Embodied

What would you do if you knew your brain would stop functioning normally in just a decade? For brothers Ansel Dow (31) and Cosmo Hinsman (26), this isn't hypothetical. They carry a rare genetic mutation that makes frontotemporal dementia almost inevitable by their mid-40s. It’s the same condition that has altered the lives and personalities of their mother and five of her siblings. In conversation with Anita, the brothers reveal how this genetic legacy influences their most personal choices about love, friendship and building a meaningful life against a countdown. Meet the guests: - Ansel Dow is a community organizer and an advocate for more research into FTD - Cosmo Hinsman holds a MFA in fiction writing Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

Sex has no age limit. But having a robust intimate life well beyond age 65 comes with distinct challenges, particularly when you no longer live in the privacy of your own home. Anita talks with two people dedicated to making good sex possible for older adults, whether they are navigating dementia and living in a nursing home, or forging a new relationship with someone in their assisted living community. Sexuality educator Jane Fleishman and research psychologist Maggie Syme discuss the policy landscape affecting older adults’ sexual wellness and share stories from their day-to-day work building an intimacy revolution in elder care. Meet the guests: - Jane Fleishman is a sexuality educator who also identifies as an older adult - Maggie Syme is a research psychologist Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

A new crop of children’s book authors are trying to help kids develop curiosity about their physical bodies. But how exactly do they turn fraught body politics into compelling children's stories? Anita gets answers when she meets Tyler Feder and Shelly Anand, the creators behind the books "Bodies Are Cool" and "Laxmi's Mooch." Meet the guests: - Tyler Feder, the author and illustrator behind the book “Bodies are Cool" - Shelly Anand, the author of “Laxmi’s Mooch" Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied Please note: This episode originally aired November 1, 2024. Update: “Bodies Are Cool” is now available as a board book. You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

Sharing something special with you this week, it’s an episode of Other People’s Problems, from CBC. Normally, therapy sessions are totally confidential — but this podcast opens the doors. In this season, the host Dr. Hillary McBride explores the transformative power of psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. With her psychological expertise, Dr. Hillary leads clients through drug-assisted therapy, guiding them to new heights on their healing journeys. You’ll experience these real, unscripted sessions firsthand as they unfold, and get an unprecedented look at therapy using psychedelics and psychoactive drugs, demystifying this often misunderstood practice as a powerful tool in trauma recovery. In this episode, we hear from Donovan, who has lived in fear and anger ever since he told the truth about being abused by his mother’s boyfriend and then felt betrayed by social workers who were supposed to help. Now, after several ketamine therapy sessions, Donovan can finally look back upon his child-self with care and calm and works to become the kind of adult he needed for his own children. You can listen to more Other People’s Problems here.

Gen Z is anxious about climate change, and it’s impacting their family planning. Anita talks to researcher Jade Sasser, who's been studying young people’s attitudes about climate change and reproductive choices while unpacking her own experiences with climate anxiety. They’ll talk about how to manage climate emotions while making big life decisions, and how “the kid question” isn’t just about babies — it’s about what bringing new life into an uncertain world represents. Meet the guest: - Jade Sasser is the author of “Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future” and an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

When the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017, journalist Ruth Whippman — nearly nine months pregnant with her third son — experienced a profound conflict. As a feminist, she celebrated the movement; as a mother, she worried: "How am I gonna raise these boys to be good?" This tension launched Ruth on a quest to understand modern American boyhood and what's not working. Ruth and her husband Neil Levine tell Anita about their journey of putting Ruth’s research into practice, working to give their sons the emotional tools to thrive in a changing world — and what’s at stake if we don’t shift our approach to raising boys. Meet the guests: - Ruth Whippman is the author of "BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity" - Neil Levine is Ruth's husband Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

When you’re living with a stigmatized mental illness like bipolar disorder, opening up to romantic partners can be tough, but Anita brings on two people who’ve found their own way through love and mental health. A writer-poet talks about navigating new romantic connections, and a married couple shares how they’ve built a strong foundation for weathering mental health ups and downs over 15 years together. Meet the guests: - Michelle Yang, a writer and advocate, shares her journey to a bipolar I disorder diagnosis, how she navigated disclosure of her diagnosis early on in her relationship with her husband and her work to separate trauma from culture - Bob Zammit, Michelle's husband, gives his perspective on managing mental health in their family and how he and Michelle have thought about raising their 10-year-old son to be conscious of mental health - Hannah Blum, author of “Oh Mind, Where Have You Gone Today?”, explains how she approaches disclosure of her bipolar II diagnosis in romantic connections and what kind of mental health support she appreciates from intimate partners Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied Please note: This episode originally aired May 24, 2024. Update: Michelle Yang is on her book tour for her memoir. You can find more information here. You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

In Anita's lifetime, the divorce rate for Americans over 55 has doubled. People are living longer, divorce stigma has decreased and women are more financially independent. But leaving a decades-long marriage … is a big life upheaval. Anita gets personal accounts from two gray divorcees about what it was like to rebuild their identities, finances and freedom post-divorce. They discuss money management, surfing and why women initiate divorce most often in heterosexual partnerships. Meet the guests: - Laura Stassi is a writer, editor and the host of the podcast "Dating While Gray" - Dr. Stephanie Han is a literature scholar, award-winning author and educator Special thanks to Nanette Murphy and Linda Lingo for sharing their thoughts for this episode! Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied Please note: This episode originally aired August 15, 2024. Update: Stephanie’s guide to writing your divorce story and her class on the same topic was featured on Oprah Daily. You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

American men are in a friendship recession. Compared to a few decades ago, five times as many men have no close friends. So what’s going on? Anita talks with Mark Pagán, creator and host of the podcast “Other Men Need Help,” about what makes close friendships among men so fraught — and what we can do about it. They talk about everything from why Mark loves secret handshakes to his ongoing journey of making himself say the hard stuff out loud. Meet the guest: - Mark Pagán is the creator and host of the podcast "Other Men Need Help" and writes the substack "Other Men" Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

Doctors are expected to make high-stakes decisions quickly and often. And while plenty of medical guidelines exist, sometimes finding the right answer relies on intuition as much as logic. So what happens when suddenly that intuition is … gone? Retired anesthesiologist Dr. Ronald Dworkin tells Anita about the day he lost his intuition and how he got it back. She also talks to one of her favorite medical minds (her brother-in-law, Dr. Amit Gupta) about training intuition in the next generation of doctors. Meet the guests: - Dr. Ronald Dworkin is a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and a retired anesthesiologist - Dr. Amit Gupta is a gastroenterologist, assistant professor of medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill and Anita's brother-in-law Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied You can check out Climbing the Walls here.

Ever since Kate Downey got her first extremely painful period at age 14, every month feels like playing Russian roulette with her uterus. Will she get “normal” abdominal discomfort — or excruciating, life-disrupting “death cramps”? After decades of not knowing the cause of her pain, Kate set out to find an answer to her very own medical mystery…and she shares with Anita how what she uncovered has implications for many other menstruating people. Meet the guest: - Kate Downey is the creator and host of CRAMPED, a podcast investigating period pain Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

When technology creators see problems … they fix them. No less is true for trans designers, who for decades have responded to emergent needs in their community with technological innovation. Trans scholar Oliver Haimson tells Anita why it's vital to understand the role of trans technology in this particular political moment. He shares stories from the hundreds of technologies he’s explored — everything from bathroom-finding apps to augmented reality — that both support trans folks’ tangible needs and help reimagine new worlds. Meet the guest: - Oliver Haimson is the author of "Trans Technologies" and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied Special thanks to Hibby Thach for her contributions to this episode!

Despite a decade of restrictive behavior and a career path in mental health counseling, Alishia McCullough had never associated herself with the phrase eating disorder. She’s not alone – while eating disorders affect all races and ethnicities at similar rates, people of color are less than half as likely to receive a diagnosis than their white counterparts. She talks to Anita about how an aha moment in grad school led her to better understand how to treat eating disorders in Black women’s bodies — starting with her own. Meet the guest: - Alishia McCullough is the author of "Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within" and a licensed mental health therapist Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

When Anita moved away to college, she experienced a big shift in her biracial identity. Turns out that the questions that emerged for her are ones that many mixed young adults still ponder today ...15 years later. She meets two college seniors and they talk through navigating everything from "Where do I belong?" to "How do I date?" Plus she hears wisdom from a life coach who helps mixed adults tell new stories about identity. Meet the guests: - Adiah Siler, a senior at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, explains how moving out of her small town to go to college allowed her opportunities to explore her Blackness and has influenced her journey as a mixed race person - Claire Gallagher, a senior at the University of Michigan, shares her own experiences growing up as a mixed race person and brings up some of the anxieties she's had about her identity, especially since attending a predominantly white college - Sarah Lotus Garrett, a certified life and goal fulfillment coach, emphasizes the confidence and healing that being a part of a mixed race community can bring Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied Please note: This episode originally aired July 14, 2023. Updates: Adiah Siler is currently working on her MFA at the University of Iowa in the Writers’ Workshop. Dig deeper: Sarah’s program for mixed adults Claire’s piece on the fetishization of mixed race identities Adiah’s piece on being a mixed teen

When Celeste Gracia was 17, her religiously conservative parents sent her to conversion therapy. This was the same summer that the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, giving queer people across the country cause for celebration. It would take years before Celeste felt that same joy and freedom, and today, the 27-year-old environment reporter at WUNC talks with Anita about how recent political events are prompting her to reflect on her decade-long path to healing. Anita also talks to therapist Jonathan Bell about how Celeste’s story fits into a broader context and why religious trauma is so challenging to heal. Meet the guests: - Celeste Gracia is an environment reporter at WUNC who has spent a decade untangling her religious trauma - Jonathan Bell is a a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in helping queer clients with religious trauma Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

Most parents in Anita's life tell her that it's a relentless job ... so if you're doing it all without a partner, how is it possible to also sustain a relationship with sex and romance? Anita talks with two unpartnered moms about juggling pleasure, dating and parenthood. Meet the guests: - Tara Ilsley is a solo mom of a toddler and a public health worker - Cordelia Gaffar is a single mom of six kids, an intimacy educator and a somatic movement facilitator Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

Soph Myers-Kelley and his mom, René Myers, have always been close. As of five years ago, they also share a diagnosis: the connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Soph and René were diagnosed one year apart – Soph was 25; René was 60. EDS explained symptoms they’d both been experiencing for decades, including waking up with jaw or shoulder dislocations and having chronic pain.The two talk with Anita about how their diagnoses began a new chapter of their lives, including the decision to move in together last summer. Meet the guests: - Soph Myers-Kelley is a medical librarian at East Carolina University - René Myers is Soph's mom and a retired educator Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

Food and sex have been deeply intertwined in our cultural imagination for millennia. Anita talks with a cultural historian who has combed through centuries of sex and food chronicles to understand what makes that connection so strong. Plus, Puerto Rican chef Manolo López shares a Valentine’s recipe and his favorite sexy food. Meet the guests: - Rachel Hope Cleves is a historian, a professor at the University of Victoria and the author of “Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex" - Manolo López is a Puerto Rican chef and storyteller Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

In the hours and days following President Donald Trump’s re-election, online searches about leaving the U.S. surged. Historically, most folks who have considered a move haven’t taken action, but Tina Strawn is an exception. Anita talks to her about why, as a queer Black woman, she left America in 2020 in search of freedom. Tina answers listener's questions about expat life and shares why she encourages everyone to ask themselves: what would it feel like to be free? Meet the guest: - Tina Strawn, the author of “Are We Free Yet? The Black Queer Guide to Divorcing America” Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on Instagram Leave a message for Embodied

Anita is committed to self-improvement but skeptical of self-help. She brings her qualms and questions to the experts: Kristen Meinzer, a podcaster who has lived by the rules of more than 50 self-help books, and Beth Blum, a scholar who's traced the genre back to its roots. Plus Sondra Rose Marie, a former self-help fan, shares how the industry has failed her as a woman of color. Meet the guests: - Kristen Meinzer, pop culture commentator and podcast host, shares what she learned from following the rules of over 50 self-help books - Beth Blum, Harvard humanities professor and author, talks about the long history of the self-help industry, and how it's changed over the decades - Sondra Rose Marie, writer, talks about why she started following a self-help guru...and what events made her leave Dig Deeper: Kristen's podcasts How To Be Fine and Daily Fail Beth's book "The Self-Help Compulsion" Sondra's Medium article on self-help Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform Follow Embodied on TikTok and Instagram Leave a message for Embodied Please note: This episode originally aired January 5, 2024. Updates: The latest season of Kristen Meinzer’s podcast “How To Be Fine” is all about the loneliness epidemic and friendship quandaries. Sondra Rose Marie is now the editor and owner of the digital magazine for LGBTQ+ women called Tagg Magazine.