Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“Globally, across many cultures, across the lifespan, many people have a deep mistrust of joy and other positive emotions for different reasons,” says psychologist, teacher, and author Kelly McGonigal, PhD. In her new book, Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking, she shares the research that’s shaped her approach to joy as a pessimist. It’s the best case for joy as a moral obligation that I’ve heard. But whet...

“ I was raised in a culture that says it’s cooler and it's smarter to say this is just a material, senseless, random world where atoms are bouncing off of each other, and there's no meaning or order or divine wink to any of it,” says psychiatrist Ellen Vora, MD. “I was missing that charm and that joy of, mmm, feels like something's happening here. I don't know what, but it feels like something is—...

In her private therapy practice, renowned psychoanalyst Galit Atlas, PhD, has identified six archetypes that shape our intimate relationships as adults. She says that every adult carries one of these archetypes with them, and that usually we carry more than one. She’s named them: the frightened child, the melancholic child, the ashamed child, the invisible child, the guilty child (I identify big-t...

“The alchemy pathway brings back synchronicity, unity, harmony to all of these different parts of self,” says psychic medium Carissa Schumacher. Her book—The Alchemy Transmissions: A Pathway to Miracles—is out this week, and it’s a series of transmissions she channeled from Yeshua (Jesus)! Today, we’re talking about what else this pathway might offer us, how to navigate the new era that we’re in,...

It’s just me today, sharing an update on my next surgery (I’m still doing well!), and reflecting on something that someone shared with me at a book event a few weeks ago. It got me thinking about how our gifts are emergent; they show up at different times in our lives, and in different ways. And sometimes, we’re being called to simply be present. I’m also starting to reflect back on the last seven...

“Feeling is really the core of consciousness,” says Antonio Damasio, MD, PhD. “And it's giving you information about what it is like to be alive, and how your life is going, and what you need to do about it.” Damasio is the director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California and the author of several books including, his latest, Natural Intelligence & the Logic...

In their brilliant new book—End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World—Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor uncover the varied threads that have given birth to an apocalyptic, survivalist alliance of power that seems intent on…ending us. And they share an arguably more appealing, enjoyable path to breaking the doom loop and—rooted in what they call here-ness—figuring out a new way to live in ou...

Richard Christiansen is the founder of Flamingo Estate and a dear pal of mine. Today, we’re talking (in part) about the stories that led to his new book, Flamingo Estate Pleasure Principles. We get into: our love of witches, why Richard thinks we’re experiencing a crisis of beauty (and what he does about it), the concept of a victory garden, the unexpected provenance of things like the California...

“ It’s just incredibly hard to really resist these forces that are, you know, probably from evolution, that we adapt to our circumstances,” says psychologist Angela Duckworth, PhD. “But once you have that insight, then you realize that you do have to shape your circumstances before they shape you.” In her new book Situated, Duckworth (who wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Grit) reveals the of...

This month’s solo episode is mostly about what I think will come of all the AI generation, the fabrication of viral moments, and the latest iteration of marketing that we’re starting to see through. And why I think where we’re headed is mostly good for us. I’m also answering questions about how I personally use AI, as well as why I chose to move from Substack to Beehiv, and some little quirky thin...

“ I think these resources are good because it gives you the language and the tools to do something that doesn’t necessarily feel right,” says Stephanie Wittels Wachs, author of Last Day. Steph also hosts a podcast by the same name and is the cofounder and CEO of Lemonada Media (the podcast network I’ve been with for the last year or so). I’m so grateful to Steph for sharing a more nuanced and comp...

Chloe Redmond Warner is a very talented interior designer—and one of my closest childhood friends. To celebrate the launch of her special book This Must Be the Place, which is about how to design a home with personality, I got to interview Chloe at Godmothers bookstore. This episode is adapted from our live conversation, in which Chloe is her usual hilarious and brilliant self. She shares some of...

David Epstein is a journalist and the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Inside the Box (which we’re talking about today), Range, and The Sports Gene. He tells some fascinating stories that he uncovered during his research that challenge or complicate a lot of cultural perceptions about: freedom (often, sadly, the death knell of creativity!), originality and innovation (turns out there is an...

Claude Steele is a social psychologist, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, and the author of Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It. Churn refers to the stress we often feel in diverse settings in everyday life; it’s the psychological reaction to being under identity threat—which is something we can all experience based on any myriad number of identity factors. St...

If you’ve been tuning into July’s special series of sorts, thank you, and I hope you’ve also been enjoying revisiting these conversations from the archives, or maybe you’re discovering them for the first time. Today, we have a big one with Jungian analyst James Hollis, PhD, who is the author of many, many books that are incredibly meaningful to me. And this conversation still lives up to how much...

I’m thrilled to be back on the podcast mic again—I’ve been healing from a double mastectomy and I’m doing well! Thank you to everyone who has been thinking of me. This update covers: the surgery experience, the energy healers and lymphatic masseuse I’ve been working with, a few essential things I bought for the recovery phase, something my friends did that was a huge help, and the mini revelations...

This special episode initially ran early in 2025 but I wanted to bump it up for those of you who missed it and also because I honestly think Richard Rohr is worthy of a re-listen. If you’re not already familiar with Richard Rohr, he’s a wonderful Franciscan friar, the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, and one of my most profound teachers. I really loved and highly recommend his b...

Gabor Maté, MD, is renowned for his work on addiction, stress, trauma, and understanding and healing from illness. He has written several books, including The Myth of Normal. As part of a special series of sorts this month, I’m turning back to a conversation I had with him a few years ago about his perspective on the relationship between how we live, the culture we live in, and our health. For the...

I believe this is the most-listened-to episode ever on Pulling the Thread. It’s a conversation that I had with therapist Esther Perel in 2023 that still stands to this day—but that’s Esther for you. I think it also highlights how difficult it remains for many of us to get comfortable with conflict in our relationships, and to disagree and even fight, productively, with someone else. Whether you te...

Hi, friends. For those who are interested, I’m saying more about this in my solo episodes, but as I was preparing to recover from a non-life-threatening (and yet major) health surgery, I spent some time thinking about what would be meaningful to share with you all for the next few weeks or so. And I landed on a shortlist of conversations that I’ve had on Pulling the Thread over the years that reso...

I spent the past month largely recovering from a (successful) double mastectomy—it was very intense, and I also had amazing care, from my team at UCLA, and from my family and friends. I am healing well and my prognosis couldn’t be better—I’m very lucky that intervention was early and I am not fighting for my life. I recorded this episode before my surgery—I did this for a number of reasons: to rec...

Mark Wolynn is a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, the director of the Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco, and author of the recently updated classic It Didn't Start with You (there’s also now a companion workbook). I find his work endlessly fascinating. Here, he helps us see how inherited family trauma, attachment trauma, and unconscious loyalty is often unknowingly af...

After the shocking end of her marriage, Belle Burden chose not to let herself get erased. Today, we talk about what she chose instead and the person she’s evolved into since writing her stunning memoir Strangers. Burden reminds me that while we can’t always understand why people do what they do, we can learn to live tethered to our own truth. For the show notes, head to my Substack. Learn more abo...

I had so much fun reading psychologist Paul Eastwick’s book Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection. A lot of his work reveals the enduring myths that are engrained in our culture and our minds about attraction, compatibility, gender differences, and relationships—and why these myths have been somewhat mistakenly connected to evolutionary psychology. The way he debunks these my...

“That’s the kind of story, that's the kind of image that I'm talking about—that really just sinks into you and won’t let go,” says psychologist Sharon Blackie. Today, Blackie returns to discuss her new book Ripening: Why Women Need Fairytales Now. Once again, her perspective is helping me make sense of who we are at different stages of our lives. For the show notes, head to my Substack. Learn more...