Unlicensed Therapist | Ali A. Rizvi

Mark Zuckerberg outraged Senators and parents in a Judicial Committee hearing by claiming that there is "no causal link" between social media and mental health. The Senators also made Mark Zuckerberg apologize to the families of children who died or ended their lives because of experiences on social media. Here's the problem: Mark Zuckerberg is right. And this hearing is just anothe...

Kelly Carlin — daughter of the legendary late comedian George Carlin — joins me to talk about her lawsuit against the creators of a fake AI-generated "special" of her dad, the future of AI and human creativity, "manufactured humanity," what her father might have thought about the world today, and the experience of making the HBO Max documentary "George Carlin's Americ...

In this episode, I speak to May Salam from Gaza. Although she was able to leave, her family is still trapped in the war, living in a tent on a street in Southern Gaza after their home was leveled by Israeli bombing. Her brother is badly injured, with no access to medical treatment. May has had no contact with her family for three weeks.  You will hear May tell her story as she has seen and experie...

Vishnu Vaka is KILLING it. His clips have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram. Russell Peters (a fan) has taken him on tour. Bill Burr has shared his bits online. He has gotten "passed" at New York's elite Comedy Cellar, one of the world's toughest clubs to get into. If you're one of the few people who haven't heard Vishnu yet, trust me—you soon will. Vishnu came to th...

Is Christian Nationalism the biggest threat to America today? James Carville, political guru and strategist who got Bill Clinton elected president twice, thinks it’s "more dangerous than Al-Qaeda." Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives, has said the separation of church and state is a “misnomer.” Congresswoman Lauren Boebert thinks it’s “junk.” And the US Supreme Court it...

The whole world is talking about Israel and Palestine — but what do people on the ground there really think? In this episode, I speak with Corey Gil-Shuster, who joins me from Tel Aviv, Israel. Corey has spent more than a decade taking a camcorder (and translators as needed) into the cities and towns in the West Bank and in Israel, asking questions to ordinary people on the street sent to him from...

It isn't just a Christmas book — it's a raucous, fun, biting statement on our world at the end of 2023. Christmas Mubarak! Author Mookie Spitz (American Jew) and illustrator and artist Rusty Yunusoff (Russian Muslim) talk about their fantastic new book about Santa Claus (North Pole Christian). But that's not all there is to it. Listen and find out. Get Super Santa here: https://www....

After a killer first episode (thanks to all who watched/listened/shared), we’re on to Episode 2 of Unlicensed Therapist, featuring one of my favorite rising standup comedians, Noor Kidwai. You may have seen Noor in one of his viral Instagram sketches with fellow comics Andrew Oporto and Edworld Kim, all of who perform standup together on their Diversity Hires comedy tour — one of the funniest and...

Mookie Spitz is the Jewish-American son of Hungarian Holocaust survivors. I was born to a Pakistani Muslim family and grew up in Saudi Arabia. In North America, we're friends. Elsewhere, we may not have been. In the inaugural episode of Unlicensed Therapist, we'll do more than just talk to each other: we will listen. Join us as we get into how our backgrounds shaped our views on the Isra...

Kelly Carlin is the only daughter of legendary comedian George Carlin and author of "A Carlin Home Companion." Kelly is an inspirational public speaker, a writer of books and screenplays, radio host, podcaster, and a declared asker of big questions, with a graduate degree in Jungian psychology and a refreshingly unique perspective on life and living. In this episode, we talk about person...

Going through a divorce is always difficult and complicated, no matter what your circumstances. And when there are children involved, it can be even more fraught and heartbreaking. If you are a divorced dad who is fortunate enough to have shared or full custody of your child(ren), you might be surprised at the lack of resources available to help you navigate your new life as a single father. My gu...

Suicide is an occupational hazard for physicians. It is the only cause of death that occurs with more frequency in physicians than non-physicians, at double the rate of the general population. For perspective, 400 physicians take their own lives every year in the US — that's more than one doctor a day. And a survey by the Canadian Medical Association showed that 1 in 3 physicians screened pos...

Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have banned the sitting President of the United States for directly inciting the unprecedented violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters on January 6. Filmmaker Jay Shapiro joined me to talk about censorship, free speech, the role of media in a post-Trump world, and a lot more — with a perspective you may not have heard before. This episode wa...

Seth Andrews was a fundamentalist Christian radio host for ten years. Today he is a secular humanist and atheist activist based in Oklahoma. He is the author of the excellent book, "Confessions of a Former Fox News Christian" — more relevant than ever today — and joins me to talk about a lot of things that have been on both our minds: his first-hand insights into the mind of the Christia...

It's OVER. Strategist Mookie Spitz and filmmaker Jay Shapiro join me again to talk about what happened. Yes, Trump lost. But he got 71 million votes. No, there was no voter fraud. But SCOTUS is 6-3 conservative. Trump's gone—but is Trumpism dead? And did he take pollsters down with him? Is it incumbent upon liberals now to reconcile with and reach out to Trump supporters? We talk about a...

Are you confident Biden will win on November 3? Or are you terrified that it's 2016 all over again? Mookie Spitz — a strategist who consulted for the Andrew Yang campaign — thinks Trump will win. Jay Shapiro — filmmaker and director of "Islam and the Future of Tolerance" — is confident that Trump will lose. Both join me in this episode to duke it out. Let's do this! Watch the v...

With two weeks left to go before the election, Democrats are more anxious than ever about a repeat of 2016, despite polling and fundraising numbers that are dramatically more favorable to Joe Biden than Donald Trump. My friend Jay Shapiro—the extraordinarily talented director and producer behind documentaries like Islam and the Future of Tolerance and Opposite Field —joins me to talk about why 202...

After his exposed tax returns, his first debate with Biden, and his diagnosis and hospitalization with COVID a month before the election, conventional wisdom would say that Donald Trump is on the trajectory to almost certain defeat. But 4 weeks is still a long time in US politics, and Mookie Spitz makes a persuasive case for why Trump STILL has a good shot — and why we should be cautious about pol...

Can Trump win again? Talking to strategist Mookie Spitz has seriously shaken me out of my complacency. Spitz is a marketing and PR strategy maestro who specializes in healthcare, non-profits, and politics. He is also a writer, rock guitar player (who can seriously SHRED), and was fired by Presidential candidate Andrew Yang (a story you'll definitely want to hear). We talked about the election...

You're lazy. You have little motivation. You don't want to go to the gym. And you're stuck at home in these COVID-19 times. But you want to be healthy and look good. Is that even possible? Armin Navabi — the controversial Iranian-Canadian atheist activist whose organization, Atheist Republic, has over 2 million followers and counting — describes himself as all of those things, but h...

The subtitle says it all: "A Journey from Ivory Coast to America, from African to Black, and from Undocumented to Doctor." Habib Fanny is a US physician who grew up in the Ivory Coast. He is both an American African and an African-American. He was raised Muslim and is now an atheist. He is an outsider and an insider. He is a prolific writer, with almost 100,000 followers on Quora, where...

The murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed have sparked passionate conversations within many marginalized communities about how insidious systems of oppression can be, especially in this day and age. I'm speak with Maryam Namazie — the British-Iranian secularist and human rights activist often credited for making the ex-Muslim movement the global phenomenon it is today — about...

Back in medical school, Anwar and I used to have a lot of conversations about what success means, what intelligence means, and how much of a role intelligence plays in success. I eventually left clinical medicine to go into medical communications and writing. Anwar is still a practicing internist, and also an aspiring fiction writer and a member of Mensa. We go back and talk about how we defined s...

Harris Sultan is a Pakistani-Australian atheist activist and author of "The Curse of God: Why I Left Islam." His YouTube channel, Pakistani Mulhid, promotes atheism and secularism in Urdu, the language spoken in Pakistan. With tens of thousands of subscribers and an even wider audience, he is able to reach countless atheists in one of the world's largest Muslim countries—in their la...

Dr. Rahman is a California pediatrician and dear friend of almost three decades. We went to medical school together. We’ll talk, among other things, about our personal and professional experiences with something that is on the minds of many in these COVID times: death. Join in and send us your questions. Watch the video version of this episode: Subscribe to Unlicensed Therapist on YouTube and hit...