A Researcher's Take on Authentic Creativity in the Age of AI with Jessica Carson

A Researcher's Take on Authentic Creativity in the Age of AI with Jessica Carson

When we met, it was a moment in time. Not as cool as 1968 Haight-Ashbury, not quite 1920s Paris — but it was DC in the early 2010s, and it was its own thing. Hustle culture before hustle culture had a name. We were all riding bikes to yoga and listening to Alt-J and none of us knew who we were going to become yet. Some of us became people the world would actually come to know. Jessica Carson is one of those people. Jessica is a social scientist, creativity researcher, author, and the founder of the Center for Human Creativity. She started her career as a neuroscience at the NIH, spent five years as Head of Innovation at the American Psychological Association, and wrote Wired This Way — a book on the psychology of entrepreneurs, the light and the shadow sides of that creative wiring, published at 29 in April 2020. She is now a PhD candidate studying authentic creativity: what makes a creative work feel genuinely human, and what happens to that feeling when artificial intelligence enters the room. Find her at jessicacarson.co [http://jessicacarson.co]. In this episode: - DC in the early 2010s as a moment in time — NIH neuroscience labs, Big Law, the first Hinge beta test, and the yoga studios where none of us had figured out who we were yet. - How the gap in age between women can feel different depending on where you're each standing — and how powerful women interact with each other. - What it means to be a student of a powerful female teacher, to receive that transmission, and to be a little terrified and a little enamored by it at the same time. - Writing and publishing Wired This Way at 29, the cringe of looking back at your own earlier creative work, and why retrospective ick is just a tax you pay for having made anything at all. - The light and dark sides of the entrepreneurial brain — ADHD, addiction, sensation-seeking, and why the same wiring that drives the addiction also drives the willingness to tolerate ambiguity and risk. - Why entrepreneurship was glamorized to the point of fetish in the 2010s, and why the AI era has produced an entirely new cast of main characters who would make that same book much harder to write today. - The job that fell apart, the toxic exit, the year the universe seemed to turn itself off, and how that exact bewilderment became the thesis for the PhD she's living inside right now. - The core of Jessica's research: AI threatens our ontological security because we've always believed creativity was our last uniquely human trait — and why panic and polarization on this topic are getting in the way of actually thinking clearly about it. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UMQNQ_AdLoA [https://youtu.be/UMQNQ_AdLoA] Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute [http://the40portal.com/contribute] — Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together. Follow The 40 Portal Book on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal [http://substack.com/@the40portal] Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open for September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching [http://the40portal.com/coaching] Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com [http://the40portal.com] | catherinezack.com [http://catherinezack.com] Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Jessica Carson | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

Who Is Mothering AI? On Lullabies for Robots, Invisibility, and Turning 40 | Leah Rubin-Cadrain

I have a working thesis. A woman over 40 is the most powerful, creative, vivifying, wise, and possibly terrifying creature in the universe, and this episode is one of my biggest pieces of proof yet. Meet Leah Rubin-Cadrain. She works in wearable technology, designing the experiences. She is a writer, an artist, a wife, a mother, she runs a poetry Substack called Lullabies for Robots, where she keeps asking one haunting question through her poems: who is mothering AI? She arrived at this question while she was nursing her newborn and having her first conversation with ChatGPT at the same time. She watched the flickering cursor and thought, “baby's first words.” Genius. Like a mother. This is a conversation about identity, motherhood, creativity, and the quiet power that women over 40 grow into, often right when the world expects them to disappear. Leah spent a lot of years being the quiet one in the room. Afraid of conflict. Rolling over. Bending herself into shapes so that no one would misunderstand her. And then she turned 40 and wrote four words on her whiteboard: I am fucking 40. And that became her mantra. In this episode: * How Leah celebrated her 40th birthday: wear something fancy, bring an offering, and surround yourself with your most beloveds. * The reciprocity of a great party — being the center of attention while also getting to look your people in the face and say, you are my people. * The fear of invisibility that can shadow a woman approaching 40 — and the woman just a few steps ahead on the path who said: you do become invisible in some settings. The exhausting ones. And honestly? The freedom that gives you. * How Leah spent years disconnected from her body — and how lipstick, a warm robe after a shower, and the slow accumulation of small self-care practices changed that. * A fertility journey that stretched across COVID, IUI, IVF, miscarriage, years of raised and dashed expectations — and a daughter who arrived when Leah was 39 and felt like a miracle. * AI as toddler — the language of training large language models is eerily similar to the language of child-rearing. We are all parenting AI. * The whiteboard mantra: I am fucking 40. When she pictured another woman aged 40, she thought — I wouldn't fuck with her. That's a woman who knows what she's doing. And then she turned that lens on herself. * Coming out, stepping out of the assigned lane for the first time, inviting the evil eye — and how being forged in that fire made her brave. * Living in the nuance. Containing multitudes. Not one thing or another. Content note: We talk about fertility struggles, miscarriage, and postpartum anxiety in this episode. Find Leah at lullabiesforrobots.substack.com [http://lullabiesforrobots.substack.com]. Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute [http://the40portal.com/contribute] Substack: substack.com/@the40portal [http://substack.com/@the40portal] Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open for September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching [http://the40portal.com/coaching] New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com [http://the40portal.com] | catherinezack.com [http://catherinezack.com] Instagram: @the40portal Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Leah Rubin-Cadrain | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

Walking Away From Burnout Was the Most Ambitious Thing She Ever Did with Lia Zneimer

We met on the internet, which I say as the highest compliment. There was an online community of independent practitioners — smart, weird, building things — and Lia Zneimer showed up in it and I immediately thought, yes, her. That is how it works sometimes. The internet at its best is a place where you find people you would never otherwise cross paths with, and you just know. She came to a virtual session I was leading and something just clicked. We have been loosely but meaningfully in each other's orbit ever since — Substack appearances, voice memos, the occasional ping — the kind of connection that doesn't require constant contact to feel real. This conversation is really about burnout, the kind that starts as a low hum and then quietly takes everything, and about what burnout recovery actually looks like when you stop performing success and start redefining it on your own terms. Lia is a marketer turned writer, originally from Colorado, now in the East Bay in California with her husband and her miniature poodle, Waffles. She is working on her debut YA novel, which she started in 2013 and which is coming along exactly as fast as it needs to, thank you very much, and she runs a Substack called The Recharge, where she writes about creativity, career, burnout, and the ways we come back to ourselves. Find her at getrecharged.substack.com [http://getrecharged.substack.com] and linkedin.com/in/liazneimer [http://linkedin.com/in/liazneimer]. If you are weighing a career pivot, in the middle of one, or quietly wondering why you are so exhausted by something that looks fine from the outside, this episode is for you. In this episode: - Storytelling, writing, and theater as the through line — veering off the path and coming home to yourself. - Two distinct burnout experiences: five years at WeWork through the failed IPO, then a leadership role at an early stage startup where she doubled down when she should have stopped, because spoiler alert — you cannot outwork everything if you try hard enough. - Getting texts from your CEO about influencer campaigns not converting while you're trying on your wedding dress — and what that moment of clarity actually feels like. - The difference between the vocation of writing and the business of writing — and why you might want to leave some things you love outside of capitalism entirely. - Creativity takes the time it takes. You cannot crank it. Stopping treating your creativity like a KPI. - Burnout as a repetitive use injury, a low hum, death by a thousand paper cuts — we don't figure this stuff out once and then we're good. It keeps cycling back. But you do get faster at catching it. - The girl boss era, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, hustle harder — the amount of bullshit millennials were fed, and the slow work of deprogramming it. - Optimizing for success by having a regulated nervous system. - Giving up ambition for my 38th birthday — what that actually means and what it doesn't - What your 10-years-ago self would be genuinely shocked to learn — and why Younger Lia would have never believed she walked away from a VP role on purpose. - And the 40 Portal wisdom read at the close: from a woman who was 41 when she wrote it, about the weight of other people's expectations lifting, about moving from okay to sure, about trusting — finally — that you can handle it all. Website: the40portal.com [http://the40portal.com] | catherinezack.com [http://catherinezack.com] Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Lia Zneimer | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

Your 40s Are Not a Crisis. They're an Arrival into Your "No Urgency" Era with Victoria R.G. Newburn

Out of every guest I've had on this podcast so far, I have known this one the longest. We met in 2010 at Flow Yoga Center in Obama-era Washington, DC — up the stairs from P Street in Logan Circle. She was behind the front desk with her grounded, earthy, ageless warmth. I was arriving every single day with a ginormous Louis Vuitton bag, straight from Kirkland & Ellis, transitioning from lawyer Cath to human Cath right there on the mat. Sixteen years and many life chapters later — welcome to this conversation with Victoria R.G. Newburn, who goes by Tori, and who I love enormously. This is the kind of female friendship that women over 40 have: the ones forged in shared becoming, that hold decades of who you were and who you're growing into. This convo is for every woman navigating the arrival of her 40s, reclaiming herself, and finally giving herself permission to stop performing. Tori is an author, guide, and intuitive. She runs This Gentle Way, her online practice working with people through astrology, meditation, and dialogue. Her debut book, The Weaver and the Wilder, came out last year. She is a mom of two, a homeschooler, and a deeply curious human being. ---------------------------------------- In this episode: * Obama-era DC and what it meant to launch our adult lives before the internet swallowed everything — the unique, almost endangered experience of millennials who actually had a before. * Stepping into inner authority and the nervous system work that has to come with it. * Internet success and the radical act of not tying your worth to numbers on a screen. * Being in our "no urgency era." * Reclamation: what practices, rhythms, and versions of yourself are you calling back in? * The permission slip of your 40s — I just don't care as much about what I thought I needed to care about. * Female friendship: the ones you don't talk to every day, or even every year, who are still among the most important people in your life. * Vocation vs. "success" — inform and inspire as a why that actually holds. * A shoutout to Debra Mishalove and the strong women who mentor us even when they're no longer in our daily orbit. Content note: We talk about pregnancy loss at about the one-hour mark I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ON THE POD! I'm looking for a listener of this podcast to be a guest on this podcast. Here's how to be considered: Submit your voice to The 40 Portal — your question if you're under 40, your wisdom if you're over 40: the40portal.com/contribute [http://the40portal.com/contribute] Leave a written review wherever you listen, then email me a photo of it by June 6, 2026: 40portalpodcast@gmail.com [40portalpodcast@gmail.com] I'll choose the guest on June 7. ---------------------------------------- Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal [http://substack.com/@the40portal] Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching [http://the40portal.com/coaching] New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. ---------------------------------------- Website: the40portal.com [http://the40portal.com] | catherinezack.com [http://catherinezack.com] Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Victoria R. G. Newburn | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

The Most Powerful Creatures in the Universe are Women Over 40: with Amber van Moessner

I thought the 40 Portal was going to be sexy. Fun. Empowering. Green dress, great party, collect some wisdom. Plot twist: I actually had to go through it. The last ten months have been a real process of midlife transformation for me, and I'm only just now popping up from being pummeled by the wave going, "cool, I survived." The only way through is through. One day I'll tell you the whole story. For now: meet Amber. You definitely need to. Amber van Moessner is 38, almost 39, a therapist-in-training, activist, community organizer, reader, mother of two, cancer survivor, and the woman who will probably shut down the dance party. She is exactly the kind of woman this podcast exists for. My husband met her first and came home with a very specific report: you have to meet this woman. He was right. She is the kind of person who walks into a cocktail party and counts how many times someone asks "what do you do?" so she can avoid asking it even once. She identifies her archetype as the wounded warrior. She's a fellow Leo, fierce lioness and wears disco-glitter-bell-bottoms to our tiny town's annual Pride parade (which she co-founded a few years back after moving here and realizing there wasn't one). ---------------------------------------- This conversation went exactly where it needed to go. In this episode: * Why "what do you do?" is capitalism's most boring trick — and what to ask instead * Friendships of convenience vs. real ones: how COVID reshuffled the deck and what we do now * The wounded warrior archetype and what it means to understand yourself through myth and story * The scarcity mindset around youth, beauty, and desirability — and the deprogramming required to move through it * Why matriarchal societies had a a council of grandmothers — and what we've lost without it * Moon time: the concept of the season of life when you are finally, fully on your own terms, post menopause And the submission that closed the episode: "My 40s are sexy, filled with a confidence, mystery, and swagger that twenty-something me would have killed for. We are not aging. We are a delight that has been simmering." Amber's response: tattoo it on my face. Me too, babe. Me too. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oBzujLRkcj4 [https://youtu.be/oBzujLRkcj4] Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute [http://the40portal.com/contribute]— Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together. Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portalsubstack.com/@the40portal [http://substack.com/@the40portal] Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching [http://the40portal.com/coaching] New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: http://the40portal.com/the40portal.com [http://the40portal.com] | http://catherinezack.com/catherinezack.com [http://catherinezack.com] Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Amber Van Moessner | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.