Aliveness: Technology, love, money, sex, soul, governance

"Understanding is the booby prize!" - Susan Kacvinsky, Mythologist & Writer

Susan and I explore how ancient stories about death, rebirth, and the suppression of women's power illuminate today's political chaos. Susan argues that mythology is actively being used to control people through fear and shame, and has been for centuries. At its heart, this is a conversation about finding solid ground when the world feels like it's falling apart.

Highlights include:

1. Understanding the patriarchy: The conversation weaves together mythology, history, psychology, and politics in a way that reframes familiar things (Christianity, patriarchy, American politics) through a rarely discussed lens. Listen to understand the development and persistence of the patriarchy.
2. Naming what it's like to live now: the exhaustion of living under fear-based control, the loneliness of carrying emotions in a culture that punishes vulnerability, the frustration of a world that seems rigged.
3. Grounded hope: Rather than despair or toxic positivity, the conversation offers a mythological perspective on cultural collapse and renewal. The Inanna descent, the three days of death before resurrection, makes difficult times feel meaningful and survivable.
4. Warmth and aliveness: Susan and I delight in each other, and we hope that energy is contagious. We hope you feel like you are having tea with us, loosening a feel something loosening in you the permission to be curious, passionate, and undefended.
5. A quiet challenge: We follow a thread about willingness, feeling feelings, and presence as a gentle but persistent invitation to stop managing life from the outside and start meeting it from within.

Follow Susan at her Substack, Modern Mythology: https://modernmythology.substack.com/

Join Alison's newsletter, Remembering Soul at http://www.alisoncrosthwait.com/remembering

I am so excited to share my conversation with Kelly Stonelake!

Kelly Stonelake is a business operator and technologist with nearly 15 years of experience at Meta, where she held senior roles in product marketing and organizational leadership. During her tenure, she raised concerns about child safety and internal misconduct and faced retaliation after senior leadership chose to conceal risks rather than address them. The gap between Meta’s stated values and her lived experience led to a severe loss of functioning and a fight for her life.

Following her departure, Kelly became a whistleblower and advocate for stronger protections for children online, greater tech accountability, awareness of autistic burnout and suicide risk, and safer workplaces for marginalized people. Her work focuses on challenging the concentration of power in technology and advancing equity, accountability, and systemic reform.

Kelly recently testified before the Washington State Senate in support of SB 5708 on addictive feeds and SB 5784 on AI companions, sharing first-hand accounts of child exposure, data collection without parental consent, and corporate retaliation against those who spoke up.

Please visit Kelly Stonelake on Substack at Overturned by Kelly Stonelake .

02:16 – 10:40 | From early idealism to the inside of Facebook

Kelly traces her early interests in journalism, constitutional debate, and technology, leading to nearly 15 years at Facebook. She describes the early years before the algorithmic feed, when the mission felt real and principled. She reflects on Cambridge Analytica, internal decision-making, and how loyalty, good faith, and “doing the right thing” slowly became tools for accumulating power.

10:41 – 29:24 | Horizon Worlds, retaliation, and the open secret about kids

Kelly recounts her time as the only woman on the senior leadership team for Horizon Worlds. She describes discovering that children were already using the product through adult accounts, being exposed to adults without parental consent, while Meta collected vast amounts of data in violation of federal law. She speaks plainly about misogyny, silencing women, attorney-client privilege used to avoid accountability, and the moment the rollout was paused for “quality” reasons while the truth stayed buried.

29:25 – 1:02:00 | The harms parents, therapists, and social workers need to understand

Kelly lays out, in clear and specific terms, the dangers children face across social platforms:

• Sextortion pipelines that move from shame to suicide in hours or days

• Relentless bullying amplified by anonymity and disappearing messages

• Algorithmic feeds that escalate vulnerability into self-harm content

• Drug acquisition through social apps leading to fentanyl deaths

• Viral challenges that kill curious kids

She explains how “teen accounts” and parental controls function as sugar pills. They reassure parents without protecting children.

1:02:01 – 1:11:30 | A chapter for parents

Kelly speaks directly to parents. Delay smartphones as long as possible. She recommends no social media. Give yourself permission to reevaluate decisions with new information and self-compassion. She shares how technology can exist in a home without extractive platforms, from family computers to creative and educational tools. She names the economic manipulation at play and explains why neurodivergent children face disproportionate risk. This is not a parenting failure. It is a systemic one.

1:11:31 – 1:21:53 | Moral injury, refusing blood money, and choosing truth

Kelly shares her mental health collapse, autistic burnout, and the moment she refused severance rather than sign an agreement holding Meta harmless. She speaks about privilege, principle, and filing a lawsuit for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and retaliation. The conversation closes with the power of parent survivors, the force of love over extraction, and the belief that even against Big Tech, truth endures.

Resources and Links

Kelly Stonelake’s Substack: Overturned by Kelly Stonelake

Alison Crosthwait’s newsletter

A reminder to all of us in these challenging times: Take care of yourself. Find fresh air. Feel the ground. Remember that we are not alone.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

I share a schedule change to balance creative purpose with financial stability, driven by new job opportunities. My voice is evolving to equip listeners for the future by addressing governance, economy, and technology through the lens of soul and aliveness.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

Ruth took on the entire Blue Jays coaching staff mid World-Series, transforming her small Spadina office into a primal, tobacco-scented dugout. She helped fourteen quiet men connect with the deep, earthy masculinity that makes them swing, throw, and finally stand ready to say "OK Blue Jays, Let's Play Ball."

For context on this fictional series read the Introduction to Session Notes From the World's Therapist.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

Alison shares a practical proposal for how readers and creators can stay connected, share meaningful work, and protect their mental health in the age of broken platforms. From dopamine detox to building intentional “email feeds,” this episode lays out a collective blueprint for a more ethical, human, and abundant internet.

Timestamp to Jump to the Solution:

9:45 – How to build an intentional “email feed”

Links Mentioned

• "No Kings, No Caesars, and the Photos I Didn't Put on Instagram". Kelly Stonelake (she actually left Meta - she worked there).
• Kit email platform (free up to 10K subs)
• Alison’s website
• Follow me on Bluesky
• Follow me on Base: erosforlife.base.eth
• Receive the Untamed Book List a dangerous, hyper-curated list of my favourite outside-the-system reads. Subscribe to my Substack and you will receive an email with the link to the list.

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

Ruth meets Hurricane Melissa in session, writing a meditation on the storm itself.

For context on this fictional series read the Introduction to Session Notes From the World's Therapist.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

This addiction group therapy session centered on the deep link between trauma and substance use, explaining how an overwhelmed nervous system causes people to "split off" from their true self, making addiction an easy way to cope with pain. The key takeaway was fostering compassionate support so group members could distinguish their true identity from the destructive actions of their addiction, helping them take responsibility while beginning to heal by connecting to their non-addicted core.

For context on this fictional series read the Introduction to Session Notes From the World's Therapist.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

Ruth contemplates the nonsensical and endlessly painful nature of world affairs and the lack of comfort offered by spiritual sayings. She's wrestling.

For context on this fictional series read the Introduction to Session Notes From the World's Therapist.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

For context on this fictional series read the Introduction to Session Notes From the World's Therapist.

Ruth is sick today.

Links to a couple of today’s stories:

White House Demolition (CBC)

In what the Frankfort Police department described as an “appalling act of littering,” Frankfort residents woke up to find KKK flyers lying in front yards and streets.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

What it's been like to publish on Substack + podcast every day for 17 days. (With an appearance from Rose). And then (at 9:00) an essay on the serious dangers of ChatGPT for therapeutic/intimate use.

Links:

• Last week, Altman said he was surprised at the reaction to his announcement that ChatGPT would now have erotic conversations with adults. 
• A widely quoted MIT report reveals that 95% of AI pilots fail to produce ROI.
• The climate cost of AI is significant and growing.
• Luiza Jarovsky, PhD writes an excellent AI safety newsletter.

SUBSCRIBE TO EROS FOR LIFE ON SUBSTACK

To receive daily emails visit your Substack profile on a web browser (not the app). From there find Eros For Life and activate the Eros For Life (Daily Version) section. There is a photo guide to doing this one the bottom of today's substack post.

Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.

Want to be a guest? Let me know here.