Off the coast of Dominica, scientists recently watched 11 sperm whales gather around a birthing mother. What happened next turned out to have a lot to say about one of the most underfunded corners of American healthcare. This week, Syris Valentine explores what sperm whales, bonobos, and even hamsters can…
This week, we get into the machine that made Taylor Frankie Paul, and what happened when it couldn't contain her anymore. From MomTok to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to The Bachelorette season that has yet to air, we break down her redemption arc, the gamble ABC made, why…
This week, Quinn and Claire are joined by Kaitlyn Teer. She's the senior editor at Cup of Jo's Big Salad, essayist, college writing teacher, and author of the essay collection Little Apocalypses: Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, And Hope at the End of the World. They discuss green motherhood as…
Today, we're gonna talk about data centers. Now, I know these things are a hot topic amid everything else: the heat, water, prices, lack of homes, lack of childcare, you name it. But we do need to speak out about them. So, who is the most qualified here to speak…
Today we’re tagging along with journalist and writer of The Gumbo Pot, Karen Fischer, on a trip to Yellowstone, where her personal quest to spot wolves in the Lamar Valley turned into a deeper understanding of how ecosystems actually work, and why that matters for the rest of us trying…
This episode contains Survivor 50 spoilers! You've been warned. This week, we dig into Season 50 of Survivor: the twists that overshadowed the players, the fan participation that wasn't, the gendered edit that disappeared some the season's top players, and what Christian Hubicki's elimination tells us about what happens when…
This week, Quinn and Claire are joined by Meghan Murphy-Gill. She's an Episcopal priest, former hospital chaplain, mom, and author of The Sacred Life of Bread. They talk about religion, community, and what we actually want to pass down to our kids. From why Claire sent her kids to Catholic…
Welcome to It's Called Reality! In our inaugural episode, we get into our origin stories with reality TV, and the argument that's going to drive every episode of this show: reality TV isn't just a guilty pleasure, it's a kind of mirror. And if you look closely enough, all the…
You may feel like you're giving it all you have, but obviously things are tough out there. We're working on all of it, but in particular, you, our listeners have asked for over and over more examples of a fight and actual progress that you can see and touch and…
This week, guest writer Matt Simmons takes us on a walk through an aspen grove, where what looks like hundreds of individual trees is actually one massive organism that’s quietly been demonstrating successful community building for 10,000 years. While our communities struggle with isolation and disconnection, aspen groves like Pando…
Reality TV. You already watch it. You already have opinions. It's Called Reality gives you somewhere to take them seriously. Hosts Willow Beck and Briana Brown have been texting each other about their reality TV obsessions for years. Now they're yapping about it on a podcast -- and going a…
This week in Life Finds A Way, writer Tasmin Lockwood, explores the intricate underground network that’s been quietly organizing forests for millions of years — mycorrhizal fungi. They organize around watersheds, share resources across species, and build resilient communities through cooperation, not competition. Have they been giving us the blueprint…
Maybe you’re familiar with the girl-power version of the orca menopause story: post-reproductive females leading their pods, holding essential ecological knowledge, coming into their power. It’s a good story, but it’s also incomplete. This week, science journalist Sarah DeWeerdt examines what killer whale life histories actually reveal about menopause, aging,…
It's Maycember, and we're not okay. This week, Claire and Quinn are back to commiserate about the absolute chaos of late spring parenting, from overloaded school calendars to the age-old debate between fifth and eighth grade graduation parties. Also discussed: Teacher Appreciation Week, Mother's Day logistics, being the "hang-out" house,…
If the name *Actually* Pro Life is deliberate, then so is the logo. Because like I said in our intro post, we’re reclaiming "pro-life" from the same people who blame kindergartners for getting shot at school, and we’re grounding it in evidence. Evidence like, “Does this action make it measurably…
This week in Life Finds A Way, writer Kavin Senapathy explores how we think about neurodiversity when we take a step back and consider cognitive diversity in other species. While the neurodiversity paradigm emerged in the 1900s as a human-centered concept rooted in social justice, the biological reality it describes…
This week, Claire and Quinn are joined by AJ Daulerio, He's a dad of three, founder of the recovery community The Small Bow, host of The Small Bow Podcast, and parenting advice columnist for Slate. AJ has been sober for nearly 10 years, and he brings the same honesty and…
250 years after a group of slaveowners wrote that "all men are created equal", we're done letting hypocrites own the language of life. Introducing *Actually* Pro Life: a reframe, a research platform, and a direct challenge to anyone willing to be held accountable to what they claim to believe. This…
Every spring thousands of siblings hatch from a single egg cluster and immediately get to work, spinning a collective silk shelter so well-engineered that it can hold 20 degrees C of warmth while outside the world sits at minus 5. There's no blueprint, no leader. Just cooperation, refined over millions…
Last Christmas we teamed up with about 40 other big podcasts to support our dear friends at Give Directly with a very special campaign called Pods Fight Poverty. The goal was to raise $1 million to send to families in extreme poverty in Bwakira, Rwanda. Today, I want to share…
Migration is essential to survival for many species, from salmon to jaguars to humans. But as border walls multiply around the world, the routes that animals have traveled for millennia are being severed. In this essay, writer Syris Valentine travels to the San Rafael Valley in Arizona (one of the…
This week, Quinn and Claire are joined by Willa Koerner, a creative strategist, writer, gardener, flower farmer, newsletter author, artist residency co-founder, and mother of a very busy four-year-old. They get into unschooling, invasive species, gardening, skincare, aging, and late-stage capitalism. ----------- Have feedback or questions? Send a message to…
Your kids are hearing about the news whether you are ready or they're ready or not. One study said two-thirds of kids aged 8 to 14 are absorbing current events at least every few days, and almost none of it was made for them. They're getting the fear without the…
Whoever said this country can't come together about anything anymore in the year of our Lord twenty twenty-six was wrong because PFAS, or forever chemicals, are in the blood of ninety-seven percent of Americans right now. They're in our water, our cookware, our food packaging, children, pets. The companies that…