Lucid Commons

About Lucid Commons

Lucid Commons is where we press pause on life long enough to hear ourselves think—where we explore the question: what does it mean to be human? We put a pin in that question thousands of years ago and got busy working. Now AI is presenting us with an opportunity to revisit this question—to do a different kind of work—the beautiful, messy work. This is an invitation to an examined life in an unexamined world. Each episode captures the science or the soul of the human experience—through a personal story, or through experts who bring the perspective and tools to navigate humanity's liminal space. If you're asking this question too, or searching for the you in your life, you're in good company. “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” —Eugène Ionesco

Publisher

Tatyana Norman-Webler

Category

education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

20 Apr 2026

Latest episode

26 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

23 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Oct 2026

   23. Maggie Ortiz

   When you can’t fix it, who do you become? Maggie Ortiz, MSN, RN, is a nurse of 26 years and the founder of Advocates for Nurses. She discovered nursing at her grandmother’s ICU bedside, then spent two decades holding families’ hands through the same goodbye she once lived herself. We talk about what the bedside teaches us about being human, what it took to walk away from the business of healthcare, and how her calling moved from nursing to the nurses themselves. In this episode, Maggie explains: ■ How letting her grandmother pass with dignity showed her the way forward: “Her last dying gift to me was to make me see that I did need to be a nurse.” ■ How she’s unlearning the fixer reflex. ■ Why the pandemic left her “not the same person,” and why she keeps going anyway. ■ Why she now stands beside nurses facing board investigations: “I’m called to nurses, I’m not called to nursing any longer.” ■ What the RaDonda Vaught case reveals about blaming one nurse for a system’s failures. ■ Why your license outranks your job, every time. ■ Why new tools in clinical practice still leave the nurse or doctor holding the bag, and why patients deserve to be asked first. 💬 Pull up a chair: Who’s the nurse who showed up for you or someone you love? Tell their story in the comments. THE COMMONS Humanity is having an identity crisis. We put a pin in the oldest question, what it means to be human, and got busy doing. Lucid Commons is where we pick it back up, bringing science and soul to the messy middle, together. Join us as a listener: ▶️ YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@LucidCommonsMedia)/ Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/5oIpxSM1vW18UYFtJZgF0F?si=zL-FslfmTvC3CUgOf6hdvA)/ Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lucid-commons/id1894857695) 🔗 Follow on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/lucid-commons-media/?viewAsMember=true) GUEST RESOURCES Advocates for Nurses Website (https://www.advocatesfornurses.com/) Maggie recommends: Nancy Brent’s Nurses and the Law (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0721691951?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback) Maggie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggieortizrn/?isSelfProfile=false)

2. 

   19 Oct 2026

   22. Kira C. Staggs

   Kira Staggs is a mom, board-certified health and wellness coach, yoga teacher, independent scholar, and author of the Substack Feral Medicine. She spent nearly 20 years as a veterinary emergency and critical care technician in the US and UK, then went back to school for a degree in health sciences with a specialty in evolutionary medicine. Watching sick animals and their frightened owners taught her that “underneath it all, humans are just animals,” and evolutionary medicine gave her the language for what she’d seen: stress. Six weeks after she went back to school, a surprise pregnancy rerouted her from integrative medicine to health coaching. When the world shut down six months after her son was born, the self-described introvert’s reaction was “don’t threaten me with a good time,” but she’s refreshingly honest that she did not have a good time, juggling a full course load with postpartum anxiety that kept her on high alert. We get into the mismatch between our primitive biology and modern life, her three papers (on chewing (https://zenodo.org/records/15611696) as a signal that the threat is gone, sociophysiological dysregulation theory (https://zenodo.org/records/18777499), and how a body that moves and senses less stays on guard (https://zenodo.org/records/21283351)), and why she says “humans built their own zoos.” Plus, why you need to find your “threshold tolerance for bullshit” before road rage hits, or before your kid spills the milk and you’re sobbing on the kitchen floor. In this episode, Kira explains: ◻️ Why “we do not have to convince our nervous systems that we’re safe,” and what to do instead ◻️ What chewing has to do with stress eating ◻️ Why stress is “not the opposite of regulation,” and balance is something you do, not something you have ◻️ How we’re “outsourcing our interoception,” and what it looks like to be more human, not less If you’ve ever reached for the chips after a hard day, told yourself to calm down and your body didn’t listen, or left Costco feeling like you’d survived something, this one’s for you. Find Kira: Read Feral Medicine (https://feralmedicineutah.substack.com/) on Substack LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaecesshealth/)

3. 

   12 Oct 2026

   21. Catherine Robert

   Catherine Robert, educator, researcher, and host of the Fearless Careerist podcast, takes us on her career journey: contract bookkeeper, small-business CFO, oil services accountant, middle school registrar, drama and English teacher, school administrator, HR, tenured professor, and now writer. She was great at accounting, but it never felt like a vocation. Then she took a job at her daughter’s school and found her people: middle schoolers. We reflect on why kids that age keep showing up in a different outfit (they’re “literally just hatched out of a little shell,” trying on new selves to see what fits), the five-minute hallway passing period that showed her how much a kid carries between classes, and why those years are “a critical time for people to become people.” Catherine shares what her research says about why people stay in the jobs that pay the least, the “career drift” many of us go through, and why the linear career path is dead. Her question now: once we’re adults, “Where’s our career services?” We get into how kids learn to think when an answer is always one click away, how she taught eighth graders to figure out how they learn best, and why it’s time to rethink a system where “we’ve assessed kids to death and not much has changed.” Catherine shares what fielding 800 requests a day as a school administrator taught her about being human, and the idea from her doctoral studies that changed how she approaches policymaking. She isn’t here to tell you to quit. “So many people live their lives in quiet desperation,” she says. If you’re ten years into the same job and ready for a change, she offers a way to think it through, so you can feel good about the decision, whether you go or stay. If you’ve ever been great at a job that never felt like yours, wondered whether to stay or go, or are trying on a new self to see if it fits, this one’s for you. Look for Fearless Careerist, the book, coming in spring 2027. Fearless Careerist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FearlessCareerist (https://www.youtube.com/@FearlessCareerist) Find Catherine: Website: https://catherinerobertedd.com/ (https://catherinerobertedd.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-robert-823801212/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-robert-823801212/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crobert903/ (https://www.instagram.com/crobert903/) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560439627250 (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560439627250)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.