Lunch with the Loveologist Podcast

Join Wendy, as she shares the life changing skills that will increase your emotional resilience, capacity for healthy relationships and over all sense of well-being. By refocusing our lens on how humans thrive and flourish we discover the basis of the fast growing field of positive psychology. Learn how positivity can be cultivated and taught to enhance your relationships and your physical and emotional health. Explore the surprising range of thinking that enhances positive consciousness and gain simple tools to identify and replace negative thinking for yourself and your loved ones.  Don't miss this solo talk by our own lovelogist, Wendy. Wendy Strgar is and an award winning social entrepreneur. She is the author of Love that Works: A Guide to Enduring Intimacy and soon the to be released Life That Works: How Positivity Reinvents Us. She is the founder and CEO of Good Clean Love and her organic products are sold and endorsed by physicians nationwide.  She is a well known blogger  who writes on the topics of love, sexual health and positivity. Her writing is featured on such high-profile sites as Care2.com, Huffington Post and Elephant Journal. Her work focusing on teaching the skills of sustainable love and positivity consciousness makes her a much sought after speaker at forward thinking events such as Bioneers and the Seattle Green Festival. In addition, she does positivity work with cancer survivors, returning soldiers and high school students. Her award winning blog atwww.makinglovesustainable.com is read by millions of people each year.

Open to a clear and loving relationship with yourself and those you love most with this profound conversation with Ken McLeod,  author of Wake up to your Life and a 40 year teacher/student of ancient Buddhist traditions.   His down to earth and direct understanding of cutting the story line to reach a peace with what is actually happening within you and your relationships offers a fresh perspective on finding the love that lives around you all the time.   His easy laughter and true presence streams throughout the conversation, showing us the way to distinguish between pain and suffering,  attend to conflicts with heart and open to your life in ways that will amaze you.   Don't miss it. Ken McLeod is one of the most innovative teachers of Buddhism today and he is known for his ability to explain difficult and subtle teachings. In a review of Ken's first book Wake up to Your Life, Phil Catalfo, Yoga Journal, said "he distills the nature and purpose of Buddhism to make it accessible for any newcomer without dumbing it down." Ken's private practice model of one-on-one consultations roiled the Buddhist world in the 90s only to become an accepted way of working with students. Through his non-profit website and organization, Unfettered Mind, he has pioneered a client or student centered approach to spiritual development, created new retreat and group learning formats, and developed translations of traditional practices and teachings that make them accessible and relevant for contemporary Western culture. He now provides teacher training and online workshops for people around the globe.

Discover the vulnerable truth of finding yourself with this lively and insightful conversation with Betsy Chasse.   Her journey from filmmaker of the well known documentary What the Bleep do We know? to becoming a single mother of two is an emotional passage that she shares with grace and wisdom in her recently released ebook Metanoia- A transformational change of heart.  Don't miss this conversation where she faces the deepest and darkest aspects of coming to love herself- it will show you a familiar path to your own heart. Betsy Chasse is a Filmmaker, Author, Radio host and Blogger. Best known as a co-creator of the hit film What The Bleep Do We Know?!   Currently as the co-owner of Intention Media she produces and distributes a range of socially meaningful documentaries including Pregnant In America.  She recently released Metanoia-A Tranformational Change of Heart,  a short e-book of essays written about the painful process of divorce.  She is the radio personality behind her weekly radio show Life Unscripted.  

Explore what sexual freedom means to you in this lively interactive conversation with Blogger Tinamarie Bernard. Freedom of all kinds begins with education, so join us as we uncover the sexual education necessary to get comfortable in your own sexual skin. Guest caller shares her take on overcoming the body shame that keeps many of us from creating a positive relationship to our erotic selves. Don't miss this conversation that is sure to free up many new ideas of what it means to live a positive sexual life right now Tinamarie Bernard is a blogger, eco-intimacy coach and green living consultant focused on the eco sexuality movement. With a clear and articulate voice and enthusiastic energy she empowers you to detoxify your life and experience eco-conscious love and relationship. I accomplish this through engaging content, one on one private sessions via phone or Skype, and seminars or play shops.

Learning to pay attention is one of the great triumphs and challenges of the human mind.  Yet our internet technology drives us culturally and personally to increasing levels of distraction at breakneck speeds. Don't miss Nick Carr,  Pulitzer prize nominee and NY Times bestselling author of The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brains, provide the insight and wisdom to make you re-think your how technology leads your life.   Our brain structures are literally created from what we pay attention to and the fabric of our relationships and what we know as our self is at risk.   Don't miss this provocative and enlightening conversation. Nicholas Carr writes about technology, culture, and economics. His most recent book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, is a 2011 Pulitzer Prize nominee and a New York Times bestseller. Nick is also the author of two other influential books, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008) and Does IT Matter? (2004). His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Nick has been a columnist for The Guardian in London and has written for The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and The Times of London, the New Republic, the Financial Times, Die Zeit and other periodicals. His essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” has been collected in several anthologies, including The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009, The Best Spiritual Writing 2010, and The Best Technology Writing 2009. Nick is a member of the Encyclopedia Britannica's editorial board of advisors, is on the steering board of the World Economic Forum's cloud computing project, and writes the popular blog Rough Type. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a sought-after speaker for academic and corporate events. Earlier in his career, he was executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.A., in English and American Literature and Language, from Harvard University.

Don't miss revolutionary thinker and author Inga Muscio, who channels her rage with our culture of violence into a creative and passionate endeavor.  With trademark precision and razor-sharp wit, Inga Muscio explores the impact of violence, abuse, war, and cultural trauma on our most intimate lives in order to uncover a path toward healthy and imaginative sex and love.  Don't miss this provocative conversation that will make you question how you see the world. Inga Muscio is the author of  Rose: Love in Violent times, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence and Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and lectures widely across the nation.  A revolutionary thinker determined to wake up our ideas about sexuality, racism and war, her anger is fuel for her creative voice.

Sexual abuse affects millions of people, often without them ever recognizing it as the core of their sexual dysfunction issues.   Internationally recognized expert and author Wendy shares her decades of experience and insights into the healing journey that millions of sexual survivors have taken.  Her classic book in its 3rd printing The Sexual Healing Journey: a Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse provides a reliable map to identifying and healing the experience of touch and intimacy.   Don't miss this enlightening and encouraging interview that could serve as your first steps towards healing your own sexual pain. Wendy Maltz, LCSW, DST, is an internationally recognized author, psychotherapist, and certified diplomat sex therapist with more than thirty years in the field. Her books include The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography, Private Thoughts: Exploring the Power of Women’s Sexual Fantasies, Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure, and Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love. Wendy is the producer of Partners in Healing and Relearning Touch, two highly acclaimed video productions for couples who are healing intimate problems caused by sexual abuse.  Wendy is co-director of Maltz Counseling Associates and an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon Graduate Program in Couples and Family Therapy in Eugene, Oregon.

Discover the power in developing your ability to harness the fundamental human need to connect. Lynne McTaggart's award winning new book The Bond, demonstrates with the latest scientific research a profound shift in human consciousness. Listen as she explains how this new understanding of how we are designed to work together replaces the damaging practices of competitive individualism.  Moving toward the belief that we are indeed all in this together and offering a manual of suggestions about how to fix the falling down world one person at a time will inspire you to create a new bonded community in your own life. Lynne McTaggart, a world expert on the science of spirituality, is the award-winning author of six books, including the worldwide bestsellers The Field, The Intention Experiment and The Bond. As editorial director of What Doctors Don’t Tell You , she also publishes one of the world’s most highly praised health publications and runs highly popular health and spirituality teleconferences and workshops. Lynne is also the architect of The Intention Experiment, a web-based ‘global laboratory,’ testing the power of intention to heal the world. She is one of the central voices in the new consciousness movement bridging science and spirituality. She is an award-winning journalist and author of six books, including her latest, The Bond, and the worldwide bestsellers The Intention Experiment and The Field, both translated into 30 languages   McTaggart, her book and the web-based experiment have been prominently featured in Dan Brown’s latest book The Lost Symbol, and in part inspired one of its characters. She’s also been featured and seen by millions in the documentaries What the Bleep!?, The Living Matrix and I Am. All three of Lynne’s books are considered seminar books of the New Age. Over the years she has been referred to as a ‘metaphysical rock star’, ‘the Madonna of the Quantum World,’ ‘the Malcolm Gladwell of new science’ even ‘The Dalai Mama.’ For two years running Watkins Review has voted her one of the world’s top 100 spiritually influential people.  A member of the Transformational Leadership Council and the Evolutionary Leadership Council, Lynne is an inspiring worldwide speaker who holds lectures and workshops around the world. She lives in London with her husband Bryan Hubbard and their two daughters.

Don't miss author and shaman Julie McIntyre discuss the sacred relationship between sexuality and our relationship to the Earth.  Learn how by getting in touch with our wild and natural selves we tap in to the constant erotic nature of the earth.   Julie shares her wisdom and years of wilderness training in her book  Heartland reveals  the healing of our deepest wounds as well as access to a deep, lasting intimacy with your lover. With interesting and thought provoking ideas on everything from rights of sex workers to the importance of childhood sex education,  Julie's earth centered teachings will awaken what it means for you to live a sexual, sensual, erotic life. Julie McIntyre is an Earth ceremonialist and Métis of Norwegian and Mohawk/Blackfeet decent. She is the director for the Center for Earth Relations and for a decade and a half has worked with the Sacred Pipe, Medicine Wheel, sweat lodge and Vision Quests in facilitating closer human bonding with the Earth. An ordained practitioner of the Church of Gaia, Julie directed a state ceremonial program for Native men in prison and also works with young women with ceremonial rites of transition into womanhood. A double-degree graduate in Political Science and Public Communications Julie has completed postgraduate training in sacred plant medicine, Ayurveda, Reiki, medical herbalism, Huichol shamanism, and wilderness survival. For six years she wrote a monthly column for Tapestry Magazine (Lansing, IA) on Earth relationship and ceremony, the sacredness and ecology of the Mississippi River system, raptor ecology, and the healing of human disease through the use of Earth medicine. She worked for four years as a Holistic Health Practitioner in an integrative medical clinic in Wisconsin, providing herbal and nutritional counseling, laser acupuncture detox, lymphatic drainage therapy, and patient education and support. Devoted to helping people reclaim their ecological identity, Julie has taught adults, young adults and children on the sacredness of Earth relations, the heart as the organ of perception, the ecstatic path, healing shame, medical herbology, and the Medicine Wheel. She has a private Holistic Health practice working with Herbal medicine, sacred Plant Medicine, and spiritual mentoring. When she's not working she can be found hiking or sitting in the sacred waters of the hot springs of her beloved Gila Wilderness and national forest.

Breast Cancer is the number one cancer killer of women.  Breast enlargement is the number one cosmetic surgery in the US.  Humans are the only mammals that have breasts continuously from puberty onwards and the onset is getting earlier and the size of breasts are bigger than ever.  Breasts produce the most beneficial, even medicinal food on the planet and they also act like a sponge for all of the environmental havoc we continue to produce.   Florence Williams is a trustworthy guide for the Natural and Unnatural History of our Breasts.   Don't miss this essential and compelling conversation about the state of our breasts. It is a rings a timely call to action and will leave you with both wonder and shock over the gift of your breasts. Florence Williams is an award-winning journalist and contributor to Outside magazine. She also writes regularly forSlate and the New York Times, both of which have published pieces related to BREASTS. Her article “A Might Wind,” about a wind-powered island in Denmark, was picked by Jerome Groopman for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009. The manuscript for this book was a finalist for the prestigious Columbia/Nieman J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize.

Ever wonder about breaking free from the financial chains that bind our life?  Don't miss Mark Sundeen's remarkable account of The Man Who Quit Money and has replaced the materialistic drive for more with a happy, sane reverence for living in nature.  His story demonstrates the meaning, connection and purpose that exist outside of the mainstream obsession with money and debt. Calling on ancient spiritual teachings as the basis for his philosophy and choice, Daniel Suelo offers a window into looking at how we live and what is lost in the illusion of the pursuit of the "good life".  It might make you uncomfortable, but this conversation is sure to stir some deep questions about our collective illusion of control and that the true pursuit of happiness might have nothing to do with how much you have in the bank.  Don't miss it. Mark Sundeen was born in Harbor City, California, in 1970. He is an award-winning writer whose nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, the Believer, and elsewhere. He is the author of the books Car Camping (HarperCollins, 2000) and The Making of Toro (Simon & Schuster, 2003), and co-author of North By Northwestern (St. Martin’s, 2010), which was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He has taught fiction and nonfiction at the MFA creative writing programs at the University of New Mexico and Western Connecticut State University. He lives in Montana and Utah.

Dealing with our physical and emotional wounds is our greatest stimulus for finding health and well being. Listen as physician and author Dr, David Knighton shares his remarkable personal and professional journey into the art and science of healing. In his book The Wisdom of the Healing Wound: A New View on Why We Hurt and How We Can Cure Even the Deepest Physical and Emotional Wounds he compares the process of healing to tending a garden. Don't miss this enlightening perspective that offers the wisdom, courage and persistence about healing wounds and then, surprisingly, how to learn from them too, whether the wound is physical, psychological, spiritual, and inevitably all three. Dr. David Knighton has achieved the highest standards in his several careers as a doctor, researcher and academic. While at medical school at the University of Illinois, he worked on cancer research at Harvard Medical School. His subsequent work in general surgery, trauma surgery and vascular surgery formed a foundation for his groundbreaking advances in wound care. He founded the Wound Healing Clinic at the University of Minnesota in 1987 which became a prototype for such clinics across the country. His research successes encompass many patents and hundreds of papers and articles for scholarly journals. David Knighton M.D., F.A.C.S., F.A.C.A., is one of the world’s leading authorities on wound healing; a visionary medical researcher who has worked with C. Everett Koop, Judah Folkman, Thomas Hunt, and other giants in the field; and a highly successful inventor and entrepreneur. His discoveries have generated over a billion dollars in revenue, and he has put most of his own share of this revenue into further research and discovery. For ten years, he ran the Wound Healing and Limb Salvage Clinic at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, which specialized in healing patients who had been declared unhealable by other doctors. David taught and did research at the U. of Minnesota from 1984 to 1998. David has spoken to hundreds of groups—from social workers to spiritual leaders to college students to physicians—on the topic of healing. He has published hundreds of short pieces in general-interest publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Science, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Christianity Today, as well as 100+ articles in medical journals such as Lancet, Annals of Surgery, and Cell and Tissue Research. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Florence.

Changing our behavior is the spring of our human potential. And yet, many of us suffer with debilitating health conditions and painful relationships due to behaviors that feel stuck and unmovable.  Listen as Georgianna Donadio shares the power of simple techniques for Behavioral Engagement.   Transform your relationships to your loved ones and to life itself by bringing your full attention and presence to your communication skills.  The key to a healthier and more satisfying life is as simple as learning to deeply listen.   Inspire your life change with this passionate and engaging conversation. Dr. Georgianna Donadio has been a pioneer in the field of behavioral health working with health care professionals and patients to change behaviors and improve health.  Author of  Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships with Easy-to-Learn, Proven Communication  Skills.  She is a popular blogger for Huffington Post and Dr. Mehmet Oz’s TeenDailyStrength,  and her expertise has been showcased in hundreds of print, online,radio and TV interviews including on Oprah.com, WebMD, CNN News,  and TODAY/MSNBC among others. Until recently she hosted a nationally syndicated cable TV show, Woman to Woman® which explored all topics of interest to women with a special focus on relationships. As a long-time proponent of the important role nurses play in health care, she is one of only six American Florence Nightingale Scholars.

Don't miss this conversation with Alexandra Franzen where we go deep and wide into the beauty of calling a thing by it's real name, especially as it applies to oneself. Learning to speak your own truth and own your gifts is a different kind of life, one worth cultivating. Alexandra does that and more for her clients who use her unique listening, visioning and creating to break their own sound barriers and express their full potential. She generously shares some of the wisdom, humor and practices that have helped her to grow wild and live a deeply joyful and authentic life. A real treat. Bio As a Promotional Wordsmith & Personal Scribe, Alexandra Franzen channels entrepreneurial LOVE into unforgettable language—the kind that inspires an immediate “YES.” Her deep listening translates into a wide ripple effect as she is able to grasp and articulate the essential truth and intentions of entrepreneurs from all walks of life. In here own words, she describes her work as Dialectic. Eclectic. and Electric with the ability to help others break their own sound barriers. Her love of life and contagious enthusiasm is a the back drop on truly innovative creativity. Alexandra has also worked as an on-air promotional coordinator for the largest public radio network in the nation, a grant-funded researcher with Occidental College, and a cocktail waitress & cigarette salesgirl at a boutique casino on the southern tip of New Zealand. Hers is the powerful storytelling that instigates the ripples of life that change who we are.

Discover the secret and dark side of the life of a sexual dominatrix through the voice of Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart: The true story of a secret life. Melissa shares the power struggles she had with her self as she wandered into the deep psychological work, that is played out in a sex dungeon. She tells an honest story of the mix of power, curiosity and impoverishment that was generated by the secrecy imposed by her life choices. Her shocking double life is not nearly as remarkable as the naked vulnerability she shares about her descent and recovery. This interview will change the way you think about the darkest fantasies of human sexuality. Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, WHIP SMART (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press), about her career as a professional dominatrix, which Kirkus Reviews said, “Expertly captures grace within depravity.” She has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Anderson Cooper’s daytime show, and the cover of the New York Post, among many other national publications. Her writing has been published and anthologized widely, in venues such as Glamour, Hunger Mountain, Salon, Dissent, The Southeast Review, ReDivider, The Brooklyn Rail, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Bitch Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, and on The Nervous Breakdown , where she regularly blogs. For five years, she has co-curated and hosted the popular Mixer Reading and Music Series at Cake Shop in Manhattan. The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she has taught writing at SUNY Purchase College, The New School, NYU, and Sarah Lawrence, and is currently Assistant Professor at Utica College. A 2010 & 2011 MacDowell Colony fellow, she speaks widely, and splits her time between Brooklyn and Clinton, NY. She is currently at work on a novel.