For April’s guest-less episode, I’m looking back on the wild ride that was this month, and trying to make sense of this period of contemplation in my life. I share a few realizations I’ve had about: uncertainty (involving Phil Stutz’s “evil wedding cake” theory); betrayal (involving a special tarot reading with Mark Horn); whether or not I have faith that the universe will support me (involving a group workshop on what women want); and what we’re meant to be doing here (involving a gondola ride with Chelsea Handler). I also answer a couple of listener questions about how I manage my time, and my research and creative processes.
For the show notes, head over to my Substack.==
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54:15
A System for Getting What’s Missing in Your Life (Laura Day)
“ Here are my real tools—because fantasy tools give you fantasy results,” says Laura Day, New York Times–bestselling author and renowned psychic. Today we get into her new book, The Prism, and her simple, effective approach to the kind of change that is often tiny, and incremental, and yet can reconstruct your whole life.
For the show notes, head over to my Substack.
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1:01:13
Navigating Different Systems of Morality (Kurt Gray, PhD)
What actually motivates us? When we disagree with someone else—how can we do it better? Social psychologist and author of Outraged, Kurt Gray, PhD, shares what he’s learned from studying the behaviors of people with different experiences. He corrects a few funny things we got wrong about human evolution. And he explains what “concept creep” and “the creep of harm” mean—and why we’re generally much safer than we think. We talk about what tends to give birth to polarization, why we behave the way we do on social media, and why we often forget the complexity within our own perspectives.
For the show notes, head over to my Substack.
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56:15
When Does Manifestation Work? (Anne Emerson)
“ My work is about getting the logjams out of your personal river so things can flow again,” says one-of-a-kind, intuitive coach Anne Emerson. Today, she outlines her process (holographic repatterning) for helping people to work through limiting beliefs—to recognize the false stories that we tell ourselves on repeat, and to break free from them. It’s perhaps surprisingly fun.
For the show notes, head over to my Substack.
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49:12
The Desire for Miracles and Wonder (Elaine Pagels, PhD)
For decades, Elaine Pagels’s work has been changing the historical landscape of Christian religion. She’s also changed the way many people, including myself, see the world. Pagels is a religion professor at Princeton University, and the author of seminal, award-winning books like The Gnostic Gospels, and her newest, Miracles and Wonder. We talked about the surprising things she’s learned about Jesus and his followers; what his most radical teaching was; and why Jesus, this essentially unlikely traveling rabbi, emerged as the figure he did in our culture. And why this all still matters today. We talk about Pagels’s own story, her personal spiritual pull; as well as a vortex I went down in boarding school that made me understand how susceptible we all are to constraints that explain the world in overly reductive and simple ways. We reflect on how natural it is for us to want some sense of connection with a transcendent being. And how this has shaped the way Elaine approaches her work: not with the intention of destroying a framework, but looking for ways to expand it.
For links to all of Elaine Pagels’s book and the (many) show notes, head over to my Substack.
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Writer Elise Loehnen explores life’s big questions with today’s leading thinkers, experts, and luminaries: Why do we do what we do? How can we understand and love ourselves better? What would it look like to come together and build a more meaningful world?
Listen to Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen, The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app
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