😳 I bought a used self help book in "good" condition and boy did I get more than I bargained for! I may never find her, but I hope she got what she was yearning for.

🙇‍♀️ This episode includes an apology for last week's rant and the juicy deets about a stranger trying to live a better life.

🚼 I also have a big announcement about a three month old baby boy I adopted this week who's stolen my heart and money.

😙 🎶 I found a delightful trove of whistling professionals.

✅ I will update this description in future, but I can't be bothered getting ready for another weekend in New York.

If you like me, visit my website: https://www.leahrenee.co/

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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Will I get excommunicated for this rant about the ludicrous lawfare the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints is waging on John Dehlin? (Let's hope so! I could use some media coverage!) I would have named this episode something cuter but I really want search engines to pick up because I want to support Mormon Stories. So, what the heck, eat these keywords you hungry bots: Mormon, LDS, Latter-day Saints, Open Stories Foundation, Mormon Church Sues Podcast, First Ammendment

Seriously though, for the benefit of the listener, that's not all I talk about in episode 12. Here's what this episode covers in a nutshell:

• How freaking easy it is to slip back into old patterns, for me that means high achieving Worky McWorkface.
• Changing careers midlife is as fun as being a child again, and even less profitable
• I played the game "Find the Irish Person" at a brewery convention AND WON! 🇮🇪
• Americans are embarrassingly self referential, myself included
• I'm going to have guests on the show starting next week!
• I'm getting a cockatiel and would like to name it Stanley Spadowski
• My faith transition began with Richard Rohr's very Jesus-y podcast and ended with John Dehlin's grumpy, yet academic exMormon episodes about things like LDS lawyer hush money for SA victims
• The weirdo at church with a mask that looked like sexy panties
• UK Mormons don't own guns but USA ones bloody do
• Nemo the Mormon's recent video about the very problematic and oft quoted "Happiness Letter" where Joseph Smith blatantly tried to manipulate a teenage girl into giving him nookie and now it's a fridge magnet. All hail to the brave Victorian pioneer Nancy Rigdon for standing up to Mormonism's favorite s*xual predator, Joseph Smith Jr. #teamNancyRigdon
• Unhinged Mormon bishops who freestyle life advice with no training or legal oversight, Mormon Stories gives a limitless repository of reasons the Latter-day Saint church desperately needs organizational reform.
• Clergy penitent privilege is dangerous bullcrap that hurts already devastated victims. Bartholomew's survey found the privilege has expanded enormously in scope over the last few decades without any corresponding evidence that the expansion produces social benefit.
• I love my Mormon friends and family: they are wholehearted, generous, and kind. I do not love the organization and leadership rampant with nepotism, fraud, and deliberate coverups and tax evasion.
• Leaving the Mormon church is like finding your way out of The Truman Show, just a difficult, just as freeing.
• The sad truth about Chris Farley and old school showbiz. While social media mostly sucks, it's a way for creators to find audiences without needing old media outlets to push them into the spotlight.
• Why personality tests are often nothing more than confirmation bias machines
• The very batsh*t beginnings of Meyers-Briggs, the most well recognized psuedo-science in the personality test space
• The Forer Effect and why you are more likely to strongly agree with a horoscope as long as it doesn't hurt your feelings
• China's social credit score could be the model for determining what you're *really* like. 😀

Apologies the podcast quality changes 30 minutes in, forgive my dead recorder and doom on my children for obfuscating my battery charger with all the effectiveness of a Kirton McConkie law team trying to hide a church s*x scandal.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🍻 Season 2, Episode 11🍻 is about sad old men in Welsh football jerseys, the perilous Dublin bus system, and lunch with Lesbians.

Episode 11 begins with a brief travelogue of my time in Dublin, Cork, London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Denmark and follows with the characteristically chaotic bounce from idea to idea peppered with memories of working for Old Navy, Bethy Black's too good to be joke clowing incident in the wild, and why I am bridge troll level attractive in Denmark.

For more visit: https://www.leahrenee.co/

This podcast will let you in on special information like:

Best case scenario is that your pants fall down.

A dream life is an unlimited rail card.

Danes are hot, but also basic.

Bristolians love blunt bangs and kombucha.

Leah's upcoming lesbian wedding in Wales.

Gold star normie Cal Newport's boring way of naming things.

Internet rabbit holes filled with Jesus cosplay fails.

LINKS!

The jail I visited in Dublin: https://www.kilmainhamgaolmuseum.ie/

Cool values test with real life examples: https://personalvalu.es/personal-values-test

Dad Core Normie and Deep Work King: https://calnewport.com/

These cool places booked me and they didn't even know me:

🇮🇪 https://institchescomedy.com/comedians/

🇮🇪 https://craicdencomedyclub.com/

🇮🇪 https://thecomedyclub.ie/

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 https://www.therummonkey.com/

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 https://camdencomedyclub.com/

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 https://www.glee.co.uk/cardiff/

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 https://www.goodeggcomedy.co.uk/

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 https://www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com/

🇩🇰 https://www.instagram.com/kompasset.comedy/

🇩🇰 https://cphcomedy.com/

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 https://www.thegaffecomedyclub.com/

Even more about this episode to help search engines know what the heck this is about:

🙏Tour Recap and Thanks: Leah Renee is back from a two-week solo comedy tour across seven European cities, including performing Practical Soaker at the 2026 Glasgow International Comedy Festival. Special thanks to the venues who hosted the tour: InStitches Comedy Club and Craic Den Comedy Club in Dublin, City Limits Comedy Club in Cork, Rum Monkey Comedy and Camden Comedy Club in London, The Glee in Cardiff, Good Egg Comedy in Glasgow, Kompasset Comedy & Copenhagen Comedy Passport in Copenhagen and The Gaffe in Bristol.

💭 Post-Trip Reflections: I'm back home having freshly quit my side gig, feeling a rush of creative possibility: screenwriting, podcasting, filming a special. I turned to Mister Dad Bod, Cal Newport for help understanding deep work and left wanting. I turned to a values quiz to figure out priorities, which probably hurt more than helped after finding out my top five values were: independence, authenticity, uniqueness, variety, and peace — which felt more aspirational than reflective of my current life as a married parent of three small kids. Should personality test and values quizzes be about what you value idealogically? or how you are actually spending your time?

🤔 Inspired Direction?: I recieved an unexpected nudge to develop more general audience (clean) comedy material because it's more profitable, with all of it's limitations and tricky politics. Is stand up comedy a better lifestyle thank podcasting? Is this podcast a smart risk or royal waste of time in the attention economy where thousands of brilliant and creative people named Tim are making intimidatingly good pieces.

🤡 Failing is Succeeding: Walking a tightrope of creative ambition and family responsibility, the rarity of actually "making it" as an artist is a constant feature in my decision making. My love of fail videos and clowning soothed me through the months of the soul-crushing nature of nine-to-five work, and now it's time to make my own. My interest in creative work "for the love of the game" even without a guaranteed audience, I persist and fail. I tease more structured future episodes with deep dives on specific people or books.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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The last episode of Season 1! We made it! 🥳

Have you ever had a Galentine's Day party? Did it include champagne? Chocolate covered strawberries? A middle aged comedian holding on to her last shreds of youth before her body is ravaged by menopause?

This episode includes my bait and switch private gig which I actually really enjoyed.

Why I'm considering specializing in Ladies Night comedy home shows.

Why my husband is so unwilling to accept that I'm superhuman and can start cars in sub zero temperatures with my high frequency energy alone.

The money saving hack airlines hate (and how I'm not going to make a video because they'll put a stop to it)

I find a loophole around marking this podcast as "explicit" by only saying the first halves of swear words and wondering if I'll get caught.

And as always, I complain about social media and raise awareness about how it's ripping at the fabric of our creative souls.

I also shout out Gold Star Normie: Cal Newport and his life's work dedicated to data on digital distraction.

I'm not sure if he ever compared smart phone use to the Opium Wars but I do!

I also found the idea of App-stinence from inspiring young person, Gabriel Nguyen.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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The penultimate episode of Season 1, I go woo woo as per usual. Fun things about this episode:

Phyllis Diller! She was my inspiration for starting comedy later in life. Did you know she was 37 and had five kids when she started?! I recently found the secret of her success: a turn of the century self help book that uses fun terms like "newspaper man" and offense ones like "colored" :{. If you've never read it, it's called The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol and it's mostly a gem if you can get over the outdated references, patriarchy, and praise for industrial capitalism. I found out she read it religiously and that's what she credits all of her success to.

I'm still (kinda) Mormon

The only difference is that a transferred my zealotry directly into standup. I approached comedy with the same dogmatic energy, striving, and hunger to be at the top of the heap Thankfully, just like I found my way out of the church, I've rejected the cult of comedy and settled into a new mindset: I don't chase, I attract.

The curse of knowing the principles of 2D design

I can't turn off my critical eye for schmalzy design and it colors my experience of self help branding, which is usually one of two things: Papyrus font, butterflies and planets or start up bro all caps with tags like "10X YOUR LIFE!" and "NEXT LEVEL DOMINATION".

The problem with outsourcing your life

Sometimes the mundane things you do as part of your work are where the hidden joys are found. You can always jump back into the business world, but your kid will never be a drooling grinning toddler covered in a layer of snot and peanut butter.

My website is coming along while my identity is unraveling.

How do you blend "What's the deal with hot dogs?" comedy and learning to trust your inner wisdom on the same site? I contain multitudes, but google doesn't like that for crawling websites.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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In this episode I get honest about things like Thanksgiving and the word "worship" (how do you pronounce it?).

Thanksgiving was... fine

As someone who likes to blabber, I found it quite restrictive not to be able to say how I really felt around a table of well-meaning Boomers. They were actually lovely people, I'm not dunking on them. Sometimes I feel like a refugee from a corrupt (but beautiful) country and visiting friends who still live there fills me with complicated feelings. I'm mostly glad kidlets got to have fun with extended family and long-time friends.

I apparently say "worship" wrong and I can't stop thinking about it.

My family probably thinks we're possessed by the devil.

Leaving Mormonism means that still believing friends and family may see you like you have zombie any fungus. No matter how happy you are, some Momos will always think Satan has deceived you and you aren't really happy. My life (and personality) is pretty much the same other than that I'm really rowdy now (if you consider having three cups of coffee on Saturday with my friend. Whoa buddy!).

My daughter found out she has a Muslim brother last week

Anybody looking to lowkey adopt a baby, I breakdown a rare lactation loophole I stumbled upon seven years ago. I describe how I used my mammary cannons to finally have a boy after giving birth to three daughters.

The best meal I've ever had might be salmon at a funeral.

I got fancy British COVID.

I lived in the UK from September to February, all the most charming months they have to offer. We got COVID right before Christmas. I guess if you're gonna get COVID, get the fancy British variety with its little monocle and top hat.

I sh*t on Instagram and TikTok Manifesters

Hatin' on the "Hey guys, it's Brinley. Just a reminder you have two weeks left to sign up for my 'Gurl. You Got This' course where we're gonna talk about how to totally dominate your social media in a way that builds fans, clients, and true disciples of your brand." **stabs pencil in eye*** **perishes from prolonged overexposure to unhealthy levels of hackney**

I need to go to this English wedding.

I'm sorry I wont stop talking about this, but I simply must witness the ties around the forehead and drunk uncles. MUST.

Neon Yellow Theory:

If the universe is gonna send me something, whomever's delivering it cannot miss me, even at night. What is looking for me will find me AND I can safely escort children through the crosswalk. Follow this space for when, on a future date, I announce my partnership with the Ann Taylor Rave Collection.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself is easier (and harder) than you think. This episode includes the cheat code for contentment and synchronicity, and a 100% effective treatment to put your Anglophilia in full remission.

Pumpkin spice to colonialism: I'll never see a pumpkin spice latte without considering the horrors of the Dutch East India Company, thanks to The Blindboy podcast.

The autumn when I received 100 gift baskets: My first side hustle was reviewing gift baskets. I received gift baskets, ate it and wrote reviews that wouldn't get me fired or collapse the delicate affiliate empire of the early noughties.

How Pinterest Ruined Wedding Photography: I'm an old crusty geriatric millenial who remembers the good old days when wedding photography was more than being a trained camera monkey executing shot lists.

I Used to Design Products: I'm not sure when Amazon turned evil but hopefully it was after my stint as a product designer where I sold over $100K in products on the platform. Although I now boycott Amazon, back then I was young and eager to make my mark on the world before getting crushed in the machine.

Manifesting vs. actually manifesting: I find the word "manifesting" as cringe as you do, not because I don't believe in it but because it's been obfuscated and mangled by wishy washy TikToker Instagram scripty fonts with hand-drawn flowers and basic biotches.

The OCD Pomeranian technique: To combat ruminative thoughts,I used to swap them for mental images of Pomeranians, a dog I still can't believe is real.

Abundance Mom v Slip-and-Slide: My children transformed our row home kitchen in a death trap using Dawn dish soap and a foam sled. Look kids, just because I'm "Abundance Mom" doesn't mean I wanna spend my abundance in the ER while you get your forehead stitched up."

Excruciating details: Have you ever experienced a perfect day? IRL or in the 4th dimension, your body reacts the same way. I overshare and walk you through what Martha Beck calls the "Perfect Day" visualization. It's funny to discover that even when it's only in my mind, I automatically put limits on myself the first few times I tried it. I'm better at it now. It's a great way to spend ten minutes if you're willing to give it a go.

Road Blocks: My cozy visions come effortlessly but visualizing showbiz standup success takes real mental effort. Ooooo. Is that revealing a truth about me? Or am I limiting myself? 🤔 Fuzzy socks, laughing with friends, and cups of coffee come easily but nice green rooms and sold out theatres can mentally be a heavier lift.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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Why are Mormons so crazy about MLMs? And why don't they do more research before they launch a product called "Noni Juice" before doing what I would consider "due diligence". Like a moth to the flame, Mormons can't help but recruit. It's in our DNA. I proudly stand by the fact that even at the height of my Latter-day Saint-y-ness, I never pedaled essential oils to my friends, families, neighbors or past school teachers.

I apologize for the manic Baroque harpsichord music on the previous episode, which at 2x playback speed may induce an aneurysm. You didn't ask for Red Bull and Meth, but I gave it to you and I'm sorry for that.

Is having a child less stressful than having a cockatoo? The jury is out, but at least children eventually grow to be adults.

Recently a friend from England was in Cincinnati and was told it was "just like Philly". Like a loose stool produced from eating Cincinnati, I lost it in an undignified way.

I tried to retell the Parable of the Ten Talents from the Bible, but completely lose the thread mid-explanation due to my lack of scripture study after leaving Mormonism. I promise I got the details right when I was devout but not know in the clutches of the Dark One.

Mary Poppins made my husband cry for different reasons that the reasons I cried. I identify hard with Burt, who starts the movie wearing nine instruments while busking, then does chalk drawings, then cleans chimneys in his futile attempt to eek out a living as a creative in the gig economy. Everyone laughs at his performance but only one person puts a coin in: "And that's why standup comedy is so hard to make a living."

King Midas: Do you know what you'd actually want if you got your wish and couldn't take it back?

My Mum's new Dr. Dimentote*: Her a beautiful act of abundance and self-worth, my mother treated herself to a handmade bag "a New York Times bestseller would have". (My mum and I make up lots of nicknames. We call Dr. Joe Dispenza, "Dr. Demento", which naturally led to my calling it her "Dimen-tote" ;)

I have a feeling this podcast would attract a very narrow audience of people that don't mind somebody interrupting themselves.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

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Leah Renee is back from Edinburgh Fringe. She has exciting news: she’s going to a gay wedding!

For the sake of the algorithm this episode covers:

Martha Beck’s sedative qualities when applied to the largest arts festival in the world

Leah’s fun Australian clowns and comedian friends: Josh Glanc, Tara Boom, and Oliver Coleman

Mormonism is having a moment and it’s not a good one: Charlie Kirk, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Grand Blanc Michigan shooting

How Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, Whole Brain Living gave Leah four new friends between her ears.

The question all comedians face a few years into their career: Do I tap dance during my set? Is there a place for piccolo in comedy? Can I be a self respecting comedian if I both tap dance AND play the piccolo in my act?...

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks for listening! See more of Leah's stuff at leahrenee.co

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.