Shows
Stoner Story WitchEp39: 🌕♌️ {Heated Rivalry} Power Mapping Prince Charmings w/ Carmen Spagnola & Jamie(This episode assumes listeners have already watched season 1 of Heated Rivalry and contains only spoilers and no synopsis.)
Why are we so consumed by Heated Rivalry, really? What does it mean to have a source of corrective experience with no threat of betrayal? How can romance offer us a reparative experience to resource us for collective liberation? When power mapping between two prince charmings, can we see to it that community wins over capitalism in real life, too? Who knew that a tuna melt could evoke so many feelings?
Kristyn with a Why...
2026-02-011h 56Stoner Story WitchS5E5: 🌑♑️Writer’s Group Ch 5: The Sexy Inventory- Daemons, Aes Sedai, and Indigenous SovereigntyNote: This Writers Group episode is more of a diary entry documenting our creative process rather than a well-researched audio essay about a theme or an outlined interview. Transitions may feel jarring or confusing since the priority is consent and privacy over elements of our work. If you have a pressing question, feel free to ask on substack! (This conversation occurred in September 2025)
Much of this conversation was omitted to protect details of our writings in progress, but in this conversation we discussed elements from our own “Sexy Inventory” for our projects- from the competent protect...
2026-01-1824 minStoner Story WitchEp37: 🌕♋️ From the Archives: Eros & Amor Fati w/ Jeanna Kadlec & Carmen SpagnolaToday’s episode revisits two conversations “From the Archives,” in particular, the Full Moon in Aries in 2025 with Jeanna Kadlec and the New Moon in Sagittarius in 2024 with Carmen Spagnola.
Today’s episode is all about how romance, desire, and eros is at its core about helping us find and orient to our destiny, Amor Fati- the love of our fate. At the end of this short and sweet episode, I share a rough draft of a song integrating this concept as a somatic practice to overcome perfectionism as I keep trudging along writing my book.
Follow...
2026-01-0320 minStoner Story WitchS5E4: 🌑♐️ Writer’s Group Ch 4: Characters Companioning us to Feel & Build Empathy w/ MattNote: This Writers Group episode is more of a diary entry documenting our creative process rather than a well-researched audio essay about a theme or an outlined interview. Transitions may feel jarring or confusing since the priority is consent and privacy over elements of our work. If you have a pressing question, feel free to ask on substack! (These conversations occurred in September 2025)
Today’s episode is about the responsibility of writers to leave their readers feeling empathy for others and empowerment to go against the grain of the tendencies Empire tries to condition us into...
2025-12-1926 minStoner Story WitchEp35: 🌕♊️ Repairing Relational Rupture w/ KevinLast year, Kristyn recorded a podcast with her partner/co-parent Kevin titled “Discord Mode.” This conversation is effectively a part 2 of that conversation, and a public offering of repair after a public rupture event.
How can cis/het white women compassionately offer grace (the same grace Black women have given us) to our men in order to invite them into liberation while also not tolerating abusive fragility? How can pivoting a relational framework from “husband” to “friend” create spaciousness for secure attachment to (finally) flourish? Why does patriarchy have to be such a fucking sinister villain?
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2025-12-041h 14Stoner Story WitchS5E3: 🌑♏️Writer’s Group Ch 3: Plotting vs Pantsing & the Pains of Editing w/ MattNote: This Writers Group episode is more of a diary entry documenting our creative process rather than a well-researched audio essay about a theme or an outlined interview. Transitions may feel jarring or confusing since the priority is consent and privacy over elements of our work. If you have a pressing question, feel free to ask on substack! (These conversations occurred in September 2025)
Today’s episode is about the push and pull between Pantsing (ie: writing by the seat of your pants) vs Plotting (ie: outlining the story ahead of time. Kristyn shares a cute anecd...
2025-11-1926 minStoner Story WitchEp33:🌕♉️ V for Vendetta, Gentrification of the Pura Vida, and Solidarity w/ Adri of the iGuana CollectiveRemember, Remember the 5th of November! The movie V for Vendetta is now 20 years old, and it is clear from looking around that the dystopia has arrived!
Why is it important to listen to and follow native Voices in the reVolution? How can we all be a little more mischieVous in how we disrupt the status quo? What is it that makes Costa Rica a Blue Zone anyway? Just how many layers of symbolism are there to the Guy Fawkes mask in the 2005 movie {V for Vendetta} anyway?
Kristyn with a why c...
2025-11-051h 39Stoner Story WitchS5E2: 🌑♎️ Writer’s Group Ch 2: Confronting the Creative Wound & Co-Creating Corrective Experiences w/ MattNote: This Writers Group episode is more of a diary entry documenting our creative process rather than a well-researched audio essay about a theme or an outlined interview. Transitions may feel jarring or confusing since the priority is consent and privacy over elements of our work. If you have a pressing question, feel free to ask on substack!
Today’s episode is about Kristyn’s attachment issues that came up as she is diving into a journey alongside her friend Matt (to see the Wizard of Oz? Deliver the ring to Mordor? For Kristyn, it is fin...
2025-10-2137 minStoner Story WitchEp32: 🌕♈️ Memoir as a Map: Finding, Redefining, and Resourcing Ourselves to Make our Way in the Revolution against Empire w/ Jeanna KadlecHow can astrology help us give ourselves permission to do the things we deeply yearn to do and live the lives we would prefer? What is the connection between a creative practice and a spiritual journey in helping us to process shame, and how can practices like playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends or baking sourdough for our community resource our somatic capacity in the revolution?
Kristyn with a why chats with Jeanna Kadlec about her memoir- "Heretic: A Queer Revolt against Evangelicalism, Empire, and the Lies we are Sold;" astrology; the role of queerness, crea...
2025-10-061h 23Stoner Story WitchS5E1: 🌑♍️Writer’s Group Ch 1: Introductions & Intentions- The Seeds & Sparks of Spirit Stuff w/ MattCan any good story that compels you towards a more liberated life be considered “Gospel?” If the Bible doesn’t mention Hell, what else might fundamentalist Christianity be getting wrong? Is this whole podcast made possible by Kristyn’s teenage years of evangelical somatics? If inspiration is really a godsend, then isn’t our creative practice a worship of the divine?
Kristyn with a Why chats with friend and fellow spiritual-creative Matt about story and gospel as they introduce themselves and set intentions for the stories they are working on in their weekly writer’s group.
2025-08-2245 minStoner Story WitchEp29: 🌑♌️Witnessing the Stories Empire Tries to Hide: {Say Nothing} Northern Ireland w/Jamie(This episode is based off the FX show “Say Nothing” that came out in 2024, based on the non-fiction book of the same name.)
What is it that makes stories of revolution (Les Mis, Hadestown, etc) so irresistible? How is it possible that our suburban public school education in the 90s in the USA did not properly educate us on the realities of oppressed peoples overseas? Who benefits when we believe the narratives that empire tries to convince us are “too complicated” to understand? Who gets to define “terrorism?” How can we do better- individually and collectively?
2025-07-241h 56Stoner Story WitchEp28: 🌕♑️ Perimenopause & Palestine: Practicing Co-Holding on the Journey of Jewish Eldership w/ Anna(This episode is offered as a collective imagining and embodiment of better stories we can look to for guidance towards liberation)
How can we collectively pivot away from stories that demand converting or disposal rather than co-holding in community?
In what ways can wounds and embodied practices be portals offering ancestral healing? How can a practice of polyamory be a portal to an animistic practice of opening up to resourcing from energetic sources found in nature? What if every womb-having person could reclaim the “wise power” of menopause as an initiation?
Krist...
2025-07-101h 15
Stoner Story WitchS4E1: 🌑♋️Reality TV & Secure Attachment in {Love Island} w/ Jamie and Jason(This episode was recorded before 2025’s “Summer of Love” & only contains spoilers for old seasons of #LoveIslandUK and #LoveIslandUSA)
How do humans biologically build attachment? How do popular reality shows (ab)use mammalian attachment to create dramatic moments for entertainment? What happens to our nervous systems as viewers when we watch? What are the narratives that #LoveIsland perpetuates? Who benefits when the collective believes those narratives? In what ways are reality TV shows and their viewership a high demand group? Can we collectively imagine something more liberated?
Kristyn with a Why chats...
2025-06-251h 58
Stoner Story WitchEp 26: 🎂🥳 “Stoner” Solstice: Animism & Plant Stories w/ KirstenThis episode marks the podcast’s one year anniversary and to celebrate we are going to give plants some “main character energy”
What might emerge if we proceeded as though plants could grow us just as much as we grow them? In what ways can Cannabis be a competent protector, and a companion for practicing consent in times of collapse? How is the Cannabis industry “just like the Handmaid’s Tale” (which is to say it is actually just like slavery)?
Kristyn with a Why chats with her colleague, friend, and “g...
2025-06-201h 24
Stoner Story WitchS3E4: 🌕♐️ Dream Place MeditationThis entire episode, not to be listened to while driving, is a guided meditation provided to help listeners practice radical rest, connection, and creativity.
In this mini-season, Kristyn discusses {Dream Productions} and offers a guided meditation practice she has done with her kids for over a year titled “Dream Place.”
Follow me on Substack to read the transcript for this meditation
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Grateful for all the learning and inspiration in today’s episode:
Carmen Spagnola’s...
2025-06-1132 min
Stoner Story WitchS3E3: 🌑♊️Dream Place Meditation: Intention, Introduction, & OverviewIn this mini-season, Kristyn will be discussing {Dream Productions} and offering a guided meditation practice she has done with her kids for over a year titled “Dream Place.”
How can we practice opening ourselves up to accidental spiritual encounters? What is a witch if not someone who can shift their consciousness at will? What becomes possible when we offer our bodies rest and our spirits a sense of security?
In this episode, Kristyn provides an overview of the psychoeducation of trance journeys, sharing her experiences and offering insights before giving an overvi...
2025-05-2650 min
Stoner Story WitchS3E2: 🌕♏️{Dream Productions} Competent Protectors, Creativity, & Value-Aligned CommunityIn this mini-season, Kristyn will be discussing {Dream Productions} and offering a guided meditation practice she has done with her kids for over a year titled “Dream Place.”
This episode provides a synopsis and discussion of the 2024 animated series “Dream Productions” that takes place between the events of “Inside Out” and “Inside Out 2” on Disney/Pixar.
Why do all the stories on this podcast have characters that are a personification of capitalism’s impact on the creative process? How can stories and intentional altered states of consciousness help us to connect with wha...
2025-05-121h 12
Stoner Story WitchS3E1: 🌑♉️*Dream Place* and the Memento Mori of MotherhoodIn this season, Kristyn will be discussing {Dream Productions} and offering a guided meditation practice she has done with her kids titled “Dream Place.”
In the words of Sophie Strand, inspired by Octavia Butler, what is sexy? How can the tropes we love in stories be the roadmaps for what liberation looks like for us, here, now? How can intentional changes of consciousness be a magical practice to enable our senses to feel the presence of loved ones after they pass on?
In this episode, Kristyn shares some more contex...
2025-04-2734 min
Stoner Story WitchEp21: 🌕♎️{Severance} Numinous Reactions to Season 2- w/ Carmen Spagnola(This season contains spoilers for the show “Severance”- season 2 aired in 2025 on Apple)
How can shows, like Severance, hijack our nervous systems into dysregulation so that we will accept the same-old stories, confusing coherence with liberation? In what ways is Severance a part of the same propaganda it warns about? How can we use stories as a way to locate ourselves in the larger story of our own lives- to see what gaps there might be in where we really are and who we aspire to be? If every white person were just a litt...
2025-04-121h 39
Stoner Story WitchEp20: 🌑♓️ Stories on our skin: Tattoos & Secure Attachment w/ DustyThis episode does not center a particular story. It is a revisiting of a {PAST} conversation, honoring that {people are stories, too!}.
In this episode, Kristyn practices secure attachment and connects with her tattoo artist Dusty to discuss tattoos, the union of creativity and spirituality, and the practices that resourced us to leave the cult of evangelical Christianity while leaving the door open for the Numinous.
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Grateful for all the learning and inspiration alluded to in today’s episode:
Carmen Spagnola’s Numinou...
2025-02-272h 15
Stoner Story WitchEp18: 🌑♒️ Embodying Community in the Revolution w/ ESJCHow can we resist buying into the big lie that we are alone? What does it take to embody a sense of dignity and belonging when we hold dominant identities within oppressive systems? Can we lay to rest the desire to be “pure, perfect, and innocent” and still be worthwhile to the revolution?
Kristyn with a Why receives compassionate witnessing from some of the folks from her Embodied Social Justice cohort (ESJC) in today's (relatively) mini episode.
0-11:00: Introduction, Updates, Synchronicities
11:16- end: Crying and Compassionate Witnessing by Emb...
2025-01-2929 min
Stoner Story WitchEp17: 🌗♎️ {Fourth Wing & Iron Flame} - themes of Disability Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty - A friendly chat with Alexis and Kendra(This episode contains spoilers for the first two books of The Empyrean Series- Fourth Wing and Iron Flame)
How can romantasy novels resource us to live a more liberated life? How does “curing” a protagonist of their chronic pain support larger ableist narratives? If you fall in love with a “book boyfriend” whose lands, language, and culture have been stolen from them- how can you show your devotion to them in real life and honor land back and indigenous sovereignty? What would it take for us to stop policing groups we have been conditioned to hate/fea...
2025-01-191h 54
Stoner Story WitchEp16:🌖♍️ {Squid Game} & Satisfiability w/ Kevin(This episode contains spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 of Squid Game)
How can I connect and hold space for someone who is moved by a story that I refuse to watch? How does capitalism thrive in binary/hierarchical thinking: good vs bad, guilt vs innocence, us vs. them? Is consent and free will even possible in capitalism? In what ways is Squid Game a metaphor for reality shows like Love Island? How can a practice of satisfiability and finding your “enough” disrupt the insatiable momentum of capitalism? How can we create the world we prefer while...
2025-01-171h 59
Stoner Story WitchS2E6- 🌕♋️ {Severance} Season Synchronicities- A friendly chat w/ Jamie(This season contains spoilers for the show“Severance”- season 1 aired in 2022 on Apple)
In what ways does Santa prime kids for the blind obedience to authority and black and white purity thinking that fascism requires? How can stories help us overcome our fear response and reach for things we deeply yearn for? Are reality TV shows (like Love Island) just another high demand group keeping us dysregulated and disconnected? Is it even possible to untangle the web of fascism, diet culture, and Christian fundamentalism?
Kristyn with a Why sits do...
2025-01-131h 12
Stoner Story WitchS2E5- 🌑♑️ History & Education’s Role in Radical Remembering- A friendly chat about {Severance Season 1} w/ John(This season contains spoilers for the show“Severance”- season 1 aired in 2022 on Apple)
What are all the ways that we sever from parts of ourselves? How does public school utilize the tools of “the break room” to foster compliance rather than embody liberation? How was Helly’s embodied elitism a catalyst for her Innie to revolt? How does Burt living out his “1st edition” beliefs radicalize Irv into queering his “ramrod straight” self? What does it take for Dylan to discover that the fingertraps of capitalism are insufficient and isolating?
Kristyn with a...
2024-12-301h 20
Stoner Story WitchS2E3- 🌑♐️ {Severance Season 1}- A Numinous Summary- w/ Carmen Spagnola(This season contains spoilers for the show“Severance”- season 1 aired in 2022 on Apple)
How might someone heal from a coercive relationship or high demand group? How can we identify fascism and fight tyranny and why must we? How can we respond when escape is off the table? When trauma severs the mind from the body, what are the pros and cons of “top down” vs “bottom up” healing modalities? How can we discern when “wellness” isn’t safe? How is absurdity a hallmark of collapse?
Kristyn with a Why chats with her teac...
2024-11-301h 30
Stoner Story WitchS2E1: 🌑♏️ {Severance} and Disorganized Attachment- A friendly chat with Jamie(This season is related to the show“Severance”- season 1 aired in 2022 on Apple)
In what ways is capitalism a cult: a high demand group that thrives off of the confusion and insecure attachment of its members? How do dystopian “fictional” stories such as Severance equip us for the realities of our present moment?
Kristyn with a Why has a friendly chat with her BFF Jamie about witchy shit (like sourdough, cats, and astrology) as well as an introduction into the themes of attachment- especially disorganized attachment- in the world of Se...
2024-11-011h 39
Stoner Story WitchS1E6: 🌑♍️ The Podcast is the Process, Sourdough as Metaphor, and Polyamorous Practice in Creative CommunityHow does our creative process actually create us? How does having a thriving ecosystem of relationships and creative outlets better resource us for ALL our relationships and creative projects? How can we create community and engage in metaphor to support ourselves? What does sourdough have to do with any of this??
Kristyn with a Why gets personal and reflects on the process of season 1, sharing more backstory of the last year of the three-year journey leading up to the release of the podcast in this decidedly un-finale episode of “season 1.”
(Free...
2024-09-0257 min
Stoner Story WitchS1E3: 🌕♑️ March Sisters– “Sisters” as Choices, Needs, & Thresholds and Internal Family SystemsThis season focuses on the 2019 film “Little Women”
In what ways is a creative practice also a liberation practice, and why is Jo the only one who gets to carry her creativity with her into adulthood? (hint: it’s capitalist patriarchy) What are the archetypal choices, needs, and thresholds the March sisters represent? What happens when: you can’t get what you want, when you get what you want only to realize you don’t actually “love it as you should,” and when your life circumstances shift in ways that make you question whether you would make...
2024-07-2154 min
Stoner Story WitchS1E1: Secure Attachment and the Male Gaze in {Little Women}This season focuses on the 2019 film “Little Women”
What is Secure Attachment? How can period pieces be a useful tool for locating ourselves in our current moment? How “process>product” yields creative practices that help us cultivate secure attachment within ourselves. And Happy Pride Month to Jo!
Kristyn with a Why explores the question “is it possible to earn secure attachment across lines of power, rank, and privilege?” by specifically looking at four men in Jo’s life (Mr Dashwood, her Father, Laurie, and Friedrich), how she relates to them, how they influence her attachment, and their impact...
2024-06-2043 min
Stoner Story WitchEpisode 0: ”What’s in a Name?”What are the questions Stoner Story Witch invites us to ask? Is Stoner Story Witch a set of instructions? In what ways is Stoner Story Witch an archetypal energy? What exactly defines a poem, anyway? How does sourdough relate to any of this??
Kristyn with a Why discusses the title of “Stoner Story Witch” and shares a little bit of backstory to the three-year journey leading up to the release of the podcast in this decidedly un-pilot episode.
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Free Palestine! There are many ways to support the Palestinian people right now. Join a studen...
2024-06-1635 min
Composer Quest: A Songwriting and Music Composition PodcastHighlights from the First Composer Quest ConcertWe recently had our first ever Composer Quest concert at Yoga Sol. The Twin Cities Trio performed some awesome listener-submitted arrangements of pop tunes and film/video game scores for bassoon, clarinet, and oboe. We also got to hear the indie pop duo Matt and Donna Schubbe, indie rocker Peter Frey of Kazyak, and indie folker Paul Spring. Here’s a special Composer Quest podcast episode with highlights from the concert.
2013-06-0100 minComposer Quest: A Songwriting and Music Composition PodcastHow to write a pooping duck robot song with Matt SchubbeMatt Schubbe, the graphic designer behind our 8-bit Composer Quest art, is also a songwriter himself! In this episode, we talk about how he writes songs for (and with) his wife, Donna. Matt tends to choose strange lyrical topics, like a kid getting his head stuck in the banister, or the 1739 invention of a pooping duck automaton.
2013-01-2300 min