Unfixed Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

"I'm no fan of myself. I've learned to tolerate myself. Like, okay, this is who I am. I don't know if anybody runs around and goes, gosh, I'm so glad I'm me. So, I don't have that, but there is an acceptance, and I think that gets better as you get older, and I think it's easier as you get older… but when I write I get to be my best self."

-Adam Nathan, writer

Ah, dear listener, what a delight awaits you today!

Before you plunge into the words below, I urge you to find a cozy nook, perhaps wrap yourself in a blanket, and instead of reading, close your eyes and listen. In this interview, the extraordinary Adam Nathan brings to life poignant excerpts from his oeuvre. Through his lyrical cadence, he leads us into imagined realms where humor hangs with mystery, play lives alongside compassion, and pain, love, and redemption reign as royalty.

He speaks of the tender moment when his mother read to him in his youth, feeling “as supple as a tiger cub in his mother’s mouth.” I suspect you, too, may find that same warmth enveloping you. Adam, no stranger to the full spectrum of human emotion, crafts stories that gut and mend, reminding us that to feel—even the sharpest of pains—is far superior to numbness. From that raw experience, the heart transforms, becoming more than mere anatomy; it evolves into a vessel of shared vulnerability and grand humanity.

And speaking of grand, Adam has embarked on a monumental journey: to write 100 stories in 100 months—an astonishing span of 8 1/3 years fueled by relentless creativity and fervor. He’s nearing the completion of his first ten, which we discuss in our conversation. I implore you to seek them out in their entirety. They will haunt you, tickle you, and join you at the kitchen table, urging you to question assumptions, live more authentically, and cultivate gratitude for this magnificent thing we call life.

"This is my third act. This is where I feel I contribute and where I feel something that I'm leaving behind is special. Nobody really cares whether I'm writing a hundred stories or six or a thousand. But I'm telling myself, look, you have a hundred stories to say It – It with a capital “I” – and if you live that long, the hundred stories are what you're saying life means to you."

"Writing is the most true to myself that I can be."

“To me, it's just exhilarating, the notion that you can have a seed of an idea and then the only way to find out where the plot is going to go is by inhabiting those characters and the situation and just writing it and finding out. And that's pretty much how I do everything when I write.”

-Nathan Slake, writer, scientist, dreamer

Occasionally, I’ll discover a writer whose prose tastes like food—nourishing food, delicious food. Phrases that slow me down, descriptions to savor, sentences that land in my body like sun-warmed blackberries: complete and whole, yet always leaving me wanting more.

Nathan Slake is one of those writers. While his professional life is spent within the walls of academia, teaching and researching immunology, his soul resides in storytelling. I’ve found a kindred spirit, a brother-from-another-mother, in Nathan. I nodded throughout our conversation like a bobblehead as I related to his experiences of being a “slow bloomer,” his love for “slow reading,” and the not-so-slow exhilaration of creating and writing without a map, where deep listening precedes strategizing.

Nathan is someone to keep on your radar, friends! His imagination and craft are already captivating the minds and hearts of many readers. And while he humbly admits to only “discovering his soul” in his 30s—largely due to a deliberate cultivation of attentive presence and deep conversations with his wife Josephine—this soul is already a mosaic of memorable landscapes and characters, all grappling with poignant themes on the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human.

Having a chronic illness as a young adult can be isolating. Healthy peers don’t understand and the medical world feels designed for older people. Then one day, you find people like you online. These online communities weren’t always there – a few brave pioneers paved the way for these safe spaces to take flight. In this episode, Stefanie Grant and Jenny McGibbon discuss how they started sharing their health journeys online in their early 20s. For both Stefanie, who has facial pain disorders and Fibromyalgia, and Jenny, who has Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and Short Bowel Syndrome, their blogs began as a personal outlet during a time they felt alone in their health battles. As their journeys evolved, so did their blogs, becoming online communities that now serve thousands. Together, they discuss their responsibilities as leaders within the space, the delicate balance that exists between positivity and authenticity, and how they attempt to hold space for others while recognizing everyone has a different lived experience.

Sometimes our heroes aren’t legendary figures, they're the ones right in our home. Bethany Cook’s world shattered when she was diagnosed with Narcolepsy and Cataplexy on the brink of young adulthood. Her mother, Tamara Cook was there to catch her as she fell into grief. As Bethany faced loss of identity, Tamara dealt with the loss of loved ones.  Together the two have marched side-by-side in the battlefield of life while caring for each other’s needs. In this episode Bethany, a grad student pursuing psychology, and her mother Tamara, founder of the nonprofit Heart 4 Children, dive into their unbreakable bond that developed out of an unexpected place: mutual suffering. Tamara explains how she was able to draw on her own life experiences to be the compassionate caregiver her daughter needed. Bethany recounts the ways her mother was a steady anchor during turbulent times with her chronic illness, offering just the right balance between encouragement and listening. It’s an intimate conversation on grief, acceptance and what it looks like to care for others in their time of need.

Life is traumatic. But some of us get an extra whopping dose of it, especially before we've learned tools to help us navigate. In this episode, our guests explore the connection between the nervous system and chronic illness – how being stuck in fight, flight or freeze can lead to long-term physiological consequences. Former family physician and trauma specialist Veronique Mead and trauma survivor Kristy Boyd share their research and personal stories living with chronic illness, illustrating that it's not “all in your head.” Together they explore the nuances and types of triggering events that can reawaken early physiological patterns and how to befriend our way to a healthier life, despite traumatic events.

Tessa and Zoe don't just share the same last name. At only 9 years old, Zoe “pooped in a blender” to save her aunt Tessa's life via fecal transplant. Today, Zoe is a high school student with her sights set on medical school alongside managing her own disability of hearing loss, and Tessa just published her first book that offers solidarity and wisdom from her rollercoaster ride with Crohn's disease. In this episode, Tessa and Zoe open up about their donor-recipient relationship, the deep insights they’ve gleaned from each other’s physical challenges, and the fine line patients walk in not over-identifying with their disease while not living in denial of it. They discuss how acceptance ebbs and flows in their lives, at times leaning more into fixing, and late-night doom scrolling, while at other times embracing what is and advocating for what's right.