The Mash-Up Americans

Latest Episodes:

How Grief Lives In The Body - Grief, Collected Nov 29, 2022

Show notes

You know how when you are grieving you might feel clumsy? Or perhaps your heart literally hurts - not metaphorically? These are some of the many physical manifestations of grief that have been scientifically observed - and humanly felt. And not just humanly!!! Animals grieve! Wait until you learn about crow funerals! Today we’re talking to Dr. Dorothy Holinger, psychologist and author of The Anatomy of Grief. This validating conversation is an exploration of the science and spirituality of grief, how deeply personal and individualistic the grief experience is and how integral it is to all living beings.

More about Dorothy Holinger

Dorothy P. Holinger, Ph.D., is a Staff Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She was a long-time Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. A graduate of Brown University with a degree in English, she earned her doctorate in psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Holinger is a member of the American Psychological Association, and Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society) and is a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science. She has studied the human brain for over thirty years, and in her book, The Anatomy of Grief (2022/2020, Yale University Press), she has drawn from brain science, psychology, paleontology and literature to describe what happens to the brain, heart and body of the bereaved. She has her own psychotherapy practice, and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband. You can connect with Dr. Holinger here.

You can find books mentioned in this episode here.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

Credits:

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by VOKSEE. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative.

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Meditation: Breathing with Linda Thai Nov 25, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to the second meditation of our Grief, Collected series, which come out every Friday.

Today is a breathing meditation with Linda Thai. Linda is a therapist and leads meditations as part of her somatic healing practice. She will take us on a 10 minute meditation to explore our relationship to our ancestors through release and healing. And for those us that get antsy about the idea of meditating for 10 minutes - we get it! Take a walk and see how it feels.

Linda Thai is also featured in Episode 3 of the podcast.

More about Linda Thai and her work here.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

More about Linda Thai -

Linda is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. She is highly sought after for her trainings in trauma-informed care, compassion fatigue resilience, and vicarious trauma recovery skills for human services professionals. As an adjunct faculty member in the Social Work Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Linda's decolonized approach to education and engaging teaching style makes her well-loved with students. She assists internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.

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Exploring Ancestral Grief - Grief, Collected Nov 22, 2022

Show notes

America! The land of opportunity! And also, for so many Mash-Ups, the ambiguous loss of immigration and uprooting a life and a history comes with a complex web of emotions. Today we’re talking to the trauma therapist and educator Linda Thai about ancestral grief, and how unmetabolized grief, particularly in Mash-Up families, is passed down through generations. We dive into how important understanding historical context is for grief and healing. There are many Mash-Up revelations in this episode!!!! We’re asking: what happens to a family structure if we don’t grieve?

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

About Linda Thai:

Linda Thai is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. She is highly sought after for her trainings in trauma-informed care, compassion fatigue resilience, and vicarious trauma recovery skills for human services professionals. As an adjunct faculty member in the Social Work Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Linda's decolonized approach to education and engaging teaching style makes her well-loved with students. She assists internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.

More about Linda Thai and her work here.

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Meditation: Songs of Grief from Daniela Gesundheit Nov 18, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to the first meditation of our Grief Collected series, which come out every Friday. Today we have a series of 4 songs on grief from Daniela Gesundheit and Snowblink. A lot of Daniela’s music engages with grief, as she weaves together stories from her personal experience and her Jewish traditions. These meditative episodes are an invitation to get out of our heads and into our bodies.

This is music by Daniela Gesundheit and Snowblink.

Playlist -

None - written by Daniela Gesundheit. Performed by Snowblink. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit, Dan Goldman, and Caley Monahon-Ward. Mixed by Thom Monahan. Courtesy of Fire Records UK.

Second Sight - written by Daniela Gesundheit and Dan Goldman. Performed by Snowblink. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit, Dan Goldman, and Robbie Lackritz. Courtesy of Outside Music.

Opposite the Seraphim - written by Daniela Gesundheit and Sarah Pagé. Performed by Sarah Pagé.Produced by Daniela Gesundheit. Mixed by Steve Kaye. Courtesy of Idée Fixe.

Wild Here - written by Daniela Gesundheit. Performed by Snowblink. Produced by Daniela Gesundheit, Dan Goldman, and Robbie Lackritz. Courtesy of Outside Music.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

More about Daniela -

Daniela Gesundheit is a vocalist, composer, poet, and cantor interested in long-surviving musical traditions that explore and foster group identity. As Snowblink Gesundheit writes non-denominational devotional pop music and has released three critically acclaimed albums. Her latest project is Alphabet of Wrongdoing, an album of Jewish prayers and blessings encircling themes of reckoning and forgiveness reimagined for secular audiences and secular spaces. She lives in Los Angeles and haunts Toronto with her husband and fraternal twin babies. You can find her @DanielaSarah

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Defining Grief in America - Grief, Collected Nov 15, 2022

Show notes

We’ve been looking around these past couple years, wondering what grief is in America. Today we start at the beginning and we have some BIG QUESTIONS. What is grief? What is the particularly American approach to grief and grieving — or not grieving as it were? Will we be okay?! We are joined by two of the world’s leading grief experts. George Bonanno and Natalia Skritskaya are psychologists who are researchers on grief, trauma, and loss to define grief and loss and their many manifestations. We go deep on the incredible resilience of human beings, the throughlines of grief experiences and the impact of NOT addressing it, particularly in a post-Covid age — and how the truth about grief may look completely different from what we think it to be.

You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com

About The Guests

Dr. George Bonanno is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Chair of the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College. He is the head of the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Columbia University. For the past 25 years, he has pioneered research in the nature of resilience in contexts of loss and trauma. His books include “The End of Trauma: How the new science of resilience is changing how we think about PTSD. And the The Other Side of Sadness”: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss. You can find him on Twitter @giorgiobee.

Dr. Natalia Skritskaya is a researcher at the Center for Complicated Grief, Columbia University and clinical psychologist in private practice. Her background is in cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders with an interest in mind-body connection. For the past decade Dr. Skritskaya has been helping people struggling with difficult losses and trained clinicians in an evidence-based prolonged grief therapy. Her research is focused on assessment of typical bereavement-related thoughts and understanding their role in prolonged grief.You can find more about her work here.

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Introducing: Grief, Collected - A New Series from The Mash-Up Americans Nov 01, 2022

Show notes

We’re back!!! Welcome to a new series about grieving and life from The Mash-Up Americans. Grief, Collected is where we explore how grief moves through our bodies, our families, and our communities — and why we need to feel it all in order to transform our future.

Launching November 15 — with new episodes every Tuesday and new meditations every Friday.

Grief, like joy, is one of our human conditions. Yet it is the one we, as Americans, are the least willing to confront, even as it becomes more and more essential to do so. We prize pushing forward, but maybe it’s time to pause. As we emerge from the catastrophic losses of the pandemic — and wrestle with the regular traumas of modern life — how do we heal ourselves to plant seeds for our future? What wisdom can we call upon to create hope for a more introspective, joyful, and honest culture?

We’re talking to leading psychologists, researchers, musicians, and authors, including George Bonnano, Natalia Skritskaya, Daniela Gesundheit, Alexander Chee, Linda Thai, Dorothy Holinger, Wendy Macnaughton, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, and adrienne maree brown.

bit.ly/meet-grief-collected

Credits:

Grief, Collected is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. Executive produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer. Senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini. Development Producer is Dupe Oyebolu. Production manager Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by The Brothers Tang. Sound design support by Pedro Rafael Rosado. Website design by Voksee. Grief, Collected was supported in part by a grant from The Pop Culture Collaborative.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Fatimah Asghar on Our Unseen Identities May 15, 2019

Show notes

Poet and screenwriter Fatimah Asghar is talking to us about why "orphan" is the identifier she relates to the most, and why her idea of home isn't a physical place. Fatimah is having a moment right now….within the past year, the web series that she co-created Brown Girls got picked up by HBO, she released a collection of poetry, and she was chosen as one of Forbes 30 under 30 on their Hollywood and Entertainment list.

She also shares her 3 rules of success and has really got us thinking about how we define success. If you don't know Fatimah, now you now, and you will definitely be hearing more from her in the future.

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Ai-Jen Poo on How We Make It All Work May 01, 2019

Show notes

“I really believe that care and caregiving can save the soul of the country. Everybody has people that they care about. It totally connects us in this very deep, emotional way.” We agree with Ai-Jen! We had SO MUCH FUN in this conversation.

The paid work of caregiving - which is mostly done by mashy women - makes our economy and world move. Ai-Jen Poo is the head of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and one of the organizers of Supermajority. She’s so mashy she even has a hyphen in her name!

Ai-Jen tells us what it was like growing up between Taiwan and the US, and how her relationship with her grandparents meant that she never was ashamed of her mashiness. There is a direct line between her mash-up origin story and how she ended up working with domestic workers.

For more details and super practical info visit domesticworkers.org and domesticemployers.org

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Alua Arthur On Demystifying Death Apr 17, 2019

Show notes

“Talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about death won’t make you dead.”

We are talking about death on this episode and it is a party! We are going to explore life, love, and family through the lens of death with our incredible guest Alua Arthur. Alua is a Ghanifornian Mash-Up and a death doula, which means that she works with individuals and families to help them through the process of death.

We chat with Alua about everything from what to do with your loved one’s magazine subscription after they are gone to what an advanced care directive is and why we need one. She tells us about the cultural differences surrounding death and about her personal journey from being a child missionary to working as a lawyer to now working within the death industry.

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Aline Brosh McKenna on Leading Ladies Apr 03, 2019

Show notes

Aline Brosh McKenna is a Hollywood triple threat; she’s a showrunner, director, and writer and she does them all really really well. She has worked in this business for more than two decades but her mission has remained the same: to center women’s stories around something other than a man. We talk about Cher, body hair, bacterial vaginosis, and so much more. Get ready!

She’s the writer of your favorite rom coms, from 27 Dresses to The Devil Wears Prada to I Don’t Know How She Does It. Most recently she has been busy showrunning and writing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend which is now in its fourth and final season.

Aline tells us what it was like growing up in the 70’s in very white suburban New Jersey with Jewish immigrant parents, and why she relates more to people with immigrant parents than other Jewish people. She tells us about the differences between being a boss in her 20’s and being a boss in her 40’s, and why she wants to write more roles for women over 50.

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