We’ve all had a moment where we aren’t just reminded of our parents; we’ve become them.

Maybe it’s a certain gesture, speaking in a certain way, when a particular phrase comes flying–involuntarily–out of your mouth, but we’ve all been there.

The inevitable has happened.

You’ve become your mother. Or your father. Or another influential caregiver from your childhood.

Since this episode is scheduled to air on Mother’s Day, I’m thinking about parents and parenting.

How much of who we are do we owe to our parents? And how much of how they are–and were–do they owe to us?

In This Episode:

• How self-parenting empowers you to change your relationship to your past
• The power of allowing yourself to hear your inner voice

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Website
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

We all love a Personality Quiz, right?

You get to see yourself through a lens you may never have considered looking through, and discover things about yourself you never thought about before, and who doesn’t love an excuse to think and to talk about themselves for a few minutes?

There has been a boom of Personality Quizzes and Typology Assessments over the last 10 years, and even more so since the pandemic.

And it makes sense why.

In particularly chaotic and challenging times, we tend to look for something, anything, to help us make sense of things, to make sense of ourselves, and to reassure us that not only are we equipped to survive this chaos, but that we are able to thrive beyond it.

As we’re digging into the questions of who or what can tell us who we are, and the limitations of any person or tool that attempts to do that, I’m thinking about typologies.

Our interest in them, our reliance on them, and what that means–what we’re making that mean–about ourselves and about each other.

In This Episode:

• The two fundamental problems with typology tests
• The long history of typologies, from Hippocrates to Myers-Briggs
• How employers began using typology tests and the consequences of relying on them
• How we could move beyond the existing limitations of typologies, and why we would want to

References:

• What Personality Tests Really Deliver | The New Yorker
• Job hiring increasingly relies on personality tests, but that can bar people with disabilities

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Website
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

Who are we really?

Are we the roles that we play? The work that we do? Are we defined by our relationships?

Is that who we are?

If I asked you if it was possible for anyone else to tell you who you are, you’d probably say absolutely not! Because you define who you are, right?

Which is true. But it’s also not the whole story.

We all tell others who they are all the time. And accepting or rejecting what other people tell us about ourselves isn’t as simple or straightforward as we might like it to be.

Today, I’m thinking about the complexity of identity.

Yes, we choose who we are, and how much any particular role defines us. But we also can’t disregard, dismiss, or discount other people’s perceptions of us, because they, too, make us who we are.

In This Episode:

• How social media has challenged and expanded our perceptions of who we could be
• The paradox of possibility and our inescapable internet pasts
• The impacts of our split-second perceptions of others on their careers, relationships, and even lives
• An invitation to take notice and take action when it comes to perceptions

References:

• The Dropout Podcast
• The Dropout
• Monica Lewinsky: The price of shame | TED Talk
• Monica Lewinsky on Pivoting to Producing, Hollywood Mentors and Her Copious Notes on 'American Crime Story: Impeachment'

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Website
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

With the emergence of the Body Positivity movement onto the global stage via social media in the last 10 years, I’m thinking about our bodies.

More and more (mostly female) public figures are actively celebrating their bodies, or are simply showing up fully with neither explanation nor apology. There is also more and more vocal backlash when they do.

How and why do we identify with our bodies? How much meaning and importance do we place on that identity?

And what are the implications for the lives we live and what we get to do during our short time on this planet?

In This Episode:

• How the stories of our bodies we absorb in our formative years stick with us
• Why BMI is a deeply flawed measure of health and how it came to widespread use
• How the “obesity epidemic” was created
• How collective perceptions of ideal body types have dramatically shifted over time
• An invitation to reconsider how you identify with your body

References:

• What Is Body Positivity?
• Weight stigma study in the US and 5 other nations shows the worldwide problem of such prejudice. - The Washington Post
• Women's idealised bodies have changed dramatically over time – but are standards becoming more unattainable?.
• What celeb trainer Jillian Michaels got wrong about Lizzo and body positivity
• Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus : NPR.
• Adolphe Quetelet and the Evolution of Body Mass Index (BMI) | Psychology Today
• The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI | by Your Fat Friend | Elemental
• Who's fat? New definition adopted - June 17, 1998
• Five Things You're Getting Wrong About Weight and Weight Loss | TIME.com
• I Weigh with Jameela Jamil podcast on Earwolf

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Website
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

Welcome back for Season Two of We’re All Alright.

This season, I’m exploring questions of identity and otherness.

The big question: Can we allow others–and be okay with others–finding themselves and being themselves when who they are is entirely different from who we are, what we prefer, and what we expect?

And where better to start that discussion than with political identity?!

Political identity encompasses how and why we choose to define ourselves as members of, in alignment with, or in relation to, political parties, and how we perceive others who do so, especially those of opposing parties.

What are we really doing when we adopt a political identity? And is it even useful?

In This Episode:

• A brief history and evolution of political parties in the United States
• Why binary labels like Left and Right fail to encompass or reflect the reality of the principles and ideologies individuals hold
• Imagining an expanded election process
• Why humans create the “other side”

References:

• We’re All Alright S01E08: Media: Where “Truth” Meets Human Nature
• From white supremacy to Barack Obama: The history of the Democratic Party
• When and why did Democrats and Republicans switch platforms? | Live Science
• Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology | Pew Research Center
• The Political Typology Quiz | Pew Research Center

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Website
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

One of my biggest intentions with this first season of We’re All Alright–and really, this podcast’s reason for being–was to explore our relationships with the collective–meaning all of us, all of humanity–and to do that through the lens of stories, headlines, issues, and questions that affect all of us.

And in that exploration, my hope was to remind us all of that connection we have, each of us, with all of us.

One of my other intentions was to help us make sense of the confusion, chaos, and turmoil of the last number of years, as a way of helping us all (myself included) feel better, feel safe, feel alright about our world and the times we’re living in.

But what I’m discovering is that it’s nearly impossible to make sense of this confusion.

Trying to apply logic doesn’t actually work because logic and reason just aren’t what they used to be!

When enough people reject collective truth, as less valid or legitimate than one’s personal truth, it becomes a rejection of the collective as a whole.

And since the same logic and reason no longer apply universally–or even for a sufficiently vast majority–making sense of it all may just not be in the cards.

And that’s when I realized…THIS is the bad place!

Which is where The Good Place comes in.

Today, I’m thinking about two of my favorite episodes of The Good Place and how they illustrate the complications of logic in modern life and what it means to be working to make the world a better place.

In This Episode:

• How the accounting system (as portrayed in the series) illustrates the impossible complexities of modern life
• Why the total eradication of suffering–aside from being impossible–might not be a desirable goal
• Why acceptance that the world doesn’t make sense is the foundation of living - and doing - well in it.

References:

• Episode 3: What Does Justice Mean in the Freedom of Truth Era?
• Episode 7: Are Cults on the Rise?
• The Good Place Season 3 Episode 11, “Chidi Sees The Time Knife”
• The Good Place Season 4 Episode 12, “Patty”

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Work With Phyllis
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

Has there ever really been such a thing as a reliable news source?

The absence of clear communication–or even, it seems, any kind of strategy–is now frequently cited as the biggest failure and missed opportunity of the pandemic response, in the US and around the world.

That lack, along with the absolute explosion of misinformation on social media–to the point that for many, it’s nearly indistinguishable from facts–has me thinking about the media.

What do we even mean when we say “the media?”

And why do we choose one news or information source over another?

If there are no reliable news sources, whose version of events do we trust?

In This Episode:

• How even “reliable” news sources have always had a bias
• What we should be asking for from our news sources
• Why we latch onto sources that are clear and consistent, even if their ideas and versions of events aren’t actually trustworthy
• Questions to consider for changing your relationship with media and information sources

Resource:

• The Web3 Renaissance: A Golden Age for Content - by Li Jin

References:

• Taiwan is using humor as a tool against coronavirus hoaxes
• The mind's mirror

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Work With Phyllis
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast

The injustices done to people inside cults are very real. And yet the perpetrators of those injustices are rarely brought to justice, largely because the boundaries of personal responsibility are fuzzy at best in these cases.

That does seem to be changing though–certainly in the court of public opinion–which we can see in the growing numbers of documentaries, series and podcasts on cults, their abuses, their money-making endeavors, their exoduses and escapes and everything in between.

The popularity and prevalence of these documentaries has me asking, are cults on the rise?

I’m also thinking about my own relationship with cults, or more specifically, cult-thinking, and about how easy it is, not just for any one of us to find ourselves accidentally in or in close philosophical proximity to a cult, but also how easy it could be for any of us–especially those of us who are teachers, coaches and mentors–to find ourselves leading one.

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

In This Episode:

• The defining characteristics of a cult, and how those are evolving to make cults even more insidious and widespread
• How the coercive language and practices of cults have infiltrated coaching spaces
• What we can learn from how modern cults spread online

Resources For Doing Your Best:

• What Makes a Cult a Cult? | The New Yorker
• The Seven Signs That You're in a Cult - The Atlantic
• How MLMs And Cults Use The Same Mind Control Techniques | HuffPost Life
• 'Holy Sh*t, We’re in a Cult!'
• The Multilevel Marketing Cults: Lies, Pyramid Schemes, and the Pursuit of Financial Freedom.
• Watch out for tell-tale signs | Rick Ross | The Guardian
• Nxivm Cult: Leader Keith Raniere Sentenced to 120 Years - The New York Times
• Gwen Shamblin, of HBO's 'The Way Down,' Ran A Weight-Loss Cult
• QAnon FAQ: It's been a year since Q's last drop, but people still believe - CNET

References:

• We're All Alright Episode 2: How Should We Practice Justice?

Learn More About Phyllis Wilson:

• Work With Phyllis
• Instagram: @Alright_Podcast