Friends & Neighbors

Few MTV News staffers had a run like Michael Alex. From producing "The Week in Rock" and "Choose or Loose," to launching MTV News Dot Com, Michael did it all. Buckle up and ride shotgun with Michael and Paul McCartney, Kieth Richards, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Sinéad O'Connor, Bootsy Collins, and many, many more.

In his more than two-decade tenure, MTV News Correspondent John Norris interviewed everyone from Britney Spears and Janet Jackson to U.S. Senator John McCain and Vice President Al Gore. In this broad, deep, and thoughtful conversation with the self-described "retrophobe," we trace the arc of his career, hitting the club with Madonna, going to court with Michael Jackson, walking the VMA Red Carpet...

My Nantucket neighbor whose father appears in Mister Rogers & Me, discusses his New York Times Best Seller, Look For Me There, and lessons learned when a few months of travel became a three-year, six-continent odyssey to discover the world, process grief, and find himself.  

As Founder of Headlines Network, Hannah Storm is at the forefront of creating connections and driving conversations toward improving journalists’ mental health. From her home north of London, Hannah discusses her early career at BBC, Reuters and Channel 4, her experience with journalism safety and wellness, and her own healing journey.

Coach, Community Builder and CoMuse CEO, LJ Malberg goes deep on cultivating compassion, finding connection, getting uncomfortable, and letting go.

Delaware First Lady Tracey Quillen Carney and Trauma Matters Delaware Chairperson Dr. Julius Mullen discuss their pioneering work in recognizing and responding to childhood trauma.

Singer/songwriter and alt-rock frontman John Faye’s “The Yin and the Yang of It All: Rock’n’Roll Memories from the Cusp,” takes us for a ride into the belly of a dream. In the new memoir, Faye beautifully renders his healing journey from an alienated and grief-stricken teen and major label frontman to a fiftysomething father, mentor and champion of the middle-class musician.

In which I find out how my long-time music marketing and singer/songwriter friend, Elisa Peimer, made a mid-life pivot to become a psychotherapist – and how the 80s band Styx and Broadway musical, Annie, connects us.

I was recording "In The End" in Muscle Shoals just a week after demo'ing it, when bandleader Will McFarlane, asked, “Should we go full Otis on this one?” Otis Redding recorded his posthumous hit, “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” in that very room on those very keyboards just months before dying in a plane crash in 1967. "Absolutely," I responded. The story behind Constellations' fifth and final...

Prior to becoming CEO of Center for Public Integrity, Paul Cheung put in three decades at America's most prestigious journalism institutions including The Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Associated Press, and the Knight Foundation. This week, Paul travels back to his childhood in Hong Kong and immigration to Manhattan's Lower East Side, adolescence in suburban New Jersey, and storied career at...

In this audio companion to my recently premiered documentary short, I trace my road trip from Memphis to Muscle Shoals writing and recording my tenth album, "Constellations," and reveal how a Texan waitress, Mexican tailor, and Tupelo pop icon's secrets helped inspire my path towards recovery.

For more than a decade, David Smydra has been at the forefront of assuring that tech platforms deliver personalized, high quality news by leading “humans in the loop,” journalists who bridge the gaps between editorial quality, product and audience development, and algorithmic design. This week, the former Google and Twitter curation lead and Online News Organization Board President shares his jour...

It has been an outstanding and occasionally excruciating year. Through it all, I’ve found hope and healing in the shared wisdom of my friends and neighbors. This week, we listen back to some of those insights, inspirations and lessons learned from Senator Sarah McBride, Author Tim Madigan, Music Therapist Kelli Rae Powell and more.

I Remember Everything, the penultimate track on my new album, Constellations, began as another in a long list of "disaster songs" but evolved into something noticeably different, deeply instructive and profoundly transformative. This week, I explore how the song helped me understand the biology, psychology and neurology of somatic memory, and how the body keeps the score.

Cellist Patrick Riley has performed string arrangements on albums by Shawn Mendes, Imagine Dragons, and The Envy Corps, played live alongside The Eagles and Father John Misty, scored big-time Hollywood films – and graced every one of my albums since 2010’s “Forever Young.”  

In the 90s, the CDC made the correlation between adverse childhood experiences like divorce, violence, substance abuse and mental illness and adult outcomes like anxiety, depression, addiction and many of the leading causes of death. It’s just that, well, no one told most of us. 

When what I thought was anxiety and depression was diagnosed as PTSD last fall, I suddenly saw trauma and its impact all around. Since April, I've been quietly crisscrossing the country, examining the roots of my own trauma, and the trauma and chronic stress that affect us all. I’ve been seeking insights, solutions, and strategies to help heal the anxious and uncertain communities around us. And n...

As outgoing CEO of the world’s largest membership organization of digital journalists, Online News Association, Irving Washington has led programming and fundraising initiatives for journalists, media professionals, and students worldwide. This week, in the fourth of a series of Media Transformation Challenge-sponsored episodes, MTC Journeys, Irving shares how MTC helped accelerate the organizatio...

Whether as a touring guitarist for the avant-garde rockers, Psychic TV, or producer for artists like Boy George, Lenny Kaye, and Pharoahe Monch, Jeff Berner makes a safe, creative space for those around him to make great art. This week, we trace Jeff’s life from first falling for “Sunshine of Your Love,” to building his studio career, performing in Russia with punk legend Genesis P-Orridge – and p...

The fourth single, final track and thesis statement of my new album, Constellations, began as an expression of darkness and sadness but with time and telling, transformed into something altogether different.

Philly singer/songwriter Lily McKown & Wilmington psyche rocker, Hayden Chance (a/k/a Chvnce) have both graduated to national stages but are close enough to rock 'n roll's rickety attics and ratty basements to remember the stale smell of beer and sharp shock of an ungrounded microphone. This week, we discuss early influences, song craft and what it feels like to finally arrive.

From a chance meeting with Nashville waitress with a profoundly personal and deeply universal story to a lushly realized FAME Studios recording, then Brooklyn-mixed and mastered masterpiece, this is the story of one song's journey to your ears.

In 2019, AP’s Noreen Gillespie was tasked with evolving domestic news operations amidst a rapidly changing ecosystem. Today, the AP’s approach to US news is wholly transformed, and Noreen’s applying what she learned to the rest of the planet.

Sound Mind Live Executive Director Chris Bullard talks about growing up in L.A., sharing a mic with Kris Kristofferson, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and his mission to end the stigma that surrounds mental health through the power of music.

We all have secrets, truths that gnaw at us, crush our spirit, and kill us from the inside out. The second single from my forthcoming album, Constellations, is that moment of realization and transformation made manifest. On this week's episode, I share the journey of writing and recording of "The Secret Song," from inception to release, and explore how it came to help me, as Fred Rogers often said...