A Chat with Uma

On episode 49 of A Chat with Uma, I’m back for a solo heart-to-heart with you about the painful circumstances I've been navigating recently. The show has been growing fast (hi, Ologies friends!), & I’ve been prioritizing platforming other voices. But I never want that to crowd out the core of this show: honest conversation about the realities living with serious mental illness, even while building a life in recovery. Today,...

On episode 48 of A Chat with Uma, I sit down with psychiatrist–neuroscientist Dr. Martijn Figee, MD., PhD—director of Mount Sinai’s Interventional Psychiatry Program & a groundbreaking pioneer in neurostimulation (e.g. DBS, TMS) for psychiatric disorders, especially OCD & depression—for a clear, grounded tour of circuit‑based psychiatry. This is the science companion to last week’s episode with Jon Nelson (ep. 47): today...

On episode 47 of A Chat with Uma, I sit down with my dear friend Jon Nelson—lived-experience mental health expert & longtime healthcare comms exec—whose decade of treatment-resistant depression nearly killed him before an experimental deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery flipped the circuit & brought instant remission in 2022. Jon shares the unfiltered, brutal reality of suicidal depression & how anger became fuel for a...

On episode 46 of A Chat with Uma, I speak with Dr. Ya’el Courtney—a neuroscientist whose life traverses extreme circumstances that most only read about. Removed from an abusive, violent, fundamentalist household at 15, she spent her teen years couch-surfing, battling eating disorders & self-harm, working night shifts, & finishing high school coursework as her own teacher. She forged a transcript to escape poverty, later con...

On episode 45 of A Chat with Uma, I sit down with Scott Kelsey—mental health advocate, former pro-hockey player, fellow One Mind Lived Experience Council member, and founder + CEO of Shareapy, a platform dedicated to transforming mental health support through peer-driven connections. Scott opens up about his decades-long journey with anxiety & depression, unfolding during & after his five-season run in professional hockey d...

On episode 44 of A Chat with Uma, I'm here for an (unexpected) solo episode to give you a full-length, 360° “State-of-the-Union” of my life for 2025. 2.5 years have flown by since my original intro episodes, and new listeners are still meeting a 2023 snapshot that’s quite outdated. Today I lay out—clearly and in one place—everything I’m doing now and why it matters: my neuroscience research, science communication, lived experie...

On episode 43 of A Chat with Uma, you have me for a solo episode where I share a huge life update that I'm living through in real time: after two solid years of showing me that recovery is actually possible, my therapist is moving across the world. Cue the whiplash of shock, grief, fear, and every intrusive “I-told-you-so” thought my OCD could cook up. In this episode, I walk you through the journey to and through here:

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On episode 42, I sit down with my dear friend, Alie Bernard Garza, LCSW—a therapist, advocate, & survivor whose life reads like an impossible novel: childhood autoimmune disease, undiagnosed OCD & ADHD, a high-control evangelical cult, multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, near-death medical crises, & eventually, a 38/40 Y-BOCS spiral that forced her into residential ERP. That would be more than enough for most lifetim...

On episode 41 of A Chat with Uma, we pick up right where we left off with Dr. Maya Schumer—a psychiatric neuroscientist who studies bipolar disorder, the very illness she lives with. In Part 2, Maya walks us through her PhD and Postdoc research thus far: the largest functional-MRI meta-analysis ever published at the time, 3 independent risk-cohort replications, and analyzing first-episode mania datasets. We dig into the honest real...

On episode 40 of A Chat with Uma, I sit down with my dear friend Dr. Maya Schumer—a psychiatric neuroscientist who studies bipolar disorder, the very illness she lives with. She shares her full experience across 3 decades: growing up with a father with bipolar 1 disorder, how her own bipolar 2 diagnosis morphed into bipolar 1, several hospitalizations, her relationship with lithium, chronic suicidality, metabolic psychiatry, IV ket...

On episode 39 of A Chat with Uma, I invite my dear friend Tracie Ibrahim, LMFT, CST to tell her full survivorship story of 29 psychiatric hospitalizations, misdiagnoses of schizophrenia & homicidality, childhood abuse, & a mental-health system that nearly killed her—until she learned the name of the monster (OCD) & fought back with exposure & response prevention. Tracie’s journey, like her, is messy, punk-rock, &...

On episode 38 of A Chat with Uma, I reflect on both my 29th birthday & 6th anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. I share a live, raw, completely unedited account of everything rising to the surface as I turn 29. I speak at length about the awe and gratitude I feel for still being here + alive, and remember how staying on this planet for this long once felt utterly impossible. I talk through the rapid transformation of life that h...

On episode 37 of A Chat with Uma, I hit pause on the lived experience & nitty-gritty research and rewind all the way to Psychedelics 101: What exactly counts as a psychedelic? Why do ketamine and MDMA show up in the same conversations as LSD and psilocybin even though they work on totally different receptors? In this deep‑dive I define "mind-manifesting," untangle the three big branches of hallucinogens, give an extra basic che...

On episode 36 of A Chat with Uma, I continue the “Everything You Need to Know About Scientific Research” series by breaking down everything you need to know about peer review and publishing papers! Here, I unpack the journey from raw data to a peer‑reviewed paper—the stage where independent experts test every assumption, statistic, and conclusion before the work can stand as part of the scientific record. You’ll learn why publishin...

On episode 35 of A Chat with Uma, I provide the long‑overdue follow‑up to my 2023 episode “Yes, I’ve Done Psychedelics: From Psychonaut to Researcher!” Two years (and many trips) later, I walk you through how psychedelics have woven themselves into my recovery from OCD, PTSD, and treatment‑resistant depression--and how my relationship to them has evolved. I’m candid about the depression pattern I now recognize: months of slow impro...

On episode 34 of A Chat with Uma, I continue the “Everything You Need to Know About Scientific Research” series by breaking down one of the most misunderstood parts of the scientific process: funding. I explain how labs secure (and often struggle to secure) the money needed to pay salaries, buy equipment, and keep the lights on—and why the competition for grants is more cutthroat than many realize. Along the way, I debunk myths abo...

In episode 33 of A Chat with Uma, I continue with part 2 of my deep dive into how scientists are trained, as part of the “Everything You Need to Know About Scientific Research” series. Picking up where I left off last time, I focus on the PhD as the central—and often most intense—phase of a scientist’s training path toward independence. I explain how researchers progress from dependent trainees to experts in their field, covering e...

On episode 32 of A Chat With Uma, as part of the “Everything You Need to Know About Scientific Research” series, we begin a 2-part overview of the full training pipeline that researchers work through to become independent biomedical research scientists.  I unpack the differences between simply knowing established scientific facts and actively generating new knowledge in a lab setting, showing how hands-on mentorship, repetitive tri...

On episode 31 of A Chat with Uma, I launch my ‘Everything You Need To Know About Scientific Research’ series by sharing an overview of what I aim to cover in the coming episodes within this series, and the personal and professional lenses that bring me to this conversation. I talk through the current crises facing scientific research, how they are affecting research (including me) at this very moment, and why this is relevant to EV...