Come As You Are Podcast

When Lauren Hough sets off on a road trip across America with Woody, her husky mix and constant companion, it’s partly because there are always reasons not to take the trip. Always reasons not to sit by the redwoods, swim in the creeks, see the ocean. Sometimes people wait so long for the perfect time to embark on an adventure like this, they never see the places they always wanted to see, and the...

This episode is about the two different justice systems that exist: one for clean-cut, well-off white boys and men, and another for the rest of us. This topic was spurred on by Judge Nicholas Rowland’s devastatingly lenient sentencing of three teenage boys in the U.K. on May 21st — but this is, infuriatingly and unconscionably — nothing new. Start paying attention to cases like these, and there’s...

This episode is all about love, and I am so thankful I got to dig into this topic with these two fantastic human beings and phenomenal writers. Kate’s novel, Book of Grace , is a sweeping, epic love story that cannot be stopped by time, loss, death — or all the different ways women sometimes prevent themselves from following their inner compass because they put themselves last on the list. It asks...

It has been hard lately, a thing I was writing about this week in French Toast for the Table — and something Dina was also writing about in her essay, If Men Are in Crisis, I Know Something That Might Help (Shhh…It’s Feminism) . For those of us who grew up with chaos, uncertainty and violence, and learned hyper-vigilance as a tool of survival, waking up in this country day after day feels all-too-...

Huge thanks to everyone who showed up live to join for this conversation, and to everyone about to listen. This talk is for any woman who has been reeling since the CNN report about the “rape academy.” Much has been written in the last few weeks, especially by women trying to get our heads around the idea that it isn’t just desolate parking lots and dark streets where we aren’t safe, it isn’t just...

First, if you are new to Come As You Are , I am so glad you’re here. Once in a while, an essay hits the right chord at the right moment, and I get to meet a whole bunch of new readers which is incredibly gratifying. Of course, it’s also devastating that the thing that brought us together is our horror over the news that there are men all over the world who have such little regard for the humanity...

No one has ever heard a podcast episode this good. It’s amazing, people are saying it’s incredible — they’ve never heard anything like it in their entire lives. Can you imagine speaking about yourself like you were the most amazing person ever to grace planet earth — meanwhile you’re just a mean old windbag who thinks Hannibal Lecter was an asylum seeker? Someone pass the fava beans. This week I r...

I’ve been feeling weird about the podcast lately, like I wasn’t sure if I should keep doing it, or if I should change the format and get a co-host, or if anyone was listening, and then I just realized there are stats, haha. I don’t know why I didn’t think to check sooner, the dashboard has stats on everything. I just tend not to look. Anyway, I found the stats, but then I was like, I have no clue...

In this week’s episode, I dug into the idea that people are not a monolith ; how we’ll get into trouble every time we conflate the president/leader/head-of-state with all the people who live in their country. It’s clear as day when you think about the (not) United States. Of the 342 million of us who live here, only 77 million voted for this president (I say “only” though I find it astounding ther...

I was going to send the podcast episode with a micro essay as usual, but I have been hit with a blinding migraine so I’m going to keep this short. Side note — once I read that migraines are caused by “too many thoughts” and I suppose that could be true. It makes me very sad and also enraged, that every time I write about the countless experiences I had with predatory men as a little girl and a tee...

I’ve been having vivid nightmares lately, and they have a theme: I’m out somewhere, and suddenly someone is threatening me. Last week, I was pushing a baby carriage in a place that wasn’t familiar. It was nighttime, and I was walking next to a hotel. A man passed me and I knew he intended to hurt me, the way you know things in a dream. I picked up my pace and glanced up at the hotel to see if anyo...

We don’t even get a day to recover anymore, which is the plan and the point. They want to exhaust people like you and me, people who are heartbroken, scared and furious — so we become overwhelmed beyond comprehension, and stop raging. I don’t know what they think. Maybe they imagine we won’t post videos anymore, we’ll stop talking to one another, stop protesting. This is how an organized crime gan...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is about men who hate women and the women who love them. It’s about people (mostly men) screaming at me in all caps that the division and violence in our country is due to rhetoric from “radical left lunatics” like me — and not because we’ve reached a point where 30% of the people in our country would not care if I got shot in the face three times for worrying about my neighbor...

This week’s podcast episode is full of heartbreak and fury. It’s about Venezuela, Greenland , Colombia, Cuba, and Canada. It includes The Monroe Doctrine, The Roosevelt Corollary, the Authorized Use of Military Force, a screeching Stephen Miller, and an administration with no qualms about doing/taking/killing what it wants — ethics, decency, truth, and the Constitution be damned. It’s about Januar...

Friends, a quick hello on Day 3 of this new year, or Day 4 if you get this Sunday morning. We will not be counting the days of this year generally, just these first few because it’s wild that it’s only Day 3 and … yeah. There are some new people in the mix and in our midst, so I want to welcome you all with a lot of love, and thank you so much for being here. Also, I want to let you know I do a po...

As the holidays approached this year, I started seeing a lot of people in my feeds expressing the desire to “quiet quit” the whole endeavor. People wondering if they could opt out, not have the big extended family dinner, get a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree, stay in pajamas. I saw this across all holidays — whatever people normally do around whatever holidays they celebrate, they wanted to do the...

Voiceover by the fantastic Andi Arndt I went to see It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve — they play it on the big screen at a theater near us every year — and if that film fails to put you in the holiday spirit you probably have to give up for the season and try again next year. It’s a strange year for all the reasons, so I think there are a lot of us trying. I love Jimmy Stewart. One of his ot...

I recorded this episode after one of the most sorrowful weeks I can remember . I wanted to be feeling joyful because it’s the holiday season, but you can’t force joy, and it’s very difficult to live in a country where we continue to have school shootings as though there’s nothing we can do to change that. Of all the issues we face here, that’s the one that wrecks me in a way that is hard to descri...

This episode is about a time when I was four, and two kids said I was dying and I believed them. More than that, though, it’s about a person who allowed me to be scared and sad and to grieve openly. I missed my grandma. I missed my old life before my grandma died — when my mom and dad and I lived together, and I didn’t spend three nights in one apartment, four nights in another. I missed my mom wh...

Four years ago today I was on a plane, trying to stay calm. I’d had to throw stuff in a bag and get on an app to find a flight that left a day earlier than the flight I had booked, which was a thing I did in a Lyft on the way to LAX. It wasn’t the plan. The plan was that I was going to fly back to NYC the following day, December 8th, to be there when the hospital discharged my mother into hospice...

Last week I wrote about what it’s like growing up and existing as a girl and a woman in this world . The response from so many women who relate was overwhelming, enraging, heartbreaking, and also incredible. The “ Quiet, Piggy” moment touched a deep nerve in many women across all kinds of borders, because so many of us felt it in our bones. So many of us know exactly what it’s like when a man atta...

There’s a certain kind of person who is so concerned with their own needs, how they’re feeling, and what’s good for them, they really don’t have the capacity to take in much of anything else. You might know some people like this. They can be very charming and charismatic, but after a short time you’ll realize their favorite topic — and the one they circle back to again and again — is them. When th...

“We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the ‘I’ behind the ‘eye’ that does the seeing.” ― Anaïs Nin This week’s essay and this podcast episode are about the “I” behind the “eye.” You, me, any of us — we are always walking out the door carrying our frames of reference with us, our perspectives, our ideas about how the world works, what we have to offer, whether anyone wants to...

One of the harder things about life right now is the constant onslaught of news that feels insane, impossible, heartbreaking, outrageous, mind-boggling, or fill-in-the-blank with your chosen word. We really aren’t built for this and it’s so incredibly sad, because it doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way. It could be so beautiful. I hope you are taking care of yourself, conscio...