBetter Than BeforeHappier with Gretchen Rubin PodcastGretchen’s Website & Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“For people who have been in a long relationship and then it goes off the rails and ends, it’s a different kind of grief from say widower grief, right? Where maybe the relationship gets to stay intact and time capsuled. And you get to maintain the quality and texture of those memories even as you're grieving the loss of the person in your present life and in your future. And I think something that happens in divorce that we maybe don't talk enough about is the kind of like, I think they call it ambiguous grief, right? It's like losing someone who's still around, but not really, and not still around and available to you in the capacity that they once were. And so if you've been with someone for a really long time, you have all this institutional knowledge, right? Like all these private jokes and little songs, and it's like, who did I see? Oh, I remember seeing that movie. Who did I see that with? Oh, right. And it's like walking in a minefield…”So says Maggie Smith, an incredible poet and teacher whose mastery of language is always stunning: She distills sentiments of motherhood, grief, and survival in a way that is equal parts relatable and beautiful. While she’s published poems that touch such a collective nerve they’ve gone viral—namely Good Bones—her newest offering is a memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. And in it, she not only breaks the traditional memoir format, but she also breaks open her relationship and the way we reimagine ourselves and our experiences as time passes. It is a beautiful book. Today, we discuss the ways that Maggie's memoir explores the disparity among gender roles and the collective damage caused by the patriarchy. Ultimately, through her story, she encourages us all to commit to a practice of self-love, introspection, and forgiveness. MORE FROM MAGGIE SMITH:You Could Make This Place BeautifulGoldenrodKeep MovingGood BonesMaggie’s WebsiteMaggie’s Substack NewsletterFollow Maggie on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Ideas don't arrive with a bang. There is no parade. The big thing never screams that it's a big thing. The big thing actually at first looks quite small, but if your life is filled with constant noise, constant chatter, and you're not making room to listen to yourself, you won't be able to hear that subtle whisper, when it arrives. Most people say, oh, my, my best ideas come to me in the shower, it's surprising. If you think about it though, it's not surprising at all because it's like one of the few moments of your day when you're by yourself and you're not getting bombarded by these high decibel sirens for attention in the form of notifications and emails and text messages and phone calls and this and that. You're in this solitary environment where you're letting your mind wander and it's just you and your thoughts and all of these built up whispers then begin to emerge to the surface, but we just don't stay with that long enough to really lean into those ideas, but imagine, you know, the types of ideas you might be able to generate if you can replicate those shower like conditions throughout the day so that you do hear those subtle whispers when they come up.”So says Ozan Varol, a recovering law professor and former rocket scientist who has spent the last decade or so analyzing the way we think, create, and ideate. In 2020, he wrote Think Like a Rocket Scientist, which explores the way we problem solve—it’s full of fascinating stories and case studies. And he’s now out with his next book, Awaken Your Inner Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary, which offers a continuation of the theme: How do we come up with new ideas and novel solutions, without falling into the trap of doing what everyone else is doing. Ozan is a wonderful narrator and guide, offering hundreds of anecdotes of people—in every conceivable sphere of life—who are doing things differently, and creating change in the process. The best part? Most of his advice is simple and easy to implement, a small shift in how we move throughout our days. MORE FROM OZAN VAROL:Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and LifeAwaken Your Inner Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become ExtraordinaryOzan Varol’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 ClockHow to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention EconomyInhabiting the Negative SpaceThe Bureau of Suspended ObjectsJenny Odell’s WebsiteFollow her On Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 RealmThe Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His MessageThe Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of ChristianityThe Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of ChristianityCynthia’s WebsiteThe Center for Action and Contemplation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 InequalityInferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the StorySuperior: The Return of Race ScienceWatch her 2019 BBC Documentary: Eugenics: Science's Greatest ScandalAngela's WebsiteFollow Angela on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 AgeWintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult TimesThe Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman's Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way HomeExplore KATHERINE'S WEBSITEListen to her podcast, How We Live Now, on APPLE PODCASTS or SPOTIFYFollow her on INSTAGRAM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 WayBuy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been ThereExplore TARA'S WEBSITEFollow Tara on INSTAGRAM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 RelationshipsSet Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming YourselfThe Set Boundaries Workbook: Practical Exercises for Understanding Your Needs and Setting Healthy LimitsFollow Nedra on Instagram and TwitterSign up for Nedra’s Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 FriendshipBooks for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing LifeThe End of Your Life BookclubSend: Why People Email So Badly and How To Do It BetterWill Schwalbe’s WebsiteFollow Will on Twitter and Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 JoyExplore Priscilla's WebsiteFollow her on Twitter and Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 SubstackMy Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 SCHUMACHERThe Freedom Transmissions: A Pathway to Peace, Yeshua as channeled by Carissa SchumacherCarissa’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 ArtDeep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About OurselvesJames’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 IyerPico’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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 EarthSeasons 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 PodcastCheck out The Golden Sufi Center and Working with Oneness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 BelongingThe Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We AreMindsight: The New Science of Personal TransformationAware: The Science and Practice of PresenceThe Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing MindFollow Dan on InstagramDan’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 YouFollow Jules on InstagramJules’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 WoundsThomas’s WebsiteFollow Thomas on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 ProjectExplore X Artists' BooksCheck out her website and the grantLOVE ProjectFollow Alexandra on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 YourselfThe Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and LifeCheck out Lynne’s Soul of Money Institute and The Pachamama AllianceFollow Lynne on Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 FreeCheck out Melissa's WebsiteFollow Melissa on Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 OutingJessi’s podcast, Hello MondayFollow Jessi on LinkedIn and Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"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 WellCheck out their initiative: Well for CultureNative Wellness InstituteFollow Thosh on Instagram Follow Chelsey on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 AbstractionsEmergence: Labeled AutisticThe Autistic Brain: Helping Different Kinds of Minds SucceedThinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism (Expanded Edition)Visit Temple's Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 ChangeThe 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 TalkCheck out Dolly's WebsiteFollow her on Twitter and Instagram“The Truth About Rosa Parks And Why It Matters To Your Diversity Initiative,” Forbes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 ThemCNBC Disruptor 50Follow Julia on Instagram and TwitterDIVE 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“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 FullyUse Your Planets Wisely: Master Your Ultimate Cosmic Potential with Psychological AstrologyCheck out Jennifer Freed's WebsiteFollow her on Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.