Ep: 1850 Tess Fyalka - Walking The Leadership Ledge
The Kathryn Zox Show
Stepping into leadership after excelling as an individual contributor can feel overwhelming. Tess Fyalka explores the common challenges new leaders face, from self-doubt and team conflict to navigating difficult conversations with former peers. She shares practical tools to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and resilience. Learn how to communicate effectively, manage emotions under pressure, and turn tension into teamwork. She breaks down strategies to reduce turnover, delegate without burnout, and build a unified, high-performing team culture. Whether you’re new to leadership or...
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Ep: 1849 Tina Seelig PhD - What I Wish I Knew About Luck
The Kathryn Zox Show
What if luck isn’t random at all? Tina Seelig PhD reframes what we call “luck” as something you can actively create. Fortune grows from the choices you make and the risks you take when opportunity appears. Drawing on insights from her renowned TED Talk, she shares simple, practical strategies to help you build your own momentum—strengthening your mindset, surrounding yourself with the right people, and taking purposeful action. Through compelling stories and research-backed ideas, she explains how to turn setbacks into progress and challenges into breakthroughs. She has taught at...
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Ep: 1848 Deborah K. Shepard - An Old Man's Darling
The Kathryn Zox Show
In her captivating memoir, Deborah K. Shepherd examines her first great love, with a man thirty-four years her senior. In 1968 and at age 21, she ditched college in Tucson for hippie life in New York. When that soured, she found a low-level corporate job, where she met Bill Shepherd, an unhappily married, 55-year-old senior executive. That they had a fling is unsurprising for the time. What is surprising is that they stayed together, for twenty years and two children, despite their age gap, differing religions, and society’s expectations. With today's perspective, and the benefits of both...
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Ep: 1847 Ainsley LeSure PhD - Locating Racism in the World
The Kathryn Zox Show
Racism and how it has developed over the years is constantly evolving, shaped by shifting social norms, political power, and the everyday assumptions people often take for granted. Ainsley LeSure PhD offers some powerful insight on how racism since the end of the civil rights era has fundamentally weakened our ability to fight it. She explains how we got from the Obama era to Trump's openly racist politics--and why our current frameworks made this trajectory not just possible, but predictable. She offers a different approach and insight about what it would actually take to combat...
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Ep: 1846 D. Earl Johnston - Choosing Emotions
The Kathryn Zox Show
Choosing Emotions For centuries, emotion has been debated, measured, regulated, and theorized, yet no single work has mapped the full range of everyday emotional experience across disciplines—until now. D. Earl Johnston introduces a groundbreaking reference that defines 272 emotional states, drawing on 3,000 years of thought spanning philosophy, science, linguistics, psychology, art, and spiritual traditions.Expanding far beyond psychology, the work integrates perspectives from seven fields and over 30 philosophical and faith traditions. Organized as an accessible “Emotionary,” it...
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Ep: 1845 Julie Merriman - Good Girl Detox
The Kathryn Zox Show
Good Girl Detox Many women are socialized to act as constant caregivers, the “good girls” who prioritize everyone else’s needs above their own. However, mental health clinician, professor, and author Dr. Julie Merriman reminds us that you cannot pour from an empty cup. This deeply ingrained “Good Girl” pattern lives within the nervous system. Releasing it requires gentle, manageable steps that avoid overwhelming the body, while rebuilding connection to oneself and embracing small, guilt-free moments of joy. She offers insights and compassionate strategies to help women reclaim...
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Ep: 1844 Sara Hirsch Bordo - Autoimmunity and The Good Girls
The Kathryn Zox Show
Autoimmunity and The Good Girls For generations, women have been conditioned to prioritize others, silence their voices, and neglect their own needs. In her latest work, Sara Hirsh Bordo addresses a critical gap in women’s wellness: the power of self-permission to speak, transform, and heal. Drawing on more than 50 hours of interviews, she explores why women often minimize their own suffering and health concerns, and offers a path toward self-prioritization. Her new book encourages women to put themselves first, alongside her limited-edition podcast, Behind the Page: Autoimmunity and the...
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Ep: 1843 Erica Gerard Di Bona - A Letter is Better
The Kathryn Zox Show
A Letter is Better In a world of texts, DMs, and disappearing messages, one woman is bringing back the lost art of the thank-you note, typing over 1,000 letters a year on vintage typewriters, and the results are nothing short of extraordinary. Erica Gerard Di Bona explores why expressing gratitude in writing doesn’t just make someone feel appreciated; it strengthens relationships, boosts mental wellbeing, and even opens unexpected professional doors. Erica is a former producer in network news, The Playboy Channel, documentaries, and kids’ game shows. She has often received letters and...
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Ep: 1842 Lora Cheadle JD - Reclaiming Your Self Worth After Betrayal
The Kathryn Zox Show
Many affairs happen in relationships that seem perfectly happy. And when betrayal is discovered, it doesn’t just break hearts; it shatters a person’s identity- their entire sense of who they are in the world. Lora Cheadle’s expertise is born from lived experience. When she discovered her husband had been unfaithful for 15 years, she faced a choice: remain a victim or become an architect of her own healing. She chose transformation. The work she and her husband did to repair their marriage—with accountability, integrity, and commitment—became the foundation for her work in betrayal...
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Ep: 1841 Mario Cartaya - Journey Back Into The Vault
The Kathryn Zox Show
Mario Cartaya found the inner peace he needed by confronting memories he didn’t know he had. Born in Havana in 1951, he left Cuba at age eight, after the turbulent winds of change forced his family to immigrate to the United States. Years passed, and the memories of his childhood were seemingly lost—until 56 years later when he returned to Cuba to rediscover the faded origins of his existence. He offers the universal message that facing the challenges of our past provides the soul the clarity it needs to rest, and then evolve. Mario’s life story and award-winning architectural designs...
info_outlineOn September 6, 1970, twenty-year-old Mimi Nichter, wearing her green mini-dress, was returning home on a flight to New York/JFK Airport from a summer spent on a kibbutz in Israel when her airplane was hijacked by armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and redirected to a remote desert region in Jordan. The hijacking of Trans World Airlines Flight 741 was the first incident of international terrorism, and one of the most significant events in aviation history. Passengers were held on board for six days in sweltering heat without flushable toilets or running water. Most were sent home, but Mimi—falsely accused of being an Israeli soldier —and thirty-one others, were held hostage in Amman, fearing for their lives as a violent war erupted around them. She is a cultural and medical anthropologist, public speaker, and a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her essays have appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, and Brevity.