Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

By: Elise Loehnen and Audacy
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  • Summary

  • 45-minute conversations and investigations with today's leading thinkers, authors, experts, doctors, healers, scientists about life's biggest questions: Why do we do what we do? How can we come to know and love ourselves better? How can we come together to heal and build a better world?
    © Elise Loehnen. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Sciences Personal Success
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Episodes
  • On Finding Our Soul's Vocation (James Hollis, PhD)

    On Finding Our Soul's Vocation (James Hollis, PhD)
    Sep 12 2024
    “You said the important word there and that is the word grown up. To be grown up is what? To recognize, yes, I am accountable for what spills into the world through me. And if I don't want to be, then I'm just irresponsible and immature. And if I want to be accountable, then I have to start inquiring about from whence are these places, these things coming from in me. Because if I don't do that, they'll just keep happening. And secondly, to, to know that I'm accountable for those consequences. And thirdly, that I have to find some source. of guidance when I'm not depending on simply the dictates of the culture outside me. You can put it this way, we all need to find what supports us when nothing supports us. That's a paradox, you see, but essential. Supports you when the outer structures and, you know, marching orders that you got from family and culture, when they don't work anymore.” So says James Hollis, a PhD and Jungian analyst who is still in private practice in Washington D.C. Hollis started his career as a professor of humanities before a midlife crisis brought him to his knees—and to the Jung Institute in Zurich. The author of 19 books, Hollis is one of the best interpreters of Carl Jung’s work, making it accessible for all of us who want to understand how complexes, archetypes, synchronicities, and the shadow drive our lives. Hollis’s books are very meaningful to me—you’ll find a long list in the show notes—and the chance to interview him did not disappoint. In fact, at one point, where he describes what we do to boys as we turn them into men, I actually started to cry. Meanwhile, James Hollis still lectures—you can go to his site to find a way to see him live. The fact that he’s 84 and does not seem inclined to retire—in fact, he told me he has another book coming out next year—is a testament to how a vocation doesn’t feel like work. This is one of my favorite interviews to date. I hope you love it as much as I do. MORE FROM JAMES HOLLIS, PhD: Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up A Life of Meaning: Relocating Your Center of Spiritual Gravity The Broken Mirror: Refracted Visions of Ourselves James Hollis’s Website RELATED EPISODES: Connie Zweig, “Embracing the Shadow” Satya Doyle Byock, “Navigating Quarterlife” Terry Real, “Healing Male Depression” Niobe Way, PhD, “The Critical Need for Deep Connection” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Why Cynicism is Not Smart (Jamil Zaki, PhD)

    Why Cynicism is Not Smart (Jamil Zaki, PhD)
    Sep 5 2024
    “In certain ways, our culture has glamorized the cynic. The person who doesn't have faith in others is seen as maybe wise or especially sharp. And it turns out that that's true in the research as well. If you survey people and you tell them about a cynic and a non cynic and ask them a bunch of questions about those two, most people, 70 percent will tell you that cynics are smarter than non cynics. And 85 percent of people believe that cynics are socially smarter than non cynics. For instance, that they'll be better at spotting liars. In other words, a lot of us put faith in people who don't have very much faith in people, which is ironic and also wrong. It turns out that the data are pretty clear that actually, when we give in to cynicism, we don't just feel bad, which we do, we also judge poorly. We do less well for instance, in spotting who's telling the truth and who's lying, because if you have a blanket default assumption about everybody, you stop actually paying attention to the evidence in front of you that can show you who might be trustworthy and who might not be.” So says Dr. Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Jamil trained at Columbia and Harvard, studying empathy and kindness in the human brain, and I’ve been a mega-fan for years, after interviewing him for his first book, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, in 2019. His latest book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, is a must-read. It’s a love letter of sorts, a collaboration through the veil with his late colleague Emile Bruneau, who also studied compassion, peace, and hope. I would love for every single person to read this book as it paints a more accurate, data-driven portrait of who we are, which is mostly good, and mostly aligned in our vision for the future. Jamil explains what happens to us when fear and cynicism intervene and the way we come to see each other through a distorted lens. He busts some other significant myths as well, namely that we glorify cynicism as being “smart”—you know, no dupes allowed—but cynicism actually makes us cognitively less intelligent. Yes, you heard that right. I loved this conversation, which we’ll turn to now. MORE FROM JAMIL ZAKI, PhD: Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World Follow Jamil on X and Instagram Jamil’s Lab’s Website RELATED EPISODES: Amanda Ripley, “Navigating Conflict” "Calling In the Call-Out Culture with Loretta Ross" To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    56 mins
  • Finding Your Inner Mentor (Tara Mohr)

    Finding Your Inner Mentor (Tara Mohr)
    Aug 29 2024
    "I was feeling this self censoring and constant push pull in sharing my voice and just feeling quite afraid of going for things that I wanted and so I got really interested in that gap and started to work with people with those clients around the inner critic. And my first guess was like, oh, we're going to dig into their childhoods and find who was the critical source in their lives that created this voice. And very quickly, I found out that was not going to be my answer because I would hear the exact same adult inner critic in these women. And some were like, my parents were so supportive. And some were like, my parents ignored me, my parents cheered me on, my parents were so critical. And yet this sort of adult, more professionally oriented, more adult selfhood oriented inner critics sounded the same despite this wide range of early experiences. So then I had to look a little more culturally and also biologically. And what became clear was that that inner critic voice really spoke up when something took us out of our comfort zone, or when we were contemplating something out of our comfort zone. And to place that in a context of gender, for women, what is unsafe and what we very deeply learn is unsafe is visibility, power, too much success, shining bright, standing out from the crowd in some way, all of that." So Says Tara Mohr, a coach, educator and the author of Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead, which is celebrating its 10th birthday this fall. I first met Tara a decade ago and was so taken with her and her insights that we did four stories together—stories that were deeply resonant with women everywhere. These stories were about understanding—and releasing—your inner critic, locating your inner mentor, examining the ways in which you keep yourself in the shadows and why, and the most potent one of them all: why women are so quick to criticize other women. We cover this same ground 10 years on—and it’s just as powerful as it was then. I loved reconnecting with Tara and can’t wait to do more with her over the coming decades, specifically revisioning what it might look like if more women led—but not in a model defined by men, in a way that might be uniquely their own. Okay, let’s get to our conversation. MORE FROM TARA MOHR: The Inner Mentor Guided Meditation Tara Mohr’s Website Tara’s Online Courses Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 7 mins

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