That Wasn't The Plan

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"Send me all the genitals" ft. Dr. Patty Brennan

What do you do when the wildest sentence of your career is "I was sure it was a worm"?

Dr. Patty Brennan is a Colombian-born, Cornell-trained evolutionary biologist, a full Professor of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College, and the world's leading expert on vertebrate genital coevolution. She's been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, The Guardian, Slate, and NPR — and she's a featured scientist in the upcoming documentary Second Nature, narrated by Elliot Page. Before all of that, she was one of five sisters in Bogotá who became a biologist because she figured out she could scare her sisters off with bugs.

Patty wrote us a line before we ever spoke that could be the tagline of this entire podcast: "The title of your podcast could be the byline for my scientific career." And she wasn't kidding.

This episode is the whole arc — the girl who talked her way onto a research ketch in the Galapagos to scuba dive around the world (and got no further than the Galapagos, and married the American man she was never going to marry, thirty years ago). The moment she and her crew photographed the first live sighting of a whale that had only ever been known from a skull. The pivot to Cornell for marine mammals, the switch to birds, and the day in the Costa Rican rainforest when she thought she'd found a parasite and instead discovered a career. In 2013, Fox News, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin came for her NSF-funded research. She hid under her desk for a week — and then wrote back. What happened next was not the plan.

Also: why females across the animal kingdom have weapons nobody was looking at, why 3% of birds have penises and the rest don't, why the full three-dimensional structure of the human clitoris wasn't mapped until the mid-1990s, dolphins as sexual harassers, Elliot Page's production company, and the Harlequin duck — the one duck that is not, in Patty's words, a "rapist duck."

Watch or request a screening of Second Nature:
🎬 secondnaturedocumentary.com

Books Patty mentioned:
📖 Vagina Obscura by Rachel Gross
📖 Bitch by Lucy Cooke
📖 Poking the Squid by Perry Ireland

Follow the show:
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.thatwasnttheplan.com
📱 Instagram: @thatwasnttheplan_podcast
🎵 TikTok: @that_wasnt_the_plan
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@That_Wasnt_The_Plan

If today's episode made you laugh, made you think, or made you text a science-curious friend — please rate, review, and share. It's the single biggest thing that helps us grow.

#ThatWasntThePlan #TWTPPodcast #DuckPenises #EvolutionaryBiology #WomenInSTEM #WomenInScience #MountHolyoke #Cornell #BasicScience #ScienceCommunication #SecondNatureDoc #ElliotPage #ColombianScientist #Galapagos #Genitalia #Vagina #DolphinSex #EvolutionaryBiology #StoryDrivenPodcast

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What happens when the paperwork for your son's college applications cracks open something you thought you'd buried 35 years ago?

Lucas Smith is a Colorado-native-turned-Seattleite, a software engineer of 15+ years working at the intersection of AI and tech, a multi-instrumentalist, an avid cyclist, a master of the smoker (the grill kind), and the host of the Not Retired Yet podcast. And in about a month, he and his wife are driving their only son six hours south and dropping him off at college.

What was supposed to be college paperwork became something else entirely. Somewhere between forms and financial aid, Lucas started losing sleep, getting angry at nothing, and couldn't figure out why. Until he traced it back to being 18 himself — the year his parents split, the family disintegrated, and a version of him was left to raise himself on his friend Dave's floor. This is an episode about handing your kid every single thing you never got. About Gen X and the eye of the hurricane between launching kids and aging parents. About unreliable memory, the sandwich generation, marriages that survive the empty nest (and the ones that don't), and Lucas's very honest admission that it was never part of the plan to live this long.

Also: a 1984 drum machine, why our brains don't remember the diapers, and what a "pack horse" does when he finally has to plan.

Follow Lucas & check out his podcast:
🎧 Not Retired Yet — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/not-retired-yet/id1823048074

Follow the show:
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.thatwasnttheplan.com
📱 Instagram: @thatwasnttheplan_podcast
🎵 TikTok: @that_wasnt_the_plan
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@That_Wasnt_The_Plan

If today's episode moved you, made you laugh, or made you text a Gen X friend — please rate, review, and share. It's the single biggest thing that helps us grow.

#ThatWasntThePlan #TWTPPodcast #NotRetiredYet #GenX #EmptyNest #LatchkeyKids #MidlifePivots #SandwichGeneration #FatherAndSon #CollegeDropOff #SeattlePodcast #Memory #Fatherhood #GenXParents

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This week Emily and Courtney sit down with Daisy Fulgham — wardrobe stylist turned sex and relationship coach, devoted wife of 34 years, mother of two, and the woman who, at 54, Googled "sex coaching programs," sat down with her husband, and signed up before she could talk herself out of it. After the first weekend she was completely hooked. After this episode, you will be too.

Daisy is warm, funny, disarmingly wise, and absolutely not here to talk about what you think she's here to talk about. Because this isn't really about sex. It's about intimacy. And intimacy, she'll tell you, is just deeply knowing yourself — all of it, the bright parts and the dark parts, the wounds and the triggers and the beautiful, complicated mess of being human — and meeting all of it with curiosity instead of judgment.

"Shame can't really grow with a bunch of light on it." — Daisy Fulgham

What you'll hear:

• The difference between therapy and sex coaching — and why Daisy's favorite clients are the ones who already have a therapist, because they're ready to stop just talking about things and start practicing them
• What most people are actually coming to her for when they book a session (spoiler: it's not what you think — it's _____________)
• Old narratives: the stories we were handed about who we're supposed to be as men and women, and why none of them are paying off for anyone
• Self-improvement vs. self-love — why we've been sold one when we desperately need the other, and what the difference actually looks like in practice
• The shame share: a simple, structured exercise for letting something you've never told anyone out into the light — and why shame physically loses its grip when someone witnesses you without judgment
• Pleasure as a radical act — "whether it's your kickball team, your knitting group, or sex in a ten-person orgy, you are just loving yourself so much more" — and why the patriarchy needs us to believe we haven't earned it yet
• What intimacy actually means — and why it's been quietly swapped out for the word "sex" by everyone who doesn't want to say sex
• Big Cat Energy — Daisy's concept of staying connected to that inner flow of energy that makes you more alive, more engaged, more sparkly — and how fashion and clothing can be a doorway into it
• Courtney's lingerie shower story: her mom, a Catholic schoolgirl costume, her brother, a grass skirt, two coconuts, and some genuinely excellent chaos
• Emily on pleasure post-cancer: huffing Lady Chunk the cat for five seconds and not caring what anyone thinks
• The embodiment breathing exercise anyone can do before they leave the house — and why Daisy is always surprised at how much it changes every interaction that comes after
• And a promise of an ethical porn list, available by email, no questions asked, anonymous welcome. Below is info for Ethical Porn! Email us. 

Daisy is accepting new clients. This is your sign.

📎 Find Daisy:

• 🌸 Website: daisyfulgham.com
• 📲 Instagram: @Daisy.Fulgham.coaching
• 📩 Want the ethical porn resource list? Email us at [email protected] — no explanation needed, no judgment, we promise

💌 Have a question for Daisy — or a story you've been carrying? Email us at [email protected] or visit thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan_podcast

🎧 If this one hit you somewhere soft — subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs permission to take up space.

That wasn't the plan, and we will talk to you next week. K bye. 🥂

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Turns out That Wasn't The Plan is basically a Canadian podcast at this point. Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton — you all showed up before anyone south of the border figured out what was happening. So Emily and Courtney decided to do the only reasonable thing: dedicate an entire episode to the Great White North.

Courtney, for the record, is a dual citizen. Born in Newfoundland on a military base. Canada was apparently on the edge of their seat waiting to find out whether she'd claim it. Life happened. She forgot. She found out at the Social Security office in Los Angeles while in her twenties and spent the rest of the day walking around going "dual citizen." She has still never been back. She and Jonathan are planning their honeymoon there. One bathroom on a houseboat is where she draws the line.

Emily, meanwhile, is accepting suitors. Canadian ones specifically. Three hours south of the border. Funny is non-negotiable. You know where to find us.

What you'll learn about Canada in this episode:

• 🩺 Insulin — invented at the University of Toronto in 1921. Probably saved more lives than anything else on this list
• 🍕 Hawaiian pizza — invented by a Greek-Canadian man in Chatham, Ontario in 1962. The world's most divisive pizza is Canada's fault and we respect it
• 🎲 Trivial Pursuit — dreamed up by two Montrealers over beers. Courtney's strategy: say "that's what I was gonna say" every single time
• ❤️ The pacemaker and IMAX — both Canadian. We'll just let that sit there
• 🍟 Poutine — rural Quebec, 1950s, several restaurants currently in a very polite dispute about who invented it
• 🍁 Maple taffy on snow — hot maple syrup poured over clean snow, rolled onto a stick. Canadians looked at a blizzard and made dessert
• 💰 The Great Maple Syrup Heist — thieves robbed Quebec's strategic maple syrup reserve for roughly $18 million Canadian dollars in 2011-2012. Yes, there is a strategic maple syrup reserve. Yes, this is real
• 🍟 Ketchup chips, all-dress chips, Tim Hortons, and the Double Double — Emily has never had any of these and is prepared to drive to Vancouver to fix that
• 🎭 The absolutely staggering list of Canadian comedians and entertainers: Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Leslie Nielsen, Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Drake, Celine Dion, Shania Twain — we could go on
• 🏃 Terry Fox — who ran a marathon a day across Canada on one leg to raise money for cancer research before dying from it. Look him up
• 📺 Schitt's Creek and Anne of Green Gables — both beloved, both Canadian, Courtney watches Schitt's Creek with her whole family
• 🐋 The orcas of the Salish Sea — shared between Seattle and Vancouver Island, and Emily's personal neighbors
• 🐻 Polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba — self-declared polar bear capital of the world, where you can ride Tundra buggies out to see them up close
• 🦦 Beavers as ecological engineers — and why reintroducing them wherever possible might actually help save the planet
• 🚀 CanadaArm — the robotic arm that's been deploying satellites and supporting the International Space Station since the shuttle era
• 👻 The Old Hag of Newfoundland — centuries of folklore around waking up unable to move with a figure sitting on your chest, which we now call sleep paralysis. The cures included saying your name backwards, which Emily and Courtney attempt with very mixed results. Yentruoc Dnalloh is flawless. Ylime Etihw is a work in progress
• 🦕 Sasquatch Country — Harrison Hot Springs, BC, where local lore claims Sasquatches gather for reunions near the lake
• 🐉 Cadborosaurus — BC's own sea serpent, affectionately called Caddy, with a horse-or-camel-like head and an impressive number of alleged sightings

📩 Canada — write in and tell us where you're from. And Australians — you're next. Courtney's already planning your episode.

💌 Write in and tell us where you're listening from! [email protected] or visit thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan_podcast

🎧 If this made you laugh — or if you're Canadian and just feel deeply seen right now — subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend. Especially a Canadian one.

That wasn't the plan, and we will talk to you next week. K bye. 🍁

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Welcome back. Season 2. We opened with a tiger shark. Seemed right.

That Wasn't The Plan is back for Season 2 — and we are not easing anyone in gently. Our first guest is Kinga Philipps: journalist, explorer, Shark Week host, Explorers Club Fellow, and one of the coolest humans on the planet. If you don't know Kinga yet, you're about to.

We start where you'd expect — with a flight cancellation. Emily spent the night on the floor of LAX, made it to Australia, made it back, and showed up for this recording slightly jet-lagged and fully feral. 

What follows is one of the most genuinely fun, unexpectedly educational, and thoroughly unhinged conversations we've had on this show. And we've had some unhinged ones.

What you'll hear:

• Kinga watched Jaws at a friend's house as a kid — wasn't allowed to — and was so terrified she couldn't go in a swimming pool for years. The little journalist brain in her eventually asked why she was scared, and that question changed the entire trajectory of her life
• Emily's own shark encounter in the Galapagos — six feet, two feet behind her, just curious — and what it actually feels like when the predator energy shifts
• What to do if a shark comes at you in the water — and why the Instagram influencer advice will absolutely get you killed
• The scariest moment of Kinga's career.
• 73 million sharks are killed every year for shark fin soup. What Shark Allies is doing about it, why it's working, and how you can help
• Kinga's new Shark Week show: What Shark Attacked? — forensic shark species identification using GoPro footage, bite mark analysis, and actual science. Airs July 30th
• And a tease for next time: ayahuasca. Kinga has an article. Courtney has questions. We're going back in.

"You're safe in the water, ladies." — Kinga Philipps, probably not talking about all the other stuff we discussed

📎 Find Kinga & Resources Mentioned:

• 📲 Instagram: @kingaphilipps
• 🦈 Shark Allies: sharkallies.org (board member — shark conservation, fin trade legislation)
• 💧 Waves for Water: wavesforwater.org (clean water solutions globally)
• 📺 Shark Week 2025 — What Shark Attacked? airs July 30th on Discovery
• 📖 The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey — go read it

💌 Have a question for Kinga you want us to put in front of her for round two? Email us at [email protected] or visit thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan_podcast. Kinga is on Instagram at @kingaphilipps

🎧 Season 2 is here. If you're glad we're back — subscribe, leave a review, and share us with someone who needs a shark story in their life.

That wasn't the plan, and we will talk to you next week. K bye. 🥂

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Happy 25th episode, everybody — and welcome to the Season One Finale of That Wasn't The Plan.

Emily and Courtney sit down to close out Season 1 the only way they know how: completely unscripted, slightly unhinged, and somehow still kind of profound. Courtney opens with a literal cliffhanger, lands the plane on a calm, clear decision about her own health at 46, and then the two of them spend the rest of the episode doing what they do best — laughing, oversharing, and somehow turning a discussion about late-night jelly bean habits into something genuinely sweet.

This one's a love letter to Season 1. They recap their favorite guest moments, reflect on what the show has become, and set up what's coming in Season 2 — launching July 23rd.

Thank you for 25 episodes of listening, laughing, and showing up for this show. Season 2 is going to be even better. Go back and revisit your favorite episodes from Season 1 while we're away — and tell us which ones you want more of.

📎 Mentioned in this episode:

• Lindsay Brockman's tooth-flying moment: watch around the 45-minute mark of the Lindsay Brockman grief episode on YouTube or Spotify

💌 Have a story, a question, or feedback on Season 1? We want to hear it. Email us at [email protected] or visit thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan. All episodes are also up on Spotify and YouTube if you want to see our faces (filters and all — full transparency).

🎧 Season 2 launches July 23rd. Until then — please subscribe, leave a review, share us with a friend. It genuinely helps more than you know.

That wasn't the plan, and we will see you in Season 2. K bye. 🥂

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This week's guest, Jonathan Fitzgerald, showed up with a life story that none of us were fully prepared for.

Jonathan grew up the middle child of ten in Sarasota, Florida, in a family that could only be described as a force of nature. His parents — both only children, for the record — moved to Virginia to help found a Bible college and wound up with 48 grandchildren. His father delivered seven of the ten kids at home after reading nine books on childbirth, built a prototype birthing chair in his garage, and tried to patent it. Nobody roasted him at his 50th birthday party because everyone was too busy crying about how much they love him.

Jonathan's life goal since his teenage years was simple: be an amazing husband, be an amazing father, have as many children as possible. He did all of that. And then the 2008 housing crash wiped out his painting business, his marriage unraveled under the weight of financial stress and lost communication, and he found himself — sober, broke, and completely on his own — raising five kids between the ages of two and sixteen while working 7 to 5 for someone else and coaching two of them in football.

He never missed a practice.

"I've got way more content." — Jonathan Fitzgerald. He's coming back.

💌 Got a story you want to share? We'd love to hear it. Reach us at [email protected] or visit thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan podcast

🎧 If this one made you laugh, cry, or call your dad — subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs it.

That wasn't the plan, and we will talk to you next week. K bye. 🥂

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(We open with Courtney's puppy accidentally getting marijuana poisoning. This is relevant because it sets the tone perfectly for an episode about a man whose life has taken approximately seventeen unexpected turns.)

This week's guest is Richard Ault — and his coworkers call him the most interesting person in the world. After about ten minutes, Emily and Courtney stopped arguing with that assessment.

Richard is a biologist by training, a technologist by accident, and a high school teacher by something that can only be described as the universe intervening at exactly the right moment. His story runs from a latchkey childhood in Bethesda, Maryland to the Arctic tundra, from a rooftop party in San Francisco that accidentally launched his tech career to the inside of Napster during one of the most chaotic moments in music industry history — and then back down: addiction, bankruptcy, almost moving into his car, and finally, improbably, joyfully, back into a classroom.

He's been sober for 13 years. He hiked to nearly 12,000 feet with his students two weeks ago. His favorite band is Tool. He is exactly who he appears to be.

Richard's closing answer to "what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?" might be the best we've ever gotten on this show.

"It's stupid and corny, but — that wasn't the plan." — Richard Ault, nailing it.

💌 Have a story, a question, or something you want to share? Email us at [email protected] or visit us at thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan_podcast

🎧 If this episode moved you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear that the bottom isn't the end of the story.

That wasn't the plan, and we will talk to you next week. K bye. 🥂

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No guest. No agenda. No plan. Just Emily and Courtney showing up, catching each other up on their weeks, and somehow covering: shoplifting ethics, a stolen Power Ranger backpack, a suspicious kid at Target, toad venom, recovery, sitting with your feelings, and a stroller left alone in a parking lot that may or may not have had a baby in it.

This is one of those episodes that was never supposed to be anything — and ends up being kind of everything. Grab a coffee, put your earbuds in, and hang out with us for a bit.

"Life is not glossy and beautiful. It's fucking nasty. But it's also... real." — Emily White, 2025, exhausted as usual

📎 Reach out: Have a story, a question, or something you've been carrying? We read anonymous submissions. Email us: [email protected] or visit thatwasnttheplan.com.

💌 Reach us at [email protected] or visit us at thatwasnttheplan.com

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplanpodcast

🎧 If you like what we're doing, subscribe, leave a review, and share us with a friend. It genuinely helps more than you know.

That wasn't the plan, and we will talk to you next week. K bye. 🥂

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(Courtney's back, everyone. Let the drinks flow. Also — Courtney's tooth made a brief unscheduled disappearance. We kept it in. You're welcome.)

This week, Emily and Courtney sit down with someone doing some of the most quietly essential work in grief support: Lindsay Brockman, licensed veterinary nurse, certified pet loss grief specialist, and founder of EverKin Pet Loss Support out of Richmond, Virginia. Lindsay has fifteen years across ER, end-of-life, and community animal medicine — and she's seen firsthand what happens when the humans in those exam rooms are left to navigate loss with nothing but a sympathy card and a parking validation.

Her framework is built around disenfranchised grief — the grief the world doesn't quite know how to honor. The grief that gets "it was just a pet." Or "you'll get another one." Or the silence where a casserole should be. Lindsay's entire practice exists to say: no. All grief deserves support.

But Lindsay brings more than professional expertise to this conversation. Earlier this year, her son Jack was stillborn at 38 weeks. And in one of the most honest, tender moments we've had on this show, she talks about how both losses — the ones she holds for clients, and the one she carries herself — share the same language. The same weight. The same need to be witnessed.

What you'll hear in this one:

• What disenfranchised grief actually means — and why pet loss is one of its biggest, most overlooked forms
• What fifteen years in vet ER looks like from the inside — and why grief literacy training for veterinary teams matters so much
• Compassion fatigue: what it actually is (and why it's not the same as burnout), and the org Not One More Vet fighting to support vet professionals
• Courtney's story of losing Rooster during the pandemic — and arriving at a locked ER door at 2am, sobbing, saying "I'm coming"
• "We don't move on. We move with." — what honoring grief actually looks like
• What NOT to say to a grieving person — and what to say instead when you genuinely don't know what to say
• Curly Sue — Lindsay's new rescue from Richmond Animal League, who weighs almost exactly what Jack weighed, and only wants to be held
• Weighted Angels, a volunteer organization making weighted stuffed animals for parents who leave the hospital without their baby
• Lady Chunk's live cameo (the cat had opinions and made them known)
• Human names for animals: Alan, Susan, Patricia, Gary, Frank — we stand by all of it
• And the grocery store pasta sauce incident, which is one of the best grief stories we've ever heard on this show

Lindsay's tagline is a Ram Dass quote: "We are all just walking each other home." By the end of this episode, you'll understand exactly why.

📎 Find Lindsay & Resources Mentioned:

• 🌿 EverKin Pet Loss Support: EverkinPetLoss.com
• 📲 Instagram: @EverkinPetLoss
• 💙 Not One More Vet: nomv.org
• 🤍 Weighted Angels: https://www.weightedangels.com/

Lindsay's books reopen June 1st — if you or someone you love needs support, now's the time to reach out.

💌 Have a story about a plan that went sideways? We want to hear it. Reach out at [email protected]

📲 Find us on Instagram | TikTok | YouTube — search @thatwasnttheplan_podcast

🐾 If this episode moved you, please subscribe, leave a review, and pass it along to anyone who's ever loved an animal — or a person — and been told to just get over it.

And as always — whatever plan you had? We're glad you're here anyway. 🥂

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