Don't Change A Thing

*Please note that this content contains sensitive information regarding mental health and topics related to suicide. The extraordinary artist, poet, model and mental health activist, Riya Hamid, opens up to us about the very brave and honest work she is doing on Instagram surrounding her own personal struggles with mental health, a subject that is all too taboo and that needs to come to the surface, because we all struggle with mental health in one way or another. She describes what it was like to grow up the eldest daughter of immigrant parents from Bangladesh, turning her back on the Muslim religion as a teen, but reconnecting with her past by wearing saris and learning to cook the traditional dishes of her mentally ill mother as a way to care for the wounded child within. Riya holds nothing back as she reveals the truth about her hospitalizations and the difference between passive suicidal ideation and suicidal intention. She explains that it’s possible to have an apparently fun life on the exterior while still being in excruciating pain on the inside. “There just needs to be a revolution in the way that we talk about mental health. Across the entire world, there's not a place where people openly talk about it and I'm sick of it. People deal with this daily, people lose lives. These conversations are bound to make people uncomfortable because it's the first time we're having them and it's actually a good sign, it's supposed to. To an outsider, I'm a person who's popular on social media and I'm attractive and I dress well and I have friends so what could possibly be wrong? What could I have possibly have been through? Every day I get messages from people who accuse me of faking my mental illness and my Go Fund Me because they see me having a good time and people don't realize that those two things can exist concurrently. I can have a good time and still be a mentally ill person.” *A note to all listeners that if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. Thank you.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Yoga teacher, actress, activist, and (we think) should-be-comedian, gifts us with her company while offering insight into what it was like growing up in the (in)famous 70s New York Chelsea Hotel, daughter of Warhol’s “superstar,” Viva, and artist Michel Auder. She tells us why she and her sister, Transparent actress Gaby Hoffman, are both so comfortable in their physicalities, at times to the discomfort of others, and tells the story and motivation behind her incredibly inspiring role on HBO’s High Maintenance playing Gloria, a yoga teacher attempting to break the world record for non-stop dancing, “it was like a homebirth gone awry.” Alex breaks down the difference between commodified “downward dog and vinyasa yoga” and the principles behind the yoga of “expanding in the now… what yoga says is the only way to expand in the now is to look death in the eye because then we're comfortable with change,” and how being comfortable with change is the key to owning and embracing our changing bodies. We pack a lot into this episode so keep your ears open!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coined the ‘Social Justice Astrologer’ and a rock “star” to us, Chani Nicholas’ readings make you feel as if she is speaking to you personally in the deepest, most intuitive, profound, psychological, and empowering way. She talks to us about how her relationship with the planets as early as 8 years old, was the first thing that made her feel seen, having grown up neglected while locked in a “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll party” on the side of a mountain, finding love at 38 just when she thought she would never have “the family,” and choosing life in her darkest times: “I was sitting watching a sunbeam on the forest floor and I went into a kind of meditation and a lot of time passed because the patch of light was one place and by the time I realized what had happened it was at another, but it was this experience of literally feeling the part of me that was separated turn around and see me and literally making a choice...it was an experience of choosing myself and choosing to see what was worth saving in myself.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We were so excited to be back in the same room as Jacob Tobia that we could barely contain our finger snaps. This author, producer, and gender-fabulous gem talked to us about pets, pencil skirts, and nail polish alongside urgent issues around gender and style politics. Far from binary, this nonconformist has compared gender to a multifaceted diamond with endless and infinite refractions and permutations, different gradations of radiance and existence. Yes. Yes. Yes. More. Please. “Any strategy for getting yourself more space, or acknowledging that others need more space even if you don't is a strategy that I support. Broadening what masculinity means, making the ‘man’ box bigger, giving men more room to move around and stay within a box...if we widen both of the boxes so much that they come together they may just fall apart on their own. There is such beauty in broadening masculinity and femininity. There's equal beauty in... pushing with all of your might against the edge of that identity from within it, and in jumping out and saying ‘I'm not in any box.’ One is a riskier position. When you're not within a box you're much more at risk of being hurt in the world and experiencing violence but pushing from within the box to broaden it is so vital.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One of the most absurd things in the world is that we all dread the one thing we absolutely know is going to happen: we don’t talk about death and as a result, we are all terrified of aging. We have an entire society that is paralyzed by this fear. The obsession with Kim Kardashian and plastic perfection has people worrying about aging and thinking about Botox at 15. How could that make for a happy society? Ashton Applewhite, activist and author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, joins Elisa & Lily and together they discuss the convenient truth that “if aging is a problem we can be persuaded to buy stuff to fix it or cure it when it’s not fixable or curable because it’s not a disease and it’s not a problem.” “One huge factor in this society is that there is so much age segregation. When you look around and you see all ages it feels fantastic, this is how life should be and this is how life was until urbanization came in and capitalism started separating workers of different ages and old age became a problem in the 20th century when retirement homes and nursing homes were invented. One of the problems is that we don’t age mingle and if you don’t mingle with people who are different from you, whether they’re a different color or a different gender or a different age then they seem distant and ‘other’, and this ‘othering’ thing is the source of all prejudice. The bizarre thing about ageism is that the ‘other’ is your own future older self.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The physical effects of vitiligo have been life-rippling for Jesi Taylor, guiding their journey towards self-acceptance. First down a path of bulimia as an attempt to control the initial devastation of their black skin losing pigment day-by-day, followed by their shifting perspectives around the constructs of race and gender (“what is it that I’m calling myself and letting people identify me as?”), and now in the midst of a high-risk pregnancy. They are finding a deeper peace by surrendering to the truth that one way or another, the only constant is that we are all forever changing.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Domino Kirke, musician and co-director/founder of Carriage House Birth reveals the wisdom she’s gained as a doula, including her own physical and emotional limitations, and how our past traumas can come to haunt us in labor. She talks about her struggle with shedding old familiar and familial rituals around drama and alcoholism in favor of creating a balanced, sober and calm environment for her body, her mind, and her loved ones.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Elisa and Lily are joined by gender non-conforming performance artist, writer, educator, and entertainer Alok Vaid-Menon who explains why the creation of the ‘self-other’ as a binary is fundamentally flawed: “Individualism is wrong because it constantly sees ourselves as separate from one another rather than synchronous. So many of the things that we’ve been taught are oppositional or antagonistic are not.” They reveal why coming out, for them, was really about radical honesty and the strength of feelings, why we need each other in order to know ourselves, how “friendship is where we go to workshop our lives,” and why they refuse to define people by one act of violence just as much as they refuse to be defined by gender.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Artist Sylvia Maier gifts us with an intimate portrait of her soul as she takes us on a journey from her childhood, growing up in 70s New York as the only daughter of biracial musician parents, through healing the pain of an abusive father by seeking out and painting beauty. She tells us why, having cared for her dying mother, she is no longer afraid of dying herself, why trust was the biggest risk she has ever taken, and she gets real about her identity as mother, artist, and person of color, all while navigating ideals around personal value in an all too material world. “I try to bridge my own contradictions, my own struggles with the world and my inner life. And for me, currency has always been about achieving your ultimate potential. That is your highest level of currency. It’s that you come to this planet and then you fulfill your potential.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

DJ Louie XIV, who has spent years mixing music for a hyper-masculine crowd, talks about struggling with the shame and hiding that followed him out of the closet and how that has shaped everything in his life, from intimate relationships with other men to owning his path as an artist, as well as imagining his life was a TV show to writing and producing his own.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.