Might Ramble

Mitchell Penningroth

5.0 (3)
Science

Long-form conversations with people who've chosen unusual paths — all in pursuit of one question: what makes someone who they are? Host Mitchell Penningroth holds chemistry degrees from Minnesota and Brown, and attempts to serve as both human guinea pig and intermediary between scientific rigor and the messy reality of being a person. mitchellpenningroth.substack.com

Nov 2

#25 Morgan Doetsch: Hummingbird, Stilled.

Morgan Doetsch, 33, is a women’s health and nutrition coach based in Austin, Texas, and the founder of Nourished & Spiced. She trained through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and coaches women one-on-one in nutrition and strength training. More than 50,000 people follow her on Instagram for high-protein recipes, most with the macros worked out. She grew up in Door County, Wisconsin, and the northern suburbs of Chicago before going to the University of Texas at Austin. I came across Morgan almost exactly a year ago. I was a few months sober and beginning a life in Austin. We had some mutual followers on social media, and I was like nowwwww here’s another healthy and vibrant fitness junkie. They come in spades in Austin. And yet, almost immediately after my digital introduction to Morgan, things took a turn for her. Here, on my timeline, was what appeared to be a model example of health, announcing that she was suddenly in the hospital, apparently had colon cancer, and needed emergency surgery to remove a tumor. From 100 to 0, real quick. Her next digital update I saw was something like: surgery went well, it apparently wasn’t cancer, the doctors were mystified and would write a case report about it, and she’d be back to her regular go-go-go lifestyle faster than they were telling her. I think I remember an announcement from her saying, “Doctors say I can’t do x, y, and z fitness-wise until (insert date). Just watch, I’m built different.” And that she was. About ten weeks after surgery, well ahead of typical recovery timelines, she ran her first half marathon, in 1:36:59. She had only taken up running in the summer of 2025, referring to it as “the thing I was avoiding most.” In September 2026, she ran 1:35 at the Chicago Half Marathon, 36th of 4,886 women. I met her in person at my gym shortly after her surgery. I introduced myself, we made small talk, and I think I tried to help her move her weights, because I was like, yoooo, you’ve been through a lot recently, take it easy. She didn’t let me. Her attitude around her health scare was interesting to me, so I filed her away as someone I wanted to talk with more at a later time. This is the result of that. I also learned prior to this conversation that she had a formative experience in dating someone who struggled with addiction, so I wanted to get her perspective on what it it’s like loving an addict, me having been the addict in that equation before. * Morgan on Instagram (@nourishedandspiced): https://www.instagram.com/nourishedandspiced/ * Coaching with Morgan: https://www.nourishedandspiced.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
Oct 16

#24 Lawrence Grobel: The Interviewer’s Interviewer

Lawrence “Larry” Grobel, 79, is one of the most accomplished interviewers alive. Playboy called him “the Interviewer’s Interviewer.” Joyce Carol Oates called him “the Mozart of interviewers.” He is the author of more than 30 books and did 33 Playboy Interviews, among them Marlon Brando, Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Dolly Parton, Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Saul Bellow, Patty Hearst, Bob Knight and Jesse Ventura. He has also sat down with Truman Capote, Linus Pauling, Richard Feynman and Henry Moore. He has written for The New York Times, Newsday, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, Parade, TV Guide, Details and AARP, and was a contributing editor at Playboy and Movieline. I have been learning the craft of interviewing, and I started with his book, The Art of the Interview, published in 2004. As I was reading it, I eventually wondered — is this guy still around, and could I talk to him? So I sent him an email. He gave me an hour and stayed for two and a half. And lo and behold, here’s the result. We get into preparation as the root of confidence, the Charles Manson interview he passed on and what it cost him with Dolly Parton, how Brando studied him back, the novel he set aside, and AI — which isn’t abstract for him. His own books are part of the Anthropic copyright settlement. BOOKS WE DISCUSSEDThe Art of the Interview: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400050715You, Talking to Me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1537422316Madonna Paints a Mustache: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B9MZR88The Narcissist: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1720250537Schemers, Dreamers, Cheaters, Believers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q4MGGPSTurquoise: Three Years in Ghana, winner of the 2023 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Peace Corps Memoir: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QNYKK22All of Larry’s books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IXRQNCLarry’s site: https://www.lawrencegrobel.com WHO LARRY HAS INTERVIEWED (83 NAMED; HE SAYS HUNDREDS) Halle Berry · Marlon Brando · Joan Collins · Robert De Niro · David Duchovny · Sally Field · Henry Fonda · Mel Gibson · Goldie Hawn · Anthony Hopkins · John Huston · Harvey Keitel · Steve Martin · Nick Nolte · Al Pacino · George C. Scott · Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert · Christian Slater · Jean-Claude Van Damme · Christopher Walken · Robin Williams · Bruce Willis · Henry Winkler. Also: Lucille Ball · Drew Barrymore · Kim Basinger · Warren Beatty · Carol Burnett · Penélope Cruz · Cameron Diaz · Robert Evans · Farrah Fawcett · Jane Fonda · Harrison Ford · Jodie Foster · Ava Gardner · Elliott Gould · Merv Griffin · Jake Gyllenhaal · Angelina Jolie · Nicole Kidman · Louise Lasser · Jack Lemmon · Jack Nicholson · James Spader · Oliver Stone · Sharon Stone · Lily Tomlin · Robert Towne · Mae West · Montel Williams · Dolly Parton · Luciano Pavarotti · Barbra Streisand. Also: Cher · Anthony Kiedis · Madonna · Saul Bellow · James A. Michener · Joyce Carol Oates · Ray Bradbury · Truman Capote · J.P. Donleavy · James Ellroy · Allen Ginsberg · Andrew Greeley · Alex Haley · Joseph Heller · Elmore Leonard · Norman Mailer · Neil Simon · Vincent Bugliosi · Patty Hearst · Bob Knight · Jesse Ventura. Also: Hugh Hefner · Monica Lewinsky · Richard Feynman · Paul McCarthy · Henry Moore · Linus Pauling · Lawrence Schiller HIS BOOKS (32, 1985–2023) Interviews & conversations: Conversations with Capote (1985) · Conversations with Brando (1991) · Talking with Michener (1999) · Above the Line (2000) · Endangered Species (2001) · Al Pacino: In Conversation (2006) · Conversations with Robert Evans (2009) · Icons (2012) · Signing In (2013) · Conversations with Ava Gardner (2013) Hollywood & collaborations: The Hustons (1989) · Climbing Higher, with Montel Williams (2004) · Marilyn & Me, for Lawrence Schiller (2012) · “I Want You in My Movie!” (2013) · Meryl Streep (Axis Mundi, Poland, c. 2015) · Barbra Streisand (Taschen, 2016) Craft & memoir: The Art of the Interview (2004) · You Show Me Yours (2014) · You, Talking to Me (c. 2016) · Turquoise: Three Years in Ghana (2022) · Hustle: The Making of a Freelance Writer (2023) Fiction, verse & satire: Catch a Fallen Star (2009) · Begin Again Finnegan (2012) · Yoga? No, Shmoga! (2012) · The Black Eyes of Akbah (2013) · Commando Ex (2014) · Madonna Paints a Mustache (2014) · The Narcissist (2018) · Screenplays: Brando & Akbah (c. 2018) · Screenplays: Fallen Star & Finnegan (c. 2018) · Schemers, Dreamers, Cheaters, Believers (2020) · Stuck: 31 Stories (2021) Plus Kindle shorts: Harlan Ellison: The Don Rickles of the Literary World · Black Panther Power! · Rhinos & Tigers & Writers, Oh My! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
Sep 25

#23 Dr. Taylor Cushman: In-Network

BACKGROUND Dr. Taylor Cushman is a board-certified internal medicine physician. With his wife, Rachel Cushman, PA-C, he co-founded Paragon Total Wellness, a physician-led membership practice in Scottsdale, Arizona. Paragon doesn’t bill insurance. One team handles each member’s medical care. Taylor studied molecular biology at Arizona State and holds a master’s in exercise and wellness. He earned his MD at the University of Arizona College of Medicine — Phoenix in 2019, finished his internal medicine residency there in 2022, and has since practiced hospital medicine in Phoenix. He’s a father of two, and a friend of mine these last 11 years. I met Taylor in 2015, when I was 18. Sammy, a friend I grew up with in Tipton, Iowa, had moved to Phoenix to go to Arizona State and live with her sister, Rachel, who is married to Taylor. I’d come down to visit Sammy, and over those visits Taylor went from Sammy’s brother-in-law to my friend. He was halfway through medical school then, and he studied harder than anyone I’d ever seen. I didn’t understand how a person could work like that. I was secretly struggling with a stimulant addiction at the time, which says something about how I thought work got done. Eleven years later, Taylor and Rachel are family to me. The morning I wrote this, Taylor and I ran ten miles together. In this conversation, we started with fatherhood — how his first kid moved him “from the starring role in the movie” to the supporting cast. We got to the anxious kid who outran his anxiety with “motion and achievement,” and to what medical training does to people who show up wanting to help. Taylor laid out a healthcare system that’s good at keeping people alive and bad at making them well. Then he explained Paragon, the practice he’s building, even though, in his words, “I did not want to start a company.” The last question came from Brittanie Winfield, the show’s previous guest: where do you feel emotion in your body? A BIT ON CRAFT DEVELOPMENT I’ve been studying great interviewers — Lawrence Grobel, Playboy’s “interviewer’s interviewer,” is the current fixation. Oriana Fallaci too (an Italian journalist), what an amazing and brave woman. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that an interview happens twice in a way. Once in the room. Once in the edit. It’s all about getting the raw material, and then learning how to tell the best story with it, while being faithful to the source material. Some psychology behind the cuts: * Edit blindness. Film viewers miss about 25% of cuts, mostly because they’re absorbed in the story. Cut at the end of a thought and nobody hears the seam. * Event segmentation. Your brain chops a continuous stream of conversation into discrete events and updates its model of what’s happening at the boundaries. Nine chapters, nine clean boundaries. * Curiosity gaps. Curiosity is the itch of a gap between what you know and what you want to know. Curious brains recruit dopamine circuitry and remember more, even things they weren’t trying to learn. An open question keeps a listener leaning forward. * Peak–end. We judge an experience mostly by its most intense moment and by how it ends. So the episode ends on the most vulnerable 3ish minutes of the conversation. Links for more info * Paragon Total Wellness website * Paragon Total Wellness Instagram * Taylor’s Instagram with health-related bits This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
Aug 14

#22 Brittanie Winfield: The Biology of Trauma

**Note: The video version kicks in around 16:13. Before that, only Brittanie's video is working.** Brittanie Winfield is a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she works in Dr. Sarah Linnstaedt’s lab in collaboration with the UNC Institute for Trauma Recovery. Her research uses longitudinal whole-blood RNA sequencing and multi-omic data from the AURORA Study to ask one of the most consequential open questions in trauma science: why do some survivors recover while others develop chronic post-traumatic symptoms? Before graduate school, she earned a BS in Microbiology from the University of Minnesota and spent two years in genomics R&D at 3M developing liquid-biopsy assays. Nearly everyone will live through a potentially traumatic event. Most people recover. A substantial number don’t, and go on to develop chronic pain, PTSD, depression/anxiety, and other persistent symptoms. Brittanie studies the difference between those two groups not just psychologically but biologically, as a molecular, measurable reality: how the immune system and hormone signaling respond in the early aftermath of trauma, and what separates the people whose bodies resolve that response from the people whose bodies never mount it at all. It’s a question she also comes at personally. She talks about her own years in therapy, and more recently in somatic experiencing, and what that work has taught her about the difference between understanding something analytically versus processing it in the body. We get into her current study with the AURORA cohort, what the data is showing, and what it might mean for how trauma gets treated. A NOTE OF THANKS Brittanie is the first guest to ever travel to Austin for this show. She took time away from a PhD, got on a plane, and sat across from me for hours — generous with her science, and more generous with herself. An episode like this only happens when someone decides the conversation is worth the trip. She did, and I’m grateful for it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
Jun 18

#21 Dr. Carla Sharp: Borderline Personality Disorder & Personality Pathology

Carla Sharp, PhD, is the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Clinical Psychology and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at the University of Houston, where she directs the ADAPT Center and the Developmental Psychopathology Lab. She holds adjunct appointments at University College London and the University of the Free State in South Africa, and completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and eight books, serves as an associate editor of Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment, and is a member of the workgroup updating the American Psychiatric Association's practice guidelines for borderline personality disorder. Dr. Carla Sharp has spent two decades proving two things the field resisted: that you can diagnose personality pathology in adolescents — as early as 12 or 13 — and that "borderline" may not be a separate box at all, but the clearest window we have into the core of personality dysfunction itself. We get into both, plus the question underneath all of it: what does it actually mean to have a coherent sense of who you are, and to make yourself understood by another person? Books by Dr. Carla Sharp * Mentalizing in Psychotherapy: A Guide for Practitioners (with Dickon Bevington; foreword by Peter Fonagy) — Guilford Press, 2022 * Handbook of Good Psychiatric Management for Adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder (with Lois Choi-Kain) — American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 2021 * Developmental Psychopathology (with Amanda Venta, Peter Fonagy, Jack Fletcher) — Wiley Blackwell, 2021 * Growing Up Resilient: The Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers (MISC) (with Lochner Marais) — Routledge, 2022 * Handbook of Borderline Personality Disorder in Children and Adolescents (with Jennifer Tackett) — Springer, 2014 * Social Cognition and Developmental Psychopathology (with Peter Fonagy, Ian Goodyer) — Oxford University Press, 2008 * Midbrain Mutiny: The Picoeconomics and Neuroeconomics of Disordered Gambling (with Don Ross, Rudy Vuchinich, David Spurrett) — MIT Press, 2008 Also referenced * I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality — Jerold J. Kreisman & Hal Straus * The DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (Section III), and the dimensional approach in ICD-11 A note on a hard subject This episode discusses suicide and self-harm. If you’re struggling, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988 in the US). If you’re recovering from a relevant relationship that left you reactive, hypervigilant, or doubting your own memory of events — that’s an injury, not a character flaw, and it does fade. Always happy to talk. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
Jun 12

#20 Dr. Aislinn Williams: The Dish on Schizophrenia

Aislinn Williams, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa and Associate Director for Research at the Iowa Neuroscience Institute. Her lab uses transgenic mouse models and patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to study how psychiatric risk genes (particularly voltage-gated calcium and sodium channels) alter neurodevelopment and behavior, with relevance to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and autism. She is a board-certified psychiatrist who sees patients in the inpatient hospital and supervises residents in psychotherapy. She earned her MD and PhD (Neuroscience) at the University of Iowa, and completed psychiatry residency at the University of Michigan. * Williams Lab: williams.lab.uiowa.edu * Iowa Neuroscience Institute: medicine.uiowa.edu/INI (A note on audio: some source files were corrupted in production, so had to use lesser backups, apologies for the reduced quality. An infographics and animation pass is coming to visually unpack the science we cover. Stay tuned.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
May 17

#19 Paul Abbott & Michael Lombard: Self-Currency

Paul Abbott is 60 and was raised on the move. His father’s career relocated the family every three years or so through Paul’s childhood. He attended Washington and Lee, started his career at Milliken & Company working night shifts in textile plants in the South, eventually built a “rollercoaster ride” of a career across real estate and finance. Today he’s based in Austin, and calls this stage of his life “Act Three.” He’s been married to his wife Lynn for thirty-nine years. People call him Chief. Michael Lombard, 36, is the great-great-grandson of Nicholas Lombard, who with his brother started Lombard Bros. in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1923. It was one of the first motor carriers in the United States, and one of the largest in the Northeast before it was sold in 1984. Mike served in the United States Marines as a Fire Direction Controlman in the artillery, deployed to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. After the Marines he attended the University of New Haven on the GI Bill. In 2020, he moved to Texas with his wife, got his CDL, and became the first Lombard to drive a truck since the company sold. Today he is Partner Development Manager at Truck Parking Club, hosts The Lombard Trucking Show podcast, advocates for trucker health through the nonprofit Project 61, and has completed three Ironmans. He’s also seriously into history, especially Napoleon. We had no shared agenda going in. What emerged over two and a half hours was a conversation about identity and the cost of refusing the boxes you’ve been put in. Mike talks about losing a hundred pounds, the death of a fellow Marine that triggered it, and what it’s like to carry a family name that built and lost an empire. Paul talks about a nomadic childhood, the identity crisis he says he’s been in his whole life, and the framework that’s helped him navigate it — “you are the currency”: the idea that who you are is the thing you actually bring to a room, not the title, the résumé, or the credentials. Paul Abbott Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chief_abbott Michael Lombard Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lombardtrucking The Lombard Trucking Show: Companion Substack Piece: https://mitchellpenningroth.substack.com/publish/post/198163382 Note: My first multi-guest episode in-person. Production quality is still a work in progress here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com
Apr 17

#18 Brad Womack: Double Take ⚭

Brad Womack, 53, is a two-time lead on ABC’s The Bachelor (Seasons 11 and 15, 2007 and 2011, respectively). He grew up in Atlanta, GA, and later Livingston, TX, is an identical twin, worked the oil fields following high school, and eventually got into the bar business in Austin — before stumbling into the lead role of one of the most-watched franchises on television after a chance conversation. Five days later, he was in a room with the president of ABC. But this episode isn’t about The Bachelor. It’s about what it does to a person’s interior to become a national projection screen — to have millions of people think they know who you are. It’s about being a twin, and how identity works under pressure. Being the Bachelor is one of the most psychologically singular experiences a person can have. There is essentially no comparable template for it. You are simultaneously a private person, a romantic protagonist, and a public figure, all at once, for an audience of tens of millions. Most people never have to reckon with the gap between who they are and who the world has decided they are. Brad had to do it twice. That gap, and what it does to a person’s sense of self, is what I wanted to explore. I’m also a fraternal twin, from Tipton, IA — a town of about 3,000 people. Brad grew up in Livingston, TX, population around 6,500. There’s something specific about coming from a place that small that I don’t think you fully understand unless you’ve lived it, and the same goes for being a twin. That shared context made for an unusually honest conversation. The “Double Take” in the title refers to the dualities at play. Brad as The Bachelor twice; two twins talking to each other; two people from small towns; Brad as others defined him versus Brad defining himself; Brad under the national microscope versus Brad in retrospect. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com

5

out of 5

3 Ratings

A thoughtful listen

09/28/2025

xoxo1548

Many topics but interesting takes!

Long-form conversations with people who've chosen unusual paths — all in pursuit of one question: what makes someone who they are? Host Mitchell Penningroth holds chemistry degrees from Minnesota and Brown, and attempts to serve as both human guinea pig and intermediary between scientific rigor and the messy reality of being a person. mitchellpenningroth.substack.com

Creator

Mitchell Penningroth
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

25
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Mitchell Penningroth
Show Website

Might Ramble

Mental Health

Mental Health

Updated Weekly