The Art of Asking Everything, Season 1, Episode 1: Elizabeth Lesser: Bullshit is Everywhere - {official Thing} (Patreon)

{public post}

hallo loves. 

AND THUS BEGAN A WHOLE ERA. 

WE DO IT. we podcast.

at long last, after a year-long delay (gulp). THE ART OF ASKING EVERYTHING PODCAST has launched.

today the first episode is out in the world and ready for you to listen. i talk with elizabeth lesser, bestselling writer and memoirist, about, well, lots of everything. i think you're going to love it. and hopefully, it'll make you feel things, help you, make you angry, make you happy, and - dare i say it - heal you a little.

it is not a coincidence that i chose elizabeth lesser as my inaugural guest. 

her book, “broken open”, is about rising like a goddamn phoenix from the ashes of her divorce, and i was deeply moved by the profound lesson she has learned over and over again: that tragedy, loss and grief help us grow and become bigger, better, deeper...more human and more capable of empathy.

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the first episode is called "BULLSHIT IS EVERYWHERE", and man, it is.

it is available now, wherever you get your podcasts, it is free to the public, and because i am funding it through this patreon, there no sponsors, there is no brand endorsements, there are no advertisements: 

GO! LISTEN! SHARE!:

https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

it's been a real haul lately, people.

i hope you are all really proud to be here, supporting this kind of work. making this podcast was not cheap; we have a huge team to pay and support, many of whom you never meet or see in the blog. your funding made it all possible. 

so please....be sure to subscribe to the podcast feed in the player of your choice so you get new episodes as they drop and if you feel so inclined, rate and review the show to help other folks discover it. and TELL PEOPLE!!!!

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HOW TO LISTEN, HOW TO SHARE?

again, this handy linktree has a round-up of how to tune into the podcast on some of the most popular players. if you use a podcast service and can't find it on there, let us know in the comments and we'll see what we can do to add it. we will have the audio embedded on each episode post on my website: http://amandapalmer.net/podcast

and i'll share the link to soundcloud here on patreon, because you can listen to this on your computer or on your phone without the need to sign in, hoorah:

https://soundcloud.com/amandapalmer/lesser-bullshit

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more fun?

THE FOLLOW-UP LIVE GUEST CHATS, for patrons only!

these will happen a few days after each podcast, starting this thursday.

i have missed you, and this is a great excuse to peel myself back into webcasting more often.

and we are.....experimenting. so HELP, by tuning in and giving me and the team feedback about how this all feels to you.

basically....since almost every one of the upcoming episodes was recorded pre-covid, i thought it would be a good idea to follow-up with every guest, have a live chat, and basically check in about what's changed since we interviewed in the Before Times....

how lockdown went. what they're working on...and take questions from you. it will feel good to be in the moment with these guests, and you, instead of just putting out year-old conversations, even though the content is so good. (and it is).

these live chats will generally happen THURSDAY NIGHTS (europe/states time, friday morning for us down under) and you can and should RSVP as soon as you can (you have to be logged into patreon to join) so you can get the reminder alert from crowdcast before i go live. you can - and should - also populate the cast with QUESTIONS, and upvote questions you like, so i have time to look through them before i talk to the guest!

you can RSVP NOW to join me for the FIRST ONE, with elizabeth lesser:

it's happening on 

october 1st, at 7pm EDT 

(check out what time it is in your local timezone here)

here's the link:

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/AOAES1E1 

again, once you RSVP, you'll get an email from crowdcast confirming your registration to the event with a link to add it to your calendar, and you'll get a notice 10 minutes before we go live to remind you to tune in.  

SEE YOU THERE....you don't wanna miss this one. elizabeth is one of the most inspiring, articulate thinkers and writers i have ever met.

here we are, recording our conversation in woodstock, NY, back in august 2019:

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every week, i am going to be putting out posts like this, including the show's transcript (for those who don't want to listen, want to follow along with written text or are impaired and cannot). also, we'll always have SHOW notes for each guest and episode....links to their work, links to relevant discussion topics and references, and all sorts of goodies.

a TON of time and work goes into this stuff. hayley has been working away full-time getting the patreon and crowdcast side of things ready, my podcast producer has been working on the technical and production side of things for over a year, and lately, xanthea has been slaving over a hot computer to work on the show notes, final musical and conversational edits. there's also a small army of video graphic designers, image graphic designers, and so on and so forth. my manager, jordan, even lent a hand last week and put the linktr.ee list together because we were scrambling so hard. michael, my assistant back in NYC, has been helping with scheduling the guests and the chats. it's a LOT of work...more than i even imagined. it's taken a village.

but we have raised a podcast!

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SHOW NOTES: The Art of Asking Everything, Season 1, Episode 1

Elizabeth Lesser: Bullshit is Everywhere 

Recorded August 14, 2019 in Woodstock, NY, at Applehead studios, Engineer: Michael Birnbaum.

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IF YOU ARE NOT A PATREON, and you're new here...hello!

the patreon makes it possible for the podcast to go out with no ads, no sponsors, and no censorship. the production on these isn't cheap, and we like paying our guests, and paying for a transcripts, and having a team to help with the graphics and the social media, and running the site costs money...and on and on. you know the deal. it all costs dough.

please, if you want to support us in keeping things running, join up here, for as little as $1 a month. 

and thank you.

your patronage means the world to me.

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here's something that's just lovely.

Elizabeth and The Dalai Lama

words from elizabeth:

Being with Amanda for this podcast was like being with Amanda anywhere: in the audience at a concert, in her kitchen drinking tea. Amanda is Amanda is Amanda wherever she is, whomever she is with, whatever she is creating, spinning, eating, loving, being. That's why we love her. 

She's the real deal.

Pir Vilayat Khan and Elizabeth, a really long time ago :)

here's her bio:

ELIZABETH LESSER is a bestselling author and the cofounder of Omega Institute, the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Elizabeth’s first book, The Seeker’s Guide, chronicles her years at Omega and distills lessons learned into a potent guide for growth and healing. Her New York Times bestselling book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, has sold almost 500,000 copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Her latest book, Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most, chronicles the journey Elizabeth and her younger sister went through when Elizabeth was the donor for her sister’s bone marrow transplant. 

Elizabeth cofounded Omega Institute in 1977—a time when a variety of fresh ideas were sprouting in American culture. Since then, the institute has been at the forefront of holistic education, offering workshops and trainings in: integrative medicine, prevention, nutrition, and the mind/body connection; meditation and yoga; cross-cultural arts and creativity; ecumenical spirituality; and social change movements like women’s empowerment and environmental sustainability. Elizabeth is also the cofounder of Omega’s Women’s Leadership Center, which grew out of the popular Women & Power conference series featuring women leaders, activists, authors and artists from around the world. Each year close to 30,000 people participate in Omega’s programs on its campus in Rhinebeck, New York and at urban and travel sites, and more than a million people visit its website for online learning. 

A student of the Sufi master, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for many years, Elizabeth has also studied with spiritual teachers, healers, psychologists, and philosophers from other traditions. In 2008 she helped Oprah Winfrey produce a ten-week online seminar based on Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. The webinar has been viewed by over 40 million people worldwide. She was a guest on the Oprah Show, a frequent host on Oprah’s Soul Series, a weekly radio show on Sirius/XM, and is one of the Super Soul 100, a collection of a hundred leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.  

In 2011, she gave a popular TED talk called “Take The Other to Lunch,” a call for civility and understanding as we negotiate our differences as human beings. She gave her second TED talk in 2016, about the power of truth-telling. 

Elizabeth attended Barnard College, where she studied literature, and San Francisco State University, where she received a teaching degree. In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, in Palo Alto, California. Early in her career she was a midwife and birth educator. Today, besides writing and her work at Omega Institute, she lends her time to social and environmental causes, and is an avid walker, cook, gardener, friend, mother, grandmother, and homebody. She and her husband live in New York’s Hudson River Valley. 

her websites: www.elizabethlesser.org www.eomega.org 

elizabeth on twitter: @ElizabethLesser 

EPISODE CREDITS:

First of all, thank you so much to Elizabeth Lesser. She has been such an incredible partner in my life and in the lead up to launching this podcast, and I am so excited to do the live follow-up chat with her this coming Friday. She’s also just been really holding my hand through the dark as I navigate my new life here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. For anyone who’s not actually following that plot at home, I’ve been marooned, stuck, not really stuck…stuck by choice, not going back to America because I am not insane, here, in Aotearoa, New Zealand since March, and I’m really homesick, but I’m happy to be here. It’s complicated. Anyway, Elizabeth, if you’re listening, thank you, and I love you so much.

The engineer for this interview was Michael Birnbaum at Applehead Studios in Woodstock, New York. The theme song that you’re listening to right now is a song called “Bottomfeeder” from my 2012 crowdfunded album, “Theatre is Evil.” 

I would like to give a shout out to my soul-brother, collaborator, Jherek Bischoff, who arranged and mixed the sort of in between orchestral music that you heard in this podcast. Those are all little snippets from my latest album, “There Will Be No Intermission,” and Jherek used the songs on the album to sort of create the little masterpieces. And you can go support Jherek over on his own Patreon. He’s a really prolific musician, and his stuff is just wonderful.

For all of the music that you heard in this episode, you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net.

Many, many thanks to my podcast assistant, social media helper, cowriter, all around wonderful person, and additional engineer, Xanthea O’Connor, who is literally holding the mike as we speak. 

I want to thank all of my team in New York and Sydney and London. We are worldwide. Team AFP, Michael, Hayley, Jordan, and Alex, thank you so much for helping with this. 

More special thanks to Nick Rizzuto, Brittney Bomberger, Allie Cohen, and Braxton Carter. 

And last, but not least, this whole thing would not be possible without my patrons, all 15,000 of you. Patronage means that I can release this podcast with no ads, no sponsors, and no censorship. We actually really are free media. I can say whatever I want here. So, special thanks are due to my high-tier patrons, Bernhard Rebok, Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdy Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, and Leela Cosgrove. Thank you, guys, so much. 

Please go to Patreon, become a member, come to the Crowdcast that we’re going to hold after every single podcast, and we’re going to do a live follow-up chat. You can ask questions. You can see me continue on this conversation in the real world, given that a lot of these podcasts were recorded, oh, like, a year a half ago, and my Patreon is full of all sorts of extra stuff, pictures and notes and so much more. So, please go find me there. 

Signing off, I am Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything. 

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
i've attached a pdf of the transcript of my conversation with elizabeth to the patreon post. to view it, you can download it by visiting this patreon post on the web at: 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/37561956/

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ELIZABETH'S BOOKS.

for more info on each of her books, and for links to purchase them, head over to elizabeth's website: https://www.elizabethlesser.org

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and....this one is AMAZING.

Elizabeth just published a new version of Broken Open with a new preface, which she has kindly offered to share with my patrons, so be on the look out for a patron-only post with that special treat for you soon.

yaaaayyyy.

and i've also read this one. anyone who's dealt with difficult family, cancer, or a sense of imposter syndrome should grab it....

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LAST BUT NOT LEAST....speaking of BOOKS

THE PODCAST BOOK CLUB!!!!!

THE UPCOMING PATRON-ONLY BOOK CLUB for elizabeth's new book, "CASSANDRA SPEAKS:  When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes" is also kicking off!!!

i've just started reading it a week ago, and holy shit.this is the book we need right now.i'm sure elizabeth and i will be talking about it a LOT when we live-chat this coming thursday (friday down under)....but here it is. 

it was published about two weeks ago....and you can get it anywhere you buy your ebooks, and of course, we encourage you to go indie and order it from your local independent bookshop if you're buying a hard copy. hurry up!we are going to start discussion of the book over HERE on the shadowbox discussion forum, in a patron-only section. and in about a month (we will figure out a good day and time depending on the participants' time-zone needs) we will do a BIG group online discussion, hopefully with elizabeth on board again as well. there will be tea and wine. and probably some crying and rage.

more about the book club HERE.

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i love you.

so much love.

so tired.

so happy.

happy listening.

x

a

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

IF YOU'RE IN THE USA.....DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER TO VOTE IN THE NOVEMBER 2020 ELECTION. DO NOT BE CONFUSED!!! help is there: you can register to vote, find your local voter registration deadlines, update your voter registration, check that your registration is still on the books, find your polling place and other important election information HERE at http://headcount.org

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http://amandapalmer.net/things

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