Time & Other Thieves

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In this episode I share an essay I recently wrote about my relationship with music, starting with myself as a five-year-old listening to Gram Parsons on vinyl and ending with present day and my decision to bring Time & Other Thieves back to the radio—live in the studio!—where I can play music again. My intention with this new iteration of the show is to only play the music I own and love, as opposed to getting seduced by the convenience and affordability of Spotify, with its overwhelming number of options. I miss the days of listening to the same albums over and over again until they become a part of my DNA. "It's so nice, I wanna hear the same song twice." This is my ode to repetitive listening.

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In this episode, I reproduce a three-part Zoom lecture that was inspired by a Lucy Holmes (2006) article titled, "Becoming an Analyst: Learning to Live with Madness, Aggression, and the Unknown," in which she gives therapists permission to be angry, stupid, and crazy. I apply her ideas to my own experience as a process-group leader, but one could apply them to any endeavor at becoming competent in a given field.

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In this episode (the first of its kind that I've made in almost a year!), I explore some of the ideas presented in Marion Woodman's "Bone: Dying Into Life," which is a collection of journal entries that chronicle her experience with uterine cancer from 1993–1995. I mostly muse on a smattering of quotes that Woodman wrote in the margins of her journal, from the likes of Carl Jung, Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Topics include the fast pace of our society and the importance of slowing down (group can help with that!); how we see versions of ourselves in others (group, anyone?); how symptoms are an attempt at healing, and how physical travails can bring us to higher consciousness; the relentless demands of dinner; the value and necessity of mundane activities; the joy of dwelling in Possibility (group again!); and the impossibility of ever knowing someone completely, which means we should try all the more to do it, like good bodhisattvas (and group members!).

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In this episode, I share a conversation I recently had with award-winning audiobook narrator and voice actor Brittany Pressley, who has also been a friend of mine since high school. Alongside my BFF Courtney Wait as co-interviewer, I ask Brittany all (or at least some) of the questions I've been wanting to ask her since I started listening to her books (e.g. Katharine Smyth's "All the Lives We Ever Lived," Piper Weiss's "You All Grow Up and Leave Me," Lori Gottlieb's "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone") several years ago. (In the episode I say "at least ten years ago," but that might not be accurate.) Brittany has recorded over 700 audiobooks! Voice acting is such a fascinating job, and she is so good at it. Courtney and I had tons of fun asking her stuff and laughing with her. What a delight. At the end of the episode I share the recording that Brittany made (so kindly at my brazen request) of herself reading some of my own writing.

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In this episode I share an edited version of a radio show I did back in October of 2022, about Van Morrison's 1968 sophomore album, "Astral Weeks," released when he was just 23 years old. I provide some history on the record's creation and then focus on three songs: the title track, "Cyprus Avenue," and "Madame George." Music critic Lester Bangs called "Astral Weeks" a "mystical document" and said it was "a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend.”