Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Latest Episodes:

Go To on AI & the Chaos of Family Life Nov 21, 2025

Show notes

A scientist and entrepreneur built an AI to intercept every interruption in family life—the basketball emails, the field trip forms, the play rehearsal schedule buried at the bottom of a message. Then, an investor suggested the product could do more: text the sitter automatically, send birthday wishes to friends, suck up every teacher email so parents never see another one, and Avni Patel Thompson realized something didn't feel right. In this Go To episode featuring Avni's TED talk from Kelly's curated session on AI and family life, a mother who designs AI products for families discovers that not all friction is bad—some of it creates connection.

Deep Dive with Alexa Arnold & Kate Cockrill on Working & Parenting Nov 18, 2025

Show notes

A text arrives: want to help build a movement around Jonathan Haidt's new book? Within a week, Alexa Arnold is sitting in his NYU office discussing how to change the world—and then she's in a hot tub with friends having a panic attack because she can't figure out how to do this massive job and raise an 18-month-old at the same time. In this final episode of The Tryhards—a three-part series for ambitious parents trying to be the best version of themselves day by day—Kelly talks with Alexa Arnold and Kate Cockrell about intensive parenting, impossible standards, and what it means to choose work you love while raising humans who need you. Through conversations about performing motherhood online, the merge of adult world and kid world, and why competence plus joy might be the actual goal, they explore how modern parenting became unsustainably intense and whether caring for your own purpose is actually one of the best things you can do for your kids.

Thanks For Being Here - PT's Essay "To Be A Woman" Nov 16, 2025

Show notes

In 1974, a suburban housewife named Pat Tiehel (aka PT), submitted an essay to a women's magazine about being angry at a system that gave her education and aspirations, then kept her pinned up at home. The magazine rejected it. One year later, everything changed. This is the essay PT's daughters found tucked away in their mom's papers after she died—a document of wanting more...and what happened next.

Go To on AI & Raising Kids After Loss Nov 14, 2025

Show notes

Andy Laats thought parenting was a complete alphabet—he did A through M, his wife Liz handled N through Z. After she died of ovarian cancer, he learned he'd underestimated the N through Z work, and then discovered there was a whole world beyond language he never even knew existed. In this Go To episode featuring Andy's TED talk from Kelly's curated session on AI and family life, a CEO learns what a mother knows—that the prize of parenting isn't in mastering the logistics or even the emotional check-ins, but in earning access to something beyond words.

Deep Dive with Alexa Arnold and Kate Cockrill on Mom Rage Nov 11, 2025

Show notes

What's underneath mom rage and why does it keep happening? In this second episode of The Tryhards—a 3-part series for ambitious parents trying to be the best version of themselves day by day—Kelly talks with Alexa Arnold and Kate Cockrill about the impossible expectations we set, the tasks we hoard, and what our rage is really trying to tell us. This is a conversation about suppression, resentment, love and the moments when mercy appears from the most unexpected places.

Thanks For Being Here - Lesley's Eulogy for Her Son Pierce Nov 09, 2025

Show notes

A mother stands to speak about her son Pierce—the boy who had style, a memorable laugh, and a way of making ordinary moments feel like love. Lesley Hu delivered this eulogy after Pierce was shot and killed by his father during a custody dispute, one of roughly 52 children murdered each year by a parent or stepparent amid legal negotiations over divorce, separation, or custody. This is Lesley's tribute to her kind, hilarious, energetic boy, and her pledge to transform unspeakable tragedy into meaning through Pierce's Pledge, a campaign working to reduce violence against children by encouraging temporary weapon storage during family law disputes.

To learn more about Pierce's Pledge, visit: https://www.piercespledge.org/

Go to on AI & Being the Bridge to the Next Generation Nov 07, 2025

Show notes

A Maasai girl grows up milking cows at dawn, walking ten kilometers for water, sleeping eight to a bed, surrounded by 38 siblings and five mothers who all knew her name and sang her song. Then she leaves for the city—chosen husband, three children, a laptop, shoes with zippers. Kelly shares Ndinini Kimesera Sikar's TED talk about living in two worlds and the question that haunts her: what do we preserve as we rush toward the future? In the village, mental health was strong because life included everything research now tells us we need—movement, nature, community, belonging. In modern life, we've traded all of that for autonomy and advancement, filling bookstores with self-help guides trying to teach us what we once knew naturally. As AI promises to manage even more of family life, Ndinini asks us to pause and decide: do we know what we want to keep and do we know how we'll protect it before the current sweeps us away?

Deep Dive with Alexa Arnold & Kate Cockrill on Tracking our Kids Nov 04, 2025

Show notes

In this first episode of "The Tryhards"—a three-part series for ambitious parents trying to be the best version of themselves day by day—Kelly talks with social impact entrepreneur Alexa Arnold and leadership coach Kate Cockrill about why we track our kids, what we're really searching for when we check our phones at midnight and the hard truth that all this data doesn't actually keep anyone safer. Through stories about location apps, late-night panic and learning when to step back, they explore the gap between monitoring and mattering and discuss how to recognize when you're filling your own need for intimacy rather than protecting your child from danger.

Thanks For Being Here - A Full Circle Kidney Donation Story Nov 02, 2025

Show notes

A woman named Karen Burke listened to an episode of Thanks For Being Here and felt an overwhelming sense of certainty about something she'd never considered before. Kelly shares a remarkable full circle story that began with listener Jennifer Cramer-Miller's letter thanking her anonymous kidney donor and ends somewhere none of us could have predicted. This is about what happens when someone else's words move you so deeply that listening isn't enough— and how sharing our experiences can ripple outward with consequences we'd never imagine possible.

Go To on Whether We're Still Human if Robots Raise our Babies Oct 31, 2025

Show notes

Babies attach to whoever responds to them—mother, father, grandmother, or machine. Kelly shares anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's TED talk about what makes humans fundamentally different from other apes: we're "other-regarding," wired to care about what others think and feel. Through 6 million years of evolution, Sarah reveals why shared care isn't just helpful—it's how our species survived. But if babies will bond with anyone (or anything) that's reliably responsive and if AI can be programmed to respond faster and more consistently than exhausted parents, are we about to create a new species? This conversation wrestles with whether our defining human trait—empathy built through messy, imperfect relationships—might disappear before we even realize what we've lost.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected