Mandyland Mandy Wintink

In this educational monologue Mandy talks about what is actually going on with the dopamine hits everyone talks about these days and then ends with some practical ways to control our behaviour for better mental health and wellbeing through harnessing the power of the reward system.

I sent Sarah a voice memo prompt to ask if she wanted to share some experiences being in the middle of a pandemic and needing to self-isolate during this time, particularly because she is living with cancer. We discussed a few topics including how the pandemic has created an experience that allows Sarah (and maybe others with chronic health conditions) to feel less alone and that she can properly take care of herself during this time.

Reflecting on what part of this experience we want to take forward...

I was very excited to be invited onto the podcast The Uncoverup to talk about the Psychology of Conspiracy Thinking with Hosts Nathan Radke and Alena Papayanis. After recording that episode, which can be found on Apple Podcast or Soundcloud (links below), we made use of their superior recording equipment to just chat about what inspired them to create their podcast and the nature of conspiracy thinking and conspiracies themselves as they try to find truth around conspiracies. I love how both of their minds work so it was seriously a pleasure and honour to be invited into their world. And I love how Nathan turned the table on me and asked where I stood on UFOs. I look forward to talking about more conspiracy stuff in the future, which we foreshadow at then end of this episode.

It’s December. Christmas season is well among us. It’s a crazy time of year for many people. Not me. But for many others. Here in this rant I talk about my process of degifting my holidays, the terribleness of commercialized Christmas, the egocentrism of Christmas, the stress and money issues around Christmas, and where is religion in all of this? I end with some thoughts on Santa.

Me… ranting about gender, gender issues, gender reveal parties, gendered clothing, gender segregation, gender neutral, gender expansion, gendered opportunities, gendered washrooms… It didn’t start out as a rant. It was going to be an introduction to two other conversations about gender I’ve had specifically around gender-expansive parenting. But 17 minutes in, I realized it was a rant. Oops.

One thing I should add, that I didn’t add during the audio is that despite hating segregation, I do think segregation is important when combining the genders is holding one or more of the genders back. For example, I have benefited seriously from opportunities in sport that were gender-segregated and allowed women to rise up to an athletic potential they otherwise might not have. This is happened in hockey and ultimate frisbee for me. That being said, the ideal as I see it, is equating the genders together, like, for example in mixed-gender division. I spent a lot of time playing women’s ultimate but my heart was always in mixed-gender where cis-men and cis-women are theoretically on an equal playing field. That doesn’t always happen in practice but it’s the best attempt I have seen in sport. The next necessary step, mind you, is to successfully incorporate transgender people into sports in a way that allows all people to both develop to their full potential. Single-gendered divisions and mixed-gender divisions imply a binary, whereas the “open division” technically means open to anyone who wants to play at the level of that team. That is wonderful. In theory.