Meredith for Real: the curious introvert
Less canceling. More curiosity. Each episode explores the questions people think, but don't ask, due to cultural hypnosis or being taboo. The mission here is to inspire curiosity by exploring nuance & breaking free from the bubble of the algorithm. Each conversation is wildly different than the last, so bring your ADD & your earbuds & have a look around! You'll hear subjects like mental health, health & wellness, biohacking, adult friendship, finances, science & technology, true stories, cults, sex & relationships, introversion, psychedelics & ADHD. Not sure where to start? Try episode 86 with the accidental swingers or 94 with the Irish Catholic comedian who converted to Orthodox Judaism.
Episodes
Breanna Wilson is a freelance travel writer & photographer who found out her travel plans got Corona canceled mid-flight & ended up being stuck in the country of Georgia. She shares how her first trip to Mongolia started with a photo on Instagram, agreeing to ride wild horses & what it’s like to live with nomadic Mongolian families. She also digs into how to discover your own threshold of certain ...
Laura & Aaron Beck were devoted parents who, like many, were in the habit of judging other parents who left their child in the back seat of a car until the day it happened to them. In this episode, Laura shares the circumstances leading up to the accident, her new perspective on parenting, how you can prevent hot car infant death & how her non-profit is working for helpful legislative & automobile...
Dr. Andrew Koutnik is a diabetes researcher who's lead 2 NASA investigations, a project for the United States Special Ops Command and assisted on projects for department of defense, DARPA and the Office of Naval Research.
He's also a type 1 diabetic.
He's currently a research scientist at the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute and actively investigating the role of lifestyle interventions and ca...
Kimmy Seltzer is a mental health therapist turned confidence counselor, stylist & dating strategist. In this episode she shares how her own hot mess moment & an encouraging retail employee helped her transform the way she saw herself as well as the paradox of building the experience of confidence when you don’t have any experience being confident, making style upgrades without feeling fake, costume co...
Daryl Davis is a musician & author. He’s also a black man who chooses to be friends with Klansmen. Over his lifetime, he has inspired over 200 Klu Klux Klan members to give up their robes. In this episode he shares about the boyscout parade where he got a race reality check, FBI files, the connection between travel & racism, his first encounter with a klansmen, his first KKK friend & true transfor...
Elliot Justin, MD is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians & worked in Emergency Medicine for 26 years. He’s now the CEO of Firm Tech, a medical technology start up. He & his team have developed a smart watch for your penis to help men assess ED & cardiovascular risk.
In this episode, he explains the connection between frequency of nocturnal erections & cardiac event risk, w...
Dr. Jason Brennan is a Flanigan Family professor at Georgetown Business School who agrees that democracies outperform most historical alternatives, but suggests that some form of Epistocracy (meaning the rule of the knowledgeable) could be worth experimenting with. In other words, the more of an informed voter you are, the more weight your vote carries. He covers why democracy may not be as bullet proof as we...
Former ecstasy dealer, Jason Edwards, tells his story of what led to prison, the types of people you find there & the mindsets that can pull you in & lift you out. You’ll also hear about the day he walked out of prison, how he won over the trust of his boss & now owns a million-dollar business. Stay to the end where he shares his message to prisoners, their family members & naysayers.
This episode is a relaxed hybrid conversation/interview with Scott Johnson, the host of What Was That Like, a true crime fan favorite with over 10 million downloads.
Scott recently invited me to co-host a weekly segment on his show, so I this episode is an introduction to him and a behind the scenes from both of us on what it takes to make a great podcast.
You’ll hear how Scott vets his gu...
If you watched the Netflix special (un)well, you may have seen Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Rachel Bernstein, in the episode on Tantric Sex. She is a mental health professional specializing in cult psychology, manipulators & systems of control. In this episode, we discuss what defines a cult, who is most vulnerable to cult recruitment & a gut-wrenching listener question. She also tackles Scientol...
At age 38 and only 8 weeks of training, Merry Morgan Holotik Henderson became 1 of the 4,700 people to summit Mt Everest & 1 of the 605 women. She shares how she went from non-athletic theatre nerd to mountaineer & what you don’t know about what it takes to get there. She shares what she learned about sherpa culture, how cerebral edema can cause your brain to deceive you & how it’s never too late ...
What exactly is considered "sexless"? What are we counting as sex? What would cause someone to not want to have sex all of a sudden?
These are all questions I unpacked with Xanet Pailet. She was a successful healthcare lawyer married to an attorney with two children. She lived in a beautiful home in NYC as well as a sexless marriage. At age 45 and no sex for over 15 years, she considered sex as somet...
Dr. Loretta Breuning is a PhD researcher & author. Since becoming unconvinced by prevailing theories on human behavior, she has researched everything from monkeys to the mafia. Now she’s not only helping people hack their brain, she’s shedding light on how the altruistic outlook may be popular, but ultimately damaging.
In this episode, she explains WHY we believe that if we are unhappy something is wrong, ...
The highlight of teenage Tony Dushane’s existence was the short car ride with his crush as they were dropped off to preach door to door. In this episode, he shares the negative impact purity culture within the Jehovah’s Witness community had on his family, the awkward moments he can laugh at (& made a film from) & the advice he would give if he had a teenager.
This episode originally aired July 5, 2021...
The message given at every commencement speech is, “Go into the world & make an impact!” This makes anyone who gone on to lead an ordinary life to feel like an extraordinary disappointment.
Dr. Brandon Warmke is an Associate Professor & philosopher at Bowling Green University who believes that living a quiet life is not an underachieving consolation prize.
In this episode, he shares the dang...
By the time she was twelve, Carissa Phelps had run away from home, dropped out of school, and fled blindly into the arms of a brutal pimp. After years of being trafficked, she was able to escape, graduate from UCLA with a law degree and an MBA, and become an attorney working to help at-risk youth & end the infrastructure behind human trafficking.
She shares names of corporations listed in lawsuits for supp...
After selling a successful business, a series of serendipitous events led Matt Simpson to research Ayahuasca as a healing modality for trauma. The experience was so healing, that he never returned to the rat race or his addictions. He now coaches others on how to properly and responsibly use psychedelics to heal trauma and addiction. In this episode, you’ll hear the big problem that plant medicine can cause, ...
Dr. Bruce Greyson was the protégé of Near Death Experience Researcher, Dr. Raymond Moody. Dr. Greyson was raised in a scientific household with no particular religion, his interest in near-death experiences was a scientific one that started when an unconscious patient of his described (in detail) a conversation he had with another woman in a different room. Despite the scrutiny of his peers, he spent the next...
Gary Arndt is a photographer, travel blogger & podcaster whose list of visited countries is so long, where he hasn’t been is actually a shorter list. In this episode, we challenge what exploring culture is and is not, the Parochial vs cosmopolitan mindset, how to save money & increase your human connection, his surprising moment in Oman, cultural travel tips & the good and bad of cruises.
If you li...
In this conversation-style episode, I talk with the hosts of the Bledsoe Said So podcast, Ryan Bledsoe & Nick Fermanides. Ryan is the son of former guest & UFO experiencer, Chris Bledsoe. Their family & the strange phenomena happening at their home has been studied by NASA, the CIA, academics & the defense intelligence agency & thanks to their small Southern town & Pentecostal communit...
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