The Release Podcast

Using The Patriarchy Against Itself, With Neeki Motabar

Neeki Motabar is an outspoken feminist influencer and the host of The Baddest B--- in the building, who in her own words is teaching women how to hack the patriarchy.
 
Whether she's deconstructing double standards, sharing a feminine twist on The 48 Laws Of Power, or setting records as a weightlifter...we love that message for her. And we love that she does it all in pink. Because she’s the kind of girl she wants to be, and she just wants every other girlie in the world to also make the space to define that for herself, and then go do it. She is misunderstood, she knows who she is and who she does not want to be, she pisses a lot of people off, and she’s really overall quite unbothered by it all.
 
What a wonderful way to walk through life.
 
For more on Neeki Motabar, and her upcoming book: https://www.instagram.com/baddestbinthebldg/

Escape From The Manosphere, With James Bloodworth, Author of LOST BOYS

What kind of personality type is most susceptible to being lured into the darkest parts of the Manosphere? Why is it that some young men can browse the same content without choosing to dive ever deeper? Do the men who follow influencers spouts seriously misogynistic ideas…even understand that somewhere deep inside, they sort of hate women? James Bloodworth has thoughts on all of this and more. Having gone undercover inside the manosphere as research for his book, Lost Boys, Bloodworth took a journey not of lot of others who are willing to talk about it, have. Bloodworth’s skepticism gave him a different take on how we got here, how bad it has gotten, and where it is we are all going.

How Important Is Redemption? With TRY AGAIN Author Nick Marshall

Ever wondered what became of your high school drug dealer? Nick Marshall has the answer at least in his own story, which begins in small town New Jersey, lands him in prison, and has led him to his latest book, TRY AGAIN.
 
It all began with a bullied kid, doing a simple favor for a coworker at a gas station. Then it evolved into selling weed and graduating into club drugs like Special K while living the high life in NYC’s clubbing heyday. And then it crashed hard with an armed robbery of a fellow drug dealer that earned Nick three years in prison, all before the age of 25. And that was just the beginning of his wake-up call. In some ways his story of finding maturity is universal, and in other ways nothing like what you’ve heard before. Nowadays Nick is an author and director with his latest book TRY AGAIN out wherever you get yours.
 
This week on the podcast we are talking about redemption, the dumb choices we make when we’re young, the stubbornness that keeps us on a path we know even then is not the right one….and how sweet it feels to one day be able to say that you’ve clawed your way back up into a life you can actually be proud of.
 
For Nick's Book Visit: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Try-Again/Nick-Marshall/9781632280985

Are We Better Off Without God? With Sociology Professor Phil Zuckerman

What is the purpose, in the modern world, of the idea of God? And would we better off without religion?
 
My guest today is Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist, professor, and lifelong student of the nature and purpose or Religion. Currently a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College he is the founder of the first Secular Studies department in the nation; this entails the study of non-religious people, groups, thought, and cultural expressions. He has written several books, including What It Means to be Moral, Living the Secular Life, and Society Without God. You can find his work regularly in both Huffington Post and Psychology Today, where he blogs regularly under the title “The Secular Life.”
 

Isn't Life Just Exquisite? with Diane Gilman, HSN's Famed "Jean Queen" Turned Viral Pro-Aging Advocate & Social Media Star

Diane Gilman was born with a mission, and she has followed it for the past 80 years. And despite becoming best known as the “Jean Queen” of HSN and QVC for 30 years, and selling over $100 million dollars worth of her designs despite nobody believing it was possible to fit the middle-aged market back in the day, the fashion was as it turns out just the expression that fit in that particular season of her life.
 
And she has never been afraid to keep reinventing because in her own words, she’s never let herself down. From a diffIcult and abusive childhood where designing was her escape, through UCLA and her 20s tumultuous (where she found herself designing for Cher, Jimmy Hendrix and eventually every single department store window in Manhattan) she just kept moving. After nursing the love of her life through cancer and then in her 70s, battling and overcoming it HERSELF…Diane decided she needed a change. And that came in the form of a whole new chapter as the wildly popular social media pro-aging advocate and podcast host we know today @TheDianeGilman.
 
It’s been a bumpy ride, and at times very lonely, but Diane has left it all out on the field after every single chapter, and has lived more lifetimes than most. Perhaps that’s why she is the pro aging advocate we didn’t know we needed. She’s not sugarcoating anything, because she doesn’t need to. She deeply understands that life is an exquisite miracle, and she just wishes everyone, regardless of their age…saw it that way.

Life After Hijacking And A Gunshot To The Head, With Survivor & Speaker Jackie Pflug

Jackie Pflug was a 30 year old newlywed American citizen traveling on Egyptair flight 648 on Thanksgiving of 1985 when the plane was hijacked. Subsequently shot in the head by hijackers who landed the plane in Malta and threw her body out onto the tarmac, Jackie was denied medical help for 5 hours, but somehow, miraculously survived. Sadly, she was one of very few who did survive that hijacking, but after a harrowing recovery and even more hurdles, she went on to a global keynote speaking career that gave her purpose after years of struggle through epilepsy, seizures, and having to learn to walk and speak again. Not many people have survived what she has.
On today’s podcast, Jackie is opening up about her return to the site of the attack 20 years later, the toll it took on her first marriage, and the weirdness of the fact that life just goes on, (both in the mundane ways and in the subsequent life challenges that we all have to endure) even after you think you’ve survived the worst. Because the good news and the bad news about surviving the unsurvivable…. is that until it is the end, it is simply not the end.
 
And luckily for us, Jackie Pflug not only survived but she is still willing and able…to tell the tale.

Is Revenge Definitely The Answer? With Comedian and Attorney Ishpal Sidhu

Is revenge a dish best served cold…or just with a side of probable cause to avoid legal action? Have you ever considered all of the legal ways that you can obtain justice without having to get your hands too messy? So has Ishpal Sidhu, the brilliant legal mind and comedian behind the hit social media series entitled "What The Ish."
 
After a relationship so toxic it sent her into a tailspin, this bright attorney felt so helpless that she took to social media to share brilliant and hilarious ways in which she imagined exacting legal revenge, for example on a cheater…without getting yourself arrested. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about her innate sense of justice, how unsatisfying the practice of the law has been, and the ways in which the little internet series she started to help others who were feeling as powerless as she was, woke her up to the mission she was probably made for.
 
From her Sikh heritage to comedy as medicine to what’s next for her…Ishpal has a lot more insight into the power of the urge for revenge than her hilarious reels reveal. And while she is here for the fight, and the healing and the search for justice, after all that she has learned she’s not so sure, that revenge is in fact ever the actual answer.
 
For more about Ishpal Sidhu: https://www.instagram.com/whattheish/

Why Do We Villianize The Victim? with Trauma Therapist Esther Goldstein

This week I’m thrilled to sit down again with Esther Goldstein, a New York based LCSW and trauma therapist (also known as the trauma therapist’s therapist), to talk about why it seems like we as a society are so uncomfortable when folks speak up about personal injustice…and why we are so quick to villify the victim. 
 
On today’s podcast, we are diving in to how the word "victim" became an insult, how victim-blaming protects the witness's sense of stability, and how the perpetrator and their enablers use Projective Identification, The Bystander Effect, and The Just World Bias as part of their tool kit to keep painting the victim as a villain…simply for voicing the harm they have endured. Above all else, we are digging in to what you can do, when people refuse to help or even to hear you, in order to make peace with those who would stand by, watch, and deny to your face…the ways in which you were and perhaps still are in fact, being victimized.

Choosing (And Surviving) No-Contact With A Parent, with Jinjara Mitchell (Filmmaker/Subject of The Ornament)

Have you ever seriously considered ending your relationship with a parent? If you think that sounds inconceivable, you wouldn’t be alone...but you would be wrong. In the U.S., there's a growing trend of adult children choosing to go "no contact" with their parents, meaning they sever all communication and interaction, often permanently. The exact stats on permanent no-contact are difficult to find and can overlap with temporary estrangement (estimated as high as 25% of US adults), but we do know both of those figures are growing.
 
So why would someone, in the absence of physical violence, choose to go no-contact with their mom or dad? Jinjara Mitchell is beginning to shed light on that with her recent film, The Ornament. A filmmaker, actress and media personality, she has been no contact with her mother for almost 10 years now. The Ornament is based on her experience at age 10 of completing a homework assignment describing what her mom did with her and her siblings at Christmas. A well-known author and motivational speaker at the time, Jinjara says her mom was a totally different person when nobody was watching.
 
The Ornament  is an honest window in to how far a child will go to protect the image & ego of an abusive parent, how much she would endure for a glimmer of maternal love….and what it takes to give yourself permission to walk away from a parent-child relationship that despite the white picket fence, turned your first 18 years into a fight for survival.  After you hear her story, if you didn’t before, you will see very clearly why a child might one day grow up to justifiably cut their parent entirely out of their own life.

How Engaged Is Your Teen...And How Do You Know?

What kind of a learner is your child? What kind of a learner were you? How much does it matter? 
There is a theory that teens these days are increasingly disengaged in school, and that it matters far more than we think. My guest this week is Jenny Anderson, coauthor of THE DISENGAGED TEEN, a toolkit for the parents of checked out and stressed out teens, to get them engaged in their own learning. And in their own futures. Anderson is an award winning journalist for The NY Times, Institutional Investor and The Atlantic to name a few...and a mother of teens herself.
 
On this week's episode we are looking at whether things are any different now than they were say 25 years ago…and why Jenny and her coauthor Rebecca Winthrop say phones are NOT the only thing to blame. 
 
Whether your kid is a resister, a passenger, an achiever or an explorer in school…there’s a lot more going on than they may show us…and we have a lot more influence than many of us seem to think.