In this episode, Nicole docks the conversation, asking what it means to live between ambition and ease—to want success and still long for stillness.

Brett and Nicole talk about the pull between striving and slowing down, and how that tension shows up in everything from career choices to the curated calm of social media. They look at the trad-wife phenomenon as an extreme expression of this desire for comfort, and how it blurs the line between resistance and retreat. The conversation explores how feminism, surveillance, and selfhood intersect online, and what it means to negotiate the parts of ourselves that want different things. It’s a thoughtful and grounded reflection on ambition, rest, and the contradictions of wanting a life that feels both full and free.

Nicole’s Notes

• Passport to Paris (1999)

• Gilmore Girls (TV series, 2000–2007)

• Maintenance Phase (Podcast, hosted by Aubrey Gordon & Michael Hobbes)The Truman Show (1998)

• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

Brett’s Notes

• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)New York Minute (2004)

• Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

The Doc to Dock Podcast is produced by Dr. Nicole Mayberry and Dr. Brett Goldberg. Original music written and composed by Matt Bogdanow. Podcast artwork designed and illustrated by André Gonzalez.

For more or find us on https://linktr.ee/doctodockpod and follow the show at @doctodockpod on Instagram and YouTube.