The Spreadsheet That Changed Derek Beyer's Relationship with Tech

The Spreadsheet That Changed Derek Beyer's Relationship with Tech

In this episode, you'll hear from Derek Beyer — writer, utopian thinker, and creator of the Substack newsletter Otherworlds Catalog — about what actually happened when he spent a full year deliberately auditing and dismantling his relationship with technology. Derek didn't go off the grid. He made a spreadsheet. And what emerged was something far more honest and sustainable than any detox challenge: a tool-by-tool reckoning with which technologies were serving him and which had quietly taken the wheel. You'll hear about the difference between feeling disconnected from life and being over-connected to tech, why dedicated devices like digital cameras and iPods are making a comeback, what utopian thinking has to do with reclaiming your attention, and how a little bit of traction — applied regularly — adds up to radical change. Topics Covered: • Why "disconnected" was Derek's word of the year — and what he discovered it actually meant: Derek set a New Year's theme around connection, only to realize that what was making him feel most disconnected was technology itself — the constant mediation of reality through apps and platforms. • The technology entanglement problem: Even people who want to quit can't fully escape — soccer leagues use apps, kids' activities require check-ins, boarding passes live on your phone. Derek argues the goal isn't perfection but reclaiming agency. • The spreadsheet method for tech auditing: Derek built a massive spreadsheet cataloging every technology in his life, including how it made him feel, what he wished were different, and what alternatives existed — then worked through it slowly, one or two items at a time, for a full year. • Dedicated devices as a form of resistance: Pulling individual functions out of the smartphone — a separate camera, an iPod for music — reduces the phone's opportunities to control your attention. It's not nostalgia; it's deliberate disarmament. • The surprising feeling of disconnecting: Derek expected enlightenment. What he found was mostly just... the absence of a bad feeling. Like not being hungry — it doesn't feel like much, but it's a lot better than the alternative. • Utopian thinking and speculative fiction as tools for imagining different futures: Derek pushes back on technological inevitability. Science fiction, he argues, doesn't predict one future — it reveals how contingent everything is. Things were different. They can be different again. • The individual vs. systemic action trap: Neither "nothing I do matters" nor "it's all individual choices" is the full picture. Derek holds both — personal action and systemic awareness — as necessary and non-contradictory. • AI and the challenge of staying intentional with new technologies: Derek is neither a booster nor an alarmist, but does think AI is different — it's already entangled in everything, and the real work is applying the same circumspect, introspective evaluation to it that he brought to the rest of his tech audit. • Why boredom is actually the point: Creativity, presence, and genuine connection require unstructured space. Learning to be bored again — without reaching for a device — is not a regression. It's the practice. • The novel, disappointed idealism, and where real hope lives: Derek has been working on a retro sci-fi novel about a one-time utopian beaten down by the world. Writing it changed him — and brought him to a place where he genuinely believes that the most hopeful thing we have is the simple fact that we do not know what the future holds. Resources Mentioned: • "How I Disconnected from Tech in 2025": https://medium.com/@derek_beyer/how-i-disconnected-from-tech-in-2025-4c4300b11ac4 [https://medium.com/@derek_beyer/how-i-disconnected-from-tech-in-2025-4c4300b11ac4] • "Positive Obsession" by Susanna Morris: https://amzn.to/4oq7YlS [https://amzn.to/4oq7YlS] • "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler: https://amzn.to/4gfLguD [https://amzn.to/4gfLguD] • "Sky Full of Elephants" by Cebo Campbell: https://amzn.to/442A9xJ [https://amzn.to/442A9xJ] Connect with Derek Beyer: • Substack: https://otherworldscatalog.com/ [https://otherworldscatalog.com/] 🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/ [http://feministpodcastcollective.com/]

Resting for My Ancestors: Rest, Race, and Liberation with Chrissy King

In this episode, you'll hear a conversation that will stop you in your tracks — and then make you think differently about rest for the rest of your life. Chrissy King, author of The Body Liberation Project, writer, speaker, and educator, joins host Becky Mollenkamp to explore what rest actually means for Black women — and why it is not a universal experience. Chrissy opens by reading a Substack post that sparked this conversation: that she rests not just for herself, but for ancestors who never could. From there, the conversation moves through joy as a life purpose, the guilt of doing nothing in a productivity-obsessed culture, the link between body liberation and time freedom, how softness is a revolutionary act, and why white women claiming "rest is resistance" in this political moment is a problem. Honest, layered, and politically sharp. Topics Covered: • Rest as ancestral honoring: Chrissy reads the Substack post that sparked this episode — resting not just for herself, but for enslaved ancestors who never had that freedom — and the complex emotions that holding both rest and achievement creates for Black women. • What rest actually looks like: From Saturday morning reading to crochet, phone-free walks in NYC, and embracing boredom — how Chrissy has actively curated a slower, more joyful life, including the deliberate choice to be child-free. • Rejecting the girl boss revival: Why Chrissy refuses to participate in the return of hustle culture, and how she's disconnecting from external "should" messaging about productivity, wake-up times, and constant achievement. • Body liberation and time liberation are the same fight: The link between diet culture's rules about bodies and productivity culture's rules about time — both rooted in perfectionism and white supremacy, and both demanding we conform to someone else's template. • Softness as revolution: For Black women, allowing yourself to feel and be soft — in your home, your relationships, with yourself — is a radical act in a society that has historically withheld that softness from Black people. • "Rest is resistance" is not universal: A direct, unflinching conversation about why Trisha Hersey's message, while monumental, does not apply the same way to white women — and why this political moment demands that white people do active resistance work, not claim rest as their form of it. • White women and co-optation: How the body positivity movement and rest as resistance have both been watered down and co-opted by white women, and the difference between having a personal body image issue versus living in a systemically oppressed body. • The guilt inside the guilt: The double bind many Black people feel — the pressure to achieve because ancestors couldn't, and the guilt of resting when so many Black people still don't have access to rest and ease. • AI, humanity, and reclaiming deep thinking: Why outsourcing our thinking to AI — including how to navigate conflict with a friend — strips us of part of our humanity, and why the struggle and messiness of figuring things out is essential to being human. • Social media is a false sense of connection: How putting the phone down opened up space for real friendship, real community, and real creativity — and why what you're "missing" online is almost never worth what you lose by being on it. Resources Mentioned: • "The Body Liberation Project" by Chrissy King: https://amzn.to/4xpnYss [https://amzn.to/4xpnYss] • "Rest Is Resistance" by Tricia Hersey: https://amzn.to/4gfNRok [https://amzn.to/4gfNRok] • "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi: https://amzn.to/4glmh98 [https://amzn.to/4glmh98] • "Kin" by Tayari Jones: https://amzn.to/3SzPEL4 [https://amzn.to/3SzPEL4] • "An American Marriage" by Tayari Jones: https://amzn.to/3QxIRB4 [https://amzn.to/3QxIRB4] • "Silver Sparrow" by Tayari Jones: https://amzn.to/4eehkfJ [https://amzn.to/4eehkfJ] • "Where the Wildflowers Grow" by Terah Shelton Harris: https://amzn.to/3QBLMIX [https://amzn.to/3QBLMIX] Connect with Chrissy King: • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamchrissyking/ [https://www.instagram.com/iamchrissyking/] • The Liberation Collective: https://chrissyking.substack.com/ [https://chrissyking.substack.com/] • The Child Free Coven: https://thechildfreecoven.substack.com/ [https://thechildfreecoven.substack.com/] 🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/ [http://feministpodcastcollective.com/]

Train Travel Helps You Disconnect From Technology and Reconnect With People with Sojourner White

In this episode, you'll meet Sojourner White (the self-proclaimed Train Travel Queen and founder of Sojourneys) a travel blogger and full-time content creator who has made train travel her life's work and her entry point back to a slower, more intentional way of being in the world. What started as a midnight YouTube rabbit hole and a pandemic-era urge to move without flying turned into a cross-country, cross-continental journey through Amtrak sleeper cars, Indian railways, Uzbekistan high-speed trains, and a tequila train in Mexico. Sojourner and Becky talk about what trains teach you about America's complicated history, how solo travel transforms introverts, why she's fine with wifi-less trains, and what it looks like to be a content creator who has genuinely learned to put the camera down and just be. Topics Covered: • How a midnight YouTube rabbit hole started everything. Sojourner discovered Amtrak's scenic mountain routes over wine at midnight in 2021, booked a ticket the next morning, and never looked back, including how a single Instagram post about that first trip revealed there was an audience hungry for exactly this kind of content. • Train travel as analog antidote. What happens when you give yourself permission to slow down (junk journaling, word searches, painting, reading, and looking out the window) and how train travel reintroduced Sojourner to activities she used to love that have nothing to do with a screen. • The unexpected history lesson in every train ride. From the Chinese immigrants who built the Western railroads, to the Pullman porters of the Midwest, to hearing her godmother describe sitting in a segregated train car in Detroit, how obsessing over trains became a surprisingly deep education in American history. • Being a Black solo female traveler on trains and internationally. What it's like to "gauge" a fellow traveler before engaging, to be a constant source of curiosity in Japan and Vietnam, and how train spaces—low-stakes, temporary, neutral—have helped Sojourner stretch her trust in strangers. • People are genuinely good, and train travel keeps proving it. From sharing snacks with strangers on a train in India via Google Translate, to casual dining car conversations, to the Japanese man offering her snacks on the Shinkansen,  what a decade of train travel has taught her about humanity. • Traveling homebody: how trains replicate home. Why Sojourner loves trains specifically, they give her a room, bring her meals, let her watch movies, call her mom, and do her junk journal while technically going somewhere. The sleeper car as the ultimate slow-travel experience. • Being a content creator who protects the experience. How Sojourner has built systems—shot lists, themes, filming boundaries—that let her actually enjoy her trips instead of documenting every second. Plus: the places she deliberately doesn't film, and why she doesn't want to. • Practical train travel advice for beginners. The top scenic US routes (California Zephyr, Coast Starlight, Empire Builder), when to book, what to bring, how to navigate the dining car as a solo traveler, and why your sleeper car attendant is your secret weapon. • From introvert to extrovert, by way of the rails. Sojourner's brothers joke that she used to stare at the menu instead of talking to servers. Now she'll strike up a conversation with anyone on a train. What that shift has meant for how she moves through the world. • Millennials, burnout, and the quiet return to analog. Sojourner on her friend group's growing preference for tech-free hangs, photo albums over Instagram dumps, and the difference between documenting for social versus documenting for yourself. Resources: • Sojourner White on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesojournies/ [https://www.instagram.com/thesojournies/] • Sojourner White on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Sojournies [https://www.youtube.com/@Sojournies] • Sojourner White on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@thesojournies [https://www.threads.com/@thesojournies] 🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/ [http://feministpodcastcollective.com/]

Building Real-World Community in the Age of Loneliness with Whitney Pollard

In this episode, you'll hear from Whitney Pollard — engineer, former corporate leader, world traveler, and founder of Homii — a community platform designed to bridge the gap between our digital lives and our desperate need for in-person connection. After getting laid off in 2023, Whitney gifted herself a year of travel, ended up in Vietnam, and stumbled into building something the world urgently needs: curated, trust-based spaces where strangers become community. She and Becky dig into why third spaces are disappearing, how technology has made us afraid to strike up a conversation with a stranger, what it means to belong somewhere when you look different from everyone around you, and how one karaoke night with 70 people from 10 countries can quietly dismantle a lifetime of stereotypes. Topics Covered: • From layoff to Vietnam to Homii. How losing her corporate job became the catalyst for a year of travel, a TikTok channel about Black American life in Vietnam, and eventually a full-blown community platform, all connected by Whitney's lifelong orientation toward people and belonging. • Why people are desperate for in-person connection but can't find it. Whitney's market research reveals that the barrier isn't desire, it's anxiety, scattered information, and not knowing where you'll be safe or welcomed. Homii is designed to close that gap. • The problem with existing platforms. Facebook groups, Eventbrite, Meetup, none of them are actually built for how humans connect. Whitney breaks down what's missing and what Homii is doing differently, including vetting hosts and training third spaces. • What it means to belong somewhere as a Black woman in Vietnam. Whitney shares what it's like to be a constant source of shock in your own neighborhood, and how finding "home base" spaces that feel safe became the seed of everything she's building. • Third spaces are disappearing, and that's a crisis. Whitney makes a passionate case for why we need the adult equivalent of a college student union: places where you can just show up, exist, and be, without rushing or performing. • How technology has eroded our ability to connect in person. The skills we're losing — striking up a conversation, sitting with a stranger, making eye contact — and what Whitney has learned from living abroad about what we've traded away. • Designing for the introvert, not just the connector. Whitney is building Homii specifically for the ninety percent of people who aren't naturally wired for community-building, matching by identity and interest, curating group size, and training hosts to make the small human gestures that lower the stakes. • Why you can't trust reviews anymore, and what Homii is doing instead. Real belonging requires real accountability. Whitney's review framework asks not "was it five stars?" but "would you bring your mom here?" • A Christmas Eve karaoke moment that captures everything. 70 people from Norway, Vietnam, the US, and beyond, and the beautiful, visible process of strangers unlearning stereotypes in real time. • Whitney's personal offline practice. Salsa dancing four nights a week, phone-down presence with people, and the Vietnamese cultural norm of sitting with someone in real life before talking business, what she's learning about balance while building a tech platform. Resources Mentioned: • Homii: https://homiiworld.com/ [https://homiiworld.com/] • Homii on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homiiglobal/ [https://www.instagram.com/homiiglobal/] • Whitney's Instagram & TikTok: @WhitneyDagail • Whitney's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@whitney.dagail [https://www.youtube.com/@whitney.dagail] 🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/ [http://feministpodcastcollective.com/]

How to Market Your Business Without Being Online All Day with Andria Singletary

In this episode, you'll hear from Andria Singletary — podcast strategist, host of Evergreen Marketing Era for Women Entrepreneurs, and mom of (almost) three — about how she stopped building her business on borrowed land. What started as a necessity when her daughter was born became a full philosophy shift: ditching the social media hamster wheel in favor of long-form content that works while you sleep. Andria breaks down how she replaced Instagram with podcasting, blogging, and strategic collaborations — and how that switch didn't just save her sanity, it brought in better clients. If you've ever felt like you'd lose your business the moment you put your phone down, this episode will make you think again. Topics Covered: • Why motherhood forced a marketing reckoning. Andria realized she was missing her kids' childhoods trying to keep up on Instagram — and that wake-up call became the catalyst for completely rethinking how she showed up for her business. • The fear of being forgotten. What it actually felt like to scale back social media when it had been her primary lead source, and how she moved through those fears instead of letting them keep her stuck. • Long-form content as a business foundation. Andria makes the case for podcasting and blogging over short-form social, explaining how evergreen content compounds over time in a way that Instagram posts simply cannot. • Quality over quantity, and what that actually means. One weekly podcast episode plus one blog post per month versus daily posting: why less, done intentionally, outperforms more, done frantically. • Dopamine hits vs. real business growth. The moment Andria realized that likes and comments don't pay the bills, and how she found a more meaningful (and more profitable) version of that reward through long-form content engagement. • Why podcast listeners make better clients. Andria explains how being "in someone's ears" while they do laundry or go for a walk creates an intimacy that social media's flat, curated feed can never replicate, and how that translates to warmer leads and shorter sales cycles. • Letting go of perfectionism in content creation. The accidental Christmas recording-on-her-phone moment that changed how Andria thought about production quality, and what she learned when her listeners loved it. • Content ownership and platform risk. Getting locked out, censored, or watching your platform collapse overnight, Andria talks about why building on rented land is a genuine business risk and how long-form content gives you something no algorithm can take away. • Her current social media diet. Instagram is basically a dead zone; Threads gets 30–45 minutes a week; and her business is just fine. What that looks like in practice, and what she actually focuses on instead. • Starting before you're ready: the case for podcast guesting. Not sure if podcasting is for you? Andria's advice is to go be a guest first, and her broader reminder that blogging and YouTube are also legit long-form paths. Resources: • Evergreen Marketing Era for Women Entrepreneurs podcast: https://mamaturnedmompreneur.com/podcast [https://mamaturnedmompreneur.com/podcast] • Andria's Threads: https://www.threads.com/@evergreenmarketingera [https://www.threads.com/@evergreenmarketingera] • Andria's website: https://mamaturnedmompreneur.com/ [https://mamaturnedmompreneur.com/] 🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/ [http://feministpodcastcollective.com/]