The Year's Most Resonant
These are the episodes you loved the most—along with the newsletters.
This Friday night (December 13th), I’ll be in conversation with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and developmental psychologist Niobe Way at
in Summerland. There are a few tickets left, the conversation runs from 6pm to 7pm. We’ll be discussing the crisis with boys and “boy” culture. It should be wonderful, please come! (And if you don’t know about Newsom’s Representation Project and work on gender equity, you’re missing out. The Mask You Live In and Miss Representation are both wonderful documentaries.This Thursday (sorry, I originally said Wednesday), I’ll be doing a Substack Live with about staying grounded and resourced in these weird-ass times. We’ll be talking tools. You can find us here, on Substack, at 4pm PT on Thursday.
It’s wild to be wrapping up my second year on Substack—a heartfelt thank you to all of you who support my work, both financially, and also with your time and attention. It is deeply appreciated. If you enjoy my work, please consider becoming a paying subscriber or leaving a podcast rating or review (Apple here, Spotify here). Ratings and reviews helps the show be discovered while paying me for the work means I can continue to do it. I typically don’t pay-wall content with the hopes it will find a wider audience—I really appreciate that some of you pay anyway.
I thought it would be fun to do some best-of lists. These are, by first week listens and total pageviews, the six most popular episodes of 2024, and the five most popular PTT posts. (I’m going to try to slide out a top 10 books of 2024 newsletter before the New Year ball drops too.)
Enjoy!
FROM THE PODCAST:
#6: Courtney Smith: Understanding the Drama Triangle
Seeing my friend Courtney so close to #5 inspired this to be a Top 6 list instead (plus six is the goddess number, so why not). In this conversation, Courtney and I dig into the concepts of Above- and Below-the-Line from Conscious Leadership Group, along with Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle. Courtney is a dear friend—and she is my co-conspirator on a workbook to go with On Our Best Behavior. It’s called Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness: A Process for Reclaiming Your Full Self, it’s really, really good, and it’s coming out next Summer. I will be telling you a lot more about this workbook in the coming months. (You can pre-order it here.)
#5: Emily Nagoski, PhD: On Maintaining Desire
I first met Emily during my goop days: In fact, at the premiere of The goop Lab in New York, I interviewed Emily and legendary sex educator Betty Dodson together—Betty is the star of the episode on sexual pleasure. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend. (Betty died a few months later at the age of 91.) In this podcast episode, Emily and I dug into her latest book—Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. While her first big book, Come as You Are, is a primer on how we all function as sexual creatures, Come Together explores what happens when you bring that into relationship—and try to establish and maintain a connection that can endure through seasons of, well, low interest. She is full of ideas, principles, and methods for getting it going—including a core blueprint for determining what rooms are adjacent to your desire.
#4: Kate Kennedy: On Being Basic
Getting to know Kate Kennedy was a highlight this year—she interviewed me for her podcast, Be There in Five, in 2023 and it was one of my favorite conversations about On Our Best Behavior to date. Kate wrote the bestselling One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting in—and while I’m Gen X and not a Millenial, there is so much in her book to which we can all relate, notably this fear of being…basic. Kennedy points to this long tradition of the veneration of action figures, Marvel, and football—and the deprecation of pretty much anything that girls and women value, whether it’s romance novels, the Spice Girls, or American Girl Dolls. While her point is not new—and certainly aligned with a summer that saw the Barbie movie, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé—her exploration of how it shaped her own mind in childhood, and the way she experiences herself now as a result of it, is revelatory.
#3: James Hollis, PhD: On Finding Our Soul’s Vocation
I’m a James Hollis mega-fan and sitting with him for this episode did not disappoint—in fact, I actually cried. Hearing Hollis, one of the most astute Jungian interpreters and therapists working today, explain the crisis of masculinity is incredibly moving—as is his explanation of a soul that’s allowed to live its vocation, or calling. 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. He’s already written 19 books. Some of my favorites include Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, and The Broken Mirror: Refracted Visions of Ourselves.
#2: Lisa Mosconi, PhD: The Upsides of Menopause
Neuroscientist, Lisa Mosconi, PhD, currently has 11 grants—including four from the NIH—to study Alzheimers, menopause, and the female brain. There are many things to love about Dr. Mosconi and her work—one, that she’s focused on an underserved group, i.e. women, but also because her insights dramatically expand the way we’ve been conditioned to understand these hormonal shifts in our lives. The picture she paints of the female brain is not only fascinating, but it’s inspiring: As we age and move through stages, our brains continually remodel, becoming leaner, meaner, and more empathic. The female brain is…formidable. There are also many things we can do to make these turbulent transitions slightly smoother sailing, which we dive into throughout our conversation.
#1: Julie & John Gottman, PhDs: Why Conflict is Critical
I first met John and Julie Gottman about six years ago, when podcasts weren’t really a thing yet—they didn’t want to let me interview them (this time, for goop) unless I went to a weekend workshop to do it. (To be fair, I did everything in person back then. Different times!) I dragged my husband, Rob—and then could barely get him out of there. He loved it, and brought EVERY SINGLE THING they had to sell on the folding table in the conference table. It was a transformative workshop and we still talk about it to this day. (I wrote about it in On Our Best Behavior. We’ve been together many times since and no conversation disappoints. If you want more, our conversation from 2022 is called “What Makes Love Last.”
Ahem, podcasts were a thing six years ago, Elise! (I love you.)