Full Spectrum with Molly Kawahata

I’ve spent the last two months talking with innovators who’ve done wild things—from surviving homelessness to becoming a world-renowned hope researcher, to convincing a sitting President to get roasted on a comedy show to save a landmark policy. This week, I’ve pulled the most powerful strategies from our recent episodes into one mixtape. The common thread? The most effective ways to create change...

What if anxiety isn’t the enemy – we’ve just been using it wrong? Sometimes the tools we build for others are the ones we needed to invent for ourselves. — I’ve always struggled with anxiety. My brain can turn an unresolved text message into a full-blown crisis. But what I never realized is that if our minds can rehearse disaster, we can also train them to rehearse something different. That insigh...

In this episode, I answer the question: What’s the most dramatic way to ruin your own life for 24 hours? This is the story about becoming the world's most expensive inconvenience. Welcome to The Between Series—a series where I take you into moments from my life that shaped the themes we explore in the main episodes. For anyone who’s ever: Hit "reply all" on something you shouldn’t h...

I remember the day at the Obama White House when healthcare.gov crashed—and millions of Americans were locked out of coverage that could literally save their lives. This is the inside story of how, in a moment of sheer desperation, the Obama White House turned to a viral comedy sketch to save the Affordable Care Act—and how Brad Jenkins made it happen. Brad was the architect behind one of the bold...

"Awe doesn’t always translate. But what do we lose when we stop trying to share it?" Welcome to The Between   Series —a series where I take you into moments from my life that shaped the themes we explore in the main episodes. These are the in-between chapters that echo through everything you hear on the show. The landscape of the High Sierra has rearranged the scale of my life more times...

We think of awe as rare. A sunset. A mountain peak. A fleeting high. But what if we’ve got it backwards? Awe isn’t just something that happens to you—it’s a biological lever hiding in plain sight. One that can decrease stress hormones, stretch time, and rewire attention. In this conversation, Dr. Kim Nolan—Buddhist chaplain, psychologist, and one of the most grounded people I’ve ever known—shows u...

"Because really—w hy would anyone fight for a future they believe is already lost?” Welcome to The Between Series —a series where I take you into moments from my life that shaped the themes we explore in the main episodes, and share the meaning I’m still trying to make from them. These are the in-between chapters that echo through everything you hear on the show. In this episode, I share a tu...

There’s a version of the story we’ve been told about climate: that it’s too late, that people don’t care, that politics will never catch up. But there’s another version. One where the real problem isn’t apathy—it’s activation.  In this episode, I talk with Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder of the Environmental Voter Project—a behavioral science powerhouse that’s quietly turning millions of non-votin...

A story about that moment of reckoning: when you finally ask yourself if the thing keeping you afloat is also the thing pulling you under. Welcome to The Between Series —a series where I take you into moments from my life that shaped the themes we explore in the main episodes, and share the meaning I’m still trying to make from them. These are the in-between chapters that echo through everything y...

I used to hate uncertainty. Whenever things felt hard, I’d assume they’d always be this hard. Like something in my brain just decided: this is how it is now. Forever. But one therapist, one sentence, one metaphor about tenuousness changed how I see it. This episode is about that shift—and how we can train ourselves to make it. Because hope isn’t about blind optimism. It’s about having a goal, beli...

I used to think the idea of hope was kind of cringe. Like, “Don’t worry, it’ll all work out”? Please. I couldn’t see past next week, let alone some imaginary better future.  But through a series of events, I realized that hope had been the theme of my life all along. And the science of hope, which is backed by decades of research, changed everything for me. Hope is one of the most impactful tools...

Full Spectrum is the podcast focused on giving you actionable strategies for navigating uncertain times. Molly Kawahata has navigated the halls of the Obama White House, a Patagonia film, and bipolar II—and wondered one thing: what do you do when the stakes are high and nothing’s clear? Part memoir, part strategy session, part existential crisis with a mic—Molly dives into unfiltered convos with f...