Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

In her new book, The Genius Myth, journalist Helen Lewis explores how and why we label certain people geniuses; and the impact this has on said geniuses, us, and culture at large. Today, we talk about our perception of the exceptional, and some of our more pernicious and dark misperceptions.

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“Living on fire is really a metaphor for figuring out two things,” says Shannon Watts. “What is limiting you. And what is calling you.” Watts spent 11 years as the full-time volunteer lead of Moms Demand Action, which she founded. Now, as she puts it, Watts continues to summon the audacity of other women. Today, she shares so many useful life nuggets from her new book, Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age.

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“You're going to find a lot of people doing their best, revealing how beautiful and strange we are, and how remarkable we can be,” says Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and founder of On Being Krista Tippett. In this conversation, Tippett shares where we might turn for more hope and pleasure, and how she thinks about what shapes our presence in the world.

For the show notes, head over to my Substack.

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In her new memoir, The Dry Season, Melissa Febos (award-winning author of Girlhood) examines her (and our culture’s) relationship to love, to falling in love with someone, to being in love with someone. Today, we talk about why she decided to spend a year celibate after a particularly rough breakup, and what more she wanted from a relationship, from herself, and for her life. We talk about being conditioned to be codependent, the lovely things that have happened in our own long-term relationships when we’ve gone off script, what it actually means to be a people pleaser—and more.

For links to Melissa Febos’s books and the show notes, head over to my Substack.

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Okay, this is a wild one. Danielle Gibbons is not a psychic, but she is a channel—she channels messages from Mother Mary. Today, she’s sharing her origin story, and a message from Mother: about how to create something sustainable and meaningful, adapt to these ever-evolving times, and find a little bit of beauty right now. 

For the show notes, head over to my Substack.

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In May’s monthly solo episode, I’m reflecting on: motherhood, my mom, the Performance of Parenthood, and what provokes my anger around Mother’s Day. How badly the world needs us all to hold a balance of the masculine and feminine—and how badly we need the feminine to rise in men. What it might look like if we didn’t operate out of fear. Applying my writing process and system to other areas of life. What keeps us from saying no, and what keeps us from saying yes—based on our Enneagram types. And, more.

For the show notes, head over to my Substack.

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“I think both of those things are problematic—both that we’ve optimized too many things and that it’s our sole worldview,” says Coco Krumme, applied mathematician and author of Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization. Today, we talk about what we lose by prioritizing optimization above all else—and what we could gain by choosing something else. We also talk about why Krumme thinks the threat of surveillance capitalism is overblown, and why she’s more optimistic about what humans can do than what AI can do.

For the show notes, head over to my Substack.

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Here, I'm sharing another podcast series with you, called Other People’s Problems. In her new season, host and therapist Hillary McBride explores the potential power of psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. She leads clients through drug-assisted therapy—and we'll experience these real, unscripted sessions as they unfold, and get a more honest look at therapy using psychedelics. Which I hope helps to further demystify this often misunderstood practice and tool in trauma recovery.

In this episode, we hear from Donovan, who has lived in fear and anger ever since telling the truth about being abused as a child. Now, after several ketamine therapy sessions, Donovan is able to look back at his young self with care. And, for his own children, Donovan works to become the kind of adult he needed then.

You can listen to more episodes of Other People’s Problems at: https://link.mgln.ai/yK69mt.

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Psychological astrologer Jennifer Freed, PhD, shares: What’s happening, astrologically speaking, that can inform the choices we make now, in the present. And she gives us a preview of what’s coming, and what opportunities the next astrological shifts will bring us. “Coming this summer, we will have a full transformation of planets and their signs,” says Freed.

For the show notes and links to Freed’s latest projects, head over to my Substack.

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Satya Doyle Byock is a psychotherapist, author of Quarter-Life, and a great teacher of Carl Jung’s work. She uses the I Ching, an ancient Taoist divination system, as a tool to help guide her life. (Not dissimilar to how others might consult tarot, astrology, Human Design, etc.) Today, we talk about the beauty of the I Ching, and much more. Including: How we’re seeking some combination of meaning and stability in our lives, a balance of the inner and outer world, and more harmony between rationalism and irrationalism. I learned some new things about Jung’s theories on the unconscious, archetypes, and synchronicity. We pondered moments of meaning that can’t be fully explained, and where the binary instinct comes from to either dismiss science or the sacred. And, ultimately, what a larger paradigm might look like if we made space for all of it—for expanded science, for synchronicity and meaning, for the masculine, and for the feminine.

For the show notes (including links to resources on the I Ching and our video workshop), head over to my Substack.

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