So I made a big decision recently, which was to quit playing competitive ultimate this summer. The process was grueling for me and it brought up a lot of interesting things for me. I start with wrapping my mind around letting go of an identity (in my own monologue) to discussing my body with Mike and ending with confidence in how I want to grow old with my body and try to embrace death with Mike, Lindsey, and Bronwyn (and the kids in the background). Who knew it would be a spiritual journey to q...
Feb 02, 2018•14 min•Season 1Ep. 19
So I made a big decision recently, which was to quit playing competitive ultimate this summer. The process was grueling for me and it brought up a lot of interesting things for me. I start with wrapping my mind around letting go of an identity (in my own monologue) to discussing my body with Mike and ending with confidence in how I want to grow old with my body and try to embrace death with Mike, Lindsey, and Bronwyn (and the kids in the background). Who knew it would be a spiritual journey to q...
Feb 02, 2018•13 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Background Jenn and I were meeting for a brainstorming session over “report cards” for home learning. We both highly value the importance of process a long with the outcome or the product. We decided to start discussing a tool to help parents (including ourselves) document the process of learning in their children, with a focus on learning that’s done at home. We don’t cover the nitty gritty of what we come up with — we’ll save that for later — but we discuss the value of process, other ways peo...
Jan 02, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 17
This is mine and Dawn’s first public discussion about her life with depression and anxiety. There are so many things I love about Dawn sharing all of this but one thing that I think deserves extra attention is how articulate and wise she with her mental illness. It’s like she sees it both through her own eyes and experience but also through the eyes of some looking from outside and also someone looking with a clinical lens. We cover quite a few topics including what it actually feels like to liv...
Dec 09, 2017•58 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Background We’re at Merchants of Green Coffee in Toronto. Just before I started recording Mike said that he had the thought that everything is exactly how it is suppose to be. So I start recording as we are launched into a conversation about enlightenment, objective truth, and activism. Because we’re at a coffee shop, we have some great background music that sets a nice atmosphere, I think. The conversation ends with Mike's distraction. Resources Merchants of Green Coffee: https://merchantsofgre...
Nov 18, 2017•36 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Background: We’re having a house breakfast. It starts off with Ashar and Nyjah getting stuck while crawling under the couch. We’re talking about our white privilege and some of our resistances to our white privilege, particularly in comparison to disadvantages we might feel because of our gender and/or sexuality. Throughout the conversation you also get to hear us parenting our kids squabbles and requests. Around the 30-minute mark, I stop the audio and then when not recording Bronwyn launches i...
Nov 08, 2017•36 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Summary Mike and I somehow end up in a debate on “what is a hipster?” It’s an old conversation, from 2014. I honestly can’t remember how it started but it did lead to a deeper (?) conversation about craftship, apprenticeship, and mentorship. You have to wait about 10 min to get to that part but I found listening to us figure out what a hipster is, kind of amusing. Then, we talk about the difference between craft, apprenticeship, and mentorship compared to design-based problem-solution-type busin...
Nov 01, 2017•30 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Summary This was a planned discussion about the role of neuroscience in coaching between myself and my friend and colleague Quinn Simpson. Quinn is a coach who works primarily within education. We cover a lot of topics including creativity, neuroplasticity, change and capacity for change, stress, decision-making, intuition, empathy, how to be present with others, and how to self-reflect on our own biases as a coach. We end with a look at how neuroscience can provide tolerance and compassion for ...
Oct 25, 2017•58 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Who would be interested in this? * people considering starting their own podcast * people who like to think about the process of podcasting * content people * people who like to watch other people’s projects unfold, kind of like Start-Up Podcast audience. 😉 Paul’s coaching me to start my Mandyland podcast. We recorded it in the summer before it launched. We start this session with Paul discussing his proposed coaching process and then we talk about Mandyland. He helps me figure out some of the ...
Oct 20, 2017•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Background Jenn rants about her job for the first 13 minutes. So skip ahead if you don’t want to hear that. We eventually cover topics such as leadership, managing others, reference letters, challenges of being a working mom, brining your whole self to work, working/busy too much, life in balance, being addicted to work. (BTW, my former student DID get the job that I’m referring to with that reference letter part of the conversation!). Resources * Money & Happiness: http://harvardmagazine.co...
Oct 15, 2017•52 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This was recorded back in the summer of 2014, long before Mandyland was conceptualized. At the time, I thought I would have a podcast with mine and Mike’s conversations. You can tell it’s old because I refer to Jian Gomeshi as the host of the Q back before we knew what kind of asshole he was. Most of what we talk about is the career of ranting and my desire to have pursued that, had I known about it at the time.
Oct 11, 2017•14 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Background We are all over the map in our conversation. We spent a great deal of time talking about poop, which I’m actually not ashamed of. I think we should talk about EVERYTHING as a culture, poop included. And this isn't even about baby poop. Just plain old regular adult poop. And the anxiety that provokes it! But that’s not all we talk about it. We started talking this conversation with a focus on authenticity in our writing and other projects and we actually do come back to that. I think t...
Oct 07, 2017•28 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Show Notes: Background This is an older recording from when our babes were under a year old and you can hear them in the background. What feels like a long time ago, Jenn and I were very active in alternative education systems, but at the time it was focussed on Post-Secondary Education. In this conversation, we talk about early childhood education. We play around with some ideas for how can we create a new education system distinct from the public school system and distinct from the homeschool ...
Sep 29, 2017•20 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Greer currently lives in LA and was back in Toronto so we decided to meet at Riverdale Park to discuss parenting practices. We cover a lot of parenting topics in our hour and 20 min conversation including sleep training, responsive parenting, discipline, self-regulation, co-sleeping, childcare, and how to balance being a mom with work. We include personal anecdotes about my 2 year old and her dog! Resources * Dan Siegel’s The Whole Brain Child: https://www.amazon.ca/Whole-Brain-Child-Revolutiona...
Sep 24, 2017•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 5
The conversation starts off with a reaction that Jenn had to a facilitator that I brought in for a retreat day for the staff of my company, the Centre for Applied Neuroscience. It sparked a whole conversation on privilege, which I admit was tough for me to have. I personally feel like it’s hard to talk about this, especially publicly, because out of fear that we might say the wrong thing. So I venture into this conversation feeling vulnerable. I think we dive into a few good points about it and ...
Sep 17, 2017•43 min•Season 1Ep. 4
We’re up at the cottage driving back from town. We start talking about my podcast but that leads into talking about doing things just for doing them, without another agenda. This leads into a conversation about science and how basic science is just for the sake of curiosity and how there is value in that. Despite this deviation into science, the conversation actually relates to people doing what they love and seeing where it goes. This is a belief I have held for a long time and it is the founda...
Sep 15, 2017•12 min•Season 1Ep. 3
We started off with Lindsey reflecting on her maternity leave (which is about to end) and the anxiety she felt during her time off from work. It fed into a discussion about body image, which Lindsey and I have covered to a great extent through our co-founded organized, Body Monologues. The theme of this conversation was our “Expanding Identity”.
Sep 15, 2017•12 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Overview of what to expect on Mandyland
Aug 08, 2017•12 min•Season 1Ep. 1
