Emmy-nominated filmmaker, renowned public speaker, and writer Tiffany Shlain is no stranger to technology. Not only is she founder of the Webby Awards and co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, but much of her work interweaves humanity’s relationship to technology. Not to mention her husband, Ken Goldberg, is a roboticist at UC Berkeley. And part of technology’s power, Tiffany says, is our ability to turn it off. So, she does turn it off - her phone, her computer - every Saturday with her family, in what they call a “Technology Shabbat,” and they’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. She even wrote a book about it, called “24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week.” And let’s be real: turning off technology feels more important - and also harder to do - NOW more than ever before. In this episode of SHAMEBOOTH, Tiffany details the impact her childhood has on her current path and mothering approach, how “Tech Shabbats” have transformed her life, and why you might want to follow suit and do the same.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a bad ass: A Lutheran pastor and the founder of House for All Sinners & Saints in Denver, the author of three (!) New York Times Bestsellers, she has a podcast, a huge following and she just doesn’t look like your typical pastor. One of her books, Shameless, got us running to her because we know how deep the connection between shame and religion can be and we want to get that shame right out of the way! We spoke with Nadia from her home. We spoke about her early days in the church, the paths she took that led her in other directions, and how she found her way back.

Eve Ensler is most well known for The Vagina Monologues, a play she created that has been performed around the world countless times. She’s also a feminist, activist and author. We spoke about her groundbreaking, heart wrenching book, The Apology. Written by her, channeling her father, it is an apology, one she never received from him but that wrote in his voice, for the years of sexual and physical abuse he inflicted upon her. Unflinching, healing, excruciating, revelatory, bold, brutal, and written with, as Anita Hill states, with unflinching candor and immeasurable grace. I had the honor of speaking with Eve Ensler. It was right before Covid hit and she was at home in the woods. We spoke about feminism, genocide and the power of calling men in instead of calling them out.

Debbie Millman’s resume is impressive, to say the least: Designer, artist, brand consultant for some of the most recognizable companies, author of six books, host of the first-ever and longest-running design podcast, Design Matters. It’s easy to think someone this accomplished had it all handed to them. But with Debbie, you’d be wrong. She struggled through and survived a deeply challenging childhood, which she first revealed, candidly and unexpectedly, on the Tim Ferris podcast. Her healing process has been a long one, and perhaps her most impressive quality is her courage in the face of it all. Time and time again, she has proven that’s she’s not afraid to reinvent herself, to evolve. Exhibit A: After being married to a man for a number of years, Debbie came out of the closet in her fifties and is now engaged to woman… but not just any woman: author Roxane Gay.

New York Times bestselling author and journalist Peggy Orenstein has spent a good part of her career focusing on girls and young women in groundbreaking books like Cinderella ate my Daughter and the infamous, Girls & Sex. As the #metoo movement was ramping up and boys and men were being taken to task, Orenstein wanted to hear from them, to better understand what boys were feeling and thinking and how was this movement, and our social climate, shaping the way in which they were understanding their sexuality and expressing it. She interviewed dozens of boys, from young adolescence to young adulthood, and realized that they were ready to talk and what they had to say may surprise readers and listeners. Boys & Sex was just published and Orenstein shares the insights she gleaned from the research and one big take away: Talk to your kids about sex. They’re ready. So should you be.

Tania Ketenjian:

This year has been an amazing one in the world of SHAMEBOOTH. We are approaching our 24th podcast episode, we produced a portable booth that Paula has been lugging around with her around the country (and soon to the border), we have presented at national events, had a two week residency in San Francisco and now we even have a shop where you can get SHAMEBOOTH merch (get your FUCK SHAME buttons before they’re all gone). Let’s just say we are kicking shame in the booty. This episode is our End of Year episode. Sounds a bit strange to call it a best of but it’s a listening experience not to be missed that brings together excerpts from the podcast, clips form the booth and other goodies. Dive in and get shame free in the new decade.

The holiday season can be a lot of things: joyful, connective, fun. It can also be downright isolating and lonely, especially for those who struggle with mental illness. Our most recent guest, British-Chinese comedy writer Amanda Rosenberg, knows this struggle all too well. In this episode, Amanda discusses her book, That’s Mental: Painfully Funny Things That Drive Me Crazy, and uses her dark humor and cutting wit to delve into her personal experience with depression, suicide attempts, Bipolar 2, and the decision to go off her medication while simultaneously pregnant with her child AND writing this very book. Throughout, Amanda shows us how to have the tough conversations about mental health that we as a society so badly need to have. Basically, she’s Wonder Woman. Can't you tell? 

On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States —  that's more than 12 million women and men over the course of a year. In this episode, we speak with Leslie Morgan Steiner, a feminist, author, TED speaker, activist, and domestic violence survivor. Her book, Crazy Love was a New York Times Bestselling Memoir, charts her marriage to her then abusive husband, Conor, in vivid detail, sharing the path from initially falling madly in love to coming close to dying at his abusive hands. Leslie did ultimately break free from him but her story is one of the millions around the world, where behind closed doors and a cloak of shame, women and men endure violence, verbal and physical, and at times have little to no resources to get their life back and survive. Leslie did and her story is illuminating, powerful and deeply inspiring.

This was one of the toughest episodes we have ever produced: Speaking with Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise about the tragedy that came into her life when there was a shooting at her son’s school, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. On that fateful day, December 14th, 2012, 28 people died, 20 of them were children between the ages of 6 and 7. Nicole Hockley’s son was amongst them. Since then, Nicole co-founded Sandy Hook Promise, a foundation committed to “honor all victims of gun violence by turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation by providing programs and practices that protect children from gun violence.” In these times, where multiple shootings occur every day, Sandy Hook Promise is vital and we spoke with Nicole about her experiences that inspired it and what has happened since.

As we know, shame finds itself everywhere, as does its sister, Pride. In this episode, we are touching on two key places where shame & pride seems to rear its head: Education and race. Our guest on the show is a graduate of Harvard University, a black woman, Ghanaian parents. When she went back for her 10-year reunion, she explored what success means for a graduate of such a prestigious school. We also wanted to know what it means to be a Black woman in a school like Harvard and whether our guest should be responsible for schooling others on Black culture (spoiler alert: No).