As AI reshapes the world at a dizzying pace, the most important question might not be what machines can do — but what stays irreplaceably human. In this fascinating episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Dr. Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist, serial entrepreneur, and self-described "professional mad scientist" whose work spans using machine learning to reunite refugee families and inventing AI to help manage her own son's diabetes. Drawing on her book Robot Proof: When Machines Have All the Answers, Build Better People, Vivienne makes a hopeful, deeply human case: the goal isn't artificial intelligence on its own, but hybrid intelligence — people and AI together, with the human firmly in the lead.

Vivienne shares what decades of research reveal about the traits that actually predict a good life — curiosity, resilience, intellectual humility, and the courage to be wrong — and why those "foundation skills" matter more than ever now that the right answers are free in everyone's pocket. She and Cynthia explore how to use AI to make yourself sharper rather than lazier, the quiet cost of over-reliance, and why, in this moment in history, it's your unique voice that makes you valuable. Vivienne also shares her own remarkable story — from a childhood weighed down by impossible expectations to years of hardship, and the hard-won decision to build a life of meaning by making other people's lives better. It's a conversation that lands right at the heart of this show: that discovering and honoring who we truly are is how we thrive, in any age.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

0:39 — Welcome, Dr. Vivienne Ming

3:07 — Robot Proof and the Skills That Last

7:13 — What Stays Uniquely Human

12:45 — When Students Beat the Experts

18:39 — The Google Maps Warning

25:54 — Your Unique Voice Is What Makes You Valuable

29:56 — Three Ways to Build Better Humans

35:51 — The Guild Story: Beyond the Pedigree

46:41 — Being Wrong Is How We Learn

51:47 — Vivienne's Story: Failure and Finding Meaning

Twenty years ago, a life-saving scholarship brought Christina Simos through the doors of Friendly House — the first all-women's recovery home in the country. Today, she runs the whole place as CEO. In this powerful episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Christina for a conversation about lived experience, radical equity, and reinventing what recovery can look like when it's built on love instead of rules. Christina shares her story with striking honesty — growing up inside the family disease of alcoholism, carrying generational trauma and the weight of being the "parental child," and the long, hard road that eventually led her, terrified, through the doors of the house that would change her life.

Together, she and Cynthia explore why real healing can't happen on a 28-day clock, how community and sisterhood become the ground people rebuild on, and the belief at the center of Christina's work: my healing is your liberation, and your healing is mine. They talk about the remarkable 75-year legacy of Friendly House — just four executive directors across three-quarters of a century — meeting each woman exactly where she is, and the joy Christina has reclaimed in her music, her son, and yes, even championship dodgeball. It's a story of coming full circle, and a living example of what it means to lead with love.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

To learn more, donate, volunteer, or find help, visit Friendly House LA online. Friendly House's 75th Anniversary Celebration takes place Saturday, October 17th at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

This episode includes candid discussion of addiction and past suicidal thoughts, shared in the spirit of recovery and hope. If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at 988, and the SAMHSA National Helpline is at 1-800-662-4357.

0:41 — Welcome, Christina Simos

1:58 — Dodgeball, Music, and the Gifts That Kept Her Hopeful

3:55 — Growing Up in the Family Disease

7:20 — Finding No Escape, and Becoming Her Mother

9:45 — Walking Through the Doors of Friendly House

13:40 — Healing as Liberation and the Power of Being Seen 17:20 — 75 Years and Why 28 Days Is a Lie

21:30 — What Actually Happens at Friendly House

46:00 — Carrying the Torch and How to Help

Book link: https://www.burnbarrelpress.com/product/grey-flowers-by-suitcase-joe

Website: https://www.suitcasejoe.com/

For over a decade, the anonymous Los Angeles street photographer known only as Suitcase Joe has walked Skid Row and the fringes of the city, photographing the people the rest of the world tends to look past. In this moving episode, Cynthia Marks sits down with Joe to talk about what he's learned in that time — not just about the community he's come to love, but about himself. What began as a project to document Skid Row "for historical purposes" slowly became something far more personal, as strangers became friends, encampments started to feel like homes, and Joe's own hardwired assumptions about people quietly fell away.

Joe shares stories from the streets, including his close friendship with a man named Cricket and the complicated reality of what happens after someone finally gets housing. He reflects on the "birth lottery" that shapes so much of our lives, how following his passion pulled him out of his own darkest chapter, and the freedom he found by letting go of what society told him he was supposed to be. It's a conversation that lands, again and again, on the theme at the heart of this show: that beneath our circumstances and our trauma, we are far more alike than different — and that seeing another person with compassion can change everything. Joe's new book, City and Soul, continues that work, honoring the people who give the city its real soul.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

You can find Suitcase Joe on Instagram @suitcasejoe and at his website, and look for his forthcoming book City and Soul, published by Beyond the Streets.

This episode includes a candid discussion of depression and past suicidal thoughts, shared in the spirit of hope and healing. If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at 988.

0:40 — Welcome, Suitcase Joe

1:50 — Wandering Into Skid Row

3:30 — These Are Their Homes: A Shift in Perspective

7:47 — The Reality of Getting Off the Streets

9:41 — Cricket: A Friendship and a Loss

14:00 — Crushow and Earning Trust on the Blocks

18:44 — The Depression That Led to Grey Flowers

28:00 — There Are No Rules to Making Art

46:00 — City and Soul and What Unites Us

What happens when everything you built your sense of security on is taken overnight? In this profoundly moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Rabbi Amy Bernstein, who has weathered an extraordinarily heavy couple of years — losing her home in the Palisades Fire alongside many of her congregants, and facing a cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy soon after. As a spiritual mother to a community of hundreds of families, Amy found herself holding others through the very catastrophe she was living herself. Drawing on Dr. Bernard Bail's idea of the mother's imprint — the unconscious blueprint we inherit before we have words — she and Cynthia explore what it means when a crisis shatters that blueprint and forces us to rebuild from scratch.

At the heart of the conversation is post-traumatic growth: the surprising, science-backed truth that trauma can lead not only to suffering but to profound transformation, when we intentionally reframe the story we tell about how the world works. Amy shares what she learned traveling to Lahaina to sit with fire survivors further down the road, why community and connection became her new ground when her possessions were gone, how she's learning to hold everything more loosely, and why our culture so badly needs to honor pain — and aging — as rich and meaningful parts of being human. It's a testament to resilience, love, and the unexpected freedom that can come when we stop grasping so tightly.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

You can find Rabbi Amy Bernstein's weekly Torah study wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more about the organization After the Fire, which supports communities recovering from wildfire.

0:38 — Welcome, Rabbi Amy Bernstein

2:38 — Holding a Community While Losing Everything

7:27 — Lessons From Lahaina and the Fire Survivors

8:26 — When the Blueprint of Security Shatters

13:08 — Holding Things Loosely

20:37 — Facing a Cancer Diagnosis and Being Seen

23:30 — Post-Traumatic Growth: Rewriting the Story

29:05 — Mortality and What Really Matters

34:00 — eSocial Media and Judging Our Insides by Others' Outsides

42:55 — Meaning vs. Happiness: We Are Meaning-Making Creatures

51:18 — The Loafers: Reinvention at Any Age

We tend to assume that of course everyone has feelings — but Dr. Loren Weiner explains that this simply isn't the case. In this fascinating episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes back Dr. Loren Weiner, a Los Angeles psychotherapist whose work is grounded in the methodology of the late Dr. Bernard Bail, for a deep look at why so many of us quietly shut our feelings down. Beneath the surface, and entirely unconsciously, we are constantly modulating emotion — allowing it, blocking it, sometimes killing it off to survive pain we couldn't tolerate, often beginning very early in life and sometimes passed down by caregivers who couldn't feel either.

Following the arc of real healing, Loren walks us through a series of remarkable patient dreams that reveal the whole journey: how the unconscious first signals that feeling has been cut off, what dreams look like as emotion begins to return (a hat lifted, an engagement between the masculine and feminine within), and the resistance that naturally comes with change. She and Cynthia explore why feelings are actually our protection and our guide, how numbing distorts our relationships with partners and children, and why reclaiming our emotions is the essential step toward knowing ourselves, connecting with others, and living fully. It all lands on a beautiful closing dream about a patient who discovers that what looked like a fake name was really a new name — the name of the person who finally has access to feeling.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

0:42 — Welcome Back, Dr. Loren Weiner

2:00 — Why People Stop Using Their Feelings

9:30 — How Caregivers Pass It Down

16:00 — Spotting It in Everyday Life and Relationships

26:00 — Dreams When Feeling Is Blocked

35:44 — Dreams as Feeling Returns: The Hat and the Engagement

48:00 — Resistance on the Road Back

54:00 — A New Name: Coming Home to Feeling

True healing means breaking through isolation to know ourselves without the weight of our trauma — and it's rarely something we can do alone. In this deeply moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Elya Braden, founder and president of HaGomel, a Los Angeles nonprofit providing expressive arts programming for women healing from sexual trauma. The name comes from Birkat HaGomel, an ancient Jewish prayer of gratitude spoken aloud after surviving a life-threatening danger — one that must be witnessed by community, so that others can answer back: we see you, we affirm you, and we are so glad you are alive.

Elya shares her own remarkable journey with grace and candor — from a childhood where writing became her secret refuge, through a career in law that quieted her creative voice, to the long road of confronting her past and finding her way home to herself through art and poetry. Together, she and Cynthia explore how creativity heals, why being witnessed by a supportive community is so transformative, and how each of us, once we've healed enough, can offer that healing to others. It's a conversation about self-love, courage, and the truth Elya returns to again and again: you are not alone, you are loved, and you absolutely deserve joy.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

To learn more, get involved, or support this work, visit the HaGomel community online and at Elya Braden's website, where you can also find her poetry collections Open the Fist and the forthcoming The Dragonfly Puzzle Box.

This episode includes candid discussion of childhood sexual abuse, shared in the spirit of healing. If you or someone you love needs support, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-656-4673.

0:30 — Welcome, Elya Braden

2:50 — A Childhood in the Arts, and a Secret Refuge

7:00 — The "If Only" Trap and Memories Resurfacing

11:00 — Leaving Law and Reclaiming Creativity

19:00 — Forgiveness and Facing the Past

33:00 — Building HaGomel and Communal Witnessing

44:00 — Art as a Path Back to the Self

52:00 — Poetry, Community, and Deserving Joy

Books referenced in the interview:Money, Power, Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood — her book documenting her Brooklyn neighborhood.

Upstate Girls — the first of two volumes documenting families in post-industrial upstate New York.

For acclaimed documentary photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally, love has always been inseparable from truth. In this deeply moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Brenda — a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and an award-winning photojournalist known for living among the families the world has left behind. Rather than observing poverty and hardship from a distance, Brenda moves into the margins and stays for years, decades even, becoming family to the people she photographs. Her images are raw, honest, and profoundly loving — doing much of the same work this show does: stripping away the armor, breaking down the stigma, and helping us see beyond our trauma.

Brenda shares her own remarkable journey with striking candor — a childhood without unconditional love, her role as the "family truth teller," early addiction and the long road through recovery, and how a camera became her way into love and connection. Together, she and Cynthia explore how trauma shapes our idea of love, why understanding "how things got that way" is the path to compassion, and why, for Brenda, all that chaos and disorder is love. It's a conversation about service, healing, and the families we create when we finally build the safe space we always needed.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

0:29 — Welcome, Brenda Ann Kenneally

3:13 — Love, Truth, and a Childhood Without Words for It

7:29 — Rebellion, Drinking, and the Family Truth Teller

15:22 — Recovery, AA, and Finding the Camera

24:00 — The Camera as Love and a Way In

29:14 — Not How Things Are, but How They Got That Way

33:00 — What She Wants Us to See in the Photos

37:38 — The Books: Brooklyn, Upstate, and Baby Girl

The Official And Now Love Website: www.andnowlove.com

Pets in Recovery: www.petsinrecovery.org

The Choice by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

What Happened to You? by Bruce Perry (Co-authored with Oprah Winfrey)

The Second Mountain by David Brooks

For many people struggling with addiction, one heartbreaking barrier stands between them and treatment: they have a beloved dog or cat, and nowhere for them to go. Faced with an impossible choice — get help and abandon their best friend, or stay in the dark to keep them safe — too many never walk through the door. Ken Moses decided no one should ever have to make that choice. In this deeply moving episode, Cynthia Marks welcomes Ken, founder of Pets in Recovery, a volunteer-driven, free fostering network that shelters and loves people's animals while their owners get the treatment they need.

Ken, who is in long-term recovery himself, shares his own story with remarkable honesty — from childhood trauma and decades of addiction to the hard, sacred work of healing, and the devastating personal loss that gave birth to his mission. Together, he and Cynthia explore what it means to carry your story without living in it, forgiveness as "giving up the hope that the past could have been any different," and the quiet grace of being told: we have your back, you matter, and your companion will be waiting for you on the other side of your healing.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

To learn more or get involved with Pets in Recovery, reach out through their community in the Coachella Valley and Southern California. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, help is available through the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357.

0:00 — Cold Open

0:26 — Welcome, Ken Moses

3:20 — Getting Sober and Asking for Help

5:57 — The Trauma Beneath the Addiction

11:00 — Learning to Carry the Story Without Living in It

15:00 — Healing, EMDR, and Meeting the Scared Child

18:21 — Forgiveness: Giving Up Hope for a Different Past

25:00 — How Pets in Recovery Works

27:00 — The Loss That Started It All

47:00 — Second Chances and the Road Ahead