The Radiant Badass with Elizabeth Holmes

Radiant Badass
  • 4.3 (18)
  • Personal Journals
  • Updated Weekly

The Radiant Badass with Elizabeth Holmes is the podcast you need if you miss sitting around your best friend’s basement riffing on whatever comes to mind. Elizabeth’s perspective as a GenXer raised by pop culture and a curious person influences her view on the world whether she’s talking books, music or how to keep your sanity in a rapidly changing world – and she’s happy to talk about all of those subjects. www.radiantbadass.com

  1. 3d ago

    i have chosen vibes over doom this week

    Elizabeth is fully in her October era — “October, she is that girl” — and this week, in the name of Libra season balance, she made an executive decision: no processing the collapse of society today. The news cycle has officially blown past the point where touching grass fixes anything, so instead of rage, she’s handing out vibes in the form of recommendations. On books: Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say ruined her in the best way, Alison Aubrey’s Your Turn: How to Build a Midlife You Love got an honest review (she’s mostly off personal-development books these days, but made an exception), and she clocked that every book currently on hold for her at the library happens to be written by a woman — a pattern she’s choosing to read as a sign of the times. There’s also a wee tangent about her aversion to books that treat random, out-of-nowhere violence as a plot device, which is a very specific and extremely relatable 2026 nervous system complaint. On movies: she saw Digger, the new Tom Cruise film that got panned in early reviews, went in skeptical on the strength of an endorsement from a comedian she doesn’t even particularly respect, and came out the other side declaring it art. She also watched the Martin Mull documentary on Netflix and now she’s mildly obsessed — both with Mull’s career and with the reveal that he was secretly an incredible painter the whole time, a detail that sent her into a brief spiral about her own buried creative gifts. On music: no new songs this round, but two mellow instrumental playlists (French Jazz Café, Fancy Hotel Lobby) for nervous-system regulation, plus a resurfaced playlist called 90 Day 90s Reset — very Lilith Fair–coded, Sarah McLachlan and Indigo Girls and Alanis, with a light dusting of grunge because it wouldn’t be her playlist otherwise — currently doing more emotional labor than her actual therapist. She closes with an assignment: make your own mixtape from your younger self to who you are now. 90 Day 90s Reset French Jazz Cafe Fancy Hotel Lobby All That Hair Subscribe. Cheaper than therapy. Share this with someone who also needs a break from the news. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    i have chosen vibes over doom this week

  2. Oct 9

    enough is a decision, not an amount

    Elizabeth came into this episode during a packed, entirely self-inflicted October calendar and zero inspiration to show for it — so she did what she always does when the muse doesn’t show: opened her running Notes app list of half-formed episode ideas. Buried in there was a quote she’d saved weeks ago and never managed to track down a source for: enough is a decision, not an amount. Which, as she puts it, is a whole sermon in one sentence, and also completely rearranged her brain. Turns out she’s spent a lifetime treating “enough” as a threshold to calculate rather than a call she’s allowed to make — waiting to hit some invisible, society-approved limit before she’s permitted to say she’s done. She traces it back to the praise she got for enduring things (bad bosses, impossible schedules, more than should be legal), and how that praise quietly trained her to keep going long past the point of “this is bad, actually.” Cue a flashback to her girl-boss-super-mom era, when a personal trainer/life concierge asked her, dead serious, “when is it enough?” and Elizabeth answered — with real confidence — “never.” A response she now rates somewhere between concerning and deeply embarrassing. She draws the line from that kind of growth-for-growth’s-sake thinking to cancer, which, fair, is a bold comparison, but she commits to it. And she lands on the actual point: enough isn’t something that happens to you when you break, it’s a decision you’re allowed to make before that. She keeps most of it personal this episode, but doesn’t let society entirely off the hook either — there’s a nod to the collective reckoning women are having right now, and her own white-hot rage thrown on that particular fire. Bottom line: No defense of “enough” is required. You just get to decide, and that’s the whole thing. Subscribe. No enduring required. Share this with someone who needs permission to say “enough”. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    enough is a decision, not an amount

  3. Oct 5

    prepare the kid, not the path

    Elizabeth’s episode went out a bit late this time, and she’s taking the W anyway — one late episode in an entire year of hitting deadlines is a stat she’ll happily brag about. The actual holdup: a minor kerfuffle around her youngest’s actual travel day as they departed for their grand European tour — nothing dramatic, just first-time-flying-solo stuff. That’s separate from the real saga, which happened weeks earlier: the kid’s travel plan vibes were sitting at “fully handled, no parental input needed” right up until a month before departure, when it became very clear nothing had actually been booked. What followed was a month of herding, book recommendations from Elliott Bay (RIP to the many tabs her kid definitely wasn’t going to read), and a crash course in mail holds and credit card limits — all while Elizabeth tried not to full-send into Overbearing Mom mode or as her kid’s call it “Beverly Goldberging”. The trip got booked. The kid departed. Elizabeth, with an unplanned trip to Seattle to make a connection also got a very nice day in Seattle and a stay at the Edgewater Hotel instead, which is a fine trade honestly. Then the real spiral started: an old therapist line about preparing the child for the path, not the path for the child, which Elizabeth has treated as parenting scripture for twenty years — until this trip had her convinced she’d failed the assignment completely. Cue a few days of quietly panicking that she’d somehow raised a kid who couldn’t function without her. She eventually lands somewhere more honest: her kid was fine, just inexperienced, because nobody’s born knowing what a packing cube is. And also — some of that “overreach” wasn’t failure, it was just a mom who’d stab a b***h for her kids and isn’t sorry about it. Subscribe. No packing cubes required. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    prepare the kid, not the path

  4. Sep 25

    invisible to whom, exactly?

    Elizabeth showed up to this one running on fumes (maybe it was the equinox?), so she led with book recs instead of righteous fury: The Correspondent, a Cannon Beach impulse buy called Sipsworth that apparently defrosted something in her chest, and Ann Patchett’s Whistler, devoured in a single 24-hour fugue state. Then she got to the actual reason you’re here. A woman on Threads posted her list of everything she no longer gives a f**k about now that she’s in her 60s — DNF-ing bad books was a highlight — and Elizabeth loved it, stole it, made her own version, and then had the audacity to actually think about it for five seconds. Which ruined everything. Because every one of these lists, hers included, is secretly the same tired plotline as “passing the torch”: you get old, you get tired, you gracefully fade into a beige cardigan and stop taking up space. Congratulations on your subtraction era. So she goes to war with the words “invisible” and “irrelevant,” asking the extremely reasonable question of invisible to whom, exactly, because her kids see her fine, her clients pay her actual money to see her, and the neighborhood dogs are big fans. Turns out the whole invisibility thing was never a law of nature — it was marketing, aimed at an audience that was never worth auditioning for in the first place. There’s also a detour into the grandmother hypothesis, which is a real anthropological theory about women in Tanzania whose foraging may have single-handedly kept humanity alive, deployed here as evidence that older women aren’t fading extras, they’re the load-bearing wall of the whole operation. She wraps by flipping the script entirely: instead of another list of what she’s given up, she runs through everything she’s making more room for now that she’s stopped performing for an audience that was never real — opinions, pleasure, ambition, curiosity, her own intuition — and asks you to send yours. Sign up. No audition required. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    invisible to whom, exactly?

  5. Sep 18

    Keep Your Torch

    Elizabeth is still basking in the verdict from last episode: crying while singing along to Bikini Kill is, per popular vote, the most punk rock thing she’s ever done. She’ll take it. But that same day at Bumbershoot left a second souvenir: an offhand comment from her husband about “passing the torch,” which she responded to by kinda biting his head off and now she’s spending an entire episode explaining why. (Sorry, babe. Also — thank you, babe.) The comment sent her spiraling back to 2023 and the Barbie movie, specifically the scene where Ruth Handler tells Barbie that motherhood is a self-sacrificing relay race, one generation shoving the next one forward forever, never getting to see the finish line. Elizabeth finds this... a lot. Very Sisyphean. Not exactly marketing material for motherhood. From there she goes on a tear about how “pass the torch” gets said to every woman who’s ever accomplished anything — feminists, activists, pop stars, anyone who’s cracked (not shattered, that thing is basically Kevlar) a glass ceiling — while men just quietly keep their torches until they’re holding a smoking nub and a Senate seat. Exhibit A, straight from her old career in the legal field: law firms that let male partners “retire” into cushy of-counsel status, keeping the office, the letterhead, and everyone’s undying respect, indefinitely. Her official ruling: nobody’s torch is getting passed. You keep yours. You can just illuminate somewhere new. She lands the plane on something personal — the ongoing tug-of-war in her own head about whether it’s time to slow down since there’s been a retirement in her household, and the flash of rage his comment set off that told her, in no uncertain terms, absolutely not yet. get more torch-hoarding, patriarchy-side-eyeing, occasionally-crying-at-punk-shows content in your inbox. Subscribe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    Keep Your Torch

  6. Sep 11

    there’s no crying at a bikini kill show

    Second summer showed up in the Pacific Northwest this week, which — fine, we all know the drill by now. Rain, then one last blast of heat before the cardigans come out. Elizabeth is ready for the cardigans. But before fall officially lands, there was Bumbershoot. Elizabeth’s youngest texted to ask if she wanted to go see Bikini Kill together, and the answer was obviously yes, even though Elizabeth hasn’t set foot in a music festival crowd in roughly two decades. She reports back: the festival is smaller than its wild ‘90s self, but well-run, clean, and safe, with a full weekend (she went for the day, gotta ease back in) of music, vintage fashion, comedy, wrestling, and — yes — a cat circus. Highlights from the day include a band called XCOMM that made Elizabeth want to punch someone (a compliment, from her), and Joey Valence & Brae, who she assumed from the name alone would be a Christian rap duo and who turned out to be gloriously Beastie Boys–coded instead. Then Bikini Kill took the stage, her kid disappeared into the pit to make their own memories, and Elizabeth — planted safely halfway back with a couple of women her own age — started crying while singing along. Not exactly punk. Except it kind of was. She gets into why: the girl-punk bands of her youth weren’t singing from the guy’s point of view, they were singing her whole messy experience back to her, and hearing it again cracked something open about the person she used to be before “the warm blanket of conformity” settled over her shoulders. She closes with a small, sincere thank-you to her kid for the reminder that Bikini Kill heals — and a quick, weary aside about sharing a name with a certain notorious tech founder. This Elizabeth is currently not in prison, actually. join the mosh pit (email edition). crowd surf this to a friend - it’s free This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    there’s no crying at a bikini kill show

  7. Sep 4

    9 to 5 was a documentary

    Rewatched 9 to 5 this weekend for the first time since I was a kid. Turns out I only remembered the pot-smoking revenge fantasy part. The actual radical bit — equal pay, job sharing, on-site daycare — is still fiction 46 years later. New episode on that, plus why Warner Bros shelving the Coyote vs. Acme movie is basically a real-life sequel to the plot. Subscribe for the rants the HR department would flag. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    9 to 5 was a documentary

  8. Aug 28

    remembering the OG Radiant Badass

    We lost Dolly Parton this week, and then Tim Curry followed right behind her. It’s the kind of loss that makes you feel the eclipse energy in your bones — a little bit 2016, a little bit too much all at once. This episode starts there: the grief, the parasocial ache of losing someone you never met but somehow knew, and a genuine send-off for the woman who refused to stay in her lane. Then, because sad doesn’t cancel out good things happening, a couple of glimmers: a wonderfully un-heckled night watching Chelsea Peretti work out new material at Solaris Hall, and a surprise new favorite album from an artist recommendation that actually stuck. And because sometimes the best way through sad is mad, the episode closes on a rant. Cory Doctorow’s new book has confirmed every suspicion about the tech and finance sectors being built on inflated valuations and borrowed credibility, and there’s a real conversation here about pedestals, participation, and what happens when we stop supplying both. In honor of Dolly: be kind, wear what you want, and think for yourself. Vince Staples - Cry Baby Free therapy, minus the couch and the copay. Subscribe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.radiantbadass.com

    remembering the OG Radiant Badass
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4.3
out of 5
18 Ratings

About

The Radiant Badass with Elizabeth Holmes is the podcast you need if you miss sitting around your best friend’s basement riffing on whatever comes to mind. Elizabeth’s perspective as a GenXer raised by pop culture and a curious person influences her view on the world whether she’s talking books, music or how to keep your sanity in a rapidly changing world – and she’s happy to talk about all of those subjects. www.radiantbadass.com

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