The 28 year-old listener opens up about his family’s history of avoiding emotions, his cries for help, being sexually assaulted by a male friend at 13, struggling to live on $8/hour, his cutting and self-abuse and his shame over being aroused by dressing and acting like a baby.
Born to a drug-addict teenage mom, Julie was given up for adoption and raised by a stoic military dad and Fundamentalist mom whose obsession with demons comes close to resembling the mother from “Carrie”. There is much more to her story including her humor and resilience.
Paul’s friend shares about being committed to a psych hospital at 17 over a breakup, discovering drugs (crack) and how to hustle money to feed his habit. Hitting bottom in the desert and the dog that might have saved his life.
The actress/ writer/ standup/ podcaster (Girl on Guy)/t.v. host (The Talk, Talk Soup) joins Paul at LAPodfest in front of a live audience and discusses her workaholism and anxiety, her outcast status as a child, where her drive comes from, growing to understand her intimidating, blunt father and appreciate the challenges of her long marriage.
The 26 year-old shares about emigrating to the U.S. (Las Vegas) from Mexico (Puruandiro in Michoacan) at 8, his fear of his hard-drinking and volatile migrant-worker father, “passing” for white, his body dysmorphia and the struggle today to feel his feelings rather than shutting down.
She was raised by a father with Schizo-Affective Disorder (whose symptoms can include delusions and paranoia) who would often break from reality. By her twenties she was battling the same disorder along with bulimia, anorexia and cutting. She has had over 80 psychiatric hospitalizations and she shares about coming out the other side, including the people, support and therapies that helped her.
He is still physically female but has always identified as a male. He talks about what it means to be genderfluid or genderqueer as well as pansexual and the difficult road in discovering who he is and expressing that around others, especially family.
Raised by attentive, loving parents she nevertheless grew up with a pervasive feeling of emptiness that she sought to soothe through relationships with men. In her words she, “Burnt her life to the ground”, but used the experience and pain to grow.
The 22 year-old opens up about the guilt and anxiety of growing up feeling like it was his duty to keep his mother out of her depression, even though she was emotionally incestuous with him, how he finally rebelled, and the toll it has taken.