Out Of The Clouds

About Out Of The Clouds

Balancing at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, fashion exec turned brand consultant and mindfulness teacher, Anne Muhlethaler, entertains conversations with friends, designers, entrepreneurs, meditation and yoga teachers, weaving their stories into a inspirational platform for a reflection on living. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Publisher

Anne V Mühlethaler

Category

business · health & fitness · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 Jun 2020

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 107 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Kulsum Shadab Wahab on dignity, healing beyond survival, and building on courage, not sympathy

   In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes Kulsum Shadab Wahab, a Bangalore-based philanthropist and social entrepreneur, Executive Director of the Hothur Foundation and founder of Ara Lumiere. Kulsum has dedicated her life to empowering women who have survived acid attacks. Through Ara Lumiere, she creates sustainable livelihoods through handcrafted garments and accessories that not only foster economic independence but also restore dignity, confidence and purpose. Ara Lumiere champions a new vision of social responsibility within the fashion industry, one that merges artistry with advocacy. This commitment was honoured in 2022, when the brand received the Social Impact Award at the Sustainable Fashion Awards of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI), Italy's national chamber of fashion. Kulsum speaks with Anne from the heart of that work, and about its cost: what it means to witness such trauma day after day, and how she holds feeling strong one hour and breaking the next. Kulsum shares with Anne how as a little girl, she felt deeply affected whenever someone was excluded from a group, and what an influence her grandfather was when it came to giving and sharing resources. She reflects on the gap between feeling for someone and acting for them (she was born with empathy, she says, but action is something she learnt much later). She also explains why, when it comes to her work with Ara Lumiere and the Hothur Foundation's support of those women survivors, survival is only ever the beginning. Later, Anne and Kulsum explore the meaning of healing when someone's lost their identities, the work that lies after the surgeries, and Kulsum explains how her background in psychology shapes the way she listens to each woman, rather than deciding for her what she needs (the foundation, she says, is not rehabilitating a case but a person, a story). The pair also discuss skin banking, a cause close to Kulsum's heart, and why pledging your skin matters (see resources below). Of course, Kulsum also tells Anne how Ara Lumiere came to be, a story of doors opening where no one imagined there was a door. She recalls how a therapeutic workshop at the foundation led her and women survivors all the way to Milan Fashion Week. She also describes what it meant for them, not least to have their creativity seen and celebrated before their pain: a victory over violence, and pain transformed into power. Kulsum shares updates about Ara Pret, where each garment becomes a story of resilience, beauty and renewal. She affirms her refusal to build a brand on sympathy, choosing courage instead, along with timelessness over trends and slow, steady growth. She also offers an exciting glimpse of what's ahead, with an upcoming collaboration with her friend, the artist Raghava KK. And she speaks about The Phoenix Circle, the community she created to uplift survivors of acid attacks and female genital mutilation, striving for a world free from such violence. Along the way, Kulsum's rebel streak shines through. A moving, fierce and warm-hearted conversation about dignity, identity and the courage it takes to rebuild a life. Happy listening! Selected links from episode You can connect with Kulsum and Ara Lumiere: Ara Lumiere website: https://aralumiere.com/ (https://aralumiere.com/) Kulsum Shadab Wahab on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kulsumshadabwahab/ (https://www.instagram.com/kulsumshadabwahab/) Ara Lumiere on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ara.lumiere/ (https://www.instagram.com/ara.lumiere/) Hothur Foundation on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hothurfoundation/ (https://www.instagram.com/hothurfoundation/) On skin and tissue donation: Swisstransplant (https://www.swisstransplant.org/fr/don-dorganes-et-de-tissus/don-de-tissus/langage-simplifie) - Tissue donation explained in simple language (in French) Donate Life America (https://donatelife.net/register/) - Register as an organ, eye and tissue donor in the US - NHS Blood and Transplant - Tissue donation in the UK MOHAN Foundation (https://www.mohanfoundation.org/skin-banks.asp) Other links: Raghava KK (https://www.instagram.com/raghavakk/) - Artist collaborating with the women of Ara Lumiere "Unwritten" (https://open.spotify.com/search/unwritten%20natasha) by Natasha Bedingfield - Song that represents Kulsum Story is The Strategy (https://www.annevmuhlethaler.com/story-is-the-strategy/?utm_source=ootc&utm_medium=podcast) - Anne's 2h on-demand masterclass Website: https://outoftheclouds.com/ (https://outoftheclouds.com/) Subscribe to The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-view (https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-view) Follow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/ (https://www.instagram.com/annvi/) BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.social) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

2. 

   17 Jun 2026

   Dr. Paule Valery Joseph on the Cinderella sense, chemosensory science and making smell and taste count

   In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes Dr. Paule Valery Joseph: nurse scientist, clinician, entrepreneur, writer and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. Born in Venezuela to Haitian parents and trained at Hostos Community College, Pace University and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Joseph is a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health, where she leads the Section on Sensory Science and Metabolism. She is also the co-founder of the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research, a network spanning more than 70 countries, and the founder and CEO of Anchor Health. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, nutrition, behaviour, and prevention — and her driving question is both simple and radical: what if our senses are not secondary to health, but among the body's earliest and most intelligent warning systems? The conversation starts with Dr Joseph sharing her life story, growing up between Spanish, French and Haitian Creole, in a household shaped by two cultures and a mother who was a community nurse. She describes how her early years in Venezuela planted questions she would spend her career answering. The path from bedside nursing in the Bronx to becoming one of the world's leading chemosensory scientists was not a straight line, but it was guided, she says, by an accumulation of questions she could not accept leaving unanswered. Anne and Paule discuss what it means to be a nurse scientist, a researcher who begins with the patient's experience and considers a discovery unfinished until a nurse in a community clinic or a patient's living room can actually use it. Paule explains how her early observations in long-term care facilities and later work with bariatric surgery patients first drew her attention to taste and smell: patients whose food no longer tasted the same, whose appetite had shifted, whose relationship to flavour had fundamentally changed. These observations led her to the Monell Chemical Senses Center and to a career studying the molecular mechanisms behind chemosensing. The conversation goes deep into what taste and smell can tell us about overall health. Paule describes how smell loss can predate a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's by four to ten years, and shares the story of her mother-in-law, whose subtle changes in cooking first signalled something was wrong and ultimately led to a diagnosis of frontotemporal lobe dementia. It is one of the most striking illustrations in the episode of what she calls the body's sensory early warning system, and of the fact that most clinicians still do not routinely test for it. Other themes include the Ozempic tongue phenomenon and what GLP-1 drugs are revealing about the relationship between the gut, the brain and flavour perception; the emerging field of urban smellscapes and how scent has been used across cultures and centuries as a way of marking place, time and memory; and what it might mean to treat smell and taste as vital signs, as routinely assessed as vision or hearing. Paule speaks with equal warmth about the personal dimensions of her work: the mentorship she received and pays forward, the responsibility she feels as the first nurse scientist in 100 years to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, the joy of her TED Fellowship and the unexpected collaboration it opened with a cacao expert, and the book she is writing at the intersection of smell, health and wellbeing. She closes with the word she might tattoo on herself — ancestor — and with Celia Cruz, whose defiant joy she describes as a Caribbean inheritance she carries everywhere. A memorable conversation with a scientist who studies the senses and a host who has been learning, since their first meeting, to follow her nose. Happy listening! Connect with Paule: Paule Valery Joseph's website (https://paulejoseph.bio/) Paule Valery Joseph on LinkedIn (about:blank) Paule Valery Joseph on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/dr_paulejoseph/) Paule Valery Joseph on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/drpaulejoseph.bsky.social) Paule Valery Joseph on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7q-OomxnuoTOxCaGSe0kSw) For more, head over to https://OutoftheClouds.com/the-Podcast Visit our website: https://outoftheclouds.com/ (https://outoftheclouds.com/) Subscribe to Anne's newsletter The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-view (https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-view) Follow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/ (https://www.instagram.com/annvi/) BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.social) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

3. 

   4 May 2026

   Saskia Wheeler on neuroaesthetics, being wired for beauty, and closing the gap between intention and felt experience

   Host Anne V. Muhlethaler interviews strategist and researcher Saskia Wheeler on how neuroaesthetics reveals our deep wiring for beauty and shapes our lived experiences.

Inside a recent episode

Karen Salmansohn on finding humor in life's heaviness, identity-based habits, and your to-die-for life

Published 22 Jul 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] No matter where you're from Timbuktu, Toronto, Toledo and that end goal is to learn lessons that help you to grow into your best possible self and he loosely called it the education of your soul. The someone doesn't resonate with word soul you can say core self but it's to grow who you are and he said that too many people don't make that the end goal for their life they make the end goal to become the wealthiest person on the planet to become the sexiest girl or the thinnest girl or something like that on the planet or to have the most YouTube followers podcast downloads but if you make these superficial goals your end goal for life and you go next in the end of your life you're going to be very disappointed because you're going to realize you chase the wrong rabbits that it's really about the education of your soul, not your ego, not your body, not status, fame, wealth, wallet, all of those things. […]

Who has been a guest on Out Of The Clouds

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Saskia Wheeler
• Caitlin Krause
• Katia Dayan Vladimirova
• Zsofia Jamieson
• Tijana Tamburic

Reach and audience

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

YouTube views

9,311

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

11 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 79 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

82

Social presence

94

YouTube

68

Engagement

77

Contact Out Of The Clouds

Guest appearances

Books guests

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

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