This week, we’re revisiting one of our most discussed and asked-for topics: BURNOUT.

Caroline Dooner’s first book, The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy is a massively popular and influential book for good reason. It’s that helped so many of us reframe diet culture and to finally drop the 10,000 lb gorilla that is our obsession with food.

After several years of feeling the effects of her work, and the way she approached her life and success, Caroline is back with a second book - Tired as F*ck: Burnout at the Hands of Diet, Self-Help, and Hustle Culture

This is the conversation we NEED and Caroline is the perfect person to get us going. She doesn’t sit on high and issue pronouncements about how we’re supposed to live. Her work is very personal and, as she says, she uses her stories as a cautionary tale.

Show notes:

Caroline Dooner: https://carolinedooner.com/

Caoline’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/thefuckitdiet/

The Fuck It Diet: https://thefuckitdiet.com/

Episode link:

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2MMf9BdRlYSWoXc1T2s0Eg?si=6a479752967e4994

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

How many of us have the courage to face the friction that comes when we need to grow, but people want us to stay the same? You’ve built an audience as a “truth-teller,” but then what if your understanding of the truth changes?

When you’re an author, artist and performer like Jill Louise Busby, creative growth is essential, but the community that first delivered your moment of “micro-fame” might not be on board. It’s a life challenge we all face, even if we don’t all do it publicly. Laura gets into all that and a whole lot more in her darkly funny and thoroughly revealing conversation with Jill.

Then, we REALLY want you to check out Jill’s debut book, Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity. It’s an intimate, impertinent, and incisive collection about race, progress, and hypocrisy, and was released in September, 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Show notes:

Jill Louise Busby: https://jilllouisebusby.com/

Jill’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/jilllouisebusby/

Jill’s book: https://amzn.to/352QlUX

Episode link: https://www.tmstpod.com/episodes/36-jill-louise-busby-on-being-unfollowed

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KI7qvvyINKOjyOqcjtszZ

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

The TMST community takes center stage again as Laura tackles some universal questions on facing down shame and regret. In this episode, we explore the ways our mistakes, our successes, our disappointments and our growth can’t be compartmentalized if we’re going to be free. It’s a VERY hopeful and energizing AMA. We’re continually blown away by the candor and courage TMST listeners bring to this space.

And THEN…we have a major show announcement to share, plus a taste of next week’s guest - the brilliant and witty Jill Louise Busby.

Show notes:

TMST LIVE at SXSW site: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2022/events/PP1140837

Jill Louise Busby: https://jilllouisebusby.com/

Episode link: https://www.tmstpod.com/episodes/35-laura-mckowen-ask-me-anything

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6n0cP0PuSjGh0IW5tF9VOk?si=47f8ccf2da064067

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

This week, we asked a big question... what can Timothée Chalamet’s character in “Don’t Look Up” teach us about finding faith in tough times?

No, seriously… we dig into it in a real way and Nadia Bolz-Weber is exactly the person to explore what we can take away from what she admits is a “deeply cynical movie.”

Nadia is an ordained Lutheran pastor, the New York Times best selling author of three memoirs including Pastrix and Accidental Saints; Finding God In All The Wrong People, and a woman in long-term recovery. She’s an example of the ways faith can exist without dogma, exclusion, or shaming. She speaks candidly and generously as a woman with decades of sobriety and a life spent as the person who “always sits in the corner with the other weirdoes.”

In this conversation, Nadia urges us to take a breath and step forward into life with courage, an open heart of acceptance, a hell of a lot of humility, and especially, a sense of humor.

Show notes:

Nadia’s site: https://nadiabolzweber.com/

Episode link: https://tmstpod.com/episodes/34-nadia-bolz-weber-how-we-are-really-doing

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3dhzKN3INZTtRg6TQkPuSr?si=a0a9ae43b3674c23

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

Janet was right. It’s all about CONTROL.

Amanda White has some wise, and life-earned, things to say about the illusion of control. If we’re honest, our desire for control is inseparable from all of our motivations, and can lead us to extreme places.

Amanda is a therapist, a woman in recovery from both disordered eating and alcohol, and she’s the author of NOT DRINKING TONIGHT, a terrific book that is a huge contribution in the sobriety space because it bridges the gap between memoir and clinical programming. Amanda breaks down important and often misunderstood topics like self-care, boundaries, reparenting, and trauma, as well as diving deep into WHY we drink.

Whether or not alcohol is a thing for you is pretty much irrelevant to this conversation, because almost anyone can relate to issues of control: over our surroundings, other people, and especially our feelings.

Show notes:

Not Drinking Tonight: https://amandaewhite.com/book

Episode link: https://tmstpod.com/episodes/33-amanda-white-our-desire-for-control

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1VgaPAppho7DouFQd8CcEz

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

How would you approach change if you saw it as BOTH a practice AND mindset?

Katy Milkman has researched this and it’s clear she’s on to something. In today’s conversation and in her bestselling book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, Katy Milkman shows us how change is BOTH a combination of acquiring practical skills AND a rewiring our brains through new behaviors.

Katy Milkman is a Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and ALSO holds an appointment at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Her research uses psychology and economics to explore how we can change for the good.

Katy has an accessible, practical demeanor and she’s able to distill complex bodies of research into easy to digest insights and she’s refreshingly honest about her own struggles with change. This episode is full of practical tools and helpful insights, and she also talks about how she’s learned to be more confident and assertive in the male-dominated world of higher education, and science.

She’s also one of those people you meet in life and talking with them is this lovely ride. And when you’re done you realize - HEY…I just learned A TON and that was really fun, too!

Show notes:

How To Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be: https://www.katymilkman.com/book

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2kjrnKaHpWmwmPJra47fjW?si=dae22796abb64144

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

We promised more AMAs, so let’s go! This week, Laura answers three questions that interlace around the topics of infidelity, trust, intimacy, divorce, addiction, forgiveness, and the complex reality of life and love.

We are so grateful for the courage and trust our listeners place in us when they call in and share themselves in such generous ways. Trust us, their words and their voices will stick with you and add to your day.

Submit a question for a future episode: https://www.tmstpod.com/question

Show notes:

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel: https://amzn.to/3AdvTvK

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7yWLC9O1WCpXdaqYArvedI?si=e740532b6dd64878

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

Purity culture isn’t a thing that happens to OTHER people. The tendrils of sexual repression have insinuated themselves into all of our lives.

In the second half of our conversation with Jamie Lee Finch, we see how evangelical Christianity’s restrictive approach to sex, sex education and owning your body and desire isn’t that different from what so many of us experienced. It’s a shocking and bracing discovery that has profound implications for our lives.

This conversation is funny and weird and dark. We get into why so many pastors can’t stop talking about their “smoking hot wife” and how missionary work might be completely inseparable from sexual sublimation.

Jamie Lee Finch is the author of You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity. Make sure you check out the first half of our conversation from last week!

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2LdiPlkf5XqJiNPr8yKqD2?si=a7a9878a8eb845a4

Episode link:

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

What if your body was your closest friend instead of…whatever it is now?

Jamie Lee Finch is a wise guide for so many women who are asking - what would a healthy relationship with my body look like? In this conversation we go deep into why we need to relate to our bodies like A PERSON and the healing that can come as a result.

Virtually NONE of us are free of body issues, whether they’re around our shape, or desire, or how we change with aging. Jamie’s unwavering stance for our health, wholeness and living an integrated life is the message we need to hear right now.

Jamie is also the author of You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity. Next week, in the second half of our conversation, we’ll explore what it’s been like to deal with the lasting effects of having been raised in purity culture and so much more.

Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2LdiPlkf5XqJiNPr8yKqD2?si=a7a9878a8eb845a4

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/

Our final episode for 2021 is a harvest of hard-earned wisdom to launch us into 2022. You’ll hear from Peter Rollins, Annie Grace, Rob Bell, yung pueblo, and africa brooke. They share so much on how to slow down, trust ourselves, get our focus on what we truly need and, most of all, have fun while doing it!

We are SO GRATEFUL for all of the support and encouragement that has come our way in these first six months since we launched TMST. We can’t wait to get at in the New Year!

Super deluxe +2 hour Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2QDWiNjDf9i5DDWZ3Smk9t

Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community.

Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/