Episode 99(!) of the pod is a riveting and heart-hitting conversation with Darcy Totten, Executive Director of the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. In this episode, you’ll hear about the Commission's history, its growth over the course of 60 years, and the critical work it does to promote gender equity. Darcy is a staunch advocate for solidarity among women, and she shares personal stories about growing up queer in the...
November is Native American Heritage Month, and in the lead-in to this week’s convo, I speak about the whitewashing of U.S. history, not to be a Thanksgiving buzzkill (sorry, not sorry), but because truth matters. Then I invite listeners into a conversation that explores the critical differences between Western and Indigenous perspectives on leadership. My guest, Wyatt Kelly, is a young Apache leader, public policy manager, and self-described...
Is embodiment a tool in the ongoing fight for collective justice? In the intro, I share how the wellness world shaped my understanding of embodiment (why it matters and what it is for) and share how two decades of navel-gazing conditioned me to be complacent in the face of injustice. I catch us up on some current events, then share a riveting interview with Dr. Lesa Clark, a strategic leader in intercultural engagement and equity. Lesa shares...
Kicking off a new short-form series on reinventing leadership, I sit down with Dr. Suze Wilson, an associate professor at Massey University in New Zealand. She and I discuss the history and significance of critical theory as a tool in understanding and transforming leadership dynamics to foster greater inclusivity and equity. Suze shares a bit about her background and then summarizes her doctoral work on the evolution of leadership theories...
I'm betting that I'm not the only one trying to figure out how to engage in constructive dialogues in today's divided social landscape, so in this episode of Subject to Change, I explore several open questions: Is emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-regulation, etc.) really enough to prepare us for difficult conversations, or is there much more to it than that - particularly when it comes to challenging deeply-embedded social systems?...
This morning, a friend and I were talking about how to respond to folks who are skeptical about whether or not protesting helps. There’s mixed data on nonviolent resistance, so I’d rather leave that debate to the experts. But even if massive protests don’t actually move the needle in the fight against fasci$m, showing tf up is essential. Why? >> Because if we're unwilling to actualize our values, what good are they? Morality is...
In the words of Timothy Snyder: “Do not obey in advance.” On October 18th, millions of Americans will gather across the nation to say ‘No’ to authoritarianism. This episode opens with audio from my solo experience at the first No Kings Protest in Downtown Los Angeles back in June. I share excerpts and offer a felt-sense of the experience, of peaceful resistance and love in action. Then I take a critical look at 'followership' and at how...
This episode of Subject To Change was recorded 2 days ago. I was in all the feels at the start of this episode 🥴... sharing because I wanna normalize feeling wobbly right now. Then, I offer a reality check around the left-to-right pipeline. I share about recent TDP blowback, both publicly and behind-the-scenes, & its ironic overlap with mainstream satire-censorship. We revisit the topic of shame, specifically how apologist shame can lead...
This episode is dedicated to American psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton, who recently passed after decades of research into the psychology of totalism. “Doctrine over person” is one of Lifton’s eight criteria of thought reform; it’s widely considered to be a defining characteristic of the cultic headspace. But how exactly does it function? Meet T Brown. In 1997, T entered a Sufi group as a free-thinking, openly gay man. But he...
I've divided this episode of Subject to Change into four chapters: Satire (5:28) Turns out, there's a TikTok account heckling the same launch that I've been speaking critically about here on the pod. Is it distasteful according to wellness-cult standards? For sure. Do I think that's part of its brilliance? Absolutely, and I'll tell you why. The Eagle & The Crow (21:54) There's a viral post circulating with a parable about an eagle & a...
