MOVD

Lisa Olivera is a therapist, writer and author of two books, Already Enough and When the Ache Remains: Lessons on Tending to the Unfixable and Finding Beauty Anyway . In this conversation, she joins host Mariah Rooney to explore what it means to come home to your body, to sort through the grief and stories we inherit, and to find belonging amidst the mess of it all. They talk about what it looks l...

Maria Popova is one of the most prolific writers and thinkers of our time. The multi-hyphenate (author-essayist-critic-poet-human) joins Mariah to talk about the power or danger of identity and about how she lives in a state of curiosity and wonder about the world around her.  Explore Maria’s project The Marginalian , her study of the search for meaning, now immortalized in the Library of Con...

Palestinian and Saudi musician Rotana Tarabzouni speaks with Mariah about seeking and following the pulls of the erotic. For the first time, she shares publicly her experience of cultural exile when a live performance of hers ending a music set with a Qur’an recitation went viral online. Listen to Rotana’s albums Alien of Extraordinary Ability and Opening , and experience her visual EP IBQI . Make...

Poet and spiritual teacher A Helwa joins Mariah to encourage us to hold joy and light through the darkness. She also shares a story about finding beauty and losing herself in the desert. Helwa is the author of the beloved book Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam .  Make sure you’re following the podcast wherever you listen and follow along on Instagram at @MOVD...

Susan Raffo joins host Mariah Rooney to talk about the value of “glacial slowness” in our urgency-driven world. Raffo is a grassroots organizer, queer elder, somatics practitioner, and writer whose walk across the country she is currently turning into a book. Make sure you’re following the podcast wherever you listen and follow along on Instagram at @MOVDpodcast . MOVD is created by host Mariah Ro...

John Christian Phifer joins host Mariah Rooney to talk about death and grief and the ways he is radically reimagining those with Larkspur , a revolutionary conservation burial ground in Tennessee. John Christian reminds us that death is a part of life and that our cultural distancing from death and from grief mirrors our disconnection from the earth. He also shares with us a path back to reconnect...

World-renowned musician Joshua Roman joins Mariah to talk about his art and his life-changing journey with chronic illness. Joshua has brought the healing power of music to communities around the world as a cellist and composer. Read the story behind Joshua’s piece Drive that scores every episode of MOVD and listen to his latest album Immunity .  Make sure you’re following the podcast whereve...

Host Mariah Rooney speaks with Kai Cheng Thom: somatics practitioner, mediator, and teacher. Kai Cheng is the author of five books, including most recently, Falling Back in Love With Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls . Kai Cheng invites us to find the beauty in the grotesque and the monstrous. She evokes Frankenstein and trans scholars, speaking about monsters as harbingers of a new world. Learn...

Mariah Rooney talks with Willow Defebaugh: host of The Nature Of podcast , author of The Overview: Meditations on Nature for a World in Transition , and editor-in-chief of climate and culture magazine Atmos . In this conversation, Willow invites us to step into wonder and reclaim intimacy with ourselves, each other, and the Earth. She shows us what we can learn about relationship and healing throu...

The first episode of MOVD features host Mariah Rooney's conversation with Prentis Hemphill: organizer, teacher, and somatics practitioner and author of the incredible book, What It Takes to Heal . Prentis embodies a presence that invites us all into deeper connection with our bodies and with one another so that we can show up more fully in our lives and in the world. In this conversation, they rem...

As we move through the turn of the new year, we are sharing a few brief sneak peeks from our upcoming season – exclusive clips that we hope will inspire connection and conversation. Here’s a moment from our conversation with Willow Defebaugh, author, podcast host, and editor-in-chief of climate and culture magazine Atmos. She shares a story about a fortuitous wander, a pigeon, and the ripple effec...

As we move towards the new year, we are sharing a few brief sneak peeks from our upcoming season – exclusive clips that we hope will inspire connection and conversation. Here we offer a moment from our conversation with author, somatics practitioner, mediator, and teacher Kai Cheng Thom on what it means to be "monstrous": misunderstood, wrong, or a harbinger of change? Our season of full episodes...

As we move through the end of the year, we will be sharing a few brief sneak peeks from our upcoming season of MOVD – exclusive clips that we hope will inspire connection and conversation. The first of these is a moment from our conversation with organizer, teacher, and somatics practitioner Prentis Hemphill on the pursuit of embodying friendship and healing through relationship, rather than in is...

Welcome to MOVD, a podcast that explores how storytelling builds empathy and reconnects us with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. At MOVD, we use storytelling to strengthen our collective connective tissue. We believe that when shared, micro moments, ephemeral experiences, and everyday miracles have the power to connect us more deeply to ourselves, each other, and the world around us...