When Schools Teach Empathy

In the season one finale, Maytal chats with Lorenzo Lewis, an entrepreneur and mental health advocate. Lorenzo’s organization, The Confess Project, trains barbers across the U.S. to provide mental health support to Black men and men of color. With a goal of training 800 barbers and impacting 1 million individuals across the country, Lorenzo is changing the face of mental health as we know it.

In episode seven, Maytal meets Dr. Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatrist from Harare, Zimbabwe. Dixon is the founder of the Friendship Bench, an organization that trains grandmothers in Africa to deliver evidence-based therapy on park benches. For Dixon, getting the Friendship Bench off of the ground wasn’t always easy - in fact, it initially incited a lot of resistance from the medical community. In today’s episode you’ll learn the story of how Dixon fought through the skepticism and transformed the Friendship Bench into a program that is widely revered across the globe.

In episode six, Maytal talks with Iben Sandahl, Danish parenting expert and psychotherapist. Iben, author of The Danish Way of Parenting, is spreading her wisdom across the globe about how to raise happier, healthier, and more empathic children. Iben is a native of Denmark, which has consistently ranked as one of the happiest countries in the world. One of Denmark’s secrets to emotional success is the fact that empathy is embedded into their school curriculum. Today, Iben not only talks about healthy parenting, but what it means to teach empathy in schools.

In episode five, Maytal sits down to chat with Dr. Renee Linklater. Renee, a member of the Rainy River First Nations in Northwestern Ontario, is the director of Shkaabe Makwa which provides mental health services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. She’s also the author of the amazing book, Decolonizing Trauma Work. In today’s conversation, Renee offers insight into what it looks like to apply indigenous healing practices within the context of mental health. She discusses the rich history of indigenous healing, as well as the collective loss we have faced given the erasure of these practices from Western psychology.

In episode four, Maytal meets Mazzie Casher and Steven Pickens, the founders of the Philly Truce app. Steven and Mazzie, who have been friends for over three decades, decided to develop the app in 2021 as a way of responding to the gun violence epidemic in their hometown of Philadelphia. As described by Steven, the Philly Truce app can be conceptualized as the Uber or DoorDash of conflict resolution and mediation. It’s an innovative, out of the box approach to healing conflict that has the potential to expand far beyond the city lines of Philadelphia. To support the Philly Truce app, visit their website: https://www.phillytruce.com.

In episode three, Maytal chats with Amanda Blumenthal, one of the first ever intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. Amanda’s impressive resume includes working on shows like How to Get Away with Murder, Euphoria, and The L Word Generation Q. Amanda is also the founder of the Intimacy Professionals Association (IPA), where she trains intimacy coordinators around the globe. In this conversation, you’ll learn about the ways Amanda brought healing to Hollywood in a period of reckoning, following the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the uprise of the Me Too movement.[Note: Some content in this interview discusses Andrew Cuomo's allegations of sexual harassment. This interview was recorded in the Spring of 2021, prior to the resignation of Andrew Cuomo.]

In the second episode of the season, Maytal connects with adrienne maree brown, an activist, doula, and prolific author. In adrienne’s previous publications, like Pleasure Activism and Emergent Strategy, she has explored the healing powers of activism, both on the individual and collective levels. In today’s conversation, adrienne expands upon the powerful lessons embedded within these texts, among others. She also offers her perspective on what it looks like to maintain mental health in a world characterized by the toxicities of white supremacy and consumer capitalism.

In the first episode of Heal With It, Maytal sits down with Dr. Jonathan Gratch, the associate director for virtual humans research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a research professor of computer science and psychology, and the co-director of USC’s Computational Emotion Group. Dr. Gratch’s work involves developing artificially intelligent virtual humans, like Ellie, who can listen to patients talk about their experiences with PTSD. In this electrifying discussion about the future of mental health, Maytal gets to ask the burning question: will AI inevitably replace therapists?

Heal With It is a podcast showcasing the most fascinating and innovative approaches to mental health around the world.