A Slight Change of Plans

Professional violinist Vijay Gupta grew up performing on the world’s biggest stages in order to fulfill his parents' dreams for him. But the pressure to play perfectly became too much, and over time he lost his love of the violin.

Then Vijay started performing in homeless shelters and mental health clinics, where audiences wanted something very different from him: not perfection, but connection. 

This week, Vijay joins Maya to share how those experiences rekindled his passion for music, and gave him the courage to walk away from his parents’ dreams towards his own.

Check out Vijay’s new book, “Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation,” and learn more about his work with Street Symphony at StreetSymphony.org.

For Fun: Watch young violinists Vijay and Maya on PBS’s Reading Rainbow in 1996, “Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin.”

For more episodes like this, we recommend our conversation with Shira Gabriel, “Why Experiencing Awe With Others Feels So Magical.”

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Here’s a preview of another Pushkin podcast, one that explores many of the topics we cover here on A Slight Change of Plans: grief, jealousy, anger, and awe. It’s called Death of an Artist. 

In February 2024, celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and deeply in love. As much a love story as one about death, it begs the question: what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them?

Journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael’s letters—as one married couple trying to understand another. Told through intimate conversations with Petra and Michael’s friends and family about their own relationships to aging, grief, death, and the friends they thought they knew, Death of an Artist weaves together a portrait of a community grappling with the Mathers’ deaths and the final words they left behind.

Search for Death of an Artist wherever you get podcasts. And get early, ad-free access to the entire season now by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.

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Psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb built her career helping people question the stories they tell themselves. But when an unexpected heartbreak left her reeling, she found herself sitting in the patient’s seat – and discovered just how hard it can be to rewrite your own story.

This week, Lori joins Maya to share what being a patient taught her about being a therapist, how therapy might not actually be for everyone, and how we can all start to be more honest with ourselves.  

Check out Lori’s most recent book, “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.” 

For more A Slight Change of Plans, we recommend our conversation with Julia Samuel, “Lessons from a Grief Therapist.”

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Stephanie Wittels Wachs and her younger brother Harris were best friends. So when he confided that he was struggling with opioid addiction, Steph believed they’d find a way through it together, like they always had. But Harris didn’t survive his addiction. 

Steph immersed herself in research on addiction to better understand what her family had been through. This week, Steph joins Maya to share what she’s learned about the disease and how we can help save more lives. 

Check out Steph’s new book “Last Day: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis” and find her podcast, “Last Day” wherever you like to listen.

For more on addiction and healing, we recommend our conversation with singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, “Jason Isbell on Resisting the Mythos of Sobriety.”

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or if you’d like to learn more about the topic, resources are available at FindSupport.gov.

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How can we find resilience, growth, and new possibilities within life’s more unpredictable moments? In this special episode from the podcast, TED Talks Daily, Maya joins journalist and author Simone Stolzoff to talk about how they’ve each explored uncertainty and change from different perspectives. Listen as they draw from their new books, Simone's “How to Not Know” and Maya's “The Other Side of Change,” to discuss why our discomfort with not having the answers might be holding us back, and how to find resilience in the face of change.

Find TED Talks Daily wherever you listen to podcasts or here: https://link.mgln.ai/kMxu6e

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While deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Air Force in 2014, psychologist Michael Valdovinos had an unexpected emotional breakdown. None of the diagnoses he knew best–like PTSD or depression–fit the crisis of conscience he was experiencing. Then he came across the concept of moral injury. 

On today’s episode, Michael and Maya explore what happens when our deepest values are violated, the different ways it can occur in everyday life, and how we can start to heal.

Check out Michael’s book, “Moral Injuries: When Good Conscience Suffers in a World of Hurt.”

If you enjoyed our conversation with Michael and want to hear more from A Slight Change of Plans, we recommend our episode “A Theranos Whistleblower” with Erika Cheung.

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As the great Rocky Balboa once said about life: Iit will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.” But in this week’s episode from our friends at The Story Collider, two storytellers share stories of their strength of will and persistence to keep going despite the scientific challenges.

Part 1: Coral reef conservationist Emily Darling is at loss when a journalist asks her if she still has hope for coral reefs. Dr Emily Darling is a coral reef scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto. Her research has won international awards and been featured on National Geographic, Forbes International, CNN, and PBS Nature. She is passionate about the importance of underwater science and works closely with scientists around the world to measure the impact of coral reef conservation. In her spare time, she is (still) learning to sail.

Part 2: James Gordon readies himself for another one of his daughter’s heart surgeries. James Gordon is an international award winning author and poet, champion storyteller, and acclaimed actor. James can be seen on Chicago Med as Kent Taylor, Detective Smiley on Amazon's The G, and PA Flanders in Background Extras.

Find The Story Collider wherever you get your podcasts.

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Deepika Chopra, a clinical psychologist, has a problem with the way optimism is often defined. Real optimism, she says, shouldn’t be about always expecting the best, because sometimes the bad thing will happen. Instead, she wants us to expect the best from ourselves. 

On today’s episode, Deepika joins Maya to talk about the deeply personal experience that changed her understanding of optimism – and how to hold onto hope while staying planted in reality. 

Check out Deepika’s book, “The Power of Real Optimism: A Practical, Science-Based Guide to Staying Resilient, Curious, and Open Even When Life Is Hard.”

If you enjoyed our conversation with Deepika and want to hear more from A Slight Change of Plans, we recommend these episodes:

• “You Have More Influence Than You Think” with Vanessa Bohns
• “Why We Avoid Conversations That Would Make Us Happier” with Nick Epley
• “How to Build Empathy and Avoid Burnout” with Jamil Zaki

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Amazon editors just chose Maya’s new book, “The Other Side of Change,” as one of the Best Books of 2026 So Far! To celebrate, we’re sharing a chapter from the audiobook with you today. 

Journalist Matt Gutman spent years reporting live from high-pressure situations all over the world. Calm and collected on camera, he was privately dealing with panic attacks behind the scenes. Then, after an on-air mistake jeopardized his livelihood, Matt fell into a seemingly endless cycle of negative thoughts. 

Order “The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans” at changewithmaya.com/book, or wherever you like to buy books. If you’ve already read “The Other Side of Change,” leave a quick review here: 

Check out some of Maya’s favorite episodes of “A Slight Change of Plans” here. 

1. A Black Musician Takes on the KKK - Daryl Davis (Spotify) (Apple)
2. Wired for Change - John Elder Robinson (Spotify) (Apple)
3. “Grieving the Man I Thought My Husband Was” - Susan Messing (Spotify) (Apple)
4. A Theranos Whistleblower - Erica Cheung (Spotify) (Apple)
5. The Science of Regret - Daniel Pink (Spotify) (Apple)
6. The Science of Making (and Keeping) Friends - Marisa Franco  (Spotify) (Apple)
7. How Awe Transforms Us - Dacher Keltner (Spotify) (Apple)
8. Brené Brown on Our Flawed, Imperfect Selves - Brené Brown (Spotify) (Apple)

Looking for more? Explore six years of inspiring stories of change and science-backed insights for a happier, healthier life here.

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Today we’re bringing you an episode from Proxy, a show built around a simple idea: Whatever you might be going through — no matter how specific or hard to explain – you’re not alone. There is someone else out there, somewhere, who truly gets it – and they might have just the advice you need to hear. 

In this episode, a writer who loses her inner narrator grapples with what happens when you can’t do the thing you love the most anymore — the thing you’ve built your whole life and identity around — and gets help from another artist who’s gone through something similar.

You can find more episodes of Proxy at https://www.proxypodcast.com/, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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