Finding Good Bones

Buckle up, Dear Listeners, we’re headed to Sunnydale for our first (but certainly not last) official episode on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The conversation explores what the show means to Kate and Amy, living through big moments of change, working to offer others the grace we’ve received, and managing the oppositional truths that arise when something you love was written by a real asshole.

Join us, Dear Listeners, as we fall under the thrall of The Overstory by Richard Power and teacher, writer, publisher and editor Melanie Haupt. It’s a lengthy selection befitting a lengthy novel and the conversation covers man vs. nature, the devastation of loss, the nostalgia of Christmas, the longevity and patience of trees, and the writing that changes our lives.

Welcome back, Dear Listeners, as we revel in the gritty nostalgia of Paul Westerberg’s “We May Be the Ones” with musician and 6th grade social studies teacher D.L. Nailing. You can practically feel the death trap playgrounds of the 1980s as we discuss the specificity and yet universality of the people in the lyrics, the power of a pocketknife, the intense calm of dissociating, and just a touch of David Lee Roth.

Well, Dear Listeners, it feels like a great time to join our wildernesses and sorrows together with Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, brought by burgeoning gardener, Gatherer of memes, and Tea Geek Sumina Bhatti. The conversation covers the immediate understanding of “March of 2020”, chaotic joy, sitting with pain, sharing burdens, and how rough we all are on our books!

Join Finding Good Bones for a rewilding as storyteller and leadership coach Jeff Mount challenges us all to look deep within and around, and speak of what we find there. It’s a ruminative discussion filled with ancient myths, challenging truths, sacred journeys, and secret names. Pour yourself a dram and start listening already!

Come get starstruck by this week's Finding Good Bones guest - New York Times bestselling author, writing coach, and podcast superstar Lani Diane Rich - and her selection, Anthem by Leonard Cohen. It's a vulnerable yet frolicking discussion on finding the beauty in destruction, honoring scars, and rebuilding foundations. Lani Diane Rich is totally our best friend now, and soon we'll have the T-shirts to prove it.

Dear Listeners, this week’s episode takes in the mindkiller with The Litany Against Fear by Frank Herbert (from Dune) with guest (and host) Kate Caldwell. Secrets are revealed - it turns out Amy somehow hasn’t read Dune (?!?) - and the conversation covers matriarchal orders in a patriarchal world, taking in fear, and letting it take what you don’t need. And remember folx - no one is as scary as Mama.

Join us for an examination of hierarchies on this episode of Finding Good Bones, when artist, improviser, award winning storyteller, and animal lover Ladislao Loera brings Lulu Miller’s book “Why Fish Don’t Exist”. It’s a joyful discussion on The Dandelion Principle, killing your darlings, understanding the ”should”, and finding grace for the people around us.

This week’s Finding Good Bones is an exploration of Sonnet 65 by William Shakespeare with Liz Larson - actor, writer, and occasional a-hole for hire (a/k/a trial attorney). The conversation covers the immutability of time, the enormity of grief, the immortality within stories, and the gleeful bawdiness of the Bard. With a few sad trombones scattered throughout.

This week on Finding Good Bones, actor, improviser, and musician Kareem Badr brings a hypnotic and vibrant neo-noir - Hell’s Half Acre by author Will Christopher Baer. The discussion includes the wonder in terrible things expressed beautifully, the works we find that help us rebuild ourselves, and the fatalistic hope at the heart of noir. Come for the conversation, stay for Kareem’s Actor Voice.

In this week’s episode of the Finding Good Bones podcast, guest and host Amy Winters takes us back to “Spring Break 1899” by the band Murder By Death. The conversation covers waking up to empty whiskey bottles, second chances and clean slates, and doing all the good we can. With a side of buttery Johnny Cash.

This week, Amy and Kate take on "The Risk of Birth", a poem by Madeleine L'Engle, with guest  Genevieve Saenz. This includes physical human birth, metaphysical creative birth, the birth of this podcast, and dinosaurs. Don’t worry, Dear Listeners - nature finds a way. So do poems.

This one is for the procrastinators and cowards in all of our hearts as guest Wendell Kimper, Amy, and Kate discuss "The Kookaburras", a poem by Mary Oliver. The episode covers the multitudes of potential, the desire (if not always the ability) to unlock the cages of suffering, and figuring just exactly what (or who?) is a god of flowers. Annnnnd we're taking it back to Buffy. Of course.

This week on the Finding Good Bones podcast, our guest Morgan Anderson takes Amy and Kate to "The Middle Place", a poem by Rupi Kaur. It's a dreamy discussion on turning people into gods, building ivory towers, taking off the mask, and figuring out how to be mortals together. Oh, and Morgan's murders of crows!

Join Amy and Kate for the very first official episode of the Finding Good Bones podcast - a discussion of the namesake of the podcast, the poem Good Bones by Maggie Smith (the poet, not the Dame).  This episode covers the power of sparseness and repetition, the importance of breaking and reforming, and the glory of fake footnotes - in between lots of cackling.