This week, we’re revisiting one of our most discussed and asked-for topics: BURNOUT. Caroline Dooner’s first book, The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy is a massively popular and influential book for good reason. It’s that helped so many of us reframe diet culture and to finally drop the 10,000 lb gorilla that is our obsession with food. After several years of feeling the effects of her work, and the way she approached her life and success, Caroline is back with a second book - Tired as F*ck:...
Mar 03, 2022•53 min•Ep. 37
How many of us have the courage to face the friction that comes when we need to grow, but people want us to stay the same? You’ve built an audience as a “truth-teller,” but then what if your understanding of the truth changes? When you’re an author, artist and performer like Jill Louise Busby, creative growth is essential, but the community that first delivered your moment of “micro-fame” might not be on board. It’s a life challenge we all face, even if we don’t all do it publicly. Laura gets in...
Feb 24, 2022•42 min•Ep. 36
The TMST community takes center stage again as Laura tackles some universal questions on facing down shame and regret. In this episode, we explore the ways our mistakes, our successes, our disappointments and our growth can’t be compartmentalized if we’re going to be free. It’s a VERY hopeful and energizing AMA. We’re continually blown away by the candor and courage TMST listeners bring to this space. And THEN…we have a major show announcement to share, plus a taste of next week’s guest - the br...
Feb 17, 2022•54 min•Ep. 35
This week, we asked a big question... what can Timothée Chalamet’s character in “Don’t Look Up” teach us about finding faith in tough times? No, seriously… we dig into it in a real way and Nadia Bolz-Weber is exactly the person to explore what we can take away from what she admits is a “deeply cynical movie.” Nadia is an ordained Lutheran pastor, the New York Times best selling author of three memoirs including Pastrix and Accidental Saints; Finding God In All The Wrong People, and a woman in lo...
Feb 10, 2022•55 min•Ep. 34
Janet was right. It’s all about CONTROL. Amanda White has some wise, and life-earned, things to say about the illusion of control. If we’re honest, our desire for control is inseparable from all of our motivations, and can lead us to extreme places. Amanda is a therapist, a woman in recovery from both disordered eating and alcohol, and she’s the author of NOT DRINKING TONIGHT, a terrific book that is a huge contribution in the sobriety space because it bridges the gap between memoir and clinical...
Feb 03, 2022•42 min•Ep. 33
How would you approach change if you saw it as BOTH a practice AND mindset? Katy Milkman has researched this and it’s clear she’s on to something. In today’s conversation and in her bestselling book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, Katy Milkman shows us how change is BOTH a combination of acquiring practical skills AND a rewiring our brains through new behaviors. Katy Milkman is a Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ...
Jan 27, 2022•44 min•Ep. 32
We promised more AMAs, so let’s go! This week, Laura answers three questions that interlace around the topics of infidelity, trust, intimacy, divorce, addiction, forgiveness, and the complex reality of life and love. We are so grateful for the courage and trust our listeners place in us when they call in and share themselves in such generous ways. Trust us, their words and their voices will stick with you and add to your day. Submit a question for a future episode: https://www.tmstpod.com/questi...
Jan 20, 2022•52 min•Ep. 31
Purity culture isn’t a thing that happens to OTHER people. The tendrils of sexual repression have insinuated themselves into all of our lives. In the second half of our conversation with Jamie Lee Finch, we see how evangelical Christianity’s restrictive approach to sex, sex education and owning your body and desire isn’t that different from what so many of us experienced. It’s a shocking and bracing discovery that has profound implications for our lives. This conversation is funny and weird and ...
Jan 13, 2022•40 min•Ep. 30
What if your body was your closest friend instead of…whatever it is now? Jamie Lee Finch is a wise guide for so many women who are asking - what would a healthy relationship with my body look like? In this conversation we go deep into why we need to relate to our bodies like A PERSON and the healing that can come as a result. Virtually NONE of us are free of body issues, whether they’re around our shape, or desire, or how we change with aging. Jamie’s unwavering stance for our health, wholeness ...
Jan 06, 2022•37 min•Ep. 29
Our final episode for 2021 is a harvest of hard-earned wisdom to launch us into 2022. You’ll hear from Peter Rollins, Annie Grace, Rob Bell, yung pueblo, and africa brooke. They share so much on how to slow down, trust ourselves, get our focus on what we truly need and, most of all, have fun while doing it! We are SO GRATEFUL for all of the support and encouragement that has come our way in these first six months since we launched TMST. We can’t wait to get at in the New Year! Super deluxe +2 ho...
Dec 30, 2021•53 min•Ep. 28
What if you could step off the rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows? What if the pain that comes with taking everything personally could taper and largely disappear? THAT’S the promise of emotional sobriety, and Veronica Valli is one of the most steady, sane, helpful voices when it comes to that murky topic. Veronica is a woman in long-term recovery, a therapist, a sobriety coach, founder of the Soberful program, a co-host of the Soberful podcast, and the author of three books, the most rec...
Dec 23, 2021•52 min•Ep. 27
John Richards is the morning drive host at KEXP, Seattle. For decades, he’s been the soundtrack to the lives of people starting their day, handpicking every record and building a global fanbase. The thing to understand about John is that he’s on a mission than transcends playing cool tunes. John and KEXP are using their collective platform to carry the message that we’re not alone. That we are loved. That there’s a reason to get up every day. He is charming and funny, even when sharing about his...
Dec 16, 2021•52 min•Ep. 26
What would life be like if we could identify ALL the emotions happening in and around us and have empathy for it all? Sharon Adams has a few ideas on how we can get there. Sharon’s a master trainer and facilitator in workshops around emotional intelligence and conflict resolution. She’s also someone who has profound insight into the lived reality of unconscious bias and inclusion and the stories she shares are super relatable. This episode of TMST is for everyone who has worked or lived with som...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 25
What if life wasn’t an endless series of zero-sum, high stakes experiences? Leonard Perlmutter is asking these and many other questions, and he's doing it in a lovely, humble way. He’s a meditation teacher, an author, and has a unique ability to make complicated things clear. He founded the American Meditation Institute in Albany, New York in 1996, and in the years since they've touched tens of thousands of lives through their classes and meditation, yoga and integrated health. Don’t be fooled b...
Dec 02, 2021•59 min•Ep. 24
Laura offers two poems today: one of her favorites, one of her own. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are celebrating. And to all, a big heap of gratitude and mystery from all of us at Tell Me Something True. The Sleepless ones by Lawrence Tirnauer https://drkarinlawson.com/the-sleepless-ones/ You could be soft instead by Laura McKowen https://www.lauramckowen.com/blog/2019-3-11-you-could-be-soft Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers ...
Nov 25, 2021•6 min•Ep. 23
This week, we turned it over to you! In the first Ask Me Anything (AMA) episode, Laura answers four questions from our listener community. She talks about why she does this show, whether or not she’d ever do another sobriety-specific show, how to choose creative projects, the truths and fallacies of the whole “you must love yourself before you can be loved by others” saying, talking about new sobriety and the importance of choosing who you tell, and making friends as an adult, especially a sober...
Nov 18, 2021•57 min•Ep. 22
What would you do if someone said you could “find comfort for the most vexing questions in our digitized lives in the wisdom of 19th c. European philosophers”? Sara Kuburic has taken up that challenge. Through her online persona as The Millennial Therapist and in private practice, Sara’s training as an existential psychotherapist integrates modern mental health knowledge with some of the most complex Western thought. Sara’s work provides a thrillingly lucid, concise and grounding response to The...
Nov 11, 2021•41 min•Ep. 21
What if the hard thing you didn’t want to share was also the thing that made you most human and brought people closer? Anna Sale knows A LOT about this. Anna is the creator of Death, Sex & Money, a podcast about “the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.” She is also the author of Let’s Talk About Hard Things, which is an invitation to discuss the tough topics that all of us encounter. The New Yorker said it’s “like a good conversation with a friend” and we agree! Anna has...
Nov 04, 2021•56 min•Ep. 20
When was the last time an artist took you by the hand and said, “Here, let me show you how the world looks through my eyes”? Frank X. Walker is Kentucky’s former poet laureate and one of the co-founders of the Affrilachian Poets - a grassroots group of poets of color living in the Appalachian region. Thirty years after their founding, the Affrilachian Poets continue to dismantle the idea that Appalachia is a white region, devoid of literature and the arts. For decades, Frank’s work has embodied ...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 19
What if social media scrolling was the latest version of the mythical Labyrinth? An elaborate, confusing structure intended to keep the Minotaur (you) from escaping. Jane Clapp is a Toronto-based Jungian Somatics teacher who left social media because she knew it was making her sick. Her answer to the question “WHY is it making me sick?” tapped the deep wisdom of concepts like archetypes, complexes, and the collective unconscious. That twitchy anxiety we feel from all the FOMO and YOLO isn’t an a...
Oct 21, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 18
How would your life look if you arranged it so you could do what you love? Rob Bell has one of the most pure, electric, inspiring and infectious energies for life. He’s truly engaged in the mystery and is such a model for doing things your own way. A former megachurch pastor, who is the New York Times bestselling author of “Love Wins” and ten other books has been encouraging us to engage in the joy of life for many years. In a time of “influencers,” cheap fixes, social media narcissism, hustle c...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 17
This week, Laura takes the mic solo to reflect on hitting seven years of sobriety. She goes deep on four ideas that feel most important now as she looks back - ideas that are both urgent and grounding, timely and timeless - whether you’ve struggled with addiction or not. Since Laura got sober in 2014, cultural ideas and discussions around sobriety and addiction have massively changed. A “condition” once cloaked in anonymity and dark church basements has become both vocal and visible as more and ...
Oct 07, 2021•59 min•Ep. 16
How many times have you looked at your relationship partner and wondered, “Why do they do that?” Have we got an episode for you! Julie Menanno’s “The Secure Relationship” (@thesecurerelationship) Instagram account is a touchstone for many folks in the TMST community. In a sea of glib, pop psychology, and low nutrition, feel-good content, she's taken her work as a couple’s therapist and scholar and turned it into a feed that’s operating at a much higher level. In recent years, the concept of atta...
Sep 30, 2021•51 min•Ep. 15
What would life be like if we gave ourselves PERMISSION? Permission to truly chill, to feel deeply, to open up and express ourselves in ways that serve us - and others? Kristoffer “KC” Carter has A LOT of ideas about this. He’s the exact opposite of aspirational hustle culture and warmed over self help -- and he’s Laura’s coach! In this episode, Kristoffer shows us what happens when a disaffected sales dude goes deep into the world of meditation and spirituality and emerges as a Fortune 100 exec...
Sep 23, 2021•48 min•Ep. 14
Have you ever said, “I’d love to stop scrolling/ drinking/ shopping/ gambling, but…?” That’s the power of dopamine. Dr. Anna Lembke is one of our most brilliant science communicators. She’s the New York Times bestselling author of Dopamine Nation, the program director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and the chief of the Stanford Addiction Medical Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Simply, if there is ONE VOICE you should listen to on why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain, it’s...
Sep 16, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 13
What do you do when you’ve impacted the lives of MILLIONS and you want to walk away because you’re miserable? Annie Grace’s book, This Naked Mind, and her free online course, The Alcohol Experiment, blew open the conversation around alcohol. It’s a legit cultural phenomenon. But after years of making a difference, she had to face the fact that some of the things that had animated her drinking - the scarcity, the unhealthy competition, the never-enoughness - were still there. Her old animating en...
Sep 09, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 12
How is social media rewiring us, and what’s the cost? Laura has been living with this question for years. In her writing and on the show, she’s shared how social media has affected her mental health, some of the eerie parallels to her alcohol addiction, and what ultimately led to her decision to bow out of social media earlier this year. Following her exit, Laura’s been diving deep into this topic, and this week, she goes solo on the mic, exploring one specific psychological framework she’s chew...
Sep 02, 2021•53 min•Ep. 11
How do you show up in relationships? Jim Zartman is a certified Enneagram teacher, a former Midwest megachurch producer, a father, husband, and the Co-Founder of The Art of Growth, a top-rated Enneagram podcast and company of the same name. He also happens to be one of Laura’s best friends. Laura brought Jim on to break down the three types of relational energy we tend to inhabit, how each can cause pain and dysfunction in our relationships, and the magical fourth type, or “with” energy, that he...
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 10
What do you do when the music stops and there’s no dancing in the distraction machine? For Jenn Wasner, like so many of us, that was her pandemic year. She had become “incredibly adept at outrunning myself,” so when her life as a touring musician was paused and two relationships ended she realized that picking up the guitar was not going to bring peace. Jenn Wasner’s band Wye Oak, her collaboration with Andy Stack, is connoisseur-grade indie rock and her deep musicality has earned her spots on t...
Aug 19, 2021•58 min•Ep. 9
“Rachel Hollis is a manifestation of a larger ideology about women's place in society. That if you just try hard enough, all of these structural issues that are making your life really, really hard can be solved if you just wash your face. .” - Anne Helen Petersen Anne Helen Petersen is one of our most essential cultural observers. Her work at Buzzfeed culminated in her 2020 book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. Now she’s using Culture Study, her Substack newsletter, t...
Aug 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 8
