Embodied

Stuttering occurs in every culture with a spoken language. So why do many communities treat it as a source of shame? Two speech-language pathologists and a comedian help Anita question cultural assumptions about stuttering and explore the growing movement to embrace speech diversity. Meet the guests: - Dr. Derek Daniels , licensed and certified speech-language pathologist and associate professor i...

Anita learns about non-sexual, social nudity and why opting to live life mostly in the nude could actually make her think about her body LESS. [This episode originally aired in September 2021.] Meet the guests: - Naomi Brown , a reporter and host at WUNC, talks about her personal journey to becoming a practicing naturist - Jay Shapiro , lead coordinator and president of Triangle Area Naturists LLC...

True or false? Victorian doctors invented the vibrator to cure women's "hysteria" by bringing them to sexual climax. The answer may surprise you...as it did Anita! She gets the truth about vibrator history from journalist Hallie Lieberman and meets Anna Lee, the engineer behind the first-ever “smart” vibrator that can help you better understand your arousal patterns. Meet the guests: - Hallie Lieb...

Anita has many close friends who defy all stereotypes about only children. But when it comes to thinking about having her own kids, she still can't shake some of those ingrained ideas. She hears three perspectives on single-kid families (including that of former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins) and learns why the debunked mythology around only children still lingers today. Meet the guests: - Laur...

The name Embodied came to Anita in a dream, and she's on a quest to figure out how that happened. She talks to a dreamworker about strengthening the bridge between dreaming and creativity, unpacks weird COVID-19 dreams and learns about nightmare therapy. [This episode originally aired in March 2022] Meet the guests: - Angel Morgan , an artist, filmmaker and the founder of Dreambridge , gives Anita...

Anita has fallen down her fair share of wellness rabbit holes [including a certain alliterative family's beauty and shapewear brands... ]. Wellness industry insider and journalist Rina Raphael shares how this $4 trillion industry misleads all of us, and 'Dope Black Social Worker' Kim Young gives us the wellness reframes we all need. Meet the guests: - Rina Raphael , author of " The Gospel of Welln...

After not seeing a drag show for the first 30 years of her life, Anita now dives in. She explores the history and evolution of the artform with a drag scholar-turned-performer; meets a non-binary drag 'thing' pushing boundaries through performance; and talks with a Durham-based drag artist who speaks out against anti-drag violence. Meet the guests: - Rose Butch , Vancouver's premiere Drag Thing, e...

Anita reconnects with the woman who changed her thinking on incarceration: her beloved college thesis adviser Ashley Lucas. Ashley reflects on her father's 20-year prison sentence and the untold stories of families navigating incarceration from the outside. Journalist Sylvia A. Harvey also shares how losing her mother to asthma and her father to a life sentence in prison before she was 6 years old...

Anita and her partner John have started talking more openly about how his hearing loss informs their relationship and how they'll continue to navigate that as they age. She meets another interabled couple (Anna and Vika) who share the sometimes humorous, sometimes challenging moments that accompany sex and dating with hearing loss. Plus, former guest Yat Li returns to talk about deafness, disclosu...

Last October Anita got an e-mail that piqued her curiosity: a story pitch about how anti-fat bias affects people seeking gender-affirming surgery. She hands the mic over to audio journalist H Conley, who follows a 26-year-old Black nonbinary food writer as they overcome repeated barriers to getting top surgery due to body size. Meet the guests: - Chala June , an associate editor at "Bon Appétit" m...

Anita learned in the early days of this show that there's no such thing as "normal" sexual behavior. But what *is* worth considering: how your relationship with sex affects your life. She meets two women whose compulsive sexual behaviors led them to seek support, and a sex-positive psychologist shares how she helps folks with sex addiction in their recovery. Meet the guests: - Krista Nabar, the ex...

Anita has not participated in a Dry January, but there are times when she's motivated to pay extra-close attention to her relationship with alcohol. Most recently: during the pandemic. While some of us started drinking more, another group of folks committed to sober curiosity: a movement encouraging introspection about your relationship with alcohol. She meets two people who are years into buildin...

Anita has been unpacking intergenerational trauma ... thanks, in part, to Hollywood. Seeing herself in movies like "Turning Red" and "Everything Everywhere All At Once" has helped her make sense of her own family's challenges. She talks with three women who've investigated how events in their own family histories have rippled through the generations to influence their bodies, parenting and culture...

Anita is a sucker for live storytelling, so when she and the Embodied team planned their first in-person event, they knew the vibe they were going for. They invited five people to stand on stage in front of a live audience and explore how purity culture has shaped their faith, relationships and sexuality. In part two, you'll meet a poet and a producer who're questioning what purity culture taught...

Anita met Embodied listeners IRL for the first time earlier this year at the show's first in-person event "Purified." The evening was part late night talk show and part live storytelling. With music DJ-ed by Quilla to set the tone, five people shared their unique experiences with purity culture on stage in front of a live audience. In part one, you'll meet a social worker, preacher and faith leade...

Anita has a lot of practice talking about taboo topics with strangers. But when it comes to having these conversations in her own family, especially around the holidays, she gets squirmy like the rest of us. She invites her older sister Priyanka onto the podcast to reflect on tricky — but often inevitable — conversations with family members. Priyanka, a mom and pediatrician, talks about her ongoin...

Anita wouldn't have made it through her 20s without her work friends. But now that she's a manager and working in a hybrid office, she's noticed that work friendships don't come as easily as they used to. A psychologist answers her burning workplace relationship questions and dives into the surprising amount of data about work besties. Plus, a Gen Z writer urges her to re-think the importance of w...

Anita has not lived with her parents since leaving for college. But during the pandemic, many Millennials and Gen Zers returned home. For some of them, especially those with unpartnered parents, this meant new and unexpected insights into their parents’ love lives. Anita shares an episode of the podcast “Dating While Gray” that features conversations between parents and their adult kids about the...

Anita hasn't always loved getting her photo taken, but seeing herself through the artistic eye of a close friend and photographer has changed her perspective. She meets two intimate photographers who take her behind the scenes of their shoots and share their philosophies on capturing the erotic in an image. Plus, she talks with a model about her intimate work that explores disability and sexuality...

Anita agrees to a suggestion posed by a listener: Explore why the hair-pulling disorder trichotillomania is so taboo. She talks with an artist who started pulling their hair more than two decades ago but only recently told her parents…after publishing part of their story in a national news outlet. A psychologist on the front-lines of studying trich treatment talks about the importance of acceptanc...

Anita is getting married next year, which means she's been thinking a lot about money and what kind of spending aligns with her values. Turns out that her money behaviors (and yours) are shaped by experiences and beliefs that have accumulated since childhood. She talks with a financial therapist and a money coach about their work to help people better understand their money hang-ups and explores s...

The first time we did an episode about the pelvic floor, Anita learned that y'all needed that education just as much as she did. She revisits the topic with a focus on access for trans and gender nonconforming folks. Two providers reflect on the sexuality education that has informed their approaches to treatment, and a patient shares his experience navigating pelvic pain with providers who weren't...

Anita is well aware that bringing a new baby into the world is a lotttttt of work (even though she's never done it herself). But when she heard about friends and family members choosing surrogacy to build their families, she realized how little she knows about that process — and how many misconceptions exist. She talks to a three-time surrogate about why she chose this path. A father who has had a...

After Anita watched the Netflix docuseries "Keep Sweet," it was on her mind for weeks. She sat down with Elissa Wall, one of the central figures in the series, to talk about growing up in an isolated, polygamist religious community in which everything was decided for her – from what she could wear to whom she would marry. Elissa talks about adjusting to life outside the FLDS Church, her process of...

For most of guest host Omisade Burney-Scott's life, she was a reluctant viewer of horror films — squinting through her fingers long enough to get to the closing credits. In recent years, that trepidation has turned into thrill as she's watched the Black horror genre evolve. She talks with a filmmaker, director and horror scholar about how they see their own experiences reflected in the Black horro...