Mothering Heights

This week, Leonora is absolutely honored to welcome Aja Volkman to Mothering Heights. Aja is a singer, songwriter, mama of FOUR children, a survivor, and artist in all senses. We discuss walking through a fire (in Aja's case, a very public fire) and using those experiences as fuel for our creativity, how we connect to the muse, and where she finds inspiration. Aja is a treasure and a pure heart an...

What a treat to have actor, writer, director, and big funny guy Ike Barinholtz on this week's Mothering Heights. Our last week of Dad's Month! You all know Ike from The Mindy Project, Blockers, Neighbors, White House Plumbers, History of the World Part II, and his new film, Maximum Truth, written by Ike and Dave Stassen, and directed by Dave.  These two old friends discuss how his passion for poli...

It's a true honor and treat to have filmmaker, actor, and true mensch Jay Duplass on this week's Mothering Heights. As an actor, you've seen Jay in the iconic series Transparent, The Chair, and Industry. As a filmmaker, he and his brother Mark redefined independent cinema with films like Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Cyrus, and The Puffy Chair and have fostered beautiful series like HBO's Togetherness...

This week, Leonora is totally thrilled to welcome actor, writer, director, and her children's beloved godfather, Charlie Day to Mothering Heights! Charlie (along with co-creators Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton) created the longest-running live action comedy TV show of all time, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, was the voice of the iconic Luigi in the animated The Super Mario Brothers Movie, a...

Dad's Month continues on Mothering Heights with actor, writer, director, icon, and DAD, Matthew Lillard. In this joyful conversation, we discuss the ups and downs and backs and forths of his career, how he re-aligned himself during a challenging time, his writing process, and how he got his first feature made. Matthew is a treasure of a human being, and that shines through in this conversation.  A...

Welcome to Dads' Month on Mothering Heights! First up, Leonora is totally thrilled to welcome actor, author, improviser, podcaster, punk rocker, AND DAD John Ross Bowie to the podcast. You all know John from his many years playing Barry Kripke on Big Bang Theory, his wonderful work on the ABC series Speechless, a thousand other roles and guest spots, and from his incredible memoir No Job For a Man...

This week, Leonora is thrilled to welcome dancer, actress, writer, and the host of the podcast That One [Blank] Friend Saudia Rashed to the podcast! They discuss finding our first love of performing through dance, dedicating one's life to creative pursuits, finding love in a sketch comedy troupe, and the audacious act of moving from being an interpretive artist to being a generative artist. Please...

This week, it's a true honor to welcome the founder and executive director of Miry's List, Miry Whitehill, to Mothering Heights. She's Miry, from the List! Miry's List is a nonprofit organization made up of neighbors and friends dedicated to welcoming new arrival refugee families into our community through inspired crowdsourcing solutions. And Miry is an unendingly inspiring leader and creator and...

This week, Leonora is totally thrilled to welcome actress, director, producer, and the Artistic Director of the Independent Shakespeare Company, Melissa Chalsma! Melissa is a true leader in the Los Angeles theater community and is a true genius in theater-making. The ISC brings FREE Shakespeare in the Park to tens of thousands Angelenos every summer, their world-class productions are engaging, hil...

This week, Leonora is so thrilled to be joined by filmmaker, documentarian, and activist Kristin Fairweather. Kristin has directed five features after pivoting from a successful career in politics, and we discuss how Kristin uses her feminist bona fides to navigate the film industry, how she was able to kickstart her career and maintain it, and how small our margins of error are as women filmmaker...

In our very first mini-sode, Leonora is thrilled to be joined by actress, writer, filmmaker, and connector Rakefet Abergel. Rakefet is a truly dynamic person, and she is presently crowd-funding to make her next film, Still. This film grew out of her own experience of having a miscarriage, and has been integral to her healing. This episode contains discussion of pregnancy and miscarriage, so please...

This week, Leonora is thrilled to welcome playwright, artist, and activist Sunny Drake to Mothering Heights. Sunny is about to launch the podcast Climate Change and Other Small Talk, a theatrical podcast that is here to hold your hand through the scary stuff and entertain you at the same time. Leonora and Sunny discuss how to use your inherent power to find hope when things are at their scariest,...

This week, Leonora is joined by… herself. Feeling very, deeply vulnerable, she shares a story of losing out on a gig that she allowed herself to hope was hers. Get ready to either cry or laugh at Leonora crying! Mothering Heights is taking a couple of weeks off for Spring Break, but we will be back soon with a new theme song (!!!) and more fabulously brave, funny, and wise guests. Until then, reme...

This week, Leonora is totally thrilled to be joined by the wonderful filmmaker Foster Wilson! Foster is an award-winning director, filmmaker, and Emergence Award Recipient. She earned her BFA at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied for 3 years with the Atlantic Theater Company under the tutelage of David Mamet, Chris Bauer, Scott Zigler, and Mary McCann, among others....

This week, Leonora is so thrilled that Emily Ziff Griffin has joined her for a wonderful chat. Emily is a writer and producer and an all-around totally amazing human. Emily's critically-acclaimed novel, Light Years, was developed for television by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and she is currently adapting her beloved New Yorker essay, "Last Dance With My Father," for Endeavor Content....

This week, Leonora is so honored and happy to welcome the prolific filmmaker and writer, Mo Perkins. Mo has directed two features, A Quiet Little Marriage, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Fest, and The Last Time You Had Fun, which premiered at LA Film Fest and won awards all over the dang place. She and Leonora discuss the various shadowing programs, Mo's extremely unique upbr...

This week, Leonora is thrilled to welcome actress, musician, producer, author, Emmy, and Grammy award-winning dynamo Alisha Gaddis to the podcast! Alisha and her husband lead Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band, which you've certainly heard on your radio if you are raising young children. She is the author of seven best-selling books and has recently landed on the pages of Vogue as one of the Gramm...

What a true honor to welcome the inimitable Grace Chon to Mothering Heights. Grace is a world-renowned photographer, published author, the host of the Creativity School podcast, Akashic Records reader, creativity coach, and all-around creative badass. In this episode, we track Grace's trajectory from marketing wiz to digging into her creative soul, how she cultivated that creativity for a *living*...

Leonora is so thrilled and honored to welcome author and dialect and vocal coach Samara Bay to Mothering Heights. Samara travels the world dialect coaching some of the biggest stars in the world, and in her brand new book, Permission to Speak, Samara lays out how each of us can change the world - and our place in it - by harnessing the power of our voices. Samara's book is profound and joyful and...

This week, Leonora is honored to welcome astrologer, poet, leader, speaker, podcaster, and author Heidi Rose Robbins to the podcast. Heidi is a generous beacon of wisdom every single day on Instagram with her Moon Notes and has guided thousands of people with her insightful and powerful understanding of the cosmos. She and Leonora discuss astrology, of course, but also what self-renewal means to u...

This week, Leonora is thrilled to welcome actress, producer, writer, funny person, and self-proclaimed Cancer Mom Lily Vonnegut to Mothering Heights. They discuss how to find humor through the worst of times and finding ourselves through to the other side, how her two famously creative parents shaped her own creativity, crying in sweatpants and corsets at acting school, the creation of her hit ani...

This week, Leonora is thrilled to be joined by dancer, choreographer, and movement director, Ayesha Orange. Ayesha assisted Ryan Heffington on his Emmy-award-winning choreography for HBO's hit series Euphoria, has worked extensively with the legendary Nina McNeely and has danced onstage at the Emmys, the Oscars, with artists like Mariah Carey, Bette Midler, Pink, and Usher, and in over twenty film...

This week, Leonora is thrilled to welcome actress, writer, and reader Clementine Ford. These two moms' group comrades discuss Clementine's experience as an immunocompromised MS patient living through lockdown, how her unique upbringing as the daughter of a Hollywood legend informs her parenting choices today, book shopping as a kid with Larry McMurtry, and what it was like being Miss Golden Globes...

Welcome back to Mothering Heights! This week, Leonora welcomes actress and acting coach Mackenzie Meehan. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be directed by Martin Scorsese, Mackenzie has got the lowdown. Mackenzie has starred in projects like Wolf of Wall Street and Bull, and she and Leonora discuss grad school, forgiving yourself for being a mean girl in your 20s, getting notes from...

This week, Leonora heartily welcomes prolific filmmaker Amber Sealey to the podcast. Amber has directed five features, including the tense psychodrama No Man of God starring Elijah Wood and Luke Kirby, and Disney's upcoming Out of My Mind. Amber is unfiltered in all the best ways: full of vulnerability and hard-won wisdom about how to be brave and focused creative. The two friends discuss working...