co-regulation is a podcast hosted by Holly Whitaker (HOME, QUITTED) that creates space for authentic conversations about how we're navigating this period of societal upheaval and profound transition. Through conversations with thinkers, artists, and experts, informed by Holly's perspective on addiction, recovery, and the intersection of personal healing and cultural systems, this show invites listeners into real-time exploration of how we're living through unprecedented change—not as isolated individuals, but as interconnected beings whose nervous systems regulate better together than apart.
In the aftermath of the 2024 election and accelerating pressure on our social systems, the limitations of the American experiment have become impossible to ignore. Every day exposes the myth that we can solve collective problems through individual achievement, consumption choices, or personal virtue. We've inherited a story that places the burden of global salvation on our individual shoulders while the architects of collapse profit from the fallout.
co-regulation emerges from Holly's direct experience: when consumed by the pressure to fix broken systems personally, she becomes incapacitated. Her nervous system remains in perpetual fight-or-flight. But when she connects with others wrestling with the same questions, something shifts. Our bodies literally calm in each other's presence. Solutions emerge not from heroic individual efforts but from the space between us.
This podcast acknowledges that we're at the end of an era defined by extraction, dominance, competition, and separation. We're being forced to move toward each other—to find collective solutions, to rebuild ways of existing harmoniously with the earth and each other. The path forward isn't through competition or meritocracy but through connection, mutual aid, and collective sense-making.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
co-regulation is a podcast hosted by Holly Whitaker (HOME, QUITTED) that creates space for authentic conversations about how we're navigating this period of societal upheaval and profound transition. Through conversations with thinkers, artists, and experts, informed by Holly's perspective on addiction, recovery, and the intersection of personal healing and cultural systems, this show invites listeners into real-time exploration of how we're living through unprecedented change—not as isolated individuals, but as interconnected beings whose nervous systems regulate better together than apart.
In the aftermath of the 2024 election and accelerating pressure on our social systems, the limitations of the American experiment have become impossible to ignore. Every day exposes the myth that we can solve collective problems through individual achievement, consumption choices, or personal virtue. We've inherited a story that places the burden of global salvation on our individual shoulders while the architects of collapse profit from the fallout.
co-regulation emerges from Holly's direct experience: when consumed by the pressure to fix broken systems personally, she becomes incapacitated. Her nervous system remains in perpetual fight-or-flight. But when she connects with others wrestling with the same questions, something shifts. Our bodies literally calm in each other's presence. Solutions emerge not from heroic individual efforts but from the space between us.
This podcast acknowledges that we're at the end of an era defined by extraction, dominance, competition, and separation. We're being forced to move toward each other—to find collective solutions, to rebuild ways of existing harmoniously with the earth and each other. The path forward isn't through competition or meritocracy but through connection, mutual aid, and collective sense-making.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Holly reconnects with her friend and former podcast co-host (Quitted) Emily McDowell for a raw conversation about how extreme adversity can strip away everything that doesn't matter and reveal what does. After years of health crises, family loss, and business transitions, Emily describes arriving at a place of No Fucks Given that feels like coming home to herself. Together, they explore what it means to build real community, trust your body's wisdom, and stop proving yourself to the world.
Topics covered include how selling her business and facing health challenges (brain tumor, autoimmune thyroid condition) led Emily to question everything; the impact of her mother's sudden death on her relationship with money, work, and pleasure; Holly's parallel journey of family awakening and learning to trust her body over her mind; practical strategies for building intentional adult friendships with agreements and conflict resolution; the difference between self-love and self-friendship; why real community is inconvenient but necessary; discernment in relationships without guilt; and the shift from constantly striving to arriving in your own life.
As an advisor, thought partner, and coach, Emily McDowell helps entrepreneurs answer the questions they can’t find the answers to. As founder and CEO of the stationery brand Em & Friends, Emily led the brand through explosive growth, and as a writer and illustrator, her work has gone viral countless times, and she has a decade-plus long track record of creating products that make people wonder if she’s been reading their diaries. Emily is also the co-author and illustrator of There Is No Good Card for This: What to Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love (HarperOne, 2017), and she offers unsolicited advice and missives from the great adventure of midlife in her newsletter, Subject to Change, a Substack Featured Publication of 2023. You can find her online at withemilymcdowell.com, and IRL in Portland, Oregon.
Original music by Gracie Coates (of Gracie and Rachel) @graciecoates @gracieandrachel on Instagram, gracieandrachel.com
Sound engineering, editor: Adam Day, adamdayphotography.com
Producer: Holly Whitaker, hollywhitaker.com
Co-Producers: Adam Day, Afton Swenor
Original art by Misha Handschumacher, cmisha.com
co-regulation is listener-supported, made possible by us and by you; you can support this podcast by joining our Patreon community patreon.com/coregulation
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.