And Now Love Podcast

Los Angeles Institute for Right Brain Practices: www.lairp.org

What does it actually take to heal a community and change the way we handle conflict? In this powerful episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Carlos Alvarez, founder of LAIRP — the Los Angeles Institute for Right Brain Practices — whose own journey is as remarkable as the work he does. Carlos grew up in southeast LA surrounded by gangs, was pulled into that li...

As AI reshapes the world at a dizzying pace, the most important question might not be what machines can do — but what stays irreplaceably human. In this fascinating episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Dr. Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist, serial entrepreneur, and self-described "professional mad scientist" whose work spans using machine learning to reunite refugee families and inventing AI to help manage her own ...

Twenty years ago, a life-saving scholarship brought Christina Simos through the doors of Friendly House — the first all-women's recovery home in the country. Today, she runs the whole place as CEO. In this powerful episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Christina for a conversation about lived experience, radical equity, and reinventing what recovery can look like when it's built on love instead of rules. Christina shares her ...

Book link: https://www.burnbarrelpress.com/product/grey-flowers-by-suitcase-joe

Website: https://www.suitcasejoe.com/

For over a decade, the anonymous Los Angeles street photographer known only as Suitcase Joe has walked Skid Row and the fringes of the city, photographing the people the rest of the world tends to look past. In this moving episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Joe to talk about what he's learned in that time — n...

What happens when everything you built your sense of security on is taken overnight? In this profoundly moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Rabbi Amy Bernstein, who has weathered an extraordinarily heavy couple of years — losing her home in the Palisades Fire alongside many of her congregants, and facing a cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy soon after. As a spiritual mother to a community of hundreds of families, Amy found ...

We tend to assume that of course everyone has feelings — but Dr. Loren Weiner explains that this simply isn't the case. In this fascinating episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes back Dr. Loren Weiner, a Los Angeles psychotherapist whose work is grounded in the methodology of the late Dr. Bernard Bail, for a deep look at why so many of us quietly shut our feelings down. Beneath the surface, and entirely unconsciously, we are constan...

True healing means breaking through isolation to know ourselves without the weight of our trauma — and it's rarely something we can do alone. In this deeply moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Elya Braden, founder and president of HaGomel, a Los Angeles nonprofit providing expressive arts programming for women healing from sexual trauma. The name comes from Birkat HaGomel, an ancient Jewish prayer of gratitude spoken aloud...

Books referenced in the interview:Money, Power, Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood — her book documenting her Brooklyn neighborhood.

Upstate Girls — the first of two volumes documenting families in post-industrial upstate New York.

For acclaimed documentary photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally, love has always been inseparable from truth. In this deeply moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Brenda — a frequent contr...

The Official And Now Love Website: www.andnowlove.com

Pets in Recovery: www.petsinrecovery.org

The Choice by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

What Happened to You? by Bruce Perry (Co-authored with Oprah Winfrey)

The Second Mountain by David Brooks

For many people struggling with addiction, one heartbreaking barrier stands between them and treatment: they have a beloved dog or cat, and nowhere for them to go. Faced with an impossible cho...

Human trafficking is often described as the exploitation of unmet needs — the universal human longings for love, belonging, safety, and to be truly seen. In this powerful episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Jasmine McDonald, Clinical Director, and Sara Elander, Director of Programs and Coordinator of Victim Services for the LA Regional Human Trafficking Task Force — both leading forces at Saving Innocence, a Los Angel...

If you live in Los Angeles, you see it every day — people living in RVs, vans, and cars on our streets — but you rarely hear the real story behind it. In this episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Sam Lutzker, a PhD candidate in sociology at UCLA and co-author of the recent "Keep Moving" report, whose ground-level research on vehicle residency has been featured in The New York Times. Sam's work looks past the politics a...

What does love look like when it puts boots on the ground? In this episode, Cynthia Marks is joined by two remarkable women doing exactly that: Ashlee George, Co-Executive Director of the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP), and Leoni Wainwright, founder of the Vaul Institute in Cape Town, South Africa — one of CTAOP's program partners. Guided by the South African philosophy of ubuntu — "I am because we are"...

Are you actually living your own life — or someone else's? In this episode, Cynthia Marks is joined once again by Dr. Loren Weiner, a Los Angeles psychotherapist whose practice is steeped in the methodology of the late Dr. Bernard Bail, for a fascinating look at how we unconsciously take in our parents' personalities, limitations, and unlived pain, and then live them out as if they were our own. Loren distinguishes ordinary i...

Award-winning filmmaker and author Eisha Marjara joins Cynthia Marks for a moving conversation about how our earliest imprints shape the way we see ourselves — and how those patterns can be rewritten. Drawing on her acclaimed documentary work, including Am I the Skinniest Person You've Ever Seen? and Calorie, Eisha shares her journey through an eating disorder in her teens, the profound loss of her mother and younger sister, ...

We all build fantasies early in life — a web of denial and idealization meant to protect us from painful truths we couldn't yet face. But those same fantasies quietly shrink our world, steering us toward relationships and patterns that reenact the very things we're avoiding. In this episode, host Cynthia Marks welcomes back Dr. Lauren Dolinsky, a Los Angeles psychotherapist who works from the teachings of the late Dr. Bernard...

In this episode of *And Now, Love*, Cynthia Marks sits down with artist, father, community organizer, and Sidewalk Project leader Crushow Herring.Crushow’s story is not simply about art. It is about becoming.He speaks openly about growing up between Kansas City and Los Angeles, missing his father, finding expression through drawing, basketball, graffiti, and street culture, and eventually facing the painful reality that the w...

In this moving episode of And Now Love, Cynthia Marks sits down with Dr. Frank Rogers Jr., professor at Claremont School of Theology and co-founder of the Center for Engaged Compassion, to explore the healing power of radical compassion. Frank defines compassion as being genuinely moved by another’s experience in a way that prompts restorative action—and distinguishes it from empathy, which can become draining “em...

In this timely episode of And Now Love, Cynthia Marks speaks with Naomi R. Aguiar, PhD, Research Associate Director at Oregon State University, about how AI is reshaping childhood connection—and possibly love itself. Naomi explains why AI “companions” can feel new and strange, yet also represent a continuum of human imaginary relationships—from kids’ imaginary friends to parasocial bonds with media fig...

What does it actually mean to feel loved?In this episode of And Now Love, Cynthia Marks speaks with Dr. Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester and coauthor of How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most.Dr. Reis explores why love is not only about romance, but about feeling seen, understood, valued, and known. He explains why happiness is deeply connected to relationships,...