This week, guest writer and science journalist, Pragathi Ravi, connects the fungi-farming behaviors of leaf cutter ants to the sustainable agriculture and land stewardship practices of indigenous peoples in India and beyond. Perhaps, the best method to conserve biodiversity isn’t to set land aside untouched and removed from human beings,…
America's Next Top Model ran for 24 cycles, launching a generation of girls inot a modelling fantasy world. This week, we're digging into what ANTM was really selling: the makeover myth, the beauty-is-pain narrative, the contradictions of a show that claimed to expand beauty standards while simultaneously reinforcing them. We…
Riley Black explores the fundamentally broken idea we have about what sex is by looking at examples of sexual shifts in other species, like cassowaries, that force us to expand our understanding of sex differences beyond a binary. ------------------------------------------------------ Life Finds A Way is a column about what nature can…
This week, we're getting into the iconic hit reality franchise, The Traitors. We analyze the actual origins of the game (it started as a Soviet social psychology experiment, no joke), who's actually good at playing it and why, and the unhinged joy of watching people lie to each other for…
This week, Claire and Quinn have Amanda Hess (NYT writer and author of Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age) on the pod. They discuss the summer logistics of having a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, Amanda's emerging second-book obsession (cryogenics, death tech, and the very human story underneath…
Today we're gonna talk about Texas. For a decade, maybe 100 years, we've heard over and over, this is the year we flip Texas. Sometimes we get closer, sometimes we get much further away. But as much as I'm excited about a candidate like James Talarico, I am always more…
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…