Help Existing

In a new flavor of episode I'm calling "Tuesdays with Tashi," I'll be having recurring conversations with one of my dearest advisors & friends: Buddhist Monk Tashi Nyima. Piece by piece, I hope to share with you some of the most fundamental advice on existence I've learned from years of studying with him.

Our first episode was Help With Despair Over The State of the World. This episode's advice is all about generosity--(a key ingredient of help with that despair, by the way).

To be clear, this is not some passive-aggressive way of asking you for more donations to the podcast! It is a conversation that emerged because your generosity truly inspired me. I was also humbled by how hard it was for me to ask for help without feeling guilty or ashamed. So I wanted to talk with Tashi about the power of generosity, and how we can both receive and give more freely and genuinely. As always, his advice was practical, warm, and inspiring.

Thank you again so much to everyone who's donated to my Venmo @rachel-krantz, or reached out with words of encouragement. Your generosity has inspired me and this conversation.

Today I'm talking with Justin Townsend, CEO and Head Facilitator for MycoMeditations. His company operates legally in Jamaica doing psilocybin-assisted retreats. Participants attend for seven days, work with licensed therapists throughout, and trip three times.

You've probably heard about some of the potential therapeutic applications of psilocybin, and changes in states like Oregon, which legalized the medicine for therapeutic use. I've heard predictions that as psychedelic therapy spreads, there will soon be a huge need for tens of thousands of therapists trained in this modality.

I picked Justin's brain about what people who are interested in working in this emerging industry should know. We also delved into why psilocybin is therapeutic in the first place, and the results his team has seen with attendees.

This was not in any way sponsored content, even though it's a great commercial for MycoMeditations. (If I ever get to the point where someone offers me money for an interview, I would only do that if I really thought it would be a good conversation, and I would always disclose that the episode was sponsored.)

But speaking of sponsoring, please consider donating to my Venmo @rachel-krantz so that I can make Season 2 of Help Existing. Here are some additional incentives:

--The first ten people to donate $30 or more can claim a signed UK edition of OPEN.

--The first five people to donate $50 or more can claim an Unbound Babes vibrator.

--Anyone who donates $150 or more can get a one-hour session with me consulting on the topic of their choice--writing, pitching, meditation, or whatever else you want to talk about.

Thanks so much for listening, and to anyone who can give!

This week, I'm joined by publishing industry expert Jane Friedman to talk about the strange business of books: how authors make a living off their books (SPOILER: keep dreaming), the impact of Amazon on the market, contentious e-book lending, why 98% of books sell under 5,000 copies, and much more.

This is a super interesting episode for writers, sure, but also for readers. There are a lot of misconceptions about the business of books, and this is a crash course on how readers can be better allies to authors.

Speaking of allyship, in the intro, I also asked listeners to consider donating to my Venmo @rachel-krantz so that I can make Season 2 of Help Existing. Here are some additional incentives:

--The first ten people to donate $30 or more can claim a signed UK edition of OPEN.

--The first five people to donate $50 or more can claim an Unbound Babes vibrator.

--Anyone who donates $150 or more can get a one-hour session with me consulting on the topic of their choice--writing, pitching, meditation, or whatever else you want to talk about.

Thanks so much for listening, and to anyone who can give!

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Jane Friedman has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. She's the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential industry newsletter for authors, and has previously worked for Writer's Digest and the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Jane's latest book is The Business of Being a Writer. In collaboration with The Authors Guild, she wrote The Authors Guild Guide to Self-Publishing.

In addition to being a professor with The Great Courses, Jane's expertise has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and many other outlets. She offers a free newsletter, Electric Speed, published since 2009, that has more than 25,000 subscribers.

This week I'm talking with one of my very favorite people in the world: counselor and author Kathy Labriola. If you've read my book Open, you'll recognize her as my counselor/real-life fairy godmother. She's also an expert on jealousy in relationships, which she writes about in books like The Jealousy Workbook and Love In Abundance.

I wanted to have a conversation with Kathy about jealousy and envy that was inclusive of non-monogamous, monogamous, and even professional relationships. How can we deal with jealousy in a way that's constructive, but also allows for the possibility that it can be a wise emotion? What is the difference between jealousy and envy, anyway? How does jealousy show up differently in non-monogamous versus monogamous relationships? What about career envy?

We covered this and much more in this episode. As always, I hope it's helpful.

Are you afraid of potential eternal nothingness? Yeah...same. Death—and fear of it—is a topic I'm hoping to continually get some help with on this podcast. This week, I'm joined by Dr. Sunita Puri, palliative care doctor and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour. Dr. Puri is refreshing in that she knows the science of death and dying—but is open to and a witness of just how much we don't know, leaving room for the spiritual or mystical.

In this conversation, we talk about near-death experiences, what's happening in the brain during death, how to address the fear of dying, psychedelics, materialism vs. mysticism, and much more. This is a theme I plan to explore in more depth as the weeks (hopefully!) go on—but this conversation is a good launching pad. I hope you find some comfort in many of the things Dr. Puri had to say. I know I did.

Today I'm talking with Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, businesswoman, coach, and all-around self-esteem icon. Cindy is 62 and openly dates younger men, and recently had a StyleLikeU video that went viral about viewing aging as sexy and forging a different path.

We don't see enough media representation of women over 50 being desired and viewed as sexy (and sexual beings)—and Cindy is certainly working to change that. Not just through her own substantial online presence, but through MakeLoveNotPorn, a social sharing platform where people can share and upload their real-world (and real-bodied) sex. I wanted to pick Cindy's brain on how exactly she's so confident and get her advice on how I might continue to embrace my own aging as sexy.

You can follow Cindy on Twitter and Instagram @cindygallop, and find out more about her work here.

This week, I'm talking with Dr. Ryan Witherspoon, who if you've read my book Open, you'll recognize as the psychologist most quoted throughout. In our interviews, I found Ryan to be a treasure trove of knowledge about so much relevant to my book—non-monogamy, communication, gaslighting—and kink.

For this conversation, I wanted to really delve into kink. We spend some time talking about definitions and common misconceptions but then dive pretty quickly into the specific subtleties of the psychology of kink and BDSM. What do submissives and dominants each get out of the dynamic? How do you talk constructively about it when a scene doesn't work? What are some red flags in play partners to look out for? What if you're using kink to work through trauma? All this and so much more is discussed in this episode.

Even if you consider yourself vanilla--or a kink expert--I think you will learn some things about sexual psychology and communication in relationships from this episode.

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Dr. Ryan Witherspoon received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) at Alliant International University. In addition, he has Masters degrees in clinical and general psychology from CSPP and Pepperdine University, respectively. After finishing his doctorate he completed two years of advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at Rose City Center.

In addition to his private practice, he is also an active researcher, author, and speaker. He regularly publishes peer-reviewed research.

How do you figure out the most important thing? Maybe you're caught between two ideas. Maybe you're trying to decide whether it's time to change careers, or whether to have kids. Maybe you're trying to discern where to best spend your energy as an activist. Maybe you want to be able to better identify the most important thing in any given moment.

This week's conversation with meditation teacher Jonathan Foust should help with navigating all those questions and more, and was filled with practical mindfulness and life advice. Jonathan is one of my favorite people to talk to, and he has a podcast and YouTube channel I've personally found incredibly helpful.

Jonathan Foust, MA, CSA, is a guiding teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and a founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in Washington. A senior teacher and former president of Kripalu Center, he leads retreats, trainings, and classes and works individually with those interested in healing and spiritual awakening. He lives outside of Washington, DC with his wife, Tara Brach, and their slightly demented dog.

What can two female authors' experiences of publishing tell us about the ways women are currently permitted (or not permitted) to speak in the culture at large? Why does that matter, even if you're not a writer or a woman? This week, I'm joined by a writer I really admire to discuss these questions and more: Olivia Sudjic. Her essay Exposure had a big influence on me as I was writing Open, and helped me think through what I might anticipate in writing something so naked and putting it out into the world.

We also spoke in this conversation about how we've been handling the news of Roe v. Wade's overturning (and the fact that both of us had not heard from any of our cis male friends since the news broke), writing fiction, and creativity's connection to anxiety.

Olivia Sudjic is a writer living in London. She is the author of 'Sympathy', her 2017 debut novel which was a finalist for the Salerno European Book Award and the Collyer Bristow Prize, and 'Exposure', a non-fiction work named an Irish Times, Evening Standard and White Review Book of the Year for 2018. Her second novel, 'Asylum Road', was published by Bloomsbury in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Encore Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Vogue, Paris Review, Frieze, Granta and Wired. She has taught Creative Writing at King's College London and is currently completing her third novel, also to be published by Bloomsbury.

How do you keep going when you increasingly believe the system is fundamentally broken, and it won't all "work out in the end"—or even necessarily get better? How do you not fall into nihilism or hedonism, and keep caring—and why should you try? How do you maintain your mental health and sense of joy as an activist and empath when you're privy to so much suffering? And what does abolitionism have to do with all of this?

These were just a few of the many questions I had for my dear friend Mich P. Gonzalez, who is a badass abolitionist lawyer by day and a comic storyteller by night. He's a proud transgender Latino raised by a single teen mom and her queer immigrant family who overcame poverty in housing instability in Miami, enabling him to become a first-generation university and law school graduate. Today, Mich works as associate director of advocacy with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project, securing carceral release and immigration relief for hundreds of immigrants, caged by ice in the Southeast.

I hope this conversation brings some wisdom and humor to what has been a dark time. Though our conversation was a few weeks before Roe v. Wade was overturned, I know I found listening to (and editing) this episode personally healing and helpful after I heard the news.

How to keep up with Mich & his work:

Twitter: @MichPGonzalez

IG: @thetea_inmich

His org's Twitter: @all4lgbtqyouth His org's IG: @all4lgbtqyouth His org's website: https://all4lgbtqyouth.org/