Headstone with Pete Wright

Chris Schembra: The Strange Mercy of a Good Middle

This is the last conversation of my first season, and I almost didn’t finish it. Chris Schembra came to me the way the best guests do, as a name pressed into my hand by someone I trust. Aliza Kline [https://trustory.fm/headstone-with-pete-wright/the-generous-goodbye-with-aliza-kline/] told me I needed to talk to him, and Aliza is rarely wrong about people. What I didn’t expect was how quickly the conversation would stop being about him. On paper, Chris is the gratitude guy: the 7:47 dinners, the pasta, the rooms full of leaders he teaches to thank the people they have forgotten to thank. I’m fascinated by the keynote version. And I wanted to talk to the kid underneath it, the one who couldn’t hold onto his own memories, who got marched into the isolation room, who learned early that loss arrives whether or not anyone gives you permission to grieve it. We went there together, and Chris went willingly, all the way down to the tattoos and the rehabs and the version of himself he is still learning to forgive. And then, somewhere near the end, he did the thing he does to everyone else. He turned the question on me. He asked what was coming up, and I told him about a lost friend, and from there the conversation belonged to both of us. I sat on this recording for months because I was afraid of that stretch. I am not afraid of it anymore. If you have ever wondered what gratitude actually costs, and what it gives back, this is the one. It lands on a single word, the one Chris wants on his headstone. It’s a good one, and a reminder of what a blessing it is to be alive. This is the season one finale, finally. I’ll see you back here for more soon. Links & Notes * Chris Schembra [https://www.chrisschembra.com/] * The 7:47 Gratitude Experience / 7:47 Club [https://www.747club.org/] * Podcast, Gratitude Through Hard Times [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gratitude-through-hard-times/id1358391891] * Books: Gratitude Through Hard Times [https://amzn.to/4uoaKtZ] and Gratitude and Pasta [https://amzn.to/4uqpsAB] * The Anatomy of Peace, The Arbinger Institute [https://arbinger.com/anatomy-of-peace] * Johann Hari TED talk, “Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong” [https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong] * Tony Lo Bianco and his one-man Fiorello LaGuardia play, “The Little Flower” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Lo_Bianco] * “Just a Common Soldier (A Soldier Died Today),” poem by A. Lawrence Vaincourt (basis for the Memorial Day 2015 veterans video Chris produced with Lo Bianco) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IROcfOGZdHY] * Dr. Edward “Ned” Hallowell, ADHD author [https://drhallowell.com/] * Curb Your Enthusiasm, “Bad Middling” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m5LK4FTNoo]

Dr. Nachi Felt: Always Becoming

Sometimes at fifteen, sometimes much later, we finally stop running from ourselves. We sit down and ask the quiet but impossible question: Who do I want to be? This conversation begins with a name. I first knew him as Michael — the professional veneer that felt safe, pronounceable, uncontroversial. But today he is Nachi, reclaiming the Hebrew name that always held the truer story of identity. That shift, simple on the surface, opens a portal into something tender and universal: how identity is shaped not by the roles we play, but by the courage to show who we really are. Faith plays a profound role in that evolution. Nachi talks about Judaism not as dogma, but as structure, clarity, and purpose — a lens that helps him understand endings without fear and see value in existence itself. He points out that death, in his tradition, gives life its shape, its urgency, its meaning. Mortality becomes not the enemy but the clarifier. We talk about rage, comfort, goodness, the pursuit of happiness versus the pursuit of pleasure, and the strange wisdom of a terminally ill teenager named Jonathan who taught Nachi how to be happy. We explore the liminal space between clarity and acceptance — how seeing ourselves honestly requires surrender to the things we cannot control, and gentleness toward the things we can. This episode is about identity, yes. It’s about faith and behavior and clarity and death. But more than anything, it’s about permission: the permission to evolve, to reclaim ourselves, to choose again and again and again who we are becoming. This is Headstone with Dr. Nachi Felt [https://adhddoctor.org/].

James Ochoa: The Storm Chaser

Some people study chaos because they have to. Others because they can’t look away. James Ochoa has spent his life inside both camps—born into a noisy, loving, impossibly crowded family, raised amid the unpredictable rhythms of mental illness and grace, and shaped by a series of accidents and near misses that could have ended him. Instead, they gave him a reason to begin again. For more than three decades, James has been a counselor, teacher, and writer—founder of The Life Empowerment Center in Austin, Texas [https://www.jamesochoa.com/]—helping adults with ADHD navigate the emotional turbulence of their minds. His first book, Focused Forward: Navigating the Storms of Adult ADHD [https://amzn.to/49xmAdH], reframed ADHD as more than a matter of focus and distraction. It was, he argued, a lifelong relationship with uncertainty—an emotional weather system that required compassion as much as strategy. Now, as he works on his forthcoming book, When the Shiny Wears Off: Navigating the Lifetime Storms of Adult ADHD, James has turned his attention to what comes after the breakthrough. How do you sustain meaning once the novelty of self-discovery fades? What does peace look like for a person whose entire life has been about motion? Our conversation isn’t about diagnoses or treatments. It’s about the quiet courage of someone who’s spent a lifetime learning not just how to endure the storms of life, but how to find wonder inside them. From the bathtub sanctuary of his childhood to the long, slow work of recovery, James’s story is one of transformation through reflection—proof that even the noisiest lives can contain a deep stillness at their core. When he talks about mortality, it isn’t abstract. He remembers the hospital bed at four years old, the blue light above him, and the promise he made then: I’m here for a reason. Decades later, he’s still living out that reason—helping others hold on through their own tempests long enough to find meaning in the calm that follows.

The Generous Goodbye with Aliza Kline

Aliza Kline has built her life around connection—the kind that happens when people gather around a table, or descend beneath the surface of the water, or find themselves saying “yes” to something unexpected. For over two decades, she’s created institutions that made those moments possible: Mayyim Hayyim, the reimagined mikveh in Boston, and OneTable, the social platform that’s helped more than a million people share Shabbat dinner. Her work has changed how Jewish ritual lives in the modern world—and how people connect to each other through it. And now, she’s walked away. In this conversation, Aliza joins me to explore what it means to build something that doesn’t need you anymore. What does it take to step back when your fingerprints are still visible on the work? How do you trust that the thing you’ve nurtured can keep living without you? We talk about the power of generosity, the practice of grace, and the paradox of legacy: that the things we make to last often outgrow us—and that maybe that’s the point. From her childhood in Colorado Springs to her leadership in New York, from the living waters of the mikveh to the glow of a Friday night table, Aliza has spent her life creating spaces for people to rediscover belonging. But her real lesson is quieter: that legacy isn’t measured in names or titles, but in the courage to release control—and the faith that meaning will keep flowing, even after you’ve stepped aside. Links & Notes * Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh [https://www.mayyimhayyim.org/] – The inclusive ritual bath and community center Aliza helped found in Boston. * OneTable [https://onetable.org/] – The social dining platform connecting people through Shabbat dinners. * Anita Diamant, The Red Tent [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4989.The_Red_Tent] – The novel and author whose essay inspired the founding of Mayyim Hayyim. * Mikveh and Jewish Ritual Immersion [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-mikveh/] – Background on the tradition reimagined by Aliza’s work. * Julianne Holt-Lunstad’s Research on Social Connection [https://www.julianneholtlunstad.com/] – The Brigham Young University psychologist whose work on loneliness shaped OneTable’s impact studies. * Melissa Kirsch, “Offer Accepted – The New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/briefing/offer-accepted.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU8.djhH.uuHfp49mhT-M&smid=url-share] – The essay that connected Aliza’s idea of “on offer” to a wider audience.

Building Cathedrals from Dry Erase with Rob Kubasko

Step into Rob Kubasko’s office and you’ll find a reliquary of light and story: Iron Man’s helmet, a model of the USS Enterprise, a Phantom of the Opera music box. To the untrained eye, it’s a collection of toys. To Rob, it’s a theory about how humans work: that play isn’t the opposite of seriousness, it’s the method for reaching it. This week, Rob opens up about the moments that shaped that worldview—growing up with humor as both a defense and a bridge, standing at the wake of a childhood bully and discovering that even pain can carry the seeds of connection, and navigating a career that carried him from the early days of digital design into the heart of national politics. What emerges is a picture of someone who has spent his life asking: how do we connect? What do we build together? And how do we keep joy alive, even in dark seasons? Rob talks candidly about the seductions and disillusionments of political life, about what it means to contribute to community now, and about the legacy he hopes to leave in the simple mantra he first taught his daughter on the walk to kindergarten. Turns out, that’s the same inscription he imagines on his headstone, a legacy not of permanence but of presence—an invitation to live joyfully, curiously, and in service to others.