Help Existing

This week I'm joined again by Buddhist Monk Tashi Nyima, who you might recognize from past episodes, Help With Despair Over the State of the World and Help With Generosity. Tashi had a near-death experience recently, and I wanted to have him on to talk about it, and what it illustrates about death from a Buddhist perspective.  In this episode we talk about: --Tashi's brush with death and what it taught him --Buddhist teachings on death and dying --How to confront the fear of death and prepare for death ahead of time And much more! I hope you find it helpful.  Here is the link to Tashi's blog, which has information on how to join his Zoom sanghas. Help Existing is listener supported. Please consider donating to my Venmo @rachel-krantz. 

This week I'm joined by one of my closest friends in the world, author and teacher Shannon McLeod. Shannon is the author of the wonderful new story collection Nature Trail Stories, as well as the novella Whimsy. She's also taught English at a high school and elementary school level and works as a reading specialist.  In this episode, I wanted to talk to Shannon about the realities that teachers today are facing.   We talked about: --How to be a better ally for teachers.  --What teachers today face, from shooting threats to phones in classrooms --Her tips and experience with burnout --The pandemic and remote teaching, and how she's seen kids change since  --How technology and trauma are impacting students' ability to read and write --How her teaching life informs her creative life --And much more! As always, I hope it's helpful. --- You can donate to Help Existing on my Venmo @rachel-krantz. Every bit helps! 

Continuing on a similar theme as the baby decision episodes, I wanted to have a conversation about what aging while child-free (and/or unmarried, and/or nonmonogamous, and/or without a stable job) might look like. I'm joined again by the counselor and author Kathy Labriola, who you might recognize from last season's episode, Help Dealing With Jealousy in Relationships & Career, as well as from my book, Open.  Not only does Kathy have an excellent new book out about aging while nonmonogamous, Polyamorous Elders, but she is herself a badass example of aging while unconventional. She is queer, child-free, and has multiple partners-- but is married to none.  In this super practical conversation, we talk about many different things to consider when aging outside the box, including: --Differences in civil rights granted in a domestic partnership versus marriage --Different things even younger people need to do, like filling out advanced care directives, writing a will, and thinking about long-term care insurance --Thinking about housing long-term, and how to pay for it if you're not rich --Why having a child is not a guarantee or even good insurance that you will be taken care of in old age --How she has set up her life and practice to operate outside of traditional capitalist structures And much more! I am always inspired by Kathy, and I know this conversation gave me a long list of things to do and think about. I hope it helps you too! -- Help Existing is listener supported. If you found this helpful, please donate to keep it going on my Venmo @rachel-krantz.  Please feel free to get in touch if I can help you with anything as a consultant, coach, or otherwise @rachelkrantz on Instagram & Twitter, or via the contact form on my website, www.racheljkrantz.com. Words of encouragement are much appreciated too! As is buying/reviewing my book, OPEN. www.prh.com/open

In Part 2 of this super-personal series, I'm speaking again with author and therapist Merle Bombardieri about the decision of whether or not to have kids. Merle is the author of THE BABY DECISION, which I found to be refreshing in its lack of agenda for or against having children. In this follow-up episode, which was more coaching-heavy than the last one, we address: --How to process this decision with your partner --A new exercise that might help you embrace a decision  --How my being nonmonogamous might factor into the decision  --The pressures of pronatalist culture  --Lots else! Merle Bombardieri, MSW, LICSW, has been a private practice clinical social worker and psychotherapist for over 30 years. She specializes in parenthood decision-making, infertility, adoption, and making the most of a childfree life. The first edition of her book THE BABY DECISION was published in 1981. Although she enjoyed raising her daughters, Bombardieri has also been an advocate for childfree people since 1979. Another advocacy project was founding the support group Boston Single Mothers by Choice in the early 1980s. -- Help Existing is listener supported. If you found this helpful, please donate to keep it going on my Venmo @rachel-krantz. Words of encouragement are much appreciated too! As is buying/reviewing my book, OPEN. www.prh.com/open

This week I'm talking with sex educator and author of the new and inclusive dating guide This is Supposed to Be Fun, Myisha Battle. We're talking specifically about online dating: ways that both non-monogamous and monogamous people can better coexist on these apps, common mistakes people make, and tips around messaging and disclosure. She also got into a little bit of personal dating advice for me...I hope this is a helpful conversation for those of you who are dating or looking to get back out there.   You can find Myisha Battle, her book, and her monthly zine at www.myishabattle.com. She's on Instagram and Twitter @myishabattle.      Please take a moment if you can to rate and review this podcast so more people can find it. Even just a line is good. Same thing with my book Open. If you can take a minute to give it a star rating and review on Goodreads or Amazon, share it on social media, tell your friends about it, and request it at your local library, all these things really help me out! And finally, if you'd like to support this podcast, throw a dollar in the hat @Rachel-Krantz on Venmo. You can find me at @RachelKrantz on Instagram and Twitter. Thanks, and see you next ep!  

In this super-personal episode, I'm talking with author and therapist Merle Bombardieri about the decision of whether or not to have kids. Merle is the author of THE BABY DECISION, which I found to be refreshing in its lack of agenda for or against having children.  In this episode, which is a blend of interview and free therapy (for me and, hopefully, listeners), we address: --Why it's important to declare a decision --How to mourn the path you won't be taking --What this decision has to do with death --An exercise to help the conflicting sides of you fight it out, and why the one who 'loses' can tell you what you need to be happy --How to deal when you feel that economics and the environment are making the decision for you --Lots else! This is only Part 1. Merle and I will be speaking again in a month, and this is a topic I plan on exploring more with her and others this season on the podcast. Let me know what you think--I hope it's helpful! -- Merle Bombardieri, MSW, LICSW, has been a private practice clinical social worker and psychotherapist for over 30 years. She specializes in parenthood decision-making, infertility, adoption, and making the most of a childfree life. The first edition of her book THE BABY DECISION was published in 1981. Although she enjoyed raising her daughters, Bombardieri has also been an advocate for childfree people since 1979. Another advocacy project was founding the support group Boston Single Mothers by Choice in the early 1980s. -- Help Existing is listener supported. If you foud this helpful, please donate to keep it going on my Venmo @rachel-krantz. Words of encouragement are much appreciated too! As is buying/reviewing my book, OPEN. www.prh.com/open   

This week I'm joined by writer and academic Christopher Sebastian McJetters. We're talking about what speciesism—the view that certain species should have more rights to freedom and life than others—has to do with racism, sexism, and homophobia. Following our recent episode with Jasmin Singer about help being more vegan-friendly, I was thrilled to hear some of you were inspired to try eating more plant-based. It's a resolution that a lot of people are making in the month of January, as we try on those New Year's resolutions. (There's even a campaign called Veganuary that can help.) But I wanted to have this broader conversation with Christopher about why caring about animal rights is a social justice issue that is related to being anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic. My hope is listening will help deepen your resolve to eat more plant-based for the animals/environment/health, or at least expand your circle of compassion a little wider. I hope you find this conversation helpful, empathy-building, and inspiring.  -- Christopher Sebastian is an author, researcher, and lecturer. He writes about food, politics, media, and pop culture. He currently teaches news writing for social media and has guest lectured at Columbia University, Cambridge University, Cornell, and the University of Oxford. Find out more about him at https://www.christophersebastian.info/ -- HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: As you might have noticed, I'm moving the podcast to biweekly for the time being so that I don't burn out and don't have to bug you quite as often about fundraising to support the podcast. I still will sometimes, but not as much. (@rachel-krantz on venmo, icymi :)) Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the podcast thus far, and I promise that even though it'll be slightly less frequent, the quality will hopefully be that much better.   

I'll be back in 2023 with all-new episodes of Help Existing, but for our last episode of 2022, I wanted to celebrate the most-listened-to episode of the year: Help Understanding Bisexuality Better, with author Jen Winston. (By the way, a close second was Help Exploring Psychadelic Therapy, further cementing my suspicion that Help Existing's audience is cool AF).  I was so happy to see this was the most listened-to episode because it was one of my favorite conversations, and with a dear friend at that: Jen Winston, author of Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much. Their memoir, and our conversations since, have helped me understand what “bisexuality” actually means, my internalized bisexual imposter syndrome, bi-phobia, and so much more.  I wanted to have a conversation with Jen to delve into these topics further so that listeners, whether they're bisexual themselves, questioning, or simply want to be better allies to bisexual friends, walk away with more understanding and compassion. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and I'll see you in 2023 with some exciting new interviews and explorations. -- Help Existing is listener supported. Throw a dollar in the hat if you can to my Venmo, @rachel-krantz. Thank you!  

It's my 35th birthday today, so I figured it was the perfect time to reissue one of the most popular episodes of Help Existing: my conversation with self-esteem icon Cindy Gallop about viewing aging as sexy. This episode got the most responses from listeners and is an all-around treat. Cindy Gallop is the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, a businesswoman, coach, and all-around self-esteem icon. She's in her sixties and openly dates younger men, and recently had a StyleLikeU video that went viral about viewing aging as sexy and forging a different path. We don't see enough media representation of women over 50 being desired and viewed as sexy (and sexual beings)—and Cindy is certainly working to change that. Not just through her own substantial online presence, but through MakeLoveNotPorn, a social sharing platform where people can share and upload their real-world (and real-bodied) sex.  I wanted to pick Cindy's brain on how exactly she's so confident and get her advice on how I might continue to embrace my own aging as sexy. You can follow Cindy on Twitter and Instagram @cindygallop, and find out more about her work here. Help Existing is listener supported. Please throw a dollar in the hat if you can on my Venmo, @rachel-krantz. Every little bit energizes me and sustains me in creating new episodes. Thank you!

This week I'm joined by Evette Dionne, author of the excellent new memoir in essays, Weightless. Her new book is about many things: the prejudiced way fat Black women are treated in our culture, her personal experience facing serious chronic illness, fatness in pop culture, and much more. Our conversation was wide-ranging, starting with the story of how doctors' anti-fat bias nearly cost Evette her life, her own subsequent reexamining of work-life balance, and the micro and macro effects of fatphobia—both externalized and internalized. Evette is such a smart, kind person. She speaks in a way that deeply impresses me not just because she's so insightful, but because she's kind and doesn't seem as motivated by the less important things in life--fame, ego, or praise. Listening to her, you feel plugged into what matters. If you want more from Evette on this podcast, you can also check out our other interview in Season 1, Help Appreciating Black Music Without Appropriating It. And again, be sure to support her memoir by buying Weightless and/or her National Book Award-Nominated middle-grade book, Lifting As We Climb: Black Women's Battle At The Ballot Box. -- Help Existing is listener supported. Please throw a dollar in the proverbial hat if you can on my Venmo @rachel-krantz, or pick up a copy of my book, Open. Every bit of support helps more than you know. Thank you!

This week on Help Existing: how your vibrator sausage is made. I have a lot of questions. Mainly, why can engineers send a man to the moon (decades ago), but I still can't find a toy that gives me handless orgasms? Seriously, wtf is that sexist shit? Rob Scott, the chief product designer for an ethical and eco-friendly sex toy company called Love Not War, was a great sport answering my questions. Surprisingly, I also learned a lot about recycling from this conversation. We dug into questions like what are the biggest challenges vibrator engineers face? Why is The Womanizer so far ahead of other suction toys on the market? Can you recycle your toys? What kind of charging habits ensure the longest life? And much more.  A note: this episode is not in any way sponsored content, though I am running a giveaway for a toy Love Not War donated on my Instagram @rachelkrantz. I'm trying to rely on your donations to keep this podcast going. Even a dollar or two is helpful! @Rachel-Krantz on Venmo. Another equally appreciated way to support me is to buy and/or review a copy of my memoir, Open. It's only $6.99 right now on kindle and is otherwise available wherever you get your books. 

In honor of my fellow vegans and vegetarians getting shit from their families this Thursday (and also in honor of World Vegan Month), I wanted to do an episode to help those wanting to lean in a more plant-based direction. This episode was filled with vegan hacks, recs, tips, and heartfelt feelings. I've been vegan for seven years now, and one of my first vegan friends was podcaster, activist, and author Jasmin Singer. She became one of my closest people because she's a compassionate, generous powerhouse and sister from another Jewish mister. Jasmin is the author of The Veg News Guide to Being a Fabulous Vegan, an excellent place to start if you want to learn more about everything we talked about in this episode. She's also the author of Always Too Much and Never Enough: A Memoir, and the editor of Antiracism in Animal Advocacy. She's also the co-host and creator of Our Hen House, an excellent podcast that centers around animal rights.  I hope this conversation is helpful to you, no matter where you are on your journey. Keep an open mind, and you might just make a new best friend too.  -- Help Existing is listener supported...theoretically. Please throw a dollar in the hat through my Venmo, @rachel-krantz, if you can. 

This episode is all about ketamine therapy: the most legally accessible psychedelic therapy. Ketamine has been used as an anesthetic for many years. But recently, it's caught on for treating patients with mental health issues--especially those who haven't responded to medication or are (content warning) suicidal.  To find out more, I spoke with Dr. Carlos De La Hoz. He's a doctor at the NeoMedicine Institute, where he administers ketamine therapy. We spoke about why ketamine's different than other psychedelics, the legality and cost of ketamine therapy, why we need to question long-term antidepressant use, where one might start if they want to try ketamine therapy, and lots more. I hope it's helpful! -- Help Existing is listener and host supported--please contribute anything you feel moved to at my Venmo @rachel-krantz. Thanks!  

If you have a fantasy of being a digital nomad or retiring abroad, what steps should you take? What do you need to know when it comes to visas, health insurance, and money? This week we're tackling these questions and more with Nicole Gustas, a consulting expert for International Citizens,  which helps people figure out how to live or retire abroad. This was a super practical episode. I think there's a larger conversation to be had about the ethics of living abroad and being a digital nomad. We touch on that a bit, but I think that's a conversation best had with someone who specializes in thinking about that topic, and who is from a country more directly impacted by digital nomads.  So I will try to do that sometime in the future.  -- Help Existing depends on your donations. Please drop a dollar in the virtual hat on my Venmo, @Rachel-Krantz. 

This week I'm talking with meditation teacher Jonathan Foust about the tendency of the mind to live in the future. Whether it's fantasizing or mundane planning, I know I often find my mind off in the future. Its underlying cause is an overdeveloped impulse to find pleasure and avoid danger and discomfort. Future thinking is impossible (and ill-advised) to avoid entirely --but I would like to learn to reign it in so that I can be more present in my life. At the same time, as we talk about in this episode, future thinking has a purpose: it can alert us to what we're anxious about, where we might be headed in life, and what we value. What I got out of this conversation is that it's about learning how to work with it skillfully. This episode provides many practical tips for exercises that might help you do that.  You may remember Jonathan from last season's episode "Help Figuring Out the Most Important Thing."  I often turn to Jonathan for some of life's biggest questions. He's so wise, and I've found his podcast and YouTube channel extremely helpful. To find out more about working with Jonathan in a private session or otherwise, check out his website www.jonathanfoust.com  ** Help Existing is host & listener supported. Every donation to my Venmo, @rachel-krantz, is appreciated. You can find out more about my book, Open, here. 

This week I'm joined by my dear friend, Ashna Ali. Ashna is the author of the poetry collection The Relativity of Living Well, and they're joining me to talk about the effects of invisible illnesses on their life. After having long COVID, they now live with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.  We talked about mitigating risk, the politics of masking, as well as how to be better towards people who have invisible illnesses. Ashna is a queer, agender, Bangladeshi diasporic poet raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. You can find them online at www.ashnaali.com and on Instagram @doctordushtu.   

When I got the pitch "three steps to a mental orgasm" from the PR person representing sex therapist Dr. Chelsie Reed, I was skeptical. But I was also intrigued by the idea of a mental orgasm, which is a scientifically-proven regular orgasm—only one induced by the mind, rather than any genital stimulation. (Think: wet dreams, only on command.) In this conversation, Dr. Reed explains how to try to have a mental orgasm, as well as the different kinds of orgasms vagina-owners might be missing. I hope this conversation brings some interesting ideas into your orgasmic life—and also does not create any shame whatsoever if you are not able to have a mental orgasm. (I know I am going to try, but I am skeptical I'll be able to cultivate this Jedi mind trick.)  Dr. Cheslie Reed's book is Sexpert: Desire, Passion Sensations, Intimacy, and Orgasm to Indulge in Your Best Sex Life. You can find her website at www.drchelsea.com. You can also find her on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter @drchelsie. Help Existing is listener supported. You can chip in @rachel-krantz on Venmo. If you feel this or other conversations have been helpful, it helps keep me going. Just throw a dollar in the hat if you can. Thank you!  

My guest this week is Emi Nietfeld, author of the wonderful new memoir Acceptance. It's the story of her growing up in foster care, and at times without a home. Though Emi ended up going to Harvard, she struggled with self-harm, depression, thoughts of suicide, eating disorders, her bisexual identity, and sexual assault. We get into all of that in this episode. I asked Emi what she felt she would most like to offer as helpful to listeners; what she felt she could best speak to (which is what I tend to ask most of the guests who come on). Emi wanted to focus on how to better talk with youth in crisis. Even if you don't have any young people in your life right now, this conversation offers great advice on helping people in crisis in general, and was wide-ranging. I really admired how precise Emi is with her speech; how eloquent and measured and honest she is. I think this was a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. 

It's Bisexual Awareness Week, and I want to celebrate my people! In the fifth episode of Help Existing, I spoke with author Jen Winston about understanding bisexuality better. That's a great primer on a lot of the myriad serious (and sometimes fun) issues bi people face.  This week, I wanted to talk with a bisexual man about what his experience has been like. For men, it is often more stigmatized to be bi. While bi women are often infuriatingly assumed to "really" be straight, bi men are assumed to "really" be gay. This conversation about why that is should help you examine your own internalized biphobia (even if you yourself are bi!). Aaron Aceves is the author of the new bisexual YA novel This Is Why They Hate Us. He's a Mexican-American-born writer who graduated from Harvard, received his MFA from Columbia, and is a teacher at UT Austin. He spoke with me about his new book, and also about his own experiences as a bisexual Chicano man.  I hope you enjoy this conversation and support any bisexuals in your life. Including if that bisexual is yourself! Help Existing is listener (and host) supported! Any contributions you can my to my Venmo @rachel-krantz help me keep going and are very appreciated. Thanks!

How do you get better at imagining things, aka, making shit up? Today I'm talking with Bianca Marais, author of the new book The Witches of Moonshine Manner and host of The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast, about cultivating imagination when writing fiction.  I've written my book Open, but it's a memoir, and I'm trained as a journalist. It's hard to give myself permission to lift off into the imaginary, but I would like to try! So I wanted to really get into the nitty-gritty technical aspects of how Bianca does that—and she really had so many great tips. This is a great episode for writers, obviously. But if you're a reader, I think you'll get a lot of interesting insight into the way fiction writers actually create entirely new worlds. -- Help Existing is funded by donations (and me!) If you're open to contributing, my Venmo is @rachel-krantz. $30 gets you a signed copy of Open.  $50 gets you a vibrator (only two left!) $150 gets you an hour consultation with me on the topic of your choice.  

In a new flavor of episode I'm calling "Tuesdays with Tashi," I'll be having recurring conversations with one of my dearest advisors & friends: Buddhist Monk Tashi Nyima. Piece by piece, I hope to share with you some of the most fundamental advice on existence I've learned from years of studying with him.  Our first episode was Help With Despair Over The State of the World. This episode's advice is all about generosity--(a key ingredient of help with that despair, by the way). To be clear, this is not some passive-aggressive way of asking you for more donations to the podcast! It is a conversation that emerged because your generosity truly inspired me. I was also humbled by how hard it was for me to ask for help without feeling guilty or ashamed. So I wanted to talk with Tashi about the power of generosity, and how we can both receive and give more freely and genuinely. As always, his advice was practical, warm, and inspiring.  Thank you again so much to everyone who's donated to my Venmo @rachel-krantz, or reached out with words of encouragement. Your generosity has inspired me and this conversation. 

Today I'm talking with Justin Townsend, CEO and Head Facilitator for MycoMeditations. His company operates legally in Jamaica doing psilocybin-assisted retreats. Participants attend for seven days, work with licensed therapists throughout, and trip three times. You've probably heard about some of the potential therapeutic applications of psilocybin, and changes in states like Oregon, which legalized the medicine for therapeutic use. I've heard predictions that as psychedelic therapy spreads, there will soon be a huge need for tens of thousands of therapists trained in this modality.  I picked Justin's brain about what people who are interested in working in this emerging industry should know. We also delved into why psilocybin is therapeutic in the first place, and the results his team has seen with attendees.  This was not in any way sponsored content, even though it's a great commercial for MycoMeditations. (If I ever get to the point where someone offers me money for an interview, I would only do that if I really thought it would be a good conversation, and I would always disclose that the episode was sponsored.) But speaking of sponsoring, please consider donating to my Venmo @rachel-krantz so that I can make Season 2 of Help Existing. Here are some additional incentives: --The first ten people to donate $30 or more can claim a signed UK edition of OPEN. --The first five people to donate $50 or more can claim an Unbound Babes vibrator. --Anyone who donates $150 or more can get a one-hour session with me consulting on the topic of their choice--writing, pitching, meditation, or whatever else you want to talk about. Thanks so much for listening, and to anyone who can give!

This week, I'm joined by publishing industry expert Jane Friedman to talk about the strange business of books: how authors make a living off their books (SPOILER: keep dreaming), the impact of Amazon on the market, contentious e-book lending, why 98% of books sell under 5,000 copies, and much more. This is a super interesting episode for writers, sure, but also for readers. There are a lot of misconceptions about the business of books, and this is a crash course on how readers can be better allies to authors. Speaking of allyship, in the intro, I also asked listeners to consider donating to my Venmo @rachel-krantz so that I can make Season 2 of Help Existing. Here are some additional incentives: --The first ten people to donate $30 or more can claim a signed UK edition of OPEN. --The first five people to donate $50 or more can claim an Unbound Babes vibrator. --Anyone who donates $150 or more can get a one-hour session with me consulting on the topic of their choice--writing, pitching, meditation, or whatever else you want to talk about.  Thanks so much for listening, and to anyone who can give!  -- Jane Friedman has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. She's the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential industry newsletter for authors, and has previously worked for Writer's Digest and the Virginia Quarterly Review.  Jane's latest book is The Business of Being a Writer. In collaboration with The Authors Guild, she wrote The Authors Guild Guide to Self-Publishing. In addition to being a professor with The Great Courses, Jane's expertise has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and many other outlets. She offers a free newsletter, Electric Speed, published since 2009, that has more than 25,000 subscribers.

This week I'm talking with one of my very favorite people in the world: counselor and author Kathy Labriola. If you've read my book Open, you'll recognize her as my counselor/real-life fairy godmother. She's also an expert on jealousy in relationships, which she writes about in books like The Jealousy Workbook and Love In Abundance. I wanted to have a conversation with Kathy about jealousy and envy that was inclusive of non-monogamous, monogamous, and even professional relationships. How can we deal with jealousy in a way that's constructive, but also allows for the possibility that it can be a wise emotion? What is the difference between jealousy and envy, anyway? How does jealousy show up differently in non-monogamous versus monogamous relationships? What about career envy? We covered this and much more in this episode. As always, I hope it's helpful.   

Are you afraid of potential eternal nothingness? Yeah...same. Death—and fear of it—is a topic I'm hoping to continually get some help with on this podcast. This week, I'm joined by Dr. Sunita Puri, palliative care doctor and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour. Dr. Puri is refreshing in that she knows the science of death and dying—but is open to and a witness of just how much we don't know, leaving room for the spiritual or mystical.  In this conversation, we talk about near-death experiences, what's happening in the brain during death, how to address the fear of dying, psychedelics, materialism vs. mysticism, and much more. This is a theme I plan to explore in more depth as the weeks (hopefully!) go on—but this conversation is a good launching pad. I hope you find some comfort in many of the things Dr. Puri had to say. I know I did.   

Today I'm talking with Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, businesswoman, coach, and all-around self-esteem icon. Cindy is 62 and openly dates younger men, and recently had a StyleLikeU video that went viral about viewing aging as sexy and forging a different path.  We don't see enough media representation of women over 50 being desired and viewed as sexy (and sexual beings)—and Cindy is certainly working to change that. Not just through her own substantial online presence, but through MakeLoveNotPorn, a social sharing platform where people can share and upload their real-world (and real-bodied) sex.  I wanted to pick Cindy's brain on how exactly she's so confident and get her advice on how I might continue to embrace my own aging as sexy. You can follow Cindy on Twitter and Instagram @cindygallop, and find out more about her work here. 

This week, I'm talking with Dr. Ryan Witherspoon, who if you've read my book Open, you'll recognize as the psychologist most quoted throughout. In our interviews, I found Ryan to be a treasure trove of knowledge about so much relevant to my book—non-monogamy, communication, gaslighting—and kink.  For this conversation, I wanted to really delve into kink. We spend some time talking about definitions and common misconceptions but then dive pretty quickly into the specific subtleties of the psychology of kink and BDSM. What do submissives and dominants each get out of the dynamic? How do you talk constructively about it when a scene doesn't work? What are some red flags in play partners to look out for? What if you're using kink to work through trauma? All this and so much more is discussed in this episode.  Even if you consider yourself vanilla--or a kink expert--I think you will learn some things about sexual psychology and communication in relationships from this episode.  *** Dr. Ryan Witherspoon received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) at Alliant International University. In addition, he has Masters degrees in clinical and general psychology from CSPP and Pepperdine University, respectively. After finishing his doctorate he completed two years of advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at Rose City Center.  In addition to his private practice, he is also an active researcher, author, and speaker. He regularly publishes peer-reviewed research.

How do you figure out the most important thing? Maybe you're caught between two ideas. Maybe you're trying to decide whether it's time to change careers, or whether to have kids. Maybe you're trying to discern where to best spend your energy as an activist. Maybe you want to be able to better identify the most important thing in any given moment. This week's conversation with meditation teacher Jonathan Foust should help with navigating all those questions and more, and was filled with practical mindfulness and life advice. Jonathan is one of my favorite people to talk to, and he has a podcast and YouTube channel I've personally found incredibly helpful.  Jonathan Foust, MA, CSA, is a guiding teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and a founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in Washington. A senior teacher and former president of Kripalu Center, he leads retreats, trainings, and classes and works individually with those interested in healing and spiritual awakening. He lives outside of Washington, DC with his wife, Tara Brach, and their slightly demented dog.

What can two female authors' experiences of publishing tell us about the ways women are currently permitted (or not permitted) to speak in the culture at large? Why does that matter, even if you're not a writer or a woman? This week, I'm joined by a writer I really admire to discuss these questions and more: Olivia Sudjic. Her essay Exposure had a big influence on me as I was writing Open, and helped me think through what I might anticipate in writing something so naked and putting it out into the world. We also spoke in this conversation about how we've been handling the news of Roe v. Wade's overturning (and the fact that both of us had not heard from any of our cis male friends since the news broke), writing fiction, and creativity's connection to anxiety. Olivia Sudjic is a writer living in London. She is the author of 'Sympathy', her 2017 debut novel which was a finalist for the Salerno European Book Award and the Collyer Bristow Prize, and 'Exposure', a non-fiction work named an Irish Times, Evening Standard and White Review Book of the Year for 2018. Her second novel, ‘Asylum Road', was published by Bloomsbury in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Encore Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Vogue, Paris Review, Frieze, Granta and Wired. She has taught Creative Writing at King's College London and is currently completing her third novel, also to be published by Bloomsbury.  

How do you keep going when you increasingly believe the system is fundamentally broken, and it won't all "work out in the end"—or even necessarily get better? How do you not fall into nihilism or hedonism, and keep caring—and why should you try? How do you maintain your mental health and sense of joy as an activist and empath when you're privy to so much suffering? And what does abolitionism have to do with all of this? These were just a few of the many questions I had for my dear friend Mich P. Gonzalez, who is a badass abolitionist lawyer by day and a comic storyteller by night. He's a proud transgender Latino raised by a single teen mom and her queer immigrant family who overcame poverty in housing instability in Miami, enabling him to become a first-generation university and law school graduate. Today, Mich works as associate director of advocacy with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project, securing carceral release and immigration relief for hundreds of immigrants, caged by ice in the Southeast.  I hope this conversation brings some wisdom and humor to what has been a dark time. Though our conversation was a few weeks before Roe v. Wade was overturned, I know I found listening to (and editing) this episode personally healing and helpful after I heard the news. How to keep up with Mich & his work: Twitter: @MichPGonzalez IG: @thetea_inmich His org's Twitter: @all4lgbtqyouth His org's IG: @all4lgbtqyouth His org's website: https://all4lgbtqyouth.org/   

How do you figure out what your boundaries are? How should you go about communicating boundaries in a way that is both firm and compassionate? How can you remain flexible and open to change without having porous boundaries? Do the same strategies apply to both familial and romantic relationships?  I knew just who to ask: Dedeker Winston, relationship coach, host of the Multiamory podcast, and author of The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory, along with the excellent forthcoming communication guide Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships.  Dedeker is one of the smartest, most articulate people I know, and this conversation was incredibly helpful to me on a practical, nitty-gritty-communication-tips level. I hope you find it useful as well!

How is technology changing our minds and existential experience? What do phones have to do with shame, power, narcissism, and death? How can we think about the difference between virtuality and reality? Is there really even a difference? Why are we not more comforted by our phones when we're addicted to them? In this AP-level episode of Help Existing, we delve into these questions and more, thinking about technology on both a philosophical and psychoanalytic level. My guests are philosopher Victor Krebs and psychologist Richard Frankel, authors of the new book Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations. Krebs is a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and a philosophical curator. Frankel is a faculty member and supervisor at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and a teaching associate and supervisor at Harvard Medical School. This was a fascinating conversation I studied up for and wanted to bring my A-game to. I hope you learn as much as I did, and that maybe after this conversation, you'll have some different lenses to think from a psychoanalytic and philosophical perspective about your relationship with technology. 

"Bisexual” is a label that, at the age of 34, I've only recently become comfortable using. Much of that is thanks to my guest for this episode: Jen Winston, author of Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much. Their memoir, and our conversations since, have helped me understand what “bisexuality” actually means, my internalized bisexual imposter syndrome, bi-phobia, and so much more.  I wanted to have a conversation with Jen this Pride Month to delve into these topics further so that listeners, whether they're bisexual themselves, questioning, or simply want to be better allies to bisexual friends, walk away with more understanding and compassion. 

In this very personal episode, I got help thinking about the nuances of consent. This isn't a directly therapeutic episode so much as a theoretical one: how might we express our ambivalence about sexual experiences that we're not sure constitute assault, but were harmful nonetheless? What are the pressures to come forward with your story in a “post-MeToo world"-- to put a clear label on your experience, or to assign blame?  To delve into these and many other questions, I spoke with a writer and thinker I really admire: Katherine Angel, author of the fantastic book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent. I use a scene for my memoir Open to talk about these themes with Katherine, so a warning that if you haven't read the book yet, this interview will contain spoilers of a pretty pivotal scene. And of course, also a content warning that this episode discusses sexual assault, both in the abstract and in personal detail. I know this conversation really helped me put some different lenses on what happened to me that night, and also around how I think about consent and telling my story moving forward. I hope it is useful to you in some way as well. 

What makes for a good listener? Is it simply making yourself into a blank canvas that absorbs whatever is splattered onto it? Or is it more active than that? We know that meditation teachers and therapists are often good listeners, but how can we laypeople hone the art of listening in conversation? These were some of the questions I had for Brad Listi, who's conducted over 800 interviews with authors over the years on his wonderfully deep OtherPpl podcast. When I had the honor of being a guest on Brad's show to promote my book Open, I noticed that he was particularly skilled at both making me feel deeply heard and steering the conversation in a deep direction.  That talent for listening to others — and the world around him — comes through in his deeply insightful new novel, Be Brief and Tell Them Everything. I wanted to get his advice on how to be a better listener, particularly as a host. This episode will be particularly helpful for those looking to hone the craft of interviewing but was largely broad and relatable to honing the skill of any sort of listening. 

Conversations about how to suck less — aka how to be actively anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic (and so much more!) — can sometimes be tricky to navigate. People in marginalized groups are often asked to do a lot of unpaid labor to explain these issues to their friends, schools, and colleagues. So I figured one thing I could do with various guests on Help Existing is to delve into the specifics of a wide array of questions. This week's topic — how to appreciate Black music when you're not Black, without in any way appropriating it —  seemed like a good place to start.  I spoke with Evette Dionne, author of Lifting As We Climb, and a pop culture critic who often writes about Black music. Together, we delved into the central question of whether a person who is not Black can listen to, twerk, or otherwise dance to Black music in any way that's not somehow problematic.  If your reaction to this topic is like, Ugh, the premise of this even annoys me, that might be a sign of some white fragility or some other form of exceptionalism you're applying yourself to not think about this. So maybe this is especially for you.  I hope this has been helpful. And please, if you have any suggestions of your own, please slide into my DMs on Twitter and Instagram to let me know. We're all in this together. And please subscribe!

The world is a lot. It seems that everyone I talk to feels some sense of despair over the state of the world, an anxiety and general overwhelm that often bleeds into their feelings about their own lives as well. I think about the millennial saying of “can't even” — and I get it. But I also don't want to identify with it. I want to be someone who can even. So I decided to start Help Existing for accountability and help with just that.  I don't need to tell you how many things there are to worry about. Whether it's the assault on reproductive rights, climate change, institutionalized racism, war….the list of things to despair over goes on and on and on. First, a disclaimer: what follows are not suggestions about solving those problems on a structural scale. This is about how we, on a personal level, can deal with the very specific feeling of overwhelm over the fact that we can't fix everything — and never will. How can you hold that feeling without devolving into nihilism and hopelessness, overwhelming anxiety and despair? How can you be realistic while also taking care of yourself and being helpful?  I knew exactly who to ask. Monk Tashi Nyima, an ordained Buddhist monk who's worked as an activist with some of the world's most vulnerable populations for decades, and who, as far as I can tell, never gets lost in despair. Tashi's someone who's helped me on a personal level incredibly since I met him. (If you read my memoir, Open, you'll recognize him as the monk from the end who I talk about non-monogamy and non-attachment with.) What follows are Tashi's warm and practical suggestions about what we can do to cultivate a sense of calm and generosity within ourselves. They are aimed at helping us think about our interconnectedness, our gratitude, and our skills in a way that gives us hope and energy to be helpful in the best way we can.  And please, if you have any suggestions of your own, please slide into my DMs on Twitter and Instagram to let me know. We're all in this together (in fact, that's kind of the whole point of this advice). 

A quick explanation of the premise of the new podcast "Help Existing" with host Rachel Krantz.  The world is a lot, and we could all use some help existing in it. Each week, award-winning journalist and author of OPEN Rachel Krantz will interview different experts, authors, teachers, and friends, all of whom can offer various pieces of advice on specific aspects of existing. This is going to be a show where highbrow and lowbrow topics happily co-exist, or really where we don't even believe in the concept of high and low brow. You could have one week talking about how to confront your fear of death and existential despair, and the next week might be about how to have your first conversation with a partner about kink or non-monogamy. No topic is too taboo, specific, or abstract -- but each conversation must be, well, helpful!