Lead to Gold

The wellness internet has a money problem, and it's dressed up in the language of liberation. 

In this episode, I'm getting into something that has been bothering me for a long time: the quiet but pervasive trend of spiritual bypassing around finances in online wellness culture, and how it gets repackaged and sold to women under the banner of feminism. We talk about why the "money is neutral" conversation is not only wrong but ...

I cursed a lot in this one.

This week, we're getting into everything that's been keeping us up at night about AI, starting with the news that broke this week around Jacob Coxon and the growing chorus of whistleblowers sounding the alarm on superintelligence. We talk about why this fear isn't new, why the environmental, moral, and educational damage has been accumulating for years, and why I think AI is categorically different from e...

Last week, I published a blog post asking the question that had been sitting with me for months: where are the women? Specifically, the older women who are still fully themselves, still curious, still having fun, still becoming. The response surprised me, and the conversation it started didn't feel finished. So I called one of my best friends.

In this episode, I sit down with my colleague-turned-bestie, one of my favorite people to ...

Let's be honest: some of us would rather reorganize our entire lives than have one uncomfortable conversation. 

In this episode, I'm coming clean about my own deeply avoidant tendencies and making the case that conflict resolution is actually a learnable skill, not a personality trait you either have or don't (I would know, I've been working hard). Starting with two personal stories where, notably, the other person had to be th...

In episode 44, we talked all about why being a "serial hobbyist" is actually a great problem. It expands your skills, your range, your social networks, and your self confidence. But what we didn't quite touch on is just how existential it can be when you start to understand that the things you spend your time doing actually matter quite a lot. 

So what do we do about that? I don't know if I have the answer, but I defi...

This one is for those of us who are chronically overwhelmed and experiencing the woes of "Good Girl Syndrome" (and no, you do not need to be a woman or a girl to get it). If you constantly tell yourself or have outside influences telling you that you should be able to achieve more, and you simply aren't, maybe the solution isn't to try harder. Maybe it's to take a step back, regulate, and realign with what feels restorative to you....

Most of us are craving a deeper sense of meaning, and one of the best ways to achieve that is to experience an "altered state" where we feel more present, more aware, and more appreciative of our surroundings. But in a culture where we are spiritually illiterate, it's easy to assume we can only get there through drugs or intense meditation.

Not true. We can experience this stone-cold sober.

Today, I want to share my own experiences w...

Paul Lagerstedt has always been drawn to fixing things and understanding how systems work. When he began to notice his own adverse reaction to alcohol without an explanation, he got curious: what’s actually in alcoholic beverages beyond ethanol, and why do people respond so differently? He began researching the trace compounds that can be present in wine, beer, spirits, and cocktails, and whether it was possible to reduce exp...

I'm going through a little bit of a hard time right now. So to be very candid, I needed a little bit of my own cheering up. I hope it helps you through whatever stuckness you're experiencing right now, too.

In today's episode, I'm outlining five reminders or mantras that have helped me through difficult periods of my life, from lacking motivation to perpetuating negative self-talk, so much so that I still think about them to this da...

Jealousy gets a bad reputation, but what if it's actually trying to tell you something? 

In this episode, I'm making the case for sitting with your jealousy instead of rushing to shame yourself out of it. We'll dig into why the current discourse around jealousy flattens a genuinely complicated feeling into either a character flaw or a feeling to normalize, and why neither of those is especially useful. We talk about the real di...

Sigh...this was a big one. So big, in fact, I had to split it into two parts. Please listen to part one first if you haven't already!

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with trading Spotify for a record collection - I think it's a big step in the right direction. But if we've ironed out the true problems of the internet, the analogue movement isn't addressing or solving a large chunk of them. Today, in the conclusion of this...

Sigh...this is gonna be a big one. So big, in fact, I had to split it into two parts.

In the opening chapter of our dive into the modern digital landscape, we move past the surface-level complaints of "too much screen time" to examine the structural rot making our online lives feel so hollow. We'll explore the transition from the internet as a creative "Third Space" to a monopolized factory floor where every interaction is a transac...

You GUYS...I'm so psyched about this episode. Hydroxide has been one of my longest and best friends, and it's been such a joy to watch her career grow. In this conversation, of course we discuss the current standings of the food and food safety industries, but we also talk unemployment, going viral, comment sections, and how to discern disinformation from truth. 

As a bit of a skeptic, I love how optimistic this conversation tu...

Your screenshots folder is full of old horoscope wisdom from your astrology app, advice pieces from Reddit, and stills of videos from TikTok wellness influencers. You meant well by saving them. You still want to incorporate them.

But you'll never have time to look at those screenshots, much less utilize them.

Today we're discussing the plague of overwhelm that comes from the internet of wellness, and why you can't get any of those le...

It really feels like nothing anyone says matters anymore. Companies aren't transparent, friends flake, leaders promise things they can't deliver. This leads to an overall degradation of language and trust, or what I like to call "linguistic inflation."

The slight bright spot in this problem is that it isn't new, at all.

Join in on the conversation today as we unpack what linguistic inflation looks like at all levels, why it really is...

You know the feeling when after being so constantly booked and busy, your body literally starts to give out? Or you have to start last-minute cancelling plans you were actually excited for? Orrrrr the plans start to feel more like obligations than events you're looking forward to?

If you're nodding along to any of these, this is the episode for you.

Join in as we discuss the frustrating nuances of wanting more community, but hav...

You're feeling a desperate itch for a thing you know, deep down, you'll never fully possess. This is the kind of craving that comes from a core wound. And spoiler alert: It's not going to go away unless you start tending to it.

In today's episode, we're speaking to that part of ourselves - the uncomfortable reality that our most intense yearning is likely directly connected to an old, neglected fragment of our lives. We'll chat abou...

Everyone online seems to be sharing their fondest memories of a year that marks the last time a lot of us felt uninhibited from life's greatest stressors: adulthood, the economy, the government, unprecedented events...you name it. It makes sense that everyone wants to bask in the nostalgia.

The funny thing is, 2016 was the worst year of my life.

But this isn't just about me. In this episode, we're discussing the juxtaposition of nost...

One of the biggest questions I've had stirring around in my head this past year was what a woman's role really is in our current age - where fascists are abundant, young people have endless access to influence (for better or worse), and so many people seem so excited to throw inclusivity and equity out the window. Where are we? How did we get here? And who are the voices we need to be listening to to guide us through?

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