Outside Issues

After touching on Pride Month and trans dignity, Audrey talks about her joy, pressures, and long term goals in helping others heal, while Patrick discusses taking a chip for 8 years of continuous sobriety. Expressions of hope and joy are vital countermessaging in the era of Trump. Opening quote by Zohran Mamdani Main show theme is “Strangers” by Midnight Prisms Music and lyrics by Alicia Beck Musi...

Audrey and Patrick welcome Melanie C. to talk about second chances, disillusionment with electoral politics, and Michael Clayton. Covid lockdown, parental support and medication-assisted treatment helped Melanie find recovery from a fifteen year opiate addiction. Reading Edward Said in college began her education on Palestine and her advocacy for humanity and liberation. We shouldn’t demand that r...

Nick Casaccio joins us to talk about Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine and its twin dynamics of alcoholism and codependency, relating Mark Kerr’s struggles to our own recoveries. Addiction has a habit of migrating, and we discuss how gambling, shopping, and relationships have taken our stories down new rabbit holes. Nick finished school while he was in treatment more than thirteen years ago, and...

Audrey welcomes another wounded healer to Outside Issues : spiritual advisor Matthew Blankinship, who helps professionals and peers get stronger in their 11th Step. To become an expert in any field, Matthew believes ten years and ten thousand hours are required, to graduate from “digging the ditches to building the high rise.” After a traumatic brain injury, paralyzed muscles and Vegas nerve sever...

Filmmaker and humanist Anna K. Scanlon joins the pod to talk about her recovery from hopelessness, which has led to a great period of creative synthesis culminating in “Toss Up,” her recently-completed film inspired by a career working on political campaigns. Anna's recovery came from a lot of places, notably a nudist resort in Mexico where she found herself after Bernie’s 2020 campaign hit the ro...

Audrey and Patrick welcome Minneapolis native and clinician Brian Dyke to talk about community responses to state violence. The joy in working with recovering people in these tough times can be found through helping them discover their inherent sense of individuality. Looking towards the future and continued ICE occupation in Minneapolis and other American cities, we must remember: these things wi...

Every member of the Trump administration is an abuser. Audrey and Patrick discuss Trump’s execution of Stephen Miller’s vision in American cities but most recently in Minneapolis with the murder of Renee Good. Today we mull our new reality of a President not just waging war abroad but on his domestic population, with misogyny and white supremacy at the tip of the spear. Opening clip and quote by C...

We share our gratitudes and resentments for the 2025 that was, preparing for the devastation of HR-1/Trump’s Fuckity Fuck Fuck (see episode 2) that is sure to come. Audrey and Patrick welcome social worker Seth Boun to talk about some of his political advocacy, shedding light on the space where social justice and clinical work meet. In the fight for progress, in the fight for each other’s lives, s...

Dr. Jamie Marich - clinical trauma specialist, LGBTQIA+ advocate and author of Trauma and the 12 Steps  - joins us as we return again to the intersection between recovery and social justice. Audrey and Jamie talk about spirituality, trauma, and the Steps. Is there such a thing as unconditional love? Is there any daylight between helplessness and powerlessness? We submit that there may be spiritual...

Before getting into news (Israel Eurovision controversy, continued Trump ICE-fronted bigotry, war crimes) Audrey talks about her 20 year high school reunion and Patrick processes the pain of an ex who struggles with homelessness. Opening quote by Greta Thunberg Main show theme is “Strangers” by Midnight Prisms Opening quote by Greta Thunberg Music and lyrics by Alicia Beck Music and production by...

Deep thoughts on favorite serial killers from Wisconsin, ghost roommates, and the blue stuff RFK ingests in an attempt to extend his horrible life. Congratulations to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city of New York, and citizens everywhere who refuse to sink into despair. Main logo art by Patrick Mitchell and Angelina Harvey (@graffitifucks on Instagram) Chapters (00:00:00) - Outside Issues With Audrey...

For domestic violence awareness month, Audrey shares her experience strength and hope, both from a clinical perspective and from once living in the 90th percentile of homicide risk from her abuser. To show up for survivors, the most important thing we can do is listen to them, believe them, validate their experience. The role of anger can be valid and constructive, not just self-immolating.   We a...

Audrey and Patrick discuss Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s address to top military brass. The continued deployment of U.S. troops to cities (bolstering ICE brutalities) plays a key role in the continued degradation of American institutions and the rapid drop into authoritarianism we’re all experiencing. Met during treatment in early recovery, Audrey’s friend and former service member Rich...

In light of Charlie Kirk’s murder, this week we talk about political violence and review “Eddington,” Ari Aster’s recent film that explores America's culture war, alienation, and predilection for carnage.   “You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it to have...

Our friend Jake shares his experience of being trans, queer and disabled, working overtime to survive a political climate that terrorizes marginalized groups. Central to his survival has been an aggressive pursuit of all the tools available -   mental health support, political action, even home gardening - which can be mobilized to help him live. We need to talk about suicide and how that’s connec...

In recognition of International Overdose Awareness Day, Audrey remembers loved one Adam Popp, who passed away far too young from a drug overdose. We talk about harm reduction, soul mates, and Prince. As much as is possible, we encourage those with loved ones in the throes of addiction to try and hold on, in ways big or small. Human connection and socialization remains one of the most effective way...

"Quiet isn't always peace, and the norms and notions of what is just isn't always justice" -Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate   Audrey and Patrick touch on Trump’s misbegotten attempts to resolve the Russia/Ukraine war and make broader assessment of U.S. imperialism. Classrooms away from each other, we experienced 9/11 on TV in the same high school, separately embarking on journeys towar...

Audrey and Patrick briefly touch on new Trump authoritarianism and Israel’s assassination of journalists, before returning to their own histories of addiction and questions of recovery maintenance. Patrick has chosen not to have children, but Audrey looks forward to being a mom. We touch on the fears but also the hope and promise of bringing a child into a world so fraught with danger and sufferin...

Attorney and law professor H. Marissa Montes joins us to talk about the plight of immigrants during this period of fascism and white nationalism driven by media, lawmakers and the White House. She articulates strategies for fighting the good fight and advocating for our immigrant brothers and sisters. As Audrey’s best friend for twenty years, we discuss where that impulse towards social justice co...

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever.” ― James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name   Audrey discusses Trump's new executive order: "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets," which seeks to punish individuals suffe...

“ Please God give everyone the strength to say something.” -Ms. Rachel   Following seventy-five years of apartheid and Hamas’ attack on October 7th, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people has become undeniable. The pact between Israel and the West has made a mockery of international law, corroded institutions, compromised democracies, and claimed thousands of lives. In Gaza now there...

In our ongoing series recognizing disability pride month, we talk to social worker Ryan Padilla, SWAICL, about how an accident which led to his paraplegia motivated him towards a new purpose of helping others in therapy, thinking global while acting local. Even before the injury that brought seismic change to his life, Ryan had always nurtured a desire to heal people. He describes in his experienc...

Patrick and Audrey break down the “Big Beautiful Bill” (hereby called the Fuckity Fuck Fuck) that was recently made the law of the land by a heartless Republican Party, which seems intent on culling the herd to enrich the very few. In our subsequent exploration of trauma and recovery, Audrey details the long path she’s taken out of her own past of addiction, and the traumatic relationship that kep...

Audrey and Patrick talk social justice, Quaker ancestral truths, and formative romantic relationships before pivoting to the event that sparked this show: the ongoing siege and terrorizing of immigrant communities in Los Angeles and other cities in America by fascist ICE commandos animated by a white nationalist Trump administration.   Introductory Quote by: H. Marissa Montes, esq. Marissa is an i...